No one voted to cut Social Security. No one voted to cut Medicare. And no one voted for higher drug prices.

Donald Trump ran on a promise to protect Social Security and Medicare. Based on Trump’s long record of working to cut and undermine our earned benefits, we don’t trust that promise for one second. But we plan to make him keep it.

There’s a good reason Trump didn’t campaign on cutting Social Security: Ninety-two percent of Americans think that’s a terrible idea.

What will Trump do once he’s actually in the White House? During his first term, he tried to cut Social Security every single year. He appointed an unqualified crony, Andrew Saul, to head the Social Security Administration. And he surrounded himself with advisors who had long records of working to cut and privatize Social Security.

Now, Trump has a new advisor, Elon Musk. He just put Musk in charge of a commission to slash $2 trillion of federal spending. That is essentially impossible without cutting Social Security, Medicare, and/or Medicaid. Indeed, incoming Vice President JD Vance has specifically said that Musk will target Social Security.

We are never going to stop fighting to protect and expand Social Security.

Musk is the wealthiest man in the world. It’s no surprise that Musk and his fellow billionaires want to cut our earned benefits rather than pay their fair share in taxes.

Trump’s top priority is to extend the tax cuts he gave the ultra-wealthy in his first term. Then, Republicans will turn around and claim that we “can’t afford” Social Security and Medicare.

Republicans in Congress have already telegraphed what those cuts could look like. The Republican Study Committee (RSC), a caucus that counts over 80 percent of House Republicans as members, released a budget proposal earlier this year that makes massive cuts to Social Security. That includes raising the retirement age to 69, and decimating benefits for the middle class.

The RSC budget would also repeal Medicare’s power to negotiate lower drug prices. That means seniors and people with disabilities would have to turn over more of their hard-earned Social Security checks to Big Pharma.

In case anyone doubted that Republicans are serious about passing these cuts into law, House Budget Chairman Jodey Arrington (who angrily chased me down the street last year after I confronted him about his support for Social Security cuts) just pledged to cut health care benefits through reconciliation—meaning that Republicans would only need 50 votes in the Senate.

Trump and Republicans will try to cut our earned benefits. But just as a grassroots movement of Americans around the country succeeded in saving the Affordable Care Act during Trump’s first term, we can save Social Security and Medicare.

Musk is the wealthiest man in the world. It’s no surprise that Musk and his fellow billionaires want to cut our earned benefits rather than pay their fair share in taxes.

Here’s how:

1. Hold Every Republican Accountable: Republicans will have only a slim majority in both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives. Every member of the House, and one-third of the Senate, is on the ballot in 2026. We will target every Republican in a competitive district with protests and billboards saying: Hands off our Social Security and Medicare!
   
2. Keep Democrats Unified: There’s nothing Republicans want more than bipartisan cover for benefit cuts. Democrats must stand united and refuse to give it to them. We are calling on every Democrat in Congress to stand strong against even one penny of cuts to Social Security and Medicare.
   
3. Refuse To Go Behind Closed Doors: Republicans want to create a closed-door, fast-track commission to cut benefits without political accountability. We’ve beaten back this type of commission before, and we’re prepared to do so again. Any changes to Social Security must happen through regular Congressional order, in the light of day.

We are never going to stop fighting to protect and expand Social Security. Social Security has stood strong for nearly a century. It has survived wars, depressions, and pandemics. And with your help, it will survive Donald Trump.

On November 5, Donald Trump was elected as the 47th U.S. president. Trump is an oligarch—an economic or political actor who secures and reproduces power and wealth, then transforms one into the other. And now he is in the small minority of oligarchs across history who have had second acts—having lost power or wealth, they find a way back. What can we learn from those experiences that might inform our understanding of Trump’s second term?

To answer that question, we looked at the track records of three other business oligarchs like Trump who have served as heads of state or government since World War II. Business oligarchs begin their journey by accumulating wealth, then move to power.

In our book The Oligarch’s Grip: Fusing Wealth and Power, we wrote about Chilean president Sebastian Piñera. He served two non-consecutive terms in office (2010-14 and 2018-22). His second act was decidedly worse than his first. During his first term in office, per capita income in constant dollars grew by 14%, while life expectancy expanded by 0.9 years. Sure, there were controversies, such as the appointment of Pinochet-era figures as cabinet ministers and protests over the end of the school voucher system. But, in general, Chileans felt better off.

While we are hesitant to make any grand predictions for the Trump second term based on these cases, it does seem questionable that it will be any better than the first.

By contrast, Piñera’s second term was disastrous. Per capita income rose by only 2% and life expectancy contracted by 0.8 years. The Covid-19 pandemic played a role in these outcomes, but it wasn’t the only driver. Piñera’s poor handling of a second, larger set of student protests has also led to his relatively low ranking among modern Chilean heads of state. He died in a helicopter accident in 2024.

Trump has been compared to Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s three-time prime minister (1994-95, 2001-06, and 2008-11). We will focus on his second and third terms, which are longer. Per capita income expanded by 3.5% in that second term, and life expectancy grew by a remarkable 1.4 years. Ambitious goals aimed at constitutional and tax reform were thwarted, but, still, Italians felt better off, even if they narrowly backed a center-left coalition that removed Berlusconi from office.

His third term was dominated by the 2007-08 global financial crisis, the Great Recession of 2008-09, and the 2009-10 eurozone crisis. Italy’s economy was one of the most highly indebted in Europe, and higher interest rates led to a 6.8% GDP decline during 2008-09. Per capita income declined by 3.6% during this term, while life expectancy increased by 0.6 years. Having been ranked by Forbes as the 12th most powerful person in the world in 2009, Berlusconi resigned in 2011 as a deeply unpopular and polarizing figure.

A similar pattern of a poor second act emerges with Rafic Hariri, Lebanon’s prime minister for two terms (1992-98 and 2000-04). Per capita income grew by a substantial 44% during his first term, while life expectancy expanded in the post-civil war period by 2.2 years. But when Hariri returned to office for a second term, results were much less compelling: income up by 16% and life expectancy by 0.6 years. Political tensions led to his assassination in 2005. His son Saad served two terms as well and also left office under a cloud. A third oligarch prime minister, Naguib Mikati, is in his third term and, given the recent Israeli invasion, is unlikely to have a successful ending.

Does history offer any relief from this picture of disappointing second acts? Not really. For example, Marcus Licinius Crassus—one of the Roman Republic’s richest and most powerful men, served as consul twice (70 and 55 BCE), both times with often rival and sometimes ally Pompey. The first consulship led to the Triumvirate Alliance of Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus. The second consulship led to Crassus being named governor of the endlessly wealthy province of Syria, where he was defeated by the Parthians and died in 53 BCE.

These examples suggest some preliminary findings and cautions. First, oligarchs’ second acts generally end badly. Sometimes, external circumstances drive this result. Other times, it seems that oligarchs don’t show much evidence of learning from their first terms.

Second, many oligarchs never serve in decision-making roles as heads of state or government like Piñera, Berlusconi, or Hariri. Some have agenda-setting power through political contributions or media ownership. Others have ideological power, shaping the way we think and act. Based on our dataset at the Center for the Study of Oligarchs, we are unaware of any oligarchs who had and lost those types of power who were able to regain it. We also don’t know of any significant cases of oligarchs losing their wealth and then recovering it.

While we are hesitant to make any grand predictions for the Trump second term based on these cases, it does seem questionable that it will be any better than the first. During that first term, per capita in the U.S. rose by 2.9% and life expectancy fell by a jaw-dropping 1.7 years. That record helped earn Trump a ranking as the worst president in U.S history, according to the American Political Science Association survey.

It is difficult to imagine how Trump will be able to successfully fight the dismal history of oligarchs’ second acts.

When Donald Trump takes office on January 20th, all his campaign promises to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours and almost as quickly end Israel’s war on its neighbors will be put to the test. The choices he has made for his incoming administration so far, from Marco Rubio as Secretary of State to Mike Waltz as National Security Advisor, Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense and Elise Stefanik as UN Ambassador make for a rogues gallery of saber-rattlers.

The only conflict where peace negotiations seem to be on the agenda is Ukraine. In April, both Vice President-elect JD Vance and Senator Marco Rubio voted against a $95 billion military aid bill that included $61 billion for Ukraine.

Rubio recently appeared on NBC’s Today Show saying, “I think the Ukrainians have been incredibly brave and strong when standing up to Russia. But at the end of the day, what we’re funding here is a stalemate war, and it needs to be brought to a conclusion… I think there has to be some common sense here.”

On the campaign trail, Vance made a controversial suggestion that the best way to end the war was for Ukraine to cede the land Russia has seized, for a demilitarized zone to be established, and for Ukraine to become neutral, i.e. not enter NATO. He was roundly criticized by both Republicans and Democrats who argue that backing Ukraine is vitally important to U.S. security since it weakens Russia, which is closely allied with China.

Any attempt by Trump to stop U.S. military support for Ukraine will undoubtedly face fierce opposition from the pro-war forces in his own party, particularly in Congress, as well as perhaps the entirety of the Democratic Party. Two years ago, 30 progressive Democrats in Congress wrote a letter to President Biden asking him to consider promoting negotiations. The party higher ups were so incensed by their lack of party discipline that they came down on the progressives like a ton of bricks. Within 24 hours, the group had cried uncle and rescinded the letter. They have since all voted for money for Ukraine and have not uttered another word about negotiations.

Any attempt by Trump to stop U.S. military support for Ukraine will undoubtedly face fierce opposition from the pro-war forces in his own party, particularly in Congress, as well as perhaps the entirety of the Democratic Party.

So a Trump effort to cut funds to Ukraine could run up against a bipartisan congressional effort to keep the war going. And let’s not forget the efforts by European countries, and NATO, to keep the U.S. in the fight. Still, Trump could stand up to all these forces and push for a rational policy that would restart the talking and stop the killing.

The Middle East, however, is a more difficult situation. In his first term, Trump showed his pro-Israel cards when he brokered the Abraham accords between several Arab countries and Israel; moved the U.S. embassy to a location in Jerusalem that is partly on occupied land outside Israel’s internationally recognized borders; and recognized the occupied Golan Heights in Syria as part of Israel. Such unprecedented signals of unconditional U.S. support for Israel’s illegal occupation and settlements helped set the stage for the current crisis.

Trump seems as unlikely as Biden to cut U.S. weapons to Israel, despite public opinion polls favoring such a halt and a recent UN human rights report showing that 70% of the people killed by those U.S. weapons are women and children.

Meanwhile, the wily Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is already busy getting ready for a second Trump presidency. On the very day of the U.S. election, Netanyahu fired his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, who opposed a lasting Israeli military occupation of Gaza and had at times argued for prioritizing the lives of the Israeli hostages over killing more Palestinians.

Trump seems as unlikely as Biden to cut U.S. weapons to Israel, despite public opinion polls favoring such a halt and a recent UN human rights report showing that 70% of the people killed by those U.S. weapons are women and children.

Israel Katz, the new defense minister and former foreign minister, is more hawkish than Gallant, and has led a campaign to falsely blame Iran for the smuggling of weapons from Jordan into the West Bank.

Other powerful voices, national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, who is also a “minister in the Defense Ministry,” represent extreme Zionist parties that are publicly committed to territorial expansion, annexation and ethnic cleansing. They both live in illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

So Netanyahu has deliberately surrounded himself with allies who back his ever-escalating war. They are surely developing a war plan to exploit Trump’s support for Israel, but will first use the unique opportunity of the U.S. transition of power to create facts on the ground that will limit Trump’s options when he takes office.

The Israelis will doubtless redouble their efforts to drive Palestinians out of as much of Gaza as possible, confronting President Trump with a catastrophic humanitarian crisis in which Gaza’s surviving population is crammed into an impossibly small area, with next to no food, no shelter for many, disease running rampant, and no access to needed medical care for tens of thousands of horribly wounded and dying people.

The Israelis will count on Trump to accept whatever final solution they propose, most likely to drive Palestinians out of Gaza, into the West Bank, Jordan, Egypt and farther afield.

Israel threatened all along to do to Lebanon the same as they have done to Gaza. Israeli forces have met fierce resistance, taken heavy casualties, and have not advanced far into Lebanon. But, as in Gaza, they are using bombing and artillery to destroy villages and towns, kill or drive people north and hope to effectively annex the part of Lebanon south of the Litani river as a so-called “buffer zone.” When Trump takes office, they may ask for greater U.S. involvement to help them “finish the job.”

The big wild card is Iran. Trump’s first term in office was marked by a policy of “maximum pressure” against Tehran. He unilaterally withdrew America from the Iran nuclear deal, imposed severe sanctions that devastated the economy, and ordered the killing of the country’s top general. Trump did not support a war on Iran in his first term, but had to be talked out of attacking Iran in his final days in office by General Mark Milley and the Pentagon.

Colin Powell’s former chief of staff, retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, recently described to Chris Hedges just how catastrophic a war with Iran would be, based on U.S.military wargames he was involved in.

Wilkerson predicts that a U.S. war on Iran could last for ten years, cost $10 trillion and still fail to conquer Iran. Airstrikes alone would not destroy all of Iran’s civilian nuclear program and ballistic missile stockpiles. So, once unleashed, the war would very likely escalate into a regime change war involving U.S. ground forces, in a country with three or four times the territory and population of Iraq, more mountainous terrain and a thousand mile long coastline bristling with missiles that can sink U.S. warships.

But Netanyahu and his extreme Zionist allies believe that they must sooner or later fight an existential war with Iran if they are to realize their vision of a dominant Greater Israel. And they believe that the destruction they have wreaked on the Palestinians in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, including the assassination of their senior leaders, has given them a military advantage and a favorable opportunity for a showdown with Iran.

By November 10, Trump and Netanyahu had reportedly spoken on the phone three times since the election, and Netanyahu said that they see “eye to eye on the Iranian threat.” Trump has already hired Iran hawk Brian Hook, who helped him sabotage the JCPOA nuclear agreement with Iran in 2018, to coordinate the formation of his foreign policy team.

So far, the team that Trump and Hook have assembled seems to offer some hope for peace in Ukraine, but little to none for peace in the Middle East and a rising danger of a U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.

Trump’s expected National Security Advisor Mike Waltz is best known as a China hawk. He has voted against military aid to Ukraine in Congress, but he recently tweeted that Israel should bomb Iran’s nuclear and oil facilities, the most certain path to a full-scale war.

Trump’s new UN ambassador, Elise Stefanik, has led moves in Congress to equate criticism of Israel with anti-semitism, and she led the aggressive questioning of American university presidents at an anti-semitism hearing in Congress, after which the presidents of Harvard and Penn resigned.

So, while Trump will have some advisors who support his desire to end the war in Ukraine, there will be few voices in his inner circle urging caution over Netanyahu’s genocidal ambitions in Palestine and his determination to cripple Iran.

If he wanted to, President Biden could use his final two months in office to de-escalate the conflicts in the Middle East. He could impose an embargo on offensive weapons for Israel, push for serious ceasefire negotiations in both Gaza and Lebanon, and work through U.S. partners in the Gulf to de-escalate tensions with Iran.

But Biden is unlikely to do any of that. When his own administration sent a letter to Israel last month, threatening a cut in military aid if Israel did not allow a surge of humanitarian aid into Gaza in the next 30 days, Israel responded by doing just the opposite–actually cutting the number of trucks allowed in. The State Department claimed Israel was taking “steps in the right direction” and Biden refused to take any action.

We will soon see if Trump is able to make progress in moving the Ukraine war towards negotiations, potentially saving the lives of many thousands of Ukrainians and Russians. But between the catastrophe that Trump will inherit and the warhawks he is picking for his cabinet, peace in the Middle East seems more distant than ever.

Those of us of a certain age grew up believing that America was the central nation on this planet—because, in the decades after World War II, it clearly was. We also believed that the course of history would move others in our direction, and that what did or didn’t happen in Washington would determine what did or didn’t happen on planet Earth. We believed, I think, that America had hit on the formula for political and economic success, that somehow our constitution had marked us out for leadership.

Most of those beliefs seem a little silly now. Clearly our political architecture—our Electoral College, our filibusters, and so on—has some deep flaws. Clearly we are not magically resistant to authoritarianism—indeed we’ve now embraced a flavor of it. And clearly America is not going to play the commanding role in helping solve the climate crisis, the greatest dilemma humans have ever encountered. For the next few years the best we can hope is that Washington won’t manage to wreck the efforts of others—and that some parts of this big nation will demonstrate what’s still possible. And that many of us can join in a genuinely global citizens’ fight for rapid action.

That Donald Trump lost in 2020 was, it turns out, of great importance: it gave the U.S. four years to help break renewable energy out of its “alternative energy” niche.

This all seems quite clear as the world’s nations gather these next two weeks in Baku, the oil-soaked capital of Azerbaijan, for 2024’s edition of the global climate talks. America is represented by John Podesta, the stalwart representative of the Democratic political structure that came crashing down on election day. (I mean, he was chief of staff to Bill Clinton). Podesta put on a brave face at a press conference as the talks began:

“Setbacks are unavoidable, but giving up is unforgivable,” he said. “This is not the end of our fight for a cleaner, safer planet. Facts are still facts. Science is still science. The fight is bigger than one election, one political cycle in one country. This fight is bigger, still, because we are all living through a year defined by the climate crisis in every country of the world.”

More specifically, he promised that the U.S. would not “revert back to the energy system of the 1950s. No way.”

Which is true—but we also, clearly, won’t be leading the charge into this century’s clean energy transition. As the leading climate scientist Michael Mann put it in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists the day after the election, “the United States is now poised to become an authoritarian state ruled by plutocrats and fossil fuel interests. It is now, in short, a petrostate.” (Not unlike the petrostate of Azerbaijan, whose lead climate negotiator was discovered last week to be using his role as host of the climate talks to negotiate new fossil fuel deals).

But—and here’s the interesting and good news—this fight for oil and gas and coal will be a rearguard action. That Donald Trump lost in 2020 was, it turns out, of great importance: it gave the U.S. four years to help break renewable energy out of its “alternative energy” niche. In those years the price of solar power and wind power dropped below the price of energy from coal and gas and oil, and as a result everything has begun to change.

If you want a fact to cheer you up—and I sure do—here’s one. It took humanity 68 years from the invention of the solar cell in 1954 to reach one terawatt of installed solar capacity. We passed that mark in 2022—and then we installed the second terawatt in two years since. To meet the goals set by climate scientists we need to roughly double the pace of solar installation again through the end of the decade: so, a terrawatt a year. Is that doable? We currently have the factory capacity to produce 1.1 terrawatts a year worth of panels. It’s a matter of finance and execution.

Most of that factory capacity, of course, is in China, and it is China that will now unambiguously be in the lead. There will be other players (here’s a good account of how India is trying to build its solar capacity) but the action shifts pretty powerfully from Washington to Beijing, which has bet big on this energy transition. One imagines that its diplomats are now the unrivaled key players in climate talks like the one in Baku, though the phalanx of other big, growing nations (Brazil, South Africa, India, Indonesia, and so on) will play important roles. Crucially, most of these are fossil fuel importers, and have every reason to move speedily in the direction of sun and wind; it’s possible that in terms of international negotiations things may get somewhat easier without the drag of the U.S. on the proceedings. (Which is why, comically, Exxon is asking the Trump administration to stay in the Paris talks).

And what of the U.S.?

Well, it’s a big country, and much of it is still in rational hands. As the World Resources Institute put it

Both Republican-led and Democratic-led states are seeing the benefits of wind, solar, and battery manufacturing and deployment thanks to the billions of dollars of investments unleashed by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act. Governors and representatives in Congress on both sides of the aisle have come to recognize that clean energy is a huge moneymaker and a job creator. President Trump will face a bipartisan wall of opposition if he attempts to rip away clean energy incentives now.

That fight over the fate of the IRA will be a huge battle, but perhaps more important globally is the fact that America—because of those decades after WWII—has most of the world’s capital. It rests, above all, in pension funds, and it could be the thing that finances that terrawatt-a-year build out. I imagine the Trump administration will cut back sharply on American contributions to the International Monetary Fund and other global financial institutions—and that may mean that as other nations gain more influence, those institutions will have more ability to use their relatively small amounts of money to “de-risk” those crucial investments. That could be critically important in helping, say, retired schoolteachers in Seattle build the solar farms that Senegal requires and that will help us all.

And America remains the world center of zeitgeist. Which means that the fact that California and Texas (the twin capitals of American dynamism, and the fifth and eight largest economies on earth) are rapidly moving toward clean energy will help. Maybe even New York—10th largest economy on earth—might show some spunk; Gov. Kathy Hochul is apparently trying to revive the congestion-pricing scheme for Manhattan that she killed eight months ago. The genie will keep trying to climb out of the bottle, even as MAGA does it best to drag it back by its heels.

And it means that there’s lots of work for the rest of us, as we try to build a global movement behind speeding up this energy transition. That will be the chief work of this newsletter in the months and years ahead. There’s real global momentum, and we can, and will, figure out ways to add to it.

America, after all, is where the solar cell was born. It was mostly in America’s labs that we came to understand the science of climate change. And, crucially, it was America that really gave birth to the environmental movement. We—American people, if not our national government—still have a key role to play.

We now live during the time of the fasci-clown. In post-election analyses, all the discussions of the appeal of his racism and patriarchy capture important things. But they may not speak starkly enough to why these sentiments run so deep and cut so broad a swath, though for different reasons, through both the white donor class and so much of the working class. Neither do they explain how and why growing segments of the populace laugh so much at Trump's fascist humor. Dressing up and clowning as a "garbage man" illustrates only one recent instance of that conjunction.

The donor class knows, and much of the working class senses, that neoliberal capitalism cannot survive in its old form for much longer. Knowing that, the donor class intends to capture as much wealth and power as it can in the time left to it, prepared to support a transition from neoliberalism to fascism if that is what it takes. Elon Musk is a perfect exemplar here, turning Twitter into a propaganda machine, becoming the fasci-clown’s Goebbels, and informally assuming the role of his economic lieutenant, preparing to impose punishing austerity in the name of a restoration of a pre-New Deal government. So much of the working class, feeling neglected and sidelined by the Democratic Party for decades, are increasingly prepared to allow Trump to twist and turn their grievances into shapes that fit a fascist agenda.

Why? Filtering into the sense of extreme entitlement of the superrich and desperation of growing segments of the working class-- sliding into those intensities in ways electoral polls do not directly capture--is a sense that the old alternatives are not working and cannot be sustained into the indefinite future. Workers, for instance, probably do not truly believe that climate wreckage is a liberal farce. Many sense that it is real, but that attempts to really reckon with it would leave them in the lurch. So they laugh at the clown's outrageous jokes, hateful comments about women, race, transgender people and immigration, and allow the fasci-clown to twist their grievances into support for his themes.

In Mein Kampf, Hitler, the fascist, malignant narcissist, and vicious humorist, summarized in two sentences the essence of his campaign to become Fuhrer:

"It belongs to the genius of a great leader to make even adversaries far removed from one another to belong to a single category, because in weak and uncertain characters the knowledge of having different enemies can only too readily lead to the beginning of doubt in their own right." And: "If he suspects they do not seem convinced by the soundness of his argument, repeat it over and over with constantly new examples."

The irony, just lurking below the rhetorical surface, is that neoliberal capitalism, in both the past and today, fosters the climate wreckage that helps to drive refugees north; and it will increasingly do so in the future.

For Hitler, writing after the massive German defeat in WWI, high inflation, and the return of hardened soldiers from battle with no jobs, Jews became the "red thread" to which he tied, through constant repetition, military defeat, social democracy, and communism. He thus condensed multiple adversaries into one enemy. For Trump, living during a time when imperial instabilities and climate wreckage create more and more refugees heading from southern to northern states, immigrants of color become the new red thread. The stagnation of the working class, the problems facing large cities, the "uppity-ness" of women of color, the snarky-ness of the liberal snowflake, and the loss of "black jobs," are all tied to the red thread of immigration. As you intensify opposition to immigration by, first, treating immigration as something insidious as such, and, second, linking it to everything else you oppose, you thereby loosen the rhetorical reins previously restraining public attacks on women, Blacks, Democrats, cities, and secularists. They are all now placed on the same line of associations, with resentments to any one magnified by those felt against others. A brilliant, cruel campaign.

The irony, just lurking below the rhetorical surface, is that neoliberal capitalism, in both the past and today, fosters the climate wreckage that helps to drive refugees north; and it will increasingly do so in the future. That is the truth that Trump and his followers must resist and shout down whenever it rears its ugly head. That is one reason racism must be intensified by the fasci-clown. This core truth must never be acknowledged: America works to produce the immigration it increasingly abhors.

But what about us? That is, what of those of us on the democratic left who have resisted Trump, supported Harris, and oppose the regime the fasci-comic seeks to impose? We participate, in at least one way, in the very condition we resist. As neoliberal capitalism morphs toward fascist capitalism during the second Trump term, we too have failed to come up with an alternative that could both work and attract droves from the working and middle classes to it.

This core truth must never be acknowledged: America works to produce the immigration it increasingly abhors.

As productive capitalism forges a future it cannot sustain in the face of growing climate wreckage, as many flirt with fascist capitalism to avoid facing this truth, nobody really believes in the alternative models of rapid growth and mastery over nature supported by classical social democracy and communism either. The danger of fascist capitalism, indeed, is tied to the failure of other familiar critical traditions to respond in a credible and sufficient way to the time of climate wreckage. This failure insinuates itself inside climate denialism and casualism today.

Such a failure encourages many to deny climate wreckage, that is, to embrace fascist tendencies. It may also encourage others to pretend that it can be resolved within either old forms of productive capitalism or one of the twentieth century alternatives to it. So, we critics, too are caught in a bind. We insist that immigration is good economically, by which we mean that it will lead to greater economic growth, when the truth is that the pursuit of that growth is at the heart of our current crisis. Is our failure connected in some subliminal sense to the growing attractions of many others to Big Lies today, to lies that growing numbers embrace without necessarily believing?

Our sense—though we cannot prove it—is that growing attractions to, and tolerances for, fascist capitalism within the working classes is tied to a larger intellectual failure to show how to evolve a political economy that curtails the future scope of climate wreckage while speaking to real grievances and anxieties of the working class writ large. Unless and until that happens it will not be that hard for fasci-clown leaders to attract the billionaire class and capture large segments of the working class. Fascist humor flourishes when no other responses to deep grievances appear credible.

We are awash in post-electoral grand explanatory arguments and pre-Trump injunctions to organize. This is neither. I want to talk now about breaking things.

As former president of a wall-to-wall union local and author of a book on how regular people can respond to the polycrisis, I'm committed to local organizing and delighted to see so many calls for it (though as a leftist I'd gently remind everyone that we equally need translocal solidarities to reorient the worst of what's to come). But, I'm also frustrated by these calls. They gloss over a crucial site of immediate political action within the actually existing system of U.S. governance.

For anyone who's invested in the Democratic Party, there is absolutely zero excuse at this point not to be very, very, very actively demanding governance from the Biden administration that creates roadblocks to Trumpism.

There's a lot of talk about what a Trump administration will mean and how to resist the worst of that locally and at a grassroots level. And that's great. But RIGHT NOW, literally at this exact moment and for a couple more months, your guy is still in office.

Wither the Last 60 Days of Biden's Presidency?

One of the dominant rhetorical tropes of American presidential politics is that of The First 100 Days. (This goes back especially to FDR, and refers to massive collections of reorienting legislation and executive orders.) And one of the major political developments of the last few decades (or century-and-a-half) in the U.S. is the rise of an "executive presidency" or "unitary executive," the refashioning of the executive branch of American government as a fundamentally presidentially controlled domain of quasi-legislative action that sidesteps the legislative branch. That includes governance by executive order and direct presidential control of the various agencies that implement and administer the legal order.

This is widely regarded as a threat to constitutionalism and democracy, and rightly so. It's also, however, how things have shaken out for us here in the United States. It's the system that we have, and the collection of rhetorical tropes and real presidential powers that orient our collective conversation now about how an incoming President Donald Trump will be enabled to behave in authoritarian ways.

It makes sense that everybody's worried about that.

If you are a person who wants to believe in this system that we have, you can today right now take the pragmatic approach of demanding something immediate from your political party that you believe is invested in democracy and that is, again, actually in control of the executive branch.

But wouldn't a better use of energy for rank-and-file Democrats, for those who believe ( against the evidence) that their preferred political party cares about small-d democracy, be to demand from U.S. President Joe Biden a "Last 60 Days" devoted to antifascist executive action?

Where, right now, are the calls for an unprecedented barrage of executive orders that would interfere with all that you take (and I agree) to be worst in Trumpism?

If you believe that one political party in the existing U.S. system of governance exists to defend and promote small-d democracy and human rights and equality and all the rest, why are you not right now demanding that this party use the extremely well-understood, very practically real power that it presently has to do things that will dramatically interfere with a near-future shift toward authoritarianism???

The Executive Order of Breaking Things

Political observers understand well that everything an executive order productively makes can be undone by another executive order.

But, as we've seen lots of in the past (the first Trump presidency's Muslim ban comes to mind), executive orders can be used very effectively to break things.

Usually, the fact that it's easier to tear things down than build them is, correctly enough, invoked as a kind of caution against tearing things down. We are right to worry that when you break things (like the EPA or freedom of movement or DACA or any institutionally secured set of goods), it's very hard to put them together again, maybe even impossible.

Left to their own devices, it will be big-D Democrat continuism that ushers in fascism, not your asshole neighbor or racist uncle or whomever else we might plausibly pin it on.

But what about breaking things that should be broken? Aren't there some features of our institutions that need to be broken?

You can create roadblocks to fascism by erecting concrete barriers, but you can also create them by dynamiting roads that tend naturally to lead there.

The fact that we're not hearing all about an enormous flurry of road-dynamiting from the actually still governing Biden administration, and about tremendous pressure for still more road-dynamiting from liberals and progressives, registers a staggering political failure. If you are a person who wants to believe in this system that we have, you can today right now take the pragmatic approach of demanding something immediate from your political party that you believe is invested in democracy and that is, again, actually in control of the executive branch.

Tell Biden to break something.

What Can Biden Break?

For just three instances, from a great many that might be imagined, a Biden administration that was trying to render fascism more difficult in the future instead of preparing for a neat and tidy transition to it might

1. Cut off all arms shipments to Israel immediately and advance new genocide resolutions in the U.N.;
2. End all military-to-police equipment programs immediately and destroy stockpiles of matériel destined for the police; and
3. Forgive all public student loans immediately and order destruction of the records.

Each of these is a mixed bag, far from simply and uncomplicatedly "good." But all three (and any number of actions like them) would interfere with fascizing in the near future.

The first because it's a recommitment to at least the discourse of "human rights" as globally real and necessary--which makes it harder for a Trump administration to smoothly continue and deepen the Biden administration's "end of the human rights era."

The second because it interferes with the militarization of police–a largely lawless, loosely affiliated assortment of locally decisionist violence-perpetrators that exists at any given moment *exclusively* to uphold whatever is designated "order"; a person can see how giving such coordinated bodies a bunch of select-fire machine guns and armored vehicles and grenade launchers would be more useful for fascism than for democracy, yes?

The third because it destroys one basis (from many) of social control, a vast body of internetworked debt holdings, in a way that simultaneously puts money back into regular people's pockets and would essentially pre-break the financial system (i.e., break it in a manner that people would see the consequences of after Trump takes office, but the benefits of while Biden is still in office).

One can think of any number of other such road-dynamiting moves. (Heck, perhaps you can even use executive orders to break the unitary executive itself–certainly, a radically antifascist set of actions from a lame-duck Biden administration would give even many Republicans anxiety about Trump's likely mobilization of the executive presidency.)

I'm just outlining three possibilities here. All would be poison if you did them while you were also seeking votes. All are mixed bags in some very real ways. All are things the executive president can really do tomorrow (though subject to lawsuits and a subsequent crisis in the courts–knowing and planning for that would be part of the strategy).

And all are real ways of interfering with wholly predictable dimensions of fascizing under a Trump administration.

They Definitely Won't Do It if You Don't Demand It

That the Biden administration and Democrats won't do any of these things on their own is an indication of their only deep political commitment: continuation of the existing order for as long as possible. Left to their own devices, it will be big-D Democrat continuism that ushers in fascism, not your asshole neighbor or racist uncle or whomever else we might plausibly pin it on.

Biden, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), and the rest of Democratic Party leadership have again and again promised a "peaceful transition of power." Peaceful, fine, sure, of course. But why so smooth a transition? If fascism is really on the menu, as we've been told over and over and as seems entirely likely, why not a rocky, uncomfortable transition that actually impedes fascizing? Why not dynamite a few roads that lead particularly smoothly toward authoritarian rule, human rights abuses, and violence against citizens and others around the world?

Liberals and progressives should demand now that Democrats change everything–not messaging strategies for the next election in 2026 if that even happens, but everything necessary to prevent a smooth and functional authoritarian transition in Trump's First 100 Days.

Because the deepest commitment of our political establishment is to continuity, not democracy. They are addicted to continuity in an age of catastrophe.

I tried to get at how hoping Democrats will arrive at better trajectories for navigating polycrisis on their own steam produces worst-case outcomes in Panic Now? Tools for Humanizing: "As everyone who's ever confronted an addiction knows, getting better doesn't start with insisting there's some relatively easy way out as long as everyone maintains hope. Getting better starts with acknowledging how unbearably bad things have gotten, and concomitantly that you actually don't know what to do next. And then you have to change everything."

American liberals have thus far raised no hue and cry demanding the Biden administration dynamite some fascizing roads, change everything. They have instead, since the election a week ago, asked for nothing of substance from the still-governing presidential administration in order to prevent or impede fascism.

Liberals and progressives should demand now that Democrats change everything–not messaging strategies for the next election in 2026 if that even happens, but everything necessary to prevent a smooth and functional authoritarian transition in Trump's First 100 Days.

What would it look like to break enough?

The current trajectory of the Democratic Party is so wholeheartedly committed to system maintenance that it guarantees the worst sorts of coming devastation. This, more than post-electoral nuts-and-bolts voting breakdowns or even pre-Trump prepping, should give everyone in the country great pause.

So, Go Demand It!

In the pause–if you canvassed to get out the vote, or wrote postcards and sent texts, or donated to Democrats, they are your party. They are currently in governance. The sorts of governance that become possible next, after the Biden administration's Last 60 Days conclude in January, will depend greatly on how Democrats choose to use the executive branch right now. They can smooth the path for an authoritarian transition–or not.

Democrats aren't my party. I vote for them as a competent hostage, not a booster or an adherent. Dear liberal and progressive friends, your party is currently in control of the executive branch of the United States of America.

Reach out and tell them to break something!

The recent 16th Conference of Parties (COP16) to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, or COP16, has highlighted the urgent need to rethink conservation strategies, particularly in Latin America, where the convergence of social conflict and environmental vulnerability creates a complex, high-stakes landscape.

The global environmental crisis, manifesting in the accelerated loss of biodiversity, is exacerbated by deep socio-economic inequalities. Yet communities most affected by environmental degradation are often those that can play a crucial role in its protection. Traditional approaches are no longer sufficient; conservation efforts must be both innovative and inclusive. Therefore, it is vital that communities are included in the formulation of policies that impact their lives. And to take an active role in conservation, they require support through financing mechanisms tailored to their specific needs.

The intersection of conservation and social justice is not merely an ideal; it is an urgent necessity that we must embrace to achieve a sustainable future for all.

In this regard, Universal Basic Income (UBI) emerges as an essential tool for empowering vulnerable communities and promoting equitable conservation strategies. It is not merely about mitigating environmental impacts; these actions also strengthen community resilience and contribute to peace, helping to prevent conflicts. However, the true potential of UBI is only fully realized when supported by financing mechanisms such as Cap and Share.

A Model of Climate Justice

The Cap and Share model generates socio-economic equality through emission reductions and biodiversity protection. And by redirecting these resources towards UBI, we can create a virtuous cycle in which vulnerable communities benefit directly from conservation actions.

Cap and Share enables communities to receive regular, unconditional payments, providing them with crucial financial security. This not only alleviates pressure on natural resources but also facilitates active community participation in the conservation of their surroundings. UBI is not simply economic assistance; it is a model of climate justice that ensures those most affected by climate change receive direct support, empowering them to become agents of change.

Colombia Pilot Project

In Colombia, where the intersection of urgent environmental challenges and violent conflict is particularly evident, a pilot project implementing UBI could be pivotal. This initiative would provide regular income to affected communities, offering them economic relief and the opportunity to engage in conservation practices. Such a project would not only generate immediate benefits for the communities involved but also serve as a vital case study for scaling UBI initiatives across similar contexts. The evidence gathered from this pilot could demonstrate the effectiveness of UBI in reducing poverty, enhancing food security, and fostering peaceful sustainable practices, thereby making a compelling case for broader implementation.

Global evidence suggests that regular income from UBI can have significant positive effects on food security and community autonomy. Communities receiving cash transfers can diversify their income sources and improve their agricultural practices, thereby reducing pressure on ecosystems. In Colombia, this could mean a reduction in practices that contribute to deforestation, as communities empowered by financial security are more likely to invest in sustainable land management.

Armed conflict in Colombia has left deep scars on the country’s social and environmental fabric. Displaced communities and areas of high ecological degradation serve as constant reminders of the interconnectedness of social and environmental issues. Restoring the environment and reducing inequalities must be tackled together to achieve lasting peace. Implementing UBI, supported by Cap and Share, could be a crucial step toward rebuilding the relationship between communities and nature, creating a foundation for sustainable development.

A Sustainable and Equitable Future

As we look forward, it is essential that the conversation around inclusive financing does not stall. Every dollar allocated to conservation should be seen as an investment in the communities that care for our most precious ecosystems. Both international and national actors must recognise the importance of these initiatives and collaborate to ensure that vulnerable communities have access to the resources they need.

The implementation of UBI, alongside mechanisms like Cap and Share, not only offers an economic solution but also addresses the root causes of social and environmental injustice. In doing so, we not only protect biodiversity and ecosystems but also build more just and resilient societies, capable of facing present and future challenges. The intersection of conservation and social justice is not merely an ideal; it is an urgent necessity that we must embrace to achieve a sustainable future for all.

Concluding this chapter of COP16, it is clear that the path to effective conservation must be inclusive. Promoting dialogue around financing mechanisms that empower vulnerable communities is essential to ensure that conservation strategies are fair and effective. Only by doing so can we strengthen the resilience of our communities and contribute to a more equitable world, where nature and humanity coexist in harmony. A pilot project in Colombia can provide the necessary evidence to scale these initiatives, offering a replicable model on a larger scale, which can be advocated in upcoming scenarios such as COP29 and COP30.

Donald Trump’s commanding victory over Kamala Harris seems to have surprised a lot of people both in the U.S. and around the world. Yet, it’s not surprising that Trump pulled off this victory, especially since polls predicted a tight race. What is surprising though is the scale of his victory. In a deeply divided society with a two-party system, one would have expected that either candidate would have won by a narrow margin.

Trump’s victory, which will have a wide-ranging impact on all aspects of U.S. society and will reverberate through the global political economy, represents a genuine political earthquake. He won the electoral college and the popular vote by expanding his coalition with historic demographic shifts. Even democratic heartlands saw large swings toward Trump, while Kamala Harris underperformed with both women (thus indicating that abortion was much less of a key issue than people thought it would be in the 2024 presidential election) and young voters. Young male voters, in particular, swung toward Trump in a big way as Kamala Harris not only put women on top of her agenda but, in turn, had very little to say about men. As for the loss of the working-class vote, which so much has already been said and written about it, suffice to say that Harris also had nothing to say to the mass of citizens facing economic hardship. Strangely enough, Harris and the Democrats in general did not even try to convey to the public some of the success that Biden’s economic policies had in contributing to growth and employment.

What the next four years will bring from the Trump administration may be unlike anything the United States has experienced in modern times.

Kamala Harris could not convince the voters. A considerable majority of the electorate did not share her priorities. That much is obvious. Following her loss to Donald Trump, Democratic National Committee finance committee member Lindy Li made a telling comment when she said that Harris’ bid for the White House was a “$1 billion disaster.”

Indeed, Democrats’ humiliating losses in the 2024 elections has sparked infighting and finger pointing about what went wrong and where the party goes from here. Whether Kamala Harris was the right choice for the Democrats is now of course an academic question. But it may be of interest to see what the New York Times said about Harris in November 2019: “Ms. Harris is the only 2020 Democrat who has fallen hard out of the top tier of candidates. She has proved to be an uneven campaigner who changes her message and tactics to little effect and has a staff torn into factions.”

The emerging consensus on Trump’s reelection is that it was fueled by the economy. But what exactly does this mean? Between the final quarter of 2022 and the third quarter of 2024, the U.S. economy under the Biden-Harris administration was in rather good shape. Unemployment was at its lowest level in decades, wages were rising (though it’s not clear at all if Americans’ pay has fully recovered from inflation), and the GDP was expanding above the trend. In fact, the U.S. economy has been growing faster than any other advanced economy by a wide margin. And the inflation has steadily cooled over the past couple of years.

Now, we do know of course that there was a mismatch in U.S. economy perception and reality, and that a Harris-Guardian poll conducted in the spring of 2024 had in fact revealed that almost everything that most Americans believed about the economy was wrong. However, all this can be explained by the fact that economies are too complex to be summed up by just a couple of indicators. A person’s perception of a country’s economic health can be influenced by one’s own economic status, pessimism about the overall direction of the economy based on comparisons about economic conditions even with the rather distant past, and sentiments about the role of government and even the public’s voice in government and politics. People who feel disconnected from the political system and have dismal views about the nation’s politics are not likely to express positive views about the state of the economy. In other words, perceptions about the state of the economy can be influenced by political biases.

The notion that Trump’s re-election was fueled not so much by the actual state of the economy but rather by voter anxiety over the general direction of the economy and who is really in charge of government in the United States would have made more sense. Most voters don’t feel economically stable or secure. They are aware of the growing economic inequalities and worry about job security. Surveys have consistently found that most workers in the U.S. can’t afford an emergency expense even of a few hundred dollars. For most U.S. adults, the American dream no longer holds true, including a staggering 80 percent among people under the age of 30.

Let’s call things by their proper names. It is the cumulative effects of neoliberalism on economic wellbeing, social cohesion, and democratic politics that explains the pessimism that exists in people’s minds about the direction of the economy and the condition of the country overall. It is the disastrous effects of neoliberalism that can explain the latest realignment of the U.S. electorate and Trump’s decisive victory over Kamala Harris. It is the dysfunctional U.S. economic system in its totality that has given rise to authoritarian demagogues like Donald Trump who promise unhappy and angry voters a return to a golden age.

The economic, political, social, and cultural dominance of neoliberalism has facilitated the rise of authoritarian populism and the far right not only in the United States but throughout the world. Here, I define neoliberalism not only as an economic doctrine primarily characterized by free markets, globalization, liberalization, massive deregulation, shifts away from social welfare programs, and the redistribution of income and wealth from labor to capital, but also as a political project that aims to undo the demos and is carried out by the dominant economic classes through a brutal form of class warfare and with the explicit aim of capturing the political system and hijacking the state as the implementation of neoliberal policies requires large-scale intervention in the capitalist economy; and, equally important, as a sociopolitical ideology that puts individual self-interest before the common good, displays indifference to economic and social inequality and subsequently justifies plutocracy, offers acceptance to unequal power distribution, and transfers responsibility to individual agents.

Neoliberalism has attained a hegemonic position as an economic doctrine and sociopolitical ideology in much of the developed world and permeates the entire mainstream political space. Across Europe, social democratic and socialist parties have become virtually indistinguishable from conservative and right-wing political parties. In the U.S. the Carter, Clinton and Obama administrations pushed neoliberalism as the only viable alternative. Subsequently, what we have seen over the past twenty or so years across the developed capitalist world is the resurgence of ethno-nationalism, the rise of far-right political movements and political parties, and neofascist leaders like Orban in Hungary and Meloni in Italy and proto-fascists like Trump in the United States rising to power through the ballot box.

The new breed of authoritarian populists like Trump has emerged precisely because neoliberal capitalism has created so much discontent and anger that it needs a new model of governance to keep the system intact. And it comes in the form of proto-fascism or neo-fascism. Trumpism is an extreme far-right ideology that attacks democracy and seeks to disband progressive social agendas while promoting a new and more ruthless form of market liberalization. Trumpism is best defined as neoliberal fascism.

Unfortunately, as the traditional parties of the left have themselves embraced the neoliberal orthodoxy and the postmodern left has become obsessed with cultural issues and anti-racism at the expense of economic issues, a very sizeable chunk of the working class has been duped by the new breed of authoritarian populists and put its trust in turn in their hands in hopes of a better future. This is the tragedy of the Left. For without radical political leadership for guidance and inspiration, the working class of today fails to recognize neoliberal capitalism as the problem and has been made in turn to look for scapegoats. This is what Trump has managed to do with his vicious attacks on immigrants, undoubtedly more successfully than any other authoritarian demagogue in the western world.

Like their predecessors, the new breed of authoritarian demagogues with proclivities to fascist rhetoric like Trump are homogenizing nationalists. But with the U.S. being one of the most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations in the world, Trump knew he had to expand his voter base if he were to be successful in his bid for reelection. The fact that his message got through with black, Latino and Asian voters is nothing short of amazing. It seems that the more racist Donald Trump sounds, the more voters he attracts from minority groups. Indeed, the Republican Party is now less white than ever before, and that has to be a very distressing development for the future of the Democratic Party.

What the next four years will bring from the Trump administration may be unlike anything the United States has experienced in modern times. Trump feels he has a powerful mandate, which is hard to argue against, to fulfill his campaign promises. Deportations and closing the border, drilling, pardons, tariffs, targeting journalists, and signing executive orders for schools pushing “critical race theory” and “gender identity” could be among the first promises he may try to fulfill. The restructuring of the U.S. government will take time, and it is unlikely that the second Trump administration will be as disorganized and chaotic as the first.

Progressives and radicals should prepare for what lies ahead. We do live in interesting times.

My reaction to Donald Trump’s recent victory was very different than the one I had when he was first elected in 2016. Back then, I was deeply upset about how it was that we had elected a narcissistic, misogynistic, xenophobic, inciter of violence. And I was anxious about what his presidency would portend for our future.

This year was different. Though still deeply distressed about what Trump’s reentry to the White House would mean for women, immigrants, the future of health care, labor rights and the environment, my overriding emotion was anger. Anger at the Democrat’s political campaigns and consultants who brought us this disaster. And anger at the collapse of the political parties as vibrant organizations that once brought people together, empowered them, and were responsive to their needs.

There was a time when it meant something to be a member of the Democratic or Republican parties. There was a structure to the party from the local to the national level. People belonged, went to meetings. and were proud of their association. Today, for most Americans, being a Democrat or a Republican means being on lists that get emails, text messages, direct mail, phone calls, or targeted social media messages. Most of these are asking for money. There is no organization, no sense of belonging, and no real opportunity to make your voice heard.

One problem with the political consultant class isn’t just the power they wield, it’s the judgements they make, and to whom they are ultimately answerable. It’s not to the political parties, or the voters. It’s to the donors who are paying their tab.

The parties, which once represented voters and empowered them, are now fundraising vehicles that amass billions of dollars each election cycle. These dollars go to consultant groups who use the money to raise more money to pay for advertising, conduct polling to shape messaging either to define and promote their candidates or to define and discourage support for their opponents.

Because they control huge amounts of campaign dollars, it is these consultants who set the agendas for the campaigns. They have effectively replaced the parties as the forces driving American politics. This class of consultants are today’s power brokers and they operate without accountability.

One of the byproducts of this situation is that there is increasingly less voter identification with the parties. The parties themselves have become less membership entities and more fundraising vehicles. This is why it was so easy for Donald Trump to take over the Republican Party and why the Democratic Party has become captive to its big donors and consultants who spend their money. This problem has become aggravated by the emergence of what are known as super-PACs—independent committees that can receive and spend unregulated contributions from billionaires who, hiring the same groups of consultants, now hold even greater sway over the political process than the parties themselves.

One problem with the political consultant class isn’t just the power they wield, it’s the judgements they make, and to whom they are ultimately answerable. It’s not to the political parties, or the voters. It’s to the donors who are paying their tab.

Another problem is how overly cautious, unimaginative, and out of touch these consultants are with voters and their needs. A former Obama official once decried the “foreign policy blob” which he described as a self-perpetuating cast of characters who had served in past administrations. They now populate the think tanks and the commentariat. They are out of touch with a changing world and yet offer the same ideas—a kind of groupthink of conventional wisdom—which failed before and are destined to fail again. The same is true of the political consultancy blob. They are out of touch with a changing electorate and have nothing more to offer other than the same old ideas that may have succeeded once but, given the changes that have occurred in the electorate, are destined to fail.

For example, those who ran this year’s Democratic campaigns failed to appreciate the economic insecurity of white working class voters, instead focusing their attention on what they called the “Obama coalition” of young and non-white voters, and college educated women. They rejected as too leftist increasing taxes on the richest 1%, providing universal health care, and raising the minimum wage. Instead of attending to the needs of working-class voters in key battleground states, they had Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris campaign with former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney believing that she would help win over moderate Republicans, and suburban women—which she could not. And of particular note, they failed to understand the impact of the genocide in Gaza on not only Arab American voters, but also on key components of their Obama coalition, in particular young, progressive, and non-white voters.

Instead of attending to the needs of working-class voters in key battleground states, they had Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris campaign with former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney believing that she would help win over moderate Republicans, and suburban women—which she could not.

Sensing the opening created by the Democrats’ miscues, Trump embraced the white working class promising new jobs, while preying on their feelings of abandonment by railing against immigrants whom he accused of taking jobs and bringing crime to our cities.

Instead of breaking with this failed approach, Harris embraced it. She backtracked on her earlier left-leaning policies favoring universal health care and support for a green economy. Instead of engaging white working-class voters, her campaign largely ignored them, opting instead to campaign with Liz Cheney. Instead of meeting with Arab Americans, she left that field wide open for Trump to exploit. And instead of using the short time available to her to introduce herself to key constituencies by personally meeting with leaders and winning new allies, she made do with mass rallies of supporters.

This is where the consultants failed. Democrats lost the White House and both houses of Congress. Harris won far fewer votes than Biden did in 2020. And lost votes with almost every demographic group, including Hispanics, Asians, white women, and, of course, Arabs.

In the aftermath, the Democratic pundits will find fault with the voters and their choices, not with the poor decisions they themselves made. They will denounce White voters as racist or misogynistic. And they will ask, how could Hispanics vote for Trump after what he and his supporters said about them? And how could Arabs and Muslims forget what Trump did to them during his first term?

In hearing this, I am reminded of one of the sayings attributed to St. Augustine—that in the contest between the church and the world, it’s the church that must go to the world, not the world to the church. In other words, don’t blame the voters. If you want their votes, you must earn them.

That’s why I’m mad at the campaign, the party, and the consultants. They made their money, they made poor choices. And now we will pay the price.

The results of the 2024 election have confirmed a reality that is too frequently denied by Democratic Party leaders and strategists: The American working class is angry — and for good reason.

They want to know why the very rich are getting much richer, and the CEOs of major corporations make almost 300 times more than their average employees, while weekly wages remain stagnant and 60 percent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck.

They want to know why corporate profits soar while companies shut down factories in America and move to low-wage countries.

They want to know why the food industry enjoys record breaking profits, while they can’t afford their grocery bills.

They want to know why they can’t afford to go to a doctor or pay for their prescription drugs, and worry about going bankrupt if they end up in a hospital.

Donald Trump won this election because he tapped into that anger.

In the past few years we have made some positive changes. We must acknowledge, however, that what we’ve done is nowhere near enough.

Did he address any of these serious issues in a thoughtful or meaningful way? Absolutely not.

What he did do was divert the festering anger in our country at a greedy and out-of-touch corporate elite into a politics that served his political goals and will end up further enriching his fellow billionaires.

Trump’s “genius” is his ability to divide the working class so that tens of millions of Americans will reject solidarity with their fellow workers and pave the way for huge tax breaks for the very rich and large corporations.

While Trump did talk about capping credit card interest rates at 10 percent, and a new trade policy with China, his fundamental explanation as to why the working class was struggling was that millions of illegal immigrants have invaded America and that we are now an “occupied country.”

In his pathologically dishonest world, undocumented immigrants are illegally participating in our elections and voting for Democrats. They are creating massive amounts of crime, driving wages down, and taking our jobs. They are getting free health care and other benefits that are denied to American citizens. They are even eating our pets.

That explanation is grossly racist, cruel, and fallacious. But it is an explanation.

And what do the Democrats have to say about the crises facing working families? What is their full-throated explanation, pounded away day after day in the media, in the halls of Congress, and in town meetings throughout the country as to why tens of millions of workers, in the richest country on earth, are struggling to put food on the table or pay the rent? Where is the deeply felt outrage that we are the only major country on earth not to guarantee health care for all as a human right while insurance and drug companies make huge profits?

How do they explain supporting billions of dollars in military aid to the right-wing extremist government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which has created an unprecedented humanitarian disaster in Gaza that is causing massive malnutrition and starvation for thousands of children?

In my view, the Democrats lost this election because they ignored the justified anger of working class America and became the defenders of a rigged economic and political system.

This election was largely about class and change and the Democrats, in both cases, were often on the wrong side. As Jimmy Williams Jr., the president of the Painters Union, said, “The Democratic Party has continued to fail to prioritize a strong, working-class message that addresses issues that really matter to workers. The party did not make a positive case for why workers should vote for them, only that they were not Donald Trump. That’s not good enough anymore!”

As an Independent member of the US Senate, I caucus with the Democrats. In that capacity I have been proud to work with President Biden on one of the most ambitious pro-worker agendas in modern history.

We passed the American Rescue Plan to pull us out of the COVID-19 economic downturn; made historic investments in rebuilding our infrastructure and in transforming our energy system; began the process of rebuilding our manufacturing base; lowered the cost of prescription drugs and forgave student debt for five million Americans. Biden promised to be the most progressive president since FDR and, on domestic issues, he kept his word.

But, unlike FDR, these achievements are almost never discussed within the context of a grossly unfair economy that continues to fail ordinary Americans. Yes. In the past few years we have made some positive changes. We must acknowledge, however, that what we’ve done is nowhere near enough.

In 1936, in his second inaugural address, FDR spoke not only of his administration’s enormous achievements in combatting the Great Depression, but of the painful economic realities that millions of Americans were still experiencing.

The Democratic leadership must recognize that, in a rapidly changing economy, working families face an enormous amount of economic pain, anxiety and hopelessness — and they want change. The status quo is not working for them.

Roosevelt’s words remain relevant today: “I see millions of families trying to live on incomes so meager that the pall of family disaster hangs over them day by day … I see millions denied education, recreation, and the opportunity to better their lot and the lot of their children … I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.”

Of course, the world is today profoundly different than it was in 1936. We are not in an economic depression. Unemployment is relatively low. People are not facing starvation.

But the Democratic leadership must recognize that, in a rapidly changing economy, working families face an enormous amount of economic pain, anxiety and hopelessness — and they want change. The status quo is not working for them.

In politics you can’t fight something with nothing. The Democratic Party needs to determine which side it is on in the great economic struggle of our times, and it needs to provide a clear vision as to what it stands for. Either you stand with the powerful oligarchy of our country, or you stand with the working class. You can’t represent both.

While Democrats will be in the minority in the Senate and (probably) the House in the new Congress, they will still have the opportunity to bring forth a strong legislative agenda that addresses the needs of working families.

Either you stand with the powerful oligarchy of our country, or you stand with the working class. You can’t represent both.

If Republicans choose to vote those bills down, the American working class will learn quickly enough as to which party represents them, and which party represents corporate greed.

In my view, here are some of the working class priorities that Democrats must fight for:

• We must end Citizens United and stop billionaires from buying elections.
• We must raise the $7.25 federal minimum wage to a living wage — at least $17 an hour.
• We must pass the Protecting the Right to Organize Act to make it easier for workers to form unions and end illegal union busting.
• We must protect senior citizens by increasing Social Security benefits and extending the solvency of the program by lifting the cap on taxable income.
• We must bring back defined benefit pension plans so that workers can retire with security.
• We must do what every other wealthy nation does and guarantee health care to all as a human right, beginning with the expansion of Medicare to cover home health care, dental, hearing, and vision.
• We must cut prescription drug prices in half, no more than is paid in other countries.
• We must provide guaranteed paid family and medical leave.
• We must guarantee equal pay for equal work.
• We must create fair trade policies that work for workers, not just corporate CEOs.
• We must build 3 million units of low income and affordable housing.
• We must make public colleges and universities tuition free, childcare affordable for all, and strengthen public education by paying teachers the salaries they deserve.
• We must adopt a progressive tax system which addresses the massive income and wealth inequality we are experiencing by demanding that the very wealthy start paying their fair share of taxes.
• We must save taxpayer dollars by ending the massive waste, fraud and abuse that exists in the Pentagon.

These are extremely popular ideas. The Democratic Party would do well to listen to the clear directive of American voters, and deliver. The simple fact is: if you stand with working people, they will stand with you. In my view, if Democrats deliver on an agenda like this, they can win back the working class of our country and the White House.

Honestly, what would George Orwell have written about this planet of ours, four decades after that ominous year 1984 passed from his fiction into history?

And yes, in case you think that, as in his novel 1984, published in 1949, a year before his death and just as the Cold War (a term he was the first to use in an essay in October 1945) was getting underway, our world, too, seems to be heading for a nightmarish future, I suspect that — were he capable of returning to this planet of ours — he wouldn’t disagree with you for a moment. Phew! Sorry for such a long, complicated sentence, but little wonder given the way our world is now tying itself in knots. Yes, just last week, with the election of climate-change denier and (to steal from Orwell) our very own Big Brother Donald Trump as president of the United States (again!), we just paved the way for an instant all-American nightmare. Still, even without him, the world was anything but peachy keen.

As a matter of fact, we live in a country on the brink of who knows what, on a planet on the brink of… well, yes, who has any idea anymore? One thing, however, is obvious (even if not to The Donald, who plans to “drill, baby, drill” on day one back in the White House): it’s getting hotter by the year (after year after year) in every sense imaginable, as heat records are broken, week by week, month by month around the world. After all, 2024 is expected to be the hottest year in human history, beating out 2023 for that record, and yet, all too sadly, it’s not likely to hold that record for more than a year. As Kristina Dahl, a climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, pointed out recently: “The latest scientific data shows a devastating scientific duality: not only is 2024 slated to be the hottest year on record to date, but it could also be one of the coolest years we’ll see in the decades ahead.”

Yikes!

War, War, and More War

Just consider that, so many thousands of years after we humans first began making war on each other, we’re on a planet that seems to be going down big-time in ways Orwell couldn’t have imagined. And no matter its state, we just can’t seem to stop ourselves from, or even evidently stop wanting to make war again… and again… and again.

Let’s face it, whether we’re talking about fire, drought, floods, unprecedented storms, or so much else, we increasingly live on a different planet.

At this point, in fact, at least three thoroughly nightmarish, seemingly never-ending conflicts are being fought (and fought and fought) on this planet of ours. There is, of course, the war in Ukraine that began with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s painful decision in February 2022 to invade that country. More than two and a half years later, with perhaps 200,000 or more deaths and the destruction of significant parts of Ukraine, it seems as if that particular war is in a nightmarish slog of endless devastation leading who knows where or to who knows what end (including, possibly, the first use of nuclear weapons since August 1945, something Orwell was already thinking about in that Cold War essay of his only months after the U.S. nuked the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end World War II).

And oh yes, only recently, a third country, also nuclear-armed like the Russians, and its leader, like Vladimir Putin, also willing to threaten the use of such weaponry, decided to directly enter the fray. I’m thinking, of course, about the neighboring state of North Korea. And don’t be confused by that “neighboring.” After all, that country’s only about 4,500 miles away from Ukraine, but it’s certainly a neighbor of Russia’s, right?

Whoops, sorry about that! After a glance at a map, I realize that I must have meant a neighbor of China, which is indeed a neighbor of Russia, which is more or less the same thing. Under the circumstances, why shouldn’t North Korean leader Kim Jong-un have sent 8,000 to10,000 of his crack troops to more or less the other side of the planet (or do I mean the universe?) to help an atomic near-neighbor? And I certainly have no right to be critical of such a decision, since in this century my own country has dispatched its military endless thousands of miles away to fight (losing) wars in places like Afghanistan and Iraq.

Of course, whatever my country did, what’s now going on in Ukraine should still be the definition of a nightmare first class, a war without end that only seems to be growing more severe. But perhaps when compared to what’s now taking place in the Middle East, it might have to be seen as a nightmare second class. After all, another nuclear-armed country, Israel, in response to a horrifying terror attack on its citizens by the Palestinian group Hamas on October 7, 2023, has spent more than a year (14 months!) devastating and decimating just about anything left standing, including human beings, in the tiny Gaza Strip. It has by now killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, including staggering numbers of children, destroyed most of the infrastructure there, promoted famine, and well… honestly, that’s just a start, since Vladimir Putin…oh, sorry, my mistake, I meant Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been spreading the war on Gaza in a thoroughly — yes! — devastating way to Lebanon (where, forget the growing numbers of dead, more than 1.2 million Lebanese have been displaced from their homes and turned into refugees in next to no time at all). Meanwhile, he’s been going face to face, or perhaps I mean bomb to bomb and missile to missile — and keep in mind that most of those bombs and missiles come from my own remarkably generous country, since Israel is “the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. military aid since World War II” — with Iran. And who knows where that set of wars may, in fact, go from here (though undoubtedly, nowhere good), or where else in the Middle East the Israelis might still want to expand their military campaigns.

And if all of that isn’t enough for you, or this deeply battered planet of ours, then don’t forget Sudan, where a devastating civil war has been raging for a year and a half, killing untold tens of thousands of Sudanese, displacing eight and a half million more of them from their homes, and causing a brutal famine affecting millions that could destroy an inconceivable number of lives. And like the horrifying conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, that war between two local military factions shows not the slightest sign of ending any time soon.

So, three devastating regional wars on one small planet. If that isn’t distinctly an achievement of sorts for a humanity that continues to arm itself to the teeth, then I’m not sure what is.

Planetary War

And sadly, all three of those wars, which have essentially nothing to do with each other — you seldom see even two of them, no less all three, in the same news coverage — are distracting us remarkably well from what might be considered the real, or at least the most devastating war on Planet Earth. I’m thinking, of course, of the war that, thanks to us, this planet is now waging on — yes! — us.

After all, even where there hasn’t been horrific war-making, all too often there have been other kinds of devastation. Take Spain recently, where in the neighborhood of the city of Valencia, a year’s worth of rain fell in eight hours in a stunning weather event leading to floods that killed hundreds and destroyed much property. Consider that a reminder, amid humanity’s seemingly unending wars (and our unending ability to keep on waging them), that thanks to the greenhouse gases we humans, especially the two great global powers, the United States and China, are still pouring into the atmosphere at — all too sadly — a record pace, this planet is essentially responding by making war on us. (And don’t forget that our wars and the militaries that fight them are another devastating way we humans have discovered to pour yet more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, heating this planet further, and the U.S. military, even when not at war, remains a gigantic emitter of such gases.)

While my country is historically the greatest producer of greenhouse gases ever, in our own moment it’s fallen into second place to China, which (despite its impressive investment in the production of green energy) continues to increase its use of coal, in particular, pouring yet more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in a fashion never before seen on Planet Earth.

It’s not that we haven’t been warned, not just by scientists, but by the weather itself. And you don’t have to be in Spain to notice it. After all, if you live in the southeastern United States, you’re not likely to soon forget the devastation caused by hurricanes Helene and Milton, after they revved up while passing over the record-hot waters of the Gulf of Mexico, before clobbering Florida and the Southeast. And that’s just one example among so many, including for instance the stunning fires that swept across Canada in the summer of 2023 (and again in 2024), sending devastating clouds of smoke south into the United States.

Let’s face it, whether we’re talking about fire, drought, floods, unprecedented storms, or so much else, we increasingly live on a different planet. After all, in 2023, the average global rise in temperature hit 1.48 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times. Worse yet, by July of this year, it had hit the ultimate 1.5 degree mark that the 2015 Paris climate accord set as the level not to be reached by the end of this century 12 (yes, 12!) months in a row. Worse yet, scientists are now talking about a possible devastating rise of 3 degrees or more by century’s end. With that in mind, just imagine what future hurricanes are going to feel like when they sweep across parts of this country.

In short, while we humans have anything but given up our old ways of making war on ourselves, it seems that we’ve found a new way of doing so as well, and if that isn’t dystopian, what is? I suspect that George Orwell would be stunned by the planet we now seem to be on and the climate-denying president Americans just sent back into the White House to create an all-too-literal hell on Earth.

And given all of that, I wonder what this planet could prove to be like in 2084, if we don’t change our habits, whether it comes to making war or burning fossil fuels? Will we still be slaughtering each other on a planet that could be truly experiencing truly devastating weather in ways we may not yet be able to imagine? It’s hard even to dream (as in having a nightmare, of course) of a future in which neither those recent hurricanes, nor the flooding in Spain will seem all that disastrously out of the ordinary, anything but — and that’s assuming none of the nine countries on this planet that have already gone nuclear (or others which may be heading in that direction) decide to atomize the planet instead.

Now, mind you, it’s also possible that (thanks to some miracle) by 2084, we humans will have figured out how to truly green ourselves and this planet, leaving all those greenhouse gases to the history books, along with our endless centuries of increasingly devastating war-making.

But given our past and the recent American election, I wouldn’t count on it.

Honestly, who would have guessed that we humans might prove capable of making Orwell’s 1984 seem like an upbeat fantasy a century later when, whatever wars might then be underway, the planet itself could prove to be a genuine hell on earth?

And here’s the truth of it all: it shouldn’t have to be this way.

As Donald Trump has won a historic landslide to once again reclaim the U.S. presidency, the conventional narrative has focused heavily on partisan polarization, disinformation, and the strengths or weaknesses of individual candidates. There is also a seeming reckoning within the Democratic Party, where at least some are recognizing that their focusing away from working class populations and policies has catalyzed their dramatic defeat.

Yet this surface-level analysis misses the deeper crisis at play—one that stems not just from right-wing populism, but from the very structure of modern capitalism itself. Understanding Trump's enduring appeal requires examining how market forces have gradually hollowed out democratic promise, creating the conditions for authoritarian alternatives to flourish. The traditional focus on defending democratic institutions against right-wing threats, while necessary, overlooks how thoroughly market logic has eroded faith in democratic problem-solving itself.

The Illusion of Market Democracy

For nearly five decades, Americans have been told that free markets and democracy are inseparable twins, each reinforcing and strengthening the other. The reality experienced by millions tells a different story. While formal democratic institutions remain intact, the actual power to shape daily life has shifted dramatically to unaccountable market forces and corporate boardrooms. Healthcare costs, housing affordability, wage stagnation, inflation, climate anxiety, seemingly eternal wars fueled by weapons makers—on issue after issue, voters watch their elected representatives appear powerless against market pressures and corporate interests.

The pervasive influence of market ideology extends far beyond explicit political decisions. It shapes our very conception of what changes are possible and who can effectively implement them. The elevation of business executives as society's primary problem-solvers reflects decades of cultural messaging that private sector experience trumps public service. This CEO worship has become so ingrained that even critics of Trump often focus on his personal failings as a businessman rather than questioning the assumption that business acumen translates to governance capability.

While Vice President Kamala Harris emphasized competence and normalcy, this message resonates poorly with voters who felt the previous "normal" wasn't working for them

This gap between theoretical democratic rights and practical powerlessness creates fertile ground for authoritarian appeals. When traditional democratic processes seem incapable of addressing material concerns, voters become more receptive to leaders promising to bypass or overturn the system entirely. Trump's appeal draws significantly from his image as a decisive business executive who can "get things done" outside normal political channels—a notion that reflects decades of cultural messaging elevating CEOs as society's most effective leaders and change agents. The belief that executive business experience translates to effective governance reveals how thoroughly market logic has colonized our political imagination.

The Democratic establishment's strategy of running primarily on defending the pre-Trump status quo shows the poverty and " strangely empty politics" of current mainstream liberal thinking. While Vice President Kamala Harris emphasized competence and normalcy, this message resonates poorly with voters who felt the previous "normal" wasn't working for them. The dominance of market ideology has convinced many that there are no real alternatives to current arrangements. Even as we face civilizational threats like climate change that markets demonstrably cannot solve, policy proposals remain trapped within market-based frameworks.

This ideological straitjacket constrains responses to pressing social problems. Housing affordability is addressed through tax credits and zoning tweaks rather than direct public provision. Healthcare reform centers on insurance market regulations rather than treating health as a public good. Climate change is filtered through carbon markets and tax incentives rather than democratic planning. The resulting policy menu appears technical and uninspiring to voters seeking fundamental change.

The Material Roots of Democratic Decline

The continued dominance of market fundamentalism doesn't exist in a vacuum—it's reinforced by material conditions that leave millions feeling economically insecure and politically powerless. Decades of wage stagnation, deindustrialization, and growing inequality have created a context where anti-democratic messages find ready audiences. The Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent greedflation intensified these dynamics. As corporations posted record profits while workers struggled with rising prices, the disconnect between democratic ideals and economic reality became increasingly stark.

The entrenchment of market power shapes every aspect of daily life. Workers face increasingly precarious employment conditions, with stable jobs replaced by gig work and contract labor. Communities watch helplessly as corporate relocations devastate local economies. Young people enter adulthood burdened by student debt and priced out of housing markets. Each of these experiences reinforces the sense that democratic citizenship offers no real power over economic conditions.

The failure of center-left parties to articulate meaningful alternatives to market dominance leaves the field open for right-wing populists to channel economic discontent.

This learned helplessness in the face of market forces creates an opportunity and desire for reclaiming control that authoritarian populists eagerly fill. When democratic processes seem incapable of addressing fundamental challenges, promises to simply override or abolish those processes gain appeal. Trump's potential return isn't simply about partisan politics or individual personality—it reflects a deeper crisis of faith in democracy's ability to solve problems under the constraints of market supremacy.

The phenomenon extends beyond American borders. Globally, we are increasingly entering into the " age of the strongman,"witnessing a pattern of authoritarian leaders rising to power by promising to subordinate market forces to national interests. While these promises usually prove hollow, their appeal reflects genuine frustration with democracy's apparent powerlessness against global market pressures. The failure of center-left parties to articulate meaningful alternatives to market dominance leaves the field open for right-wing populists to channel economic discontent.

This dynamic particularly affects younger generations who have grown up entirely within the neoliberal era and its " capitalist realism." Having never experienced a period when democratic governance seemed capable of directing economic outcomes, many view politics primarily as cultural performance rather than a means of affecting material conditions. The resulting cynicism further erodes democracy's legitimacy as a tool for collective problem-solving.

Reclaiming Democratic Power

The path forward requires going beyond simply defending existing democratic institutions to advancing a vision of democratic economic control. This means building power in workplaces, communities, and political spaces to subject market forces to democratic oversight and direction. The key to defeating authoritarian populism lies not in simply defending the status quo, but in demonstrating that democratic action can meaningfully improve people's lives.

This expanded conception of democracy must reach beyond formal political rights to encompass economic decision-making. Public banking initiatives seeking democratic control over financial flows, workplace democracy expanding worker voice in corporate governance, and community control over local development and services all point toward possible futures where market forces serve democratic will rather than override it.

Real democratic renewal requires challenging both right-wing authoritarianism and the market fundamentalism that fuels it.

Success requires transcending the false choice between unaccountable market forces and authoritarian state power. Democratic economic control doesn't mean centralized bureaucracy—it means building institutions and movements that allow communities to shape investment priorities, work conditions, and development patterns. To imagine and create a different type of economy and society where profit is not prioritised overall other aspects of our existence.

The stakes of this choice become increasingly clear as Trump's return to power looms. Simply denouncing his anti-democratic tendencies while accepting the market's anti-democratic dominance is a recipe for failure. Real democratic renewal requires challenging both right-wing authoritarianism and the market fundamentalism that fuels it. The moment calls for fundamental reimagining of the relationship between democracy and economic power—moving from a system where democracy stops at the market's edge to one where democratic principles shape economic life itself.

Amid the most widespread coral reef bleaching ever recorded, we face a crucial question: How can we implement effective, holistic protections for coral reefs?

For over 30 years, governments and civil society have gathered at United Nations Climate Change Conferences, yet the results have often been superficial and ineffective. Despite scientists’ urgent warnings about the devastating effects of warming beyond 1.5°C, proposed mitigation targets remain unmet, and accountability is absent due to non-binding agreements. Climate policies have largely centered on humanity’s needs in the name of development and economic growth, neglecting the equally vital futures of other species. This oversight has led to repeated failures for Nature, contributing to today’s largest recorded coral bleaching event across 74 countries. Now, scientists warn that even 1.5°C may be too much for coral and ocean health.

News headlines keep warning us of a point of no return, calling attention to fires in the Amazon and yet another massive coral bleaching event. This may seem distant from our daily lives, but the truth is that the problem is closer than we realize—and solutions lie within each of us. Recognizing the inherent Rights of Nature is one such solution.

What Are the Rights of Nature?

Recognizing and respecting Nature’s rights holds the potential to change humanity's relationship with our planet. The Rights of Nature movement traces its roots to Christopher Stone’s 1972 book Should Trees Have Standing? Since then, countless scholars, scientists, and activists have joined the call to recognize Nature’s inherent rights and our responsibility to all other beings with whom we are interconnected.

The Rights of Nature is now a powerful global movement aiming to transform human consciousness, redesign unsustainable economic and social systems, and provide a framework for living in harmony with Nature. Drawing on the wisdom of ancient and Indigenous cultures and leveraging modern law, the movement seeks a balanced relationship between humankind and all forms of life, honoring the natural equilibrium of our biosphere.

Recognizing the rights of corals ensures a holistic approach to ocean protection, safeguarding these crucial ecosystems so they can continue to exist, persist, and regenerate their life-sustaining cycles.

Recognizing the inherent Rights of Nature to protect the future of coral reefs provides a real and holistic solution not only to corals but to the well-being of all species that live among them. The escalating coral bleaching crisis must serve as a call to action, not just for environmental protection, but for a transformative shift in how we view and relate to Nature. By recognizing coral reefs as living entities with inherent rights through the Rights of Nature framework, we move beyond traditional conservation approaches. This holistic lens not only restores and protects coral ecosystems but also elevates the voices and rights of Indigenous communities, whose knowledge and stewardship are vital to these ecosystems’ survival. Granting legal rights to reefs ensures their protection from exploitation and destruction while fostering a deeper respect for the interconnectedness of all life. It’s a crucial step toward securing the future of coral reefs and the communities that depend on them.

Have Coral Reefs Been Granted Rights Around the World?

The Rights of Nature movement allows for a flexible approach, enabling creative implementation tailored to different environments and legal systems. In Ecuador, these rights were embedded in the Constitution in 2008, while Panama established them as National Law (Law 287) in 2022. Various initiatives and campaigns for Ocean Rights, encompassing diverse marine ecosystems, are underway—a majority of them featured in the EcoJurisprudence Monitor.

Just this past September, the Rights of Nature movement had a big win led by the Leatherback Project and local entities when Panama adopted the Saboga Wildlife Refuge under Resolution N° DM-0361-2024, protecting critical sea turtle habitat and recognizing corals’ rights to regenerate their vital cycles. The resolution proposes to “promote the protection of the Rights of Nature, enshrined in Law 287 of 2022, ensuring that the ecosystems within the Saboga Wildlife Refuge are treated as subjects of rights, with the aim of preserving their integrity, regeneration, and ecological balance.” Additionally, the law recognizes the rights of corals to regenerate under this specific clause: “Promote the protection, conservation, and restoration of coral reefs and seagrass meadows, recognizing their importance as critical habitats for marine biodiversity and as fundamental components for the ecological health of the protected area and its resilience to climate change.” The protection of the Saboga Wildlife Refuge will require Panama’s action even beyond the borders of the reserve, as upholding coral and sea turtles' rights will not depend only on what happens inside protected areas.

Who Can Benefit From Corals Having Their Rights Recognized?

Listing coral reefs’ contributions to a healthy ocean could go on endlessly. Thriving coral reefs support thriving ocean life, provide essential nurseries for marine species, and offer reliable food sources. Recognizing the rights of corals ensures a holistic approach to ocean protection, safeguarding these crucial ecosystems so they can continue to exist, persist, and regenerate their life-sustaining cycles. As scientists warn, rising ocean temperatures are damaging coral reefs, making urgent action essential. Oceans know no borders, and governments must implement bold climate mitigation measures to halt and reverse ecosystem degradation. Recognizing Nature’s rights offers an effective and bold solution to achieving this goal. In summary, all benefit from coral reefs having their rights recognized.

How the Rights of Nature Are Being Used Around the World

From Antarctica to the Amazon rainforest to rivers in Bangladesh, the Rights of Nature movement is working to holistically protect vital ecosystems through principles rooted in ancient wisdom and the undoubted connection between humans and Nature. We need to restore our connection to Mother Earth and act boldly for the implementation of real, effective solutions to the polycrises we are facing today. The Rights of Nature movement offers hope for future generations, both human and non-human.

On the morning of November 6, many of us woke to the reality that what we thought of as our nation was even more corrupt and dangerous than we had realized. Manipulated by oligarchs and frustrated by status quo Democrats, a majority of the U.S. electorate embraced and voted for a fascist, racist, rapist, convicted felon, compulsive liar, insurrectionist, would-be dictator.

Understandably, in the first days after the election of a man who pledged retribution against his enemies, promised the deportation of undocumented immigrants, and who told supporters that this was the last time they would need to vote, discourse and debate focused on a postmortem of U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris’ defeat. Yet, as we debate how best to protect people threatened by deportation and racist attacks, democratic values, culture, and institutions, Donald Trump’s return to power has enormous global ramifications. There are the not so small questions about how to keep the narcissist’s finger off the nuclear button? How best to win cease-fires and just peace negotiations in Gaza and Ukraine? And how to prevent avoidable wars with China, Russia, and North Korea?

Fears abound. Trump’s admiration of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Xiaoping have Ukraine, Europe, and people across the Indo-Pacific region facing an uncertain future. Trump will not be able to end the Ukraine War within 24 hours as he promised, but under Putin’s escalating attacks, now augmented by fresh if ill-trained North Korean troops and swarms of attack drones, we again face the question of how much of Ukraine he will seize? Will Trump’s expressed doubts about the U.S. commitment to NATO and his threatened tariffs lead to a profound disruption in U.S.-European relations and renewed European commitments to create a fourth military superpower? Will Trump’s embrace of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s racist Gaza genocide facilitate complete ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank and join attacks on Iran’s nuclear and oil production infrastructures? Will the killing of North Korean forces with U.S. weapons in Kursk reignite the Korean War? And could a Russian victory in Ukraine lead China, in time, to invade or blockade Taiwan?

With such an escalation in U.S. military spending, we can forget financing climate resilience, or the housing needed by Trump’s working-class base.

In this uncertain time, what do we really know about Trump’s foreign and military commitments, about his acolytes who are jostling for position and influence, and what do we think the tyrant will actually do? An August 2024 Foreign Policy article named contending voices among Trump’s key “national security” advisers along with thumbnail sketches of their backgrounds and policy commitments. The article began with Elbridge Colby, an arrogant hardline deputy assistant secretary of defense in the last Trump administration. Colby is perhaps the “loudest” voice seeking “a complete shift from Europe, NATO, and Russia and toward the growing challenge from China.” Fred Fleitz, once a protégé of the notorious John Bolton, is among the most ideologically right-wing MAGA figures in Trump’s national security orbit. Ric Grenell was Trump’s ambassador to Germany and was closely aligned with neo-fascist European leaders including Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Marine Le Pen, and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. He once threatened to withdraw all U.S. forces from Germany (something that many in the German peace movement would applaud), and as special envoy to the Balkans he was accused of engineering the collapse of the Kosovo government. Robert Lighthizer and Peter Navarro (the latter just released from prison) are the leading trade war and tariff advocates, with China their number one, but not only, target.

There is a host of other America Firsters who may be visited upon the world, including a raft of nuclear weapons and war planners in the nation’s think tanks who have been competing with one another to publish the most hawkish revisions of U.S. nuclear war planning.

That said, Robert C. O’Brien, Trump’s last national security adviser, may prove to be the most influential of Trump’s foreign and military policy advisers. There is a tradition of senior advisers to presidential aspirants outlining their foreign and military policy commitments in the pages of Foreign Affairs, and this year that honor fell to O’Brien.

In the July/August edition of Foreign Affairs, O’Brien published an article titled “The Return of Peace Through Strength: Making the Case for Trump’s Foreign Policy.” Having been tapped, but not yet confirmed, to become either Trump’s next national security adviser or secretary of state, we would do well to take O’Brien’s observations and commitments seriously. Here is a summary of what O’Brien tells us.

First and foremost, O’Brien reports that “Trump adheres not to dogma but to his own instincts.” Trump is given to whims, and his transactional approach to deal making, which makes it impossible to precisely predict what Trump will do. As The New York Times also reported, “He has often said that keeping the world guessing is his ideal foreign policy.”

Even as Trump has denigrated U.S. alliances, O’Brien reminds us that “Trump never canceled or postponed a single deployment to NATO. His pressure on NATO governments to spend more on defense made the alliance stronger.”

Trump’s goal in the Middle East may be the same as Biden’s: a Saudi-Israel entente, targeted against Iran, and backed by a new U.S.-Saudi military alliance complimenting the one already in place with Jerusalem.

Further O’Brien asserts that “Ameria first is not America alone.” From this perspective, Trump’s threat to “encourage” the Russians “to do whatever the hell they want” to nations that fail to meet NATO’s 2% of GDP military spending goal can be read as simply a coercive fundraising strategy. Worth noting too is that under pressure from a second Trump administration, 2% could become a very taxing 3%, resulting in still greater reductions in spending on essential social services.

Addressing the Ukraine War, O’Brien pledges that Trump will continue to support lethal aid but insists that it must be paid for by Europeans, while keeping the door open for diplomacy with Russia. Out-manned and out-gunned, European support may enable Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to hold out against Russian advances for up to a year, but the longer Zelensky holds out with his overly ambitious demands before initiating a cease-fire and returning to peace negotiations, the greater the danger for all Ukrainians. Trump will not have Zelensky’s back, even as conservative Poles warn Trump that Warsaw is next on the Kremlin’s menu.

O’Brien’s answer: NATO will rotate ground and air forces to Poland, and “the alliance will defend all its territory from foreign aggression.”

Contrary to the ostensible U.S. tradition of valuing human rights, and with little regard for the company the United States keeps, O’Brien advises that “the administration undermines its own putative mission when it questions the democratic bona fides of conservative elected leaders in countries allied with the United States.” For example: Jair Bolsonaro (formerly of Brazil), Orban (Hungary), Netanyahu (Israel) and Andrzej Duda (Poland.) By this same logic, Vladimir Putin can point to his election as Russia’s president, even if it came by way of assassinations and rigged national polls. And Xi Xiaoping can point to his apparent, if enforced, national popularity.

Consistent with all of Trump’s foreign and military advisers, President Joe Biden’s national security strategy, and congressional China hawks, is O’Brien’s warning that China is “a formidable military and economic adversary.” Xi, O’Brien believes, “is China’s most dangerous leader since the murderous Mao Zedong. And China has yet to be held to account for the Covid-19 pandemic.” It is “pablum,” O’Brien states “to believe that China is not truly an adversary.” Therefore, the United States should “focus its Pacific diplomacy on allies such as Australia, Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea... [and] traditional partners such as Singapore and emerging ones such as Indonesia and Vietnam.” Washington, O’Brien urges should also “seek to decouple its economy from China’s” with a 60% tariff on Chinese goods and tougher export controls on technology. Since the publication of O’Brien’s article, Trump has threatened tariffs of up to 200%, which would punish U.S. consumers far more than China’s economy.

Bolstering these alliances, which may be tested by “America First” arrogance, values, and financial burden-sharing demands, O’Brien argues that the Navy should move an aircraft carrier from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and move the “entire Marine Corps to the Pacific” (later clarified to be operational troops, not administrative forces). The Navy should increase its ambitions to creating a 355-ship fleet, adding more stealthy nuclear armed Virginia class submarines and Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines. Congress should fund all 100 planned B-21s, as well as 256 strategic bombers he believes are needed to continue containing China. With such an escalation in U.S. military spending, we can forget financing climate resilience, or the housing needed by Trump’s working-class base.

Over the next two-and-a-half months, Biden could, but will not, do much to limit the damage Trump will wreak.

Not to be forgotten is Trump’s urging of Netanyahu to finish the job in Gaza. So too the Trump family ties to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, and Trump’s hatred of Iran that led to his sabotaging the JCPOA nuclear deal with Teheran. O’Brien writes that in the Middle East, the U.S. should exert “maximum pressure” on Iran. “The truest source of the Palestine-Israel conflict” he argues is not the dispossession and oppression of Palestinians, but Iran. He informs us that the Trump administration will “[b]ack Israel to eliminate Hamas, not pressure Israel to return to negotiations for a long-term solution.” Trump’s goal in the Middle East may be the same as Biden’s: a Saudi-Israel entente, targeted against Iran, and backed by a new U.S.-Saudi military alliance complimenting the one already in place with Jerusalem. But as Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken learned, this agenda has its contradictions. The vast majority of the Arabian people identify with and support Palestinian resistance to the genocide. And the Saudi monarchy believes that it could be overthrown if it officially recognizes Israel before credible processes are in place for a two-state solution to the century-old conflict.

If there was little discussion about foreign and military policies during the election campaign, there was even less said about their nuclear dimensions. The reality is that we are facing the greatest danger of nuclear war since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Leading the way has been the Kremlin’s nuclear saber rattling and its reduction of its threshold for nuclear weapons use. The past few weeks have seen back-to-back U.S. and Russian nuclear war games and a demonstration North Korean ICBM missile test. The U.S., its allies, China, and Russia are continuing provocative and confrontational military exercises in the South and East China Seas and around Taiwan in which an accident or miscalculation could easily escalate to the unthinkable. If this weren’t sufficient reason for concern, all of the nuclear weapons states are upgrading their nuclear arsenals and delivery systems—the U.S. at a cost of $1.7 trillion. And militarist forces in Iran, Japan, and South Korea are all pressing for their nations to become nuclear powers.

The Trump response? Pour more oil on the fire. O’Brien says that the U.S. should be “test[Ing] new nuclear weapons for reliability... in the real world” and resuming “production of uranium 235 and plutonium 239.” O’Brien also reminds readers that we came much closer to nuclear war during Trump’s 2017 Fire and Fury Korean threats than most people understand.

And then there is the climate emergency. Trump will further endanger this and future generations by again withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement, burning fossil fuel regulations, and defunding green energy initiatives. This will further isolate the United States from the civilized world while it will ironically provide a powerful boost to China’s soft power diplomacy.

Over the next two-and-a-half months, Biden could, but will not, do much to limit the damage Trump will wreak: He could order revision of the U.S. nuclear weapons and war doctrine by ordering a No First Use doctrine. He could halt weapons deliveries to Israel unless Netanyahu agrees to cease-fires and negotiations for Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran. He could insist that Ukraine revise the legitimate but unachievable demands it makes of Russia before reengaging in cease-fire and peace negotiations. A neutral Ukraine with credible international security guarantees and putting resolution of the territorial disputes on the diplomatic shelf for future resolution remains possible. And like President George H.W. Bush did with the Soviets at the end of the last Cold War, he could take limited unilateral actions like reducing the almost daily provocative military exercises in the South China Sea, the Taiwan Strait, and in relation to North Korea to engender common security reciprocal actions.

Of course, Donald Trump and his minions could reverse any such initiatives, but the geopolitical landscape would be transformed, with heavy political and diplomatic lifting required to put Trump’s foreign and military ambitions back on track.

In this new time, we will need to be thoughtful, and much more strategic—thinking more critically about our assumptions and campaigning—and we must keep our eyes on the proverbial prize as we create new ways to defend people, the climate, and democratic values and culture.

Correction: An earlier version of this article said that the first two months of the Israeli war on Gaza released the carbon output of 26 countries. The actual figure is more than 20 countries, and the article has been updated to reflect this.

As we write, New York City is an unsettling 70°F in November. Meanwhile, a cohort of war profiteers, their pockets lined by the very industries destroying our climate, are flying to COP, the annual United Nations climate summit hosted by a petrostate, no less. They’re gathering to “discuss climate solutions”—but one of the world’s biggest contributors to the climate crisis will be entirely overlooked: the U.S. military-industrial complex.

The world’s largest institutional emitter, the U.S. military, sits beyond the reach of the metrics meant to hold countries accountable for climate pollution. Exempt from transparency requirements at the COP or within U.N. climate agreements, the military sector is, in fact, the leading institutional driver of the climate crisis. It burns through fossil fuels on a scale that surpasses entire nations while waging wars that destroy lives, communities, and the land itself. It’s a deliberate omission, one meant to hide the environmental and social costs of militarism from view.

Leading the U.S. delegation to COP is John Podesta—a career defender of militarism, a lobbyist who has worked to fortify the very military establishment poisoning our air, water, and land. Now, he arrives in the conference halls of COP wrapped in a cloak of environmentalism. Yet, as long as he skirts around the elephant in the room, no amount of recycled paper or energy-efficient lighting at COP will address the core driver of the climate crisis. If Podesta ignores the environmental impact of U.S. militarism, he’ll be dooming us.

Each weapon shipped, each tank deployed, is an environmental crime in the making, one funded by American tax dollars.

For those of us directly feeling the crisis, there’s no question that the U.S. Empire’s military machine is central to our climate emergency. Appalachians living through floods and those of us in New York watching temperatures soar out of season are witnesses to the toll. And yet we watch as our leaders, claiming to care about climate, push forward with policies and budgets that only deepen our climate emergency.

In the past year alone, the war on Gaza has been a horrifying example of militarism’s environmental toll. Entire communities were leveled under the firepower of U.S.-funded bombs. In just two months, emissions from these military activities equaled the yearly carbon output of more than 20 countries. This violence bleeds beyond borders. U.S. police forces train with the Israeli military, and they’ll soon bring their war tactics to Atlanta’s Cop City, where a training center is planned on sacred Indigenous land. Militarism is woven into every facet of our society—taking lives, razing homes, and desecrating land—all while stoking climate disaster.

This crisis can’t be solved by those who are its architects. It can’t be fixed by Podesta’s well-crafted speeches or the administration’s empty pledges. The Biden administration just passed one of the largest military budgets in history, pumping more dollars—and more carbon emissions—into the climate catastrophe. Each weapon shipped, each tank deployed, is an environmental crime in the making, one funded by American tax dollars. We can’t ignore this fact as COP progresses and climate talks fall short yet again.

It’s easy to despair in the face of such unaccountable power. But in times of crisis, clarity can become a weapon. We must expose the truth that militarism is antithetical to climate justice. True climate solutions don’t come from polite panel discussions led by those who wield the tools of destruction. They come from radical honesty and demands for accountability. They come from a commitment to ending the empire choking our planet and communities. And they come from a shared goal of mutual liberation that doesn’t ignore the plight of the many to serve the few.

The cost of militarism is clear, and its environmental toll demands our fiercest opposition. This COP, let’s not let the elephant in the room fade into the background. It’s time for those responsible for our climate crisis—the war machines, the lobbyists, and the industries that back them—to be held accountable. For our survival and for each other, we must demand climate justice that tells the truth.

U.S. President Joe Biden has now joined the ranks of Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush as a president whose Middle East policy crashed and burned spectacularly. Unlike Carter, who was stymied by the Iranian hostage crisis, or Bush, who faced a popular Iraqi resistance movement, Biden’s woes weren’t inflicted by an enemy. Quite the opposite, it was this country’s putative partner, the Israeli government, that implicated the president in its still ongoing genocide in Gaza, as well as its disproportionate attacks on Lebanon and Iran, for which Biden steadfastly declined to impose the slightest penalties. Instead, he’s continued to arm the Israelis to the teeth.

Israel’s total war on Palestinian civilians, in turn, significantly reduced enthusiasm for Biden among youth and minorities at home, helping usher him out of office. It also created electoral obstacles for Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential bid. By his insistence on impunity for the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Biden has left the Middle East in flames and the U.S. and the world distinctly in peril.

During his first three years in office, his administration wielded the tools of diplomacy in the Middle East. Donald Trump’s sanctions against the Houthis in Yemen had imperiled the civilian population there by denying them humanitarian aid and gasoline to drive to the market for food. Biden lifted those sanctions and sponsored continued negotiations between those in power in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa and in the neighboring Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh. Only relatively small contingents of American troops remained in Syria and Iraq to help with the mopping-up operations against the so-called Islamic State terrorist organization.

Pushing Iran Into the Arms of China and Russia

Danger signals nonetheless soon began flashing bright red among friend and foe alike in the region, as Biden’s team quickly squandered an opportunity to restore the 2015 “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action,” or JCPOA, between the United Nations Security Council and the Iranian regime in Tehran, which Trump had so tellingly trashed. Between 2015 and 2019, that deal had successfully kept Iran’s civilian nuclear enrichment program purely civilian, closing off the four most plausible pathways to a nuclear weapon.

In those years, the Iranians had, in fact, mothballed 80% of their nuclear program in return for sanctions relief. While the U.N. Security Council lifted economic sanctions on that country, Republicans in Congress refused to halt unilateral American sanctions, which applied to third parties as well. European investors had to jump through hoops to invest in Iran while avoiding Treasury Department fines. As a result, a disappointed Iranian leadership went unrewarded for its careful compliance with the JCPOA.

Then, in May 2018, Trump stabbed the Iranians in the back, withdrawing the U.S. from the JCPOA and slapping the most severe economic sanctions ever applied by one country to another in peacetime on Iran. It essentially added up to an invisible blockade of the Iranian economy, even interfering with ordinary commerce like that country’s oil sales. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu boasted of having convinced the gullible Trump to take such a step, which led Iran’s petroleum exports to plummet over the next three years. Trump even designated the Iranian National Bank a terrorist organization, again with potentially crippling consequences for the entire economy.

Biden’s hardline policy toward Tehran ultimately harmed his major foreign policy initiative, of defeating Moscow.

In revenge, Iran went back to enriching uranium to high levels and building more centrifuges, though without actually producing weapons-grade material. To this day, its civilian nuclear program remains a form of “the Japan option,” an attempt at deterrence by making it clear that it does not want a bomb but that, if it feels sufficiently threatened, it can build a nuclear weapon relatively quickly.

As soon as Joe Biden defeated Trump in 2020, the centrist Iranian President Hassan Rouhani declared that the JCPOA could be restored by the two leaders virtually by fiat. And Biden’s foreign policy team initially appeared to consider negotiations to reinstate the treaty, only to ultimately retain Trump’s outrageous sanctions as “leverage,” demanding that Iran return to compliance with the JCPOA before the two sides could talk.

Perhaps the Iranian public got the message that Biden was determined to be as hostile as Trump. Certainly, in the next round of voting in the summer of 2021, they swung behind hardliner Ebrahim Raisi. And despite occasional modest diplomatic forays since then, relations have been in a dumpster for the remainder of Biden’s term, with most of Trump’s “maximum pressure” sanctions still in place. And once again, as in the Trump years, the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu has lobbied Biden hard to cease all negotiations with Tehran.

Iran, which might have been drawn into the Western camp, has instead become a hostage to Beijing. Starting in 2019, China accepted smuggled Iranian petroleum at a substantial price discount. Then, when the Ukraine War broke out and Biden imposed maximum sanctions on the Russian Federation, Moscow and Tehran found themselves pushed ever closer.

Now, the two countries plan to sign a “strategic partnership agreement,” while, in July 2023, Iran joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, cementing the alliances with both China and Russia into which it had been so vigorously pushed by Washington. Iran also became a definite asset for Russia in its Ukraine War, providing Russian President Vladimir Putin with crucial weaponry. In short, Biden’s hardline policy toward Tehran ultimately harmed his major foreign policy initiative, of defeating Moscow.

Passionate Intensity

Biden’s team also pursued the strategy worked out by Donald Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner of trying to wheedle or strong-arm Arab states into making a separate peace with Israel, while throwing the stateless Palestinians under the bus. They managed to defame the Bible by naming their agreements—initially among Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, and Israel—the “Abraham Accords,” though they were actually thinly veiled arms deals. Underlying such a strategy lurked the possibility of creating a military bloc, involving Israel and significant parts of the Arab world, to isolate and ultimately overthrow the government of Iran. The Arab signatories all sought the economic benefits of trade and investment with Israel as well as U.S. security promises, benefiting American arms manufacturers with their orders. Had Biden instead made a full-court press for Palestinian rights, he might have created optimism rather than despair.

Sudan was also soon blackmailed into joining the accords. A popular revolution there overthrew the decades-long dictatorship of Omar al-Bashir on April 11, 2019. Its civilian and military wings then entered into a tenuous cohabitation, with the civilians pressing the generals to return to their barracks. Civilian Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok and the chairman of the Transitional Military Council, General Abdel Fattah Burhan, signed onto the Abraham Accords in January 2021 both to get Sudan removed from the U.S. list of terrorist nations and to begin repairing its economy.

The Israeli and U.S. response to the gruesome Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023, can fairly be said to have entirely undone all of Biden’s diplomatic work in the region.

In the end, that represented pure economic blackmail, a policy continued by Secretary of State Antony Blinken. A 2022 poll showed that more than 74% of Sudanese rejected any normalization with Israel. Instead of attempting to bolster budding Sudanese democracy, the Biden administration continued to resort to backdoor deals with that junta in the interests of America’s main geopolitical client in the Middle East (while Sudan itself fell into a catastrophic civil war).

Blinken also made it a personal mission to rope Saudi Arabia into the Abraham Accords. Unlike the two other Gulf states committed to the treaty, however, Saudi Arabia has a largely pro-Palestinian Muslim population in the millions and a peace treaty with Israel might have fomented unrest among them. While Mohammed Bin Salman, the fickle crown prince who ran much of the show in that country, continued to vacillate on the issue, his father, King Salman, repeatedly made it clear that “Palestine is our number one issue,” and that there will be no recognition of Israel without an ironclad path to a Palestinian state (a longstanding Saudi position).

Nonetheless, the Biden foreign policy team continued pressuring Riyadh to normalize relations with Israel, even as the Gaza War grew ever more devastating and the Saudi public daily saw images of women and children being shredded by American-supplied bombs and drones. In an opinion poll released last January, 78% of Saudis said that they felt psychologically stressed by the Gaza War, while nearly every one of them lambasted the U.S. response as “bad” or “very bad,” and 57% believed there was now no possibility of making peace with Israel.

Things Fall Apart, the Center Cannot Hold

The security guarantees the U.S. gave the United Arab Emirates under the Abraham Accords emboldened its leader, Mohamed Bin Zayed (MBZ), in his quest to create an informal empire stretching from Yemen to Sudan and even all the way to Libya. In April 2023, however, Sudan’s conventional army and the country’s special operations Rapid Support Forces (RSF) fell to fighting one another, as the generals that led them competed for power. The country then devolved into a horror show of a civil war, with half of its 50 million people now facing starvation and at least 62,000 already slaughtered. The brutal RSF fighters are nonetheless backed by the Emirates (lovingly dubbed “little Sparta” by the Pentagon). And in these years, President Biden has proven impotent when it came to reining in America’s “Abraham Accords” darling. In fact, he only recently hosted MBZ at the White House and a Rose Garden that’s seen more genocidaires than most administrations.

The Israeli and U.S. response to the gruesome Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023, can fairly be said to have entirely undone all of Biden’s diplomatic work in the region. While the United States and some other Western governments viewed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s never-ending devastation of Gaza and his country’s deployment of American 2,000-pound bombs against residential complexes as forced on him by Hamas’ alleged tactic of using civilians as “human shields,” virtually no one in the Global South agreed. Even some European Union states and Israeli journalists dissented.

President Biden could undoubtedly have halted Netanyahu’s total war on Palestinian civilians at any point in 2024, given Israel’s dependence on U.S. ammunition and arms.

South Africa brought a case against Israel at the International Criminal Court charging it with genocide, which the Court said was "plausibly brought" in January, issuing the equivalent of a preliminary injunction against the Netanyahu government. Israel, of course, ignored it and has simply continued the devastation there (and now in Lebanon as well). Somehow, Biden seemed unaware that the government of extremists formed by Netanyahu in late 2022 was anything but the Israel of the 1960 film Exodus, with a blue-eyed Paul Newman as the protagonist. It was instead a witch’s brew of virulent ethnonationalism and religious apocalypticism.

Worse yet, Netanyahu used the cover of his Gaza atrocities to expand the war further. He deliberately bombed an Iranian diplomatic facility (considered Iranian soil under international law) in the Syrian capital of Damascus last spring. Iran later responded with a rocket barrage. Netanyahu went on attempting to get Tehran’s goat, aware that if he could turn his conflict into an actual war with Iran, American jingoists would give him even more knee-jerk support.

In the process, he had Ismail Haniyeh, his chief, if indirect, civilian Hamas negotiating partner, assassinated in Iran’s capital of Tehran on the occasion of the inauguration of a new president there. He then launched a terrorist onslaught of booby-trapped pager bombs against an Iran-allied group, Hezbollah, in Lebanon before invading that country and subjecting significant parts of it to a Gaza-style bombardment, as a response to Hezbollah rocket attacks on Israel in support of Gaza. Such provocations led to yet another Iranian missile barrage against Israel on October 1 to which Israel replied with attacks on Iranian military facilities. Biden was reduced to pleading with Iran to be reasonable in response, while declining to demand any similar restraint from Israel.

The Blood-Dimmed Tide

And here’s the truth of the matter: President Biden could undoubtedly have halted Netanyahu’s total war on Palestinian civilians at any point in 2024, given Israel’s dependence on U.S. ammunition and arms. Instead, his gung-ho support of the insupportable in Gaza has helped turn the Middle East into a genuine powder keg, which he is bequeathing to his successor. Crucial Red Sea and Suez Canal maritime trade has already been partially paralyzed, thanks to rocket attacks launched by Yemen’s Houthi rebels in support of the people of Gaza, adding inflation and supply-chain difficulties to the global economy.

Biden then restored sanctions on the Houthis, harming Yemeni civilians, while allowing Netanyahu to go on butchering Gazan civilians. Lebanon, already a basket case, with a ruined port, a bankrupt national bank, no president, and a third of its population below the poverty line, now faces a wholesale reduction to fourth-world misery. More than a million Lebanese have had to flee their homes in that small country, and the conflict will undoubtedly contribute to Europe’s immigration crisis.

Consider it a distinct irony, then, that, rather than allying with Israel against Iran, most Arab publics have significantly raised their estimation of Tehran. Even long-time American ally Turkey and U.S. partner Egypt have felt threatened by the extremist Netanyahu government and its Napoleonic ambitions, and have begun warming to one another and exploring better relations with Tehran.

Nativist Shiite militias in Iraq rained down rockets on bases in that country hosting U.S. troops, but ranged even further afield, targeting American soldiers in Jordan and killing Israeli troops in Israel itself. They pledged to come to the aid of Lebanon’s Hezbollah. The Iraqi parliament recognized such militias in 2016 as the equivalent of a national guard. Iraq’s outraged Shiites even finally convinced Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ Al Sudani to kick the last U.S. troops out of that country by 2026.

In the end, Biden’s unfaltering bear hug of Benjamin Netanyahu ensured that even the last vestiges of the George W. Bush administration’s neoconservative project of reshaping the Middle East to America’s and Israel’s advantage have now gone down the drain. Washington continues to send ever more bombs and sophisticated weaponry to a Middle East in flames and, with Donald Trump set to take office in January, such dangerous arms deals will likely only multiply.

Consider it a genuine first-class nightmare.

Recently I had the opportunity to speak with and learn from members of an Inuit community in East Greenland. One of the Indigenous leaders recounted how her mother was saved by the men and women of her community when she went into premature labor as they were crossing one of the fjords in a storm. Banding together, with only their survival skills and traditional practices, they were able to safely deliver the baby and save the mother.

Her story reveals the secret behind this Indigenous community’s success in such harsh and unforgiving conditions. Their strength lies in their deep connection to the land and sea, using age-old knowledge passed down through generations to live in harmony with nature. In a world of extreme cold and scarcity, they’ve built communities that endure, embodying resilience and resourcefulness. Watching their way of life, it’s clear: Humanity is built to do hard things.

That same potent mix of tenacity and ingenuity is now required on a global scale. With world leaders now gathering for this year’s United Nations climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan (COP29), new climate targets for 2035 are due at the start of next year. The urgency of collective action has never been greater. And it’s clear that governments can’t do it alone. It takes the entire tribe—a whole-of-society approach that includes businesses, civil society, and communities as well as governments working together—to achieve real progress.

Even without further federal support, high-ambition efforts from these groups alone could reduce U.S. emissions by 48% to 60% by 2035.

Last year’s summit saw nearly 200 countries make historic pledges to accelerate global renewable energy capacity and increase improvements in energy efficiency by 2030. They also committed to transitioning away from fossil fuels and deploying emerging technologies. Despite these commitments, we are still headed for a 2.9°C rise in global temperatures—far beyond the limits required to avoid the most severe impacts of climate change. And the window to close the gap between our ambitions and the reality of our current situation is narrowing rapidly. To stabilize our climate, we must, like the Inuit and countless other societies around the world and throughout history, commit ourselves to doing hard things.

We are making progress towards our goals. The world is currently on a path to increase renewable power capacity by about two-and-a-half times from 2022 levels by the end of the decade. Likewise, energy efficiency is improving, with current annual gains of 2%. And yet, we must go even farther and faster.

To meet our renewable energy goals under the Paris agreement, we need to triple global renewable capacity in the next decade, and double energy efficiency to over 4% by 2030. Global fossil fuel demand needs to decline by more than a quarter by the end of the decade, instead of continuing to rise. This will require a dramatic and immediate acceleration in clean energy adoption and infrastructure development, such as the replacement of fossil fuels to heat and cool our buildings, and the expansion of electric vehicle charging networks. While wind power generation recently surpassed coal for the first time in U.S. history, a remarkable achievement, we need to push harder, putting in place a comprehensive solution for phasing out coal entirely.

COP29 presents an opportunity for a reset, as governments are expected to establish more ambitious Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs)—formal pledges under the Paris agreement outlining each nation’s plan to reduce emissions. The U.S., which is the world’s largest economy and second-largest emitter, can and should lead by example, showcasing how all levels of society—federal, state, city, and business—can implement climate action at scale.

The U.S. has set a strong foundation, with its 2030 NDC including a goal for a carbon-free electricity sector by 2035 supported by historic investments from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Reaching this ambitious target also requires action by non-federal actors—state and local governments, businesses, and civil society—to close the gap. Renewable portfolio standards, state emission limits, and state electric vehicle incentives are effective tools to increase climate action. Even without further federal support, high-ambition efforts from these groups alone could reduce U.S. emissions by 48% to 60% by 2035.

Through the right policies, U.S. state and local governments can incentivize investments in local energy sources like rooftop solar panels. By reducing reliance on centralized energy production. individuals, communities, and businesses are empowered to take climate action into their own hands. Likewise, local and state-level coordination can avoid bottlenecks and streamline approvals needed to expand our clean energy infrastructure. Communities and frontline workers can identify areas of investment needed to make the transition to a low carbon future inclusive and equitable, so that no segment of society is left behind.

Nations around the world must adopt a similar whole-of-society approach if they hope to meet their climate targets and benefit all their citizens. The story of the Inuit saving one of their own in a storm is a vital reminder that survival takes teamwork. As we face the enormity of the climate crisis, let’s not forget that it’s in our bones to do hard things—and that we are strongest when we work together.

November 11, declared Armistice Day at the end of World War I, is celebrated in the U.S. as Veterans Day. Understanding why requires us to recall World War I and its aftermath.

World War I was an international conflict, from 1914-18, that embroiled most of the nations of Europe, along with Russia, the United States, the Middle East, and other regions. The war pitted the “Central Powers”—mainly Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey—against the “Allies”—mainly France, Great Britain, Russia, Italy, and (from 1917) the United States. The war was unprecedented in the slaughter, carnage, and destruction it caused. Over 15 million people were killed—both soldiers and civilians, and over 25 million were wounded.

The First World War ended in November 1918 when an armistice was declared at the “11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month,” marking a moment of hope and the promise of peace. It was also a moment of great sadness and a sense of great tragedy. Many people prayed this would be “the war to end all wars,” and that Armistice Day would serve as an eternal warning never to repeat the past. But then came World War II.

“When U.S. bombs stop dropping on Palestinian children, the genocide will end.”

After the end of World War II and the Korean War cease-fire, in 1954 veterans’ organizations pushed the U.S. Congress to switch the holiday’s name to Veterans Day, a day to honor those who fight in war. Could it be that—having emerged from World War II unscathed and more powerful than ever, the United States was not ready to abandon militarism? Whatever the intention, the holiday’s meaning was turned on its head—a day for war instead of a day for peace.

The national organization Veterans For Peace has been working to Reclaim Armistice Day as a day that is dedicated to ending war once and for all. Veterans lead Armistice Day activities around the country, many incorporating the ringing of bells at the “11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.” Now the veterans group is also calling for peace in the Middle East.

The looming threats of climate catastrophe and nuclear annihilation have been overshadowed this year by Israel’s horrific ongoing genocide of Palestinian civilians in Gaza—up to 50,000 killed, nearly 70% of whom are women and children. For 13 months straight, unspeakable atrocities have filled our screens and haunted our consciences. We can see clearly that the U.S. government is complicit in Israel’s merciless ethnic cleansing. The bombs that Israel drops on Palestinian children are made in the USA and delivered by the U.S. government. U.S.-backed Israeli wars have now expanded to Palestine’s West Bank, to Lebanon, and to Iran, risking a wider war, possibly even a global war that could “go nuclear.”

According to Wikipedia: Scholars trying to understand the cause of World War I “look at political, territorial, and economic competition; militarism, a complex web of alliances and alignments; imperialism, the growth of nationalism; and the power vacuum created by the decline of the Ottoman Empire.” One hundred and six years after the end of World War I, another such deadly concoction is brewing. War is permanent. Genocide is on TV. A desperate empire is pushing human civilization toward a tragic end.

No More U.S. Bombs To Israel

This year, Veterans For Peace is calling for an Armistice—a permanent cease-fire in Palestine, Lebanon, and throughout the Middle East, and for an end to U.S. arms shipments to Israel.

“When U.S. bombs stop dropping on Palestinian children, the genocide will end,” said VFP Vice President Joshua Shurley.

The 39-year-old veterans’ organization, with chapters in over 100 US cities, recently issued a statement in support of Israeli and U.S. soldiers who refuse to take part genocide, illegal wars, and war crimes.

It’s important we squarely face U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s victory and what there is to do about it.

Trump has already signaled the kind of president he will be: revengeful, uncontrolled, and unburdened by past norms and current laws. I won’t go through the litany of awful things he’s pledged to do, since that’s been well-established with his words, Project 2025 plans, and excellent analyses from authoritarian experts.

For us to be of any use in a Trump world, we have to pay grave attention to our inner states, so we don’t perpetuate the autocrat’s goals of fear, isolation, exhaustion, or constant disorientation.

Looking into an even more destabilized future is not easy. If you’re like me, you’re already tired. The prospect of more drama is daunting. But authoritarianism isn’t going away no matter the election results. So here’s some thinking about ways to orient so we can ground ourselves better for these times ahead.

I am blessed to have spent time writing scenarios about what might happen, developing trainings for a Trump win, and working alongside colleagues living under autocratic regimes. One of the things they keep reminding me is that good psychology is good social change. Authoritarian power is derived from fear of repression, isolation from each other, and exhaustion at the utter chaos. We’re already feeling it.

Thus, for us to be of any use in a Trump world, we have to pay grave attention to our inner states, so we don’t perpetuate the autocrat’s goals of fear, isolation, exhaustion, or constant disorientation.

1. Trust Yourself

I started writing this list with strategic principles (e.g. analyze your opponents’ weaknesses and learn to handle political violence), but actually the place to start is with your own self.

Trump is arriving at a time of great social distrust. Across the board, society has reduced trust in traditional institutions. Yes, there’s more distrust of the media, medical professionals, experts, and politicians. But it extends beyond that. There’s reduced trust in most community institutions and membership groups. Whether from Covid-19 or political polarization, a lot of us have experienced reduced trust in friends and family. Even our trust in predictable weather is diminished.

Distrust fuels the flame of autocracy because it makes it much easier to divide. We can see that in the casual nature of Trump’s rhetoric—telling people to distrust immigrants, Democrats, socialists, people from Chicago, women marchers, Mexicans, the press, and so on.

Trust all these things inside of you because trust in self is part of the foundation of a healthy movement life.

This is a social disease: You know who to trust by who they tell you to distrust.

Trust-building starts with your own self. It includes trusting your own eyes and gut, as well as building protection from the ways the crazy-making can become internalized.

This also means being trustworthy—not just with information, but with emotions. That way you can acknowledge what you know and admit the parts that are uncertain fears nagging at you.

Then take steps to follow through on what you need. If you’re tired, take some rest. If you’re scared, make some peace with your fears. I can point you to resources that support that—like FindingSteadyGround.com—but the value here is to start with trusting your own inner voice. If you need to stop checking your phone compulsively, do it. If you don’t want to read this article now and instead take a good walk, do it.

Trust all these things inside of you because trust in self is part of the foundation of a healthy movement life.

2. Find Others Who You Trust

I promise I’ll head towards practical resistance strategies. But the emotional landscape matters a great deal. Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism explored how destructive ideologies like fascism and autocracy grow. She used the word verlassenheit—often translated as loneliness—as a central ingredient. As she meant it, loneliness isn’t a feeling but a kind of social isolation of the mind. Your thinking becomes closed off to the world and a sense of being abandoned to each other.

She’s identifying a societal breakdown that we’re all experiencing. Under a Trump presidency, this trend will continue to accelerate. The constant attacks on social systems—teachers, healthcare, and infrastructure—make us turn away from leaning on each other and toward ideologically simple answers that increase isolation (e.g. “distrust government,” “MAGA is nuts,” “anyone who votes that way doesn’t care about you”).

In a destabilized society, you need people who help ground you.

In extreme cases, like Chile in the 1970s and ‘80s, the dictatorship aimed to keep people in such tiny nodes of trust that everyone was an island unto themselves. At social gatherings and parties, people would commonly not introduce each other by name out of fear of being too involved. Fear breeds distance.

We have to consciously break that distance. In Chile they organized under the guise of affinity groups. This was, as its name suggests, people who shared some connections and trust. Finding just a few people who you trust to regularly act with and touch base with is central.

Following Trump’s win: Get some people to regularly touch base with. Use that trust to explore your own thinking and support each other to stay sharp and grounded.

For the last several months I’ve been hosting a regular group at my house to “explore what is up with these times.” Our crew thinks differently but invests in trust. We emote, cry, sing, laugh, sit in stillness, and think together.

I’ve written an agenda for such gatherings right after a Trump win that you can use.

All of us will benefit from actively organized nodes to help stabilize us. In a destabilized society, you need people who help ground you.

3. Grieve

No matter what we try to do, there’s going to be a lot of loss. The human thing to do is grieve. (Well, apparently humans are also very good at compartmentalizing, rationalizing, intellectualizing, and ignoring—but the damage it does to our body and psyche is pretty well documented.)

If you aren’t a feelings person, let me say it this way: The inability to grieve is a strategic error. After Donald Trump won in 2016, we all saw colleagues who never grieved. They didn’t look into their feelings and the future—and as a result they remained in shock. For years they kept saying, “I can’t believe he’s doing that...”

An alternative: Start by naming and allowing feelings that come to arise. The night that Donald Trump won in 2016, I stayed up until 4:00 am with a colleague. It was a tear-filled night of naming things that we had just lost. The list ranged from the political to the deeply personal:

Losing a presidency to an awful man means you and your people lose a lot.

“Trump will leave the Paris climate agreement, and that means much of the world will soft pedal its climate plans.”

“Ugh, I’m gonna have this man in my dreams. We’re all going to sleep less and wake up to bat-shit crazy headlines each morning.”

“Trump’s gonna constantly attack immigrants—the wall may or may not happen, but he’s gonna raise the threshold for racism. I don’t think I can take it.”

“Friends I know who signed up for DACA are never going to trust government again.”

And on and on. It wasn’t only a list, but it was finding the impact inside of us of sadness, anger, numbness, shock, confusion, and fear. We alternated between rageful spouts and tears. We grieved. We cried. We held each other. We breathed. We dove back into naming all the bad things we knew we’d lost and things we thought we’d be likely to lose.

It wasn’t anywhere near strategizing or list-making or planning. It was part of our acceptance that losing a presidency to an awful man means you and your people lose a lot. Ultimately, this helped us believe it—so we didn’t spend years in a daze: “I can’t believe this is happening in this country.”

Believe it. Believe it now. Grief is a pathway to that acceptance.

4. Release That Which You Cannot Change

Growing up my mom had a copy of the Serenity Prayer: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Notably, that prayer comes from theologian Reinhold Niebuhr as he was watching the rise of Nazis in Germany.

Trump’s first day likely includes pardoning January 6 insurrectionists, reallocating money to build the wall, pulling out of the Paris climate agreement, and firing 50,000-plus government workers to begin replacing them with loyalists. There’s little reason to believe that day two will get much quieter.

Under a Trump presidency, there are going to be so many issues that it will be hard to accept that we cannot do it all. I’m reminded of a colleague in Turkey who told me, “There’s always something bad happening every day. If we had to react to every bad thing, we’d never have time to eat.”

Public angsting as a strategy is akin to pleading with the hole in the boat to stop us from sinking.

An elder once saw me trying to do everything and pulled me aside. “That’s not a healthy lifelong strategy,” she said. She’d been raised in Germany by the generation of Holocaust survivors who told her, “Never again.” She took it personally, as if she had to stop every wrong. It wracked her and contributed to several serious ongoing medical conditions. We can accept our humanity or suffer that lack of acceptance.

Chaos is a friend of the autocrat. One way we can unwittingly assist is by joining in the story that we have to do it all.

Over the last few months I’ve been testing out a terribly challenging tool. It’s a journaling exercise that invites you to reflect on which issues you’ll spend energy on. It asks: What are issues you’ll throw down on, do a lot for, a little for, or—despite caring about it—do nothing at all for? That last question can feel like a kind of torture for many activists, even while we’re intellectually aware that we cannot stop it all.

Unaddressed, this desire to act on everything leads to bad strategy. Nine months ago when we gathered activists to scenario plan together, we took note of two knee-jerk tendencies from the left that ended up largely being dead-ends in the face of Trump:

• Public angsting—posting outrage on social media, talking with friends, sharing awful news
• Symbolic actions—organizing marches and public statements

The first is where we look around at bad things happening and make sure other people know about them, too. We satisfy the social pressure of our friends who want us to show outrage—but the driving moves are only reactive. The end result wasn’t the intended action or an informed population. It’s demoralizing us. It’s hurting our capacity for action. Public angsting as a strategy is akin to pleading with the hole in the boat to stop us from sinking.

Symbolic actions may fare little better under a Trump presidency. In whatever version of democracy we had, the logic of rallies and statements of outrage was to build a unified front that showed the opposition many voices were opposed to them. But under an unleashed fascist—if it’s all you do—it’s like begging the suicidal captain to plug the hole.

Let me be clear. These strategies will be part of the mix. We’ll need public angsting and symbolic actions. But if you see an organization or group who only relies on these tactics, look elsewhere. There are other, more effective ways to engage.

5. Find Your Path

I’ve been writing scenarios of how a Trump presidency might play out. (You can read the scenarios written as a choose-your-own-adventure-style book at WhatIfTrumpWins.org or order the book.) The initial weeks look chaotic no matter what. But over time some differentiated resistance pathways begin to emerge.

One pathway is called “Protecting People.” These are folks surviving and protecting our own—especially those of us directly targeted, such as trans people, folks choosing abortions, and immigrants. This might mean organizing outside current systems for healthcare and mutual aid, or moving resources to communities that are getting targeted. Further examples include starting immigrant welcoming committees, abortion-support funds, or training volunteers on safety skills to respond to white nationalist violence.

Another pathway is “Defending Civic Institutions.” This group may or may not be conscious that current institutions don’t serve us all, but they are united in understanding that Trump wants them to crumble so he can exert greater control over our lives. Each bureaucracy will put up its own fight to defend itself.

Your path may not be clear right now. That’s okay. There will be plenty of opportunities to join the resistance.

Insider groups will play a central battle against Trump fascism. You may recall government scientists dumping copious climate data onto external servers, bracing for Trump’s orders. This time, many more insiders understand it’s code red. Hopefully, many will bravely refuse to quit—and instead choose to stay inside as long as possible.

Institutional pillars understand a Trump presidency is a dire threat. The military, for one, is well aware that Trump’s potential orders to use them to crack down on civilian protesters would politicize them permanently.

These insiders will need external support. Sometimes it’s just folks showing compassion that some of our best allies will be inside, silently resisting. A culture of celebrating people getting fired for the right reasons would help (then offering them practical help with life’s next steps). Other moments will need open support and public activation.

Then there’s a critical third pathway: “Disrupt and Disobey.” This goes beyond protesting for better policies and into the territory of people intervening to stop bad policies or showing resistance.

Initially a lot of that prefigurative work may be purely symbolic. In Norway, to create a culture of resistance during World War II people wore innocuous paperclips as a sign they wouldn’t obey. The symbolism is to build preparation for mass strikes and open resistance. In Serbia, protests against their dictator started with student strikes before escalating to strikes by pensioners (which were both largely symbolic) before finally escalating to the game-changing strike of coal miners.

In effective “Disrupt and Disobey” type actions the ultimate goal is paving a path for mass noncooperation: tax resistance, national strikes, work shut-downs, and other nonviolent mass disobedience tactics—the most effective strategies to displace authoritarians. (Training on how to do that in a new Trump era can be found here.)

Lastly, there’s a key fourth role: “Building Alternatives.” We can’t just be stuck reacting and stopping the bad. We have to have a vision. This is the slow growth work of building alternative ways that are more democratic. It includes grounding and healing work, rich cultural work, alternative ways of growing food and caring for kids, participatory budgeting, or seeding constitutional conventions to build a majoritarian alternative to the Electoral College mess we’re in.

Each of us may be attracted to some pathways more than others.

Myself, I’m attracted to “Disrupt and Disobey”—though I know when certain moments hit I’ll be pulled into some immediate “Protecting People.” I’m perhaps too impatient for most “Building Alternatives” and too unhappy with the status quo to do “Defend Civic Institutions.” However, I’m delighted others will do that work!

I’m reminded of another way of finding your role that comes from my friend Ingrid’s grandfather, who lived in Norway under the Nazi regime. He learned that the resistance was hiding people in the basement of a church near a cemetery. As a florist he already traveled to and from the cemetery—so he found a role smuggling messages in funeral wreaths, delivering them all over the city.

He didn’t go out designing his perfect role. In fact, I’m not sure he would have looked at the list of possible “roles” and found his political path. Instead, he found his space by circumstance.

In other words: Your path may not be clear right now. That’s okay. There will be plenty of opportunities to join the resistance.

6. Do Not Obey in Advance, Do Not Self-Censor

The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times’ cowardly refusal to endorse a political candidate is, it appears, a classic example of self-censorship. Trump did not have to make a direct threat to these media outlets. Their own leadership told them to “sit this one out.”

Why? Because they wanted to stay safe.

If autocrats teach us any valuable lesson it’s this: Political space that you don’t use, you lose.

This is a message to all levels of society: lawyers advising nonprofits, leaders worried about their funding base, folks worried about losing their jobs.

I’m not coaching to never self-protect. You can decide when to speak your mind. But it is a phenomenally slippery slope here we have to observe and combat.

Timothy Snyder has written a helpful book called On Tyranny—and turned it into a video series. He cites ceding power as the first problem to tackle, writing: “Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.”

Put simply: Use the political space and voice you have.

7. Reorient Your Political Map

A few months ago I sat in a room with retired generals, Republicans like Michael Steele, ex-governors, and congresspeople. We were scenario-planning ways to prevent using the Insurrection Act to target civilian protesters, playing step-by-step who would give the orders to whom, and how the worst could be avoided.

For a committed antiwar activist, the phrase “strange bedfellows” doesn’t begin to describe the bizarre experience I felt.

I came out of it realizing that a Trump presidency reshapes alignments and possibilities. The bellicose, blasphemous language of Trump will meet the practical reality of governing. When you’re out of power, it’s easy to unify—but their coalition’s cracks will quickly emerge. We have to stay sharp for opportunities to cleave off support.

Trump has been very clear about using his political power to its fullest—stretching and breaking the norms and laws that get in his way. The movement will constantly be asking itself: “Are you able to stop this new bad thing?”

How we position ourselves matters: Are we interested in engaging with people unhappy with the regime—whether because they love the current institutions or are unhappy with Trump’s policies on them? Are we able to tell a story that explains how we got here—and do political education? Or are we only interested in maintaining ideological purity and preaching to our own choir?

Even if you don’t want to engage with them (which is fine), we’ll all have to give space to those who do experiment with new language to appeal to others who don’t share our worldview of a multiracial true democracy.

Empathy will be helpful here. I write all this with a particular moment in mind: At the end of the scenario day, we whipped around the room with conclusions. The generals said “The military cannot stop Trump from giving these orders.” Politicians said “Congress cannot stop it.” The lawyers said “We cannot stop it.”

I could see a lot of pain in high-ranking people of great power admitting a kind of defeat. I felt a level of compassion that surprised me.

Only the left activists said: We have an approach of mass noncooperation that can stop this. But we’d need your help.

I’m not sure that projected confidence was well-received. But if we’re going to live into that (and I’m far from certain we can), we have to get real about power.

8. Get Real About Power

In Trump’s first term, the left’s organizing had mixed results. With John McCain’s assistance, we were able to block Trump’s health proposal. Rallies proved less and less effective as time went on. The airport shutdowns showed that disruptive action can activate the public and helped pave the way for the court’s dismissal over the Muslim ban. But Trump was still able to win huge tax cuts and appoint right-wing Supreme Court judges. The narrative lurched, and sizeble chunks of the population have now been captivated by the “Big Lie.” It was elections that ultimately stopped Trump.

This time will be much harder.

The psychological exhaustion and despair is much higher. Deploying people into the streets for mass actions with no clear outcome will grow that frustration, leading to dropout and radicalized action divorced from strategy.

Trump has been very clear about using his political power to its fullest—stretching and breaking the norms and laws that get in his way. The movement will constantly be asking itself: “Are you able to stop this new bad thing?”

We’re not going to convince him not to do these things. No pressure on Republicans will result in more than the tiniest of crumbs (at least initially). We’re not going to stop him from doing these things just by persuasive tactics or showing that there are a LOT of us who oppose them.

It will be helpful to have a power analysis in our minds, specifically that’s known as the upside-down triangle. This tool was built to explain how power moves even under dictatorships.

The central tenet is that like an upside-down triangle, power can be unstable. It naturally topples over without anything supporting it. To prevent that, power relies on pillars of support to keep it upright.

Casually, the left often focuses on pillars of support that include governments, media, corporations, shareholders, and policymakers. Describing the pillars of support, Gene Sharp wrote:

By themselves, rulers cannot collect taxes, enforce repressive laws and regulations, keep trains running on time, prepare national budgets, direct traffic, manage ports, print money, repair roads, keep markets supplied with food, make steel, build rockets, train the police and army, issue postage stamps, or even milk a cow. People provide these services to the ruler though a variety of organizations and institutions. If people would stop providing these skills, the ruler could not rule.

Removing one pillar of support can often gain major, life-saving concessions. In response to Trump’s 2019 government shutdown, flight attendants prepared a national strike. Such a strike would ground planes across the country and a key transportation network. Within hours of announcing they were “mobilizing immediately” for a strike, Trump capitulated.

Another example comes from the recently deceased long-time activist Dick Taylor. In his book Blockade, he writes about how he and a tiny group changed U.S. foreign policy by repeatedly blocking armaments sent to support Pakistani dictator Yahya Khan. The ragtag crew sent canoes to block mighty military shipments leaving from East Coast ports until eventually the International Longshoremen’s Association was persuaded to refuse to load them. This broke the back of national policy.

For larger system change we have to look outside of recent U.S. organizing. A good place to start is with Waging Nonviolence’s recent interview series with folks sharing key lessons on fighting autocracies and aiming for system change.

In our country, pressuring elite power is reaching its end point. Power will need to emerge from folks no longer obeying the current unjust system. This tipping point of mass noncooperation will be messy. It means convincing a lot of people to take huge personal risks for a better option.

As a “Disrupt and Disobey” person, we have to move deliberately to gain the trust of others, like the “Protecting People” folks. Mass noncooperation does the opposite of their goal of protection—it exposes people to more risk, more repression. But with that comes the possibility that we could get the kind of liberatory government that we all truly deserve.

9. Handle Fear, Make Violence Rebound

Otpor in Serbia has provided an abundance of examples on how to face repression. They were young people who took a sarcastic response to regular police beatings. They would joke amongst each other, “It only hurts if you’re scared.”

Their attitude wasn’t cavalier—it was tactical. They were not going to grow fear. So when hundreds were beaten on a single day, their response was: This repression will only stiffen the resistance.

This is attitude.

They were also practical. They would follow their arrested protesters to jail cells and insist on making sure they were being treated well. They would target police who beat them up—showing up outside their houses with pictures of the people they beat up. Their call was rooted in the future they wanted: “You’ll have a chance to join us.”

Making political violence rebound requires refusing to be intimidated and resisting those threats so they can backfire.

Handling fear isn’t about suppressing it—but it is about constantly redirecting. One activist described to me two motions in the universe: shrinking or expansion. When Donald Trump directs the Justice Department to use sedition charges against protesters or arrest his political enemies like Jamie Raskin or Liz Cheney, what’s our response?

Activist and intellectual Hardy Merriman released a studied response about political violence that had some news that surprised me. The first was that physical political violence hasn’t grown dramatically in this country—it still remains relatively rare. The threats of violence, however, trend upwards, such as this CNN report: “Politically motivated threats to public officials increased 178 percent during Trump’s presidency,” primarily from the right.

His conclusion wasn’t that political violence isn’t going to grow. Quite the opposite. But he noted that a key component to political violence is to intimidate and tell a story that they are the true victims. Making political violence rebound requires refusing to be intimidated and resisting those threats so they can backfire. (Training on this backfire technique is available from the HOPE-PV guide.)

We can shrink into a cacophony of “that’s not fair,” which fuels the fear of repression. Or we take a page from the great strategist Bayard Rustin.

Black civil rights leaders were targeted by the government of Montgomery, Alabama during the bus boycott in the 1950s. Leaders like the newly appointed Martin Luther King Jr. went into hiding after police threats of arrest based on antiquated anti-boycott laws. Movement organizer Rustin organized them to go down to the station and demand to be arrested since they were leaders—making a positive spectacle of the repression. Some leaders not on police lists publicly demanded they, too, get arrested. Folks charged were met with cheers from crowds, holding their arrest papers high in the air. Fear was turned into valor.

10. Envision a Positive Future

I don’t feel certain, and I’m not predicting we win. But we’ve all now imagined storylines about how bad it might get. We would do ourselves a service to spend an equal measure of time envisioning how we might advance our cause in these conditions. As writer Walidah Imarisha says, “The goal of visionary fiction is to change the world.”

In my mind, we’ll have to eventually get Trump out of office. There are two paths available.

The first: Vote him out. Given the bias of the electoral college, this requires successfully defending nearly all local, state, and national takeovers of elections such that they remain relatively fair and free.

A very public loss like this can cause what Timur Kuran calls an “unanticipated revolution.” He noted many incidents where political leaders seem to have full support, then suddenly it evaporates.

Winning via the path of electoral majority has a wide swath of experience and support from mainstream progressive organizations and Democratic institutions. It’s going to be a major thrust.

In my scenario writing I’ve explored what that strategy could look like, including preparing electoral workers to stand against last minute attempts by Trump to change election rules and even stymie the election with dubious emergency orders. They don’t obey—and go ahead with elections anyway.

The second strategy is if he illegally refuses to leave or allow fair elections: Kick him out. That means we are able to develop a national nonviolent resistance campaign capable of forcing him out of office.

I’ve written several versions of this: One where large-scale strikes disable portions of the U.S. economy. If you recall from Covid-19, our systems are extremely vulnerable. Businesses running “just in time” inventory means small hiccups in the system can cause cascading effects.

Sustained strikes would face deep resistance, but they could swing communities currently on the fence, like the business community, which already is concerned about Trump’s temperamental nature. Trump’s own policies might make these conditions much easier. If he really does mass deportations, the economic injury might be fatal.

In another scenario I explore another strategy of taking advantage of a Trump overreach. Autocrats overplay their hands. And in this imagined scenario, Trump overreaches when he attempts to force autoworkers to stop building electric vehicles. UAW workers refuse and keep the factories running. Eventually he’s unable to stop them—but in the process he’s publicly humiliated.

A very public loss like this can cause what Timur Kuran calls an “unanticipated revolution.” He noted many incidents where political leaders seem to have full support, then suddenly it evaporates. He gives as an example the Iranian Revolution of 1978-79. “None of the major intelligence organizations—not even the CIA or the KGB—expected Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s regime to collapse. Right up to the revolution, they expected him to weather the gathering storm.”

Kuran’s analysis reminds us to look at Trump’s political weakness. Political hacks like Lindsay Graham appear to be sycophants—but if given the chance to turn their knife in his back, they might. This means exposed political weaknesses could quickly turn the many inside Trump’s campaign against him.

That feels far away from now. But all these remain possibilities. Practicing this future thinking and seeing into these directions gives me some hope and some strategic sensibilities.

On the days when I can’t sense any of these political possibilities (more than not), I zoom out further to the lifespans of trees and rocks, heading into spiritual reminders that nothing lasts forever.

All of the future is uncertain. But using these things, we’re more likely to have a more hopeful future and experience during these turbulent times.

On October 28, the Israeli Knesset passed a second reading of two bills that effectively ban the United Nations Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) from carrying out "any activity" in Israel and occupied Palestine.

Simply put, the decision is catastrophic, because UNRWA is the main international body responsible for the welfare of millions of Palestinians throughout the occupied territories, and throughout much of the region.

Israel followed its decision by attacking and damaging an UNRWA office in the Nur Shams refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. It was the Israeli government's way of demonstrating its seriousness regarding the matter.

A key player in the war on UNRWA was Jared Kushner, son-in-law of former U.S. President, and now President-elect, Donald Trump.

This is not the first time that Israel has pursued an anti-UNRWA agenda and, contrary to claims by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israel officials, the decision is not linked to the current genocidal war on Gaza, or the unfounded claims that UNRWA supports "terrorism."

An independent review commissioned by the U.N. revealed that Israel "made public claims that a significant number of UNRWA employees are members of terrorist organizations," but that it "has yet to provide supporting evidence of this."

Israeli claims, however, did a great deal of damage to the organization, as 13 countries, including the United States, Canada, Australia, Britain, Germany, and Italy, withheld badly needed funds which were helping Gaza stave off a horrific famine.

Eventually, most of these countries reinstated their financial support, though without apologizing to the Palestinians who were adversely impacted by these countries' initial, unfair decision.

Unrepenting, Israel continued to unleash its relentless war on the organization. "UNRWA workers involved in terrorist activities against Israel must be held accountable," Netanyahu said in a statement on October 28.

The anti-UNRWA rhetoric remains functional for Israel. Amplified by the ever-willing U.S. mainstream media, Israel has managed to keep UNRWA's name in the news, always associating it with "supporting terrorism." So, when the Israeli Knesset voted for the anti-UNRWA bills, mainstream media conveyed the news as if they were the only rational conclusion to an essentially fabricated story.

Israel's problem with UNRWA has little to do with the organization itself, but with its underlying political representation as a U.N. entity whose mission is predicated on providing "assistance and protection to Palestine refugees."

UNRWA was established in 1949 by the U.N. General Assembly Resolution 302 (IV). It began its operations on May 1, 1950, and with time, it became central to the survival of a large number of Palestinian refugee communities in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan.

Many have rightly criticized the U.N. for failing to supplement UNRWA's humanitarian mandate with a political equivalent that would ultimately help Palestinians achieve their Right of Return in accordance with U.N. Resolution 194. For Israel, however, UNRWA remained problematic.

According to Tel Aviv's thinking, UNRWA's existence is a constant reminder that there is a distinct group of people called Palestinian refugees. And though UNRWA is not a political organization, the Palestinian refugee crisis and all related U.N. resolutions that emphasize the "inalienable" rights of these refugees are very political.

Taking advantage of the initial, albeit brief, sympathy with Israel worldwide, and the massive campaign of misinformation emanating from Israel and its allies, Netanyahu used October 7 as an opportunity to further demonize UNRWA. However, his campaign had started much earlier.

A key player in the war on UNRWA was Jared Kushner, son-in-law of former U.S. President, and now President-elect, Donald Trump. Kushner, who invested much time in helping Israel defeat the Palestinians once and for all, made UNRWA a key point in his plan. He vowed to carry out "sincere effort to disrupt" the work of the organization, a leaked email revealed.

Due to international rejection and solidarity, Kushner ultimately failed. Even the withholding of funds by the U.S. administration did not force the organization to shut down, although it did negatively impact the lives of millions of Palestinians.

The ongoing war on Gaza and the push to annex large parts of the West Bank represented a golden opportunity for Netanyahu and his extremist government to increase the pressure on UNRWA. They have been enabled by unconditional U.S. support, and the willingness of various Western governments to recklessly act upon Israel's false claims regarding the U.N. organization.

By allowing Israel to delegitimize the very organization responsible for enforcing international law, the U.N.'s crisis becomes much deeper.

The impassioned plea on October 30 by U.N. Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese reflects the frustration felt by many U.N.-affiliated officials regarding the growing irrelevance of the U.N.

In her speech, Albanese pointed out that, if the U.N.'s failures continue, its impact will become even "more and more irrelevant to the rest of the world," especially during these times of turmoil.

This irrelevance is already being felt by millions of Palestinians, mainly in Gaza, but also in the West Bank. Though Palestinians continue to withstand and reject and resist Israeli aggression, they are fed up with an international system that seems to offer them only words, but little action.

Israel's banning of UNRWA should represent an opportunity for those concerned about the standing of the United Nations, to remind Israel that U.N. members who have no respect for international law deserve to be delegitimized. This time, words must be accompanied by action. Nothing else will suffice.