Coming up for a vote in early November is a resolution advanced by the Ireland and New Zealand delegations to the United Nations to commission a critical new scientific study on the effects of nuclear war. The study, which would be the first under U.N. auspices in more than 30 years, would be run by an independent scientific panel of 21 members and would examine the physical effects and societal consequences of a nuclear war on local, regional, and planetary scales. It would be comprehensive in its scope, including the climate, environmental, and radiological effects of nuclear war and how these would impact public health, global social and economic systems, agriculture, and ecosystems over periods of days, weeks, and decades.

Our Understanding of the Effects of Nuclear War Needs to Be Updated

That nuclear war would be catastrophic and potentially kill hundreds of millions of people has been well known for decades. But we have reason to believe that our current knowledge is incomplete, and some of it is out of date. Since the last time the U.N. commissioned such a report—its 1988 Study on the Climatic and Other Global Effects of Nuclear War—the world population has grown and changed in distribution, economies have become more interdependent, and the environment more fragile. New scientific information has yielded insights, including updates to our understanding of, and ability to model, the atmosphere, and the studies of the long-term effects of radiation on affected populations have yielded new information. Some of this technical work has been presented in the four Conferences on the Humanitarian Impacts of Nuclear Weapons.

It is also clear that additional research continues to be needed to fill important knowledge gaps. New studies are being published and commissioned and research gaps are being identified. There have been recently updated studies published of the radiological fallout impacts of atmospheric nuclear detonations and of ground bursts, and the U.S. National Academies is currently conducting an Independent Study on Potential Environmental Effects of Nuclear War to try to improve our understanding of the risks and effects of nuclear winter, which recent research suggests could kill hundreds of millions or billions of people. In a 2022 report, the U.S. National Academies urged the development of a research program to better understand the effects of low-dose ionizing radiation using recent advances in epidemiology, biological understanding of disease occurrence, and computational and analytical technologies, and it has also become clear that our understanding of how radiation affects women and children differently than men is incomplete.

As long as countries possess nuclear weapons, nuclear war is a possibility.

There is little current, detailed information available about how even a limited nuclear war could affect social and economic systems, including how damage to industry, energy production, and financial systems would affect human well-being and what subsequent migration, conflict, and disease would result. Studies in the 1980s indicated that a relatively limited nuclear war could cause a U.S. economic collapse, which would take many years to recover from, and larger-scale attacks could cause damage from which recovery might not be possible.

A 2023 study by the U.S. National Academies on Risk Analysis Methods for Nuclear War and Nuclear Terrorism, tasked to look at the likelihood and consequences of different nuclear war scenarios, found the information about the consequences incomplete. Given this, the study advised, “There is a need to improve the understanding of less-well-understood physical effects of nuclear weapons (such as fires; damage in modern urban environments; electromagnetic pulse effects; and climatic effects, such as nuclear winter), as well as the assessment and estimation of psychological, societal, and political consequences of nuclear weapons use.”

Why Would a U.N.-Commissioned Study Be Important?

As long as countries possess nuclear weapons, nuclear war is a possibility. Nuclear war does not respect national boundaries, and countries not party to the conflict may be affected, potentially catastrophically. The global community deserves a rigorous, science-based understanding of these possible consequences. This lack of understanding is not limited to the public. The nuclear war consequence models maintained by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) for the U.S. Department of Defense provide an incomplete picture, according to the 2023 National Academies study, which found these assessments to be “focused on prompt effects and military objectives. This results in a partial accounting of the consequences leading to a limited understanding of the breadth of the outcomes.”

This new U.N. study needs to be legitimate, transparent, inclusive, and accountable. The global community expects this type of authoritative scientific assessment on global existential threats from its international bodies; an example is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that was created to provide governments and the public with regular scientific assessments on climate change, risks posed, and solutions.

What Role Should Scientists Play in Nuclear Weapons Policy?

Scientists have regularly provided critical information and perspectives that have served to sound the alarm on the dangers of the use of nuclear weapons. They’ve done so from the very first moments of the nuclear age, when Manhattan Project scientists wrote the Franck report foretelling the nuclear arms race and signed a Leo Szilard-spearheaded petition to forego the first use of a nuclear bomb. Later, scientists working independently from governments went on to publicly illuminate the dangerous effects of radioactive fallout from atmospheric nuclear explosions on unsuspecting people, and used those findings to create momentum for the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty, which kept tests below ground. Scientists have been warning us since the 1980s about nuclear winter—the scenario in which soot from firestorms set off by nuclear war could be lofted into the stratosphere and persist for years, disrupting the climate and thus agriculture on global scales, inducing widespread famine.

In April of this year, the national science academies of the G7 countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States) weighed in, issuing a statement for the first time on nuclear weapons. They declared that “it is imperative to highlight the known consequences of nuclear warfare,” adding that there is strong scientific evidence that “depending on the scale of use of nuclear weapons, there is the potential for the destruction of entire ecosystems and extinction of species, due to the direct impact of explosions and fires and altered climatic conditions. In the worst cases this could be on the scale of a mass extinction.”

The academies further urged the scientific community “to continue to develop and communicate the scientific evidence base that shows the catastrophic effects of nuclear warfare on human populations and other species with which we share our planet.”

The United States Should Support This Resolution—and Urge Other Nations to Follow Suit

Given that the United States relies on a strategy of nuclear deterrence, which seeks to obtain security by threatening nuclear war, it seems obvious that this country should want to fully understand the risks it is running.

Nuclear-armed states do not run these risks alone. The rest of the world can be affected by nuclear war via radioactive fallout, environmental changes such as nuclear winter, and disruption of the global economic system. Almost any nuclear war would be a global problem.

As a country with a strong global leadership role, the United States should co-sponsor this resolution and encourage its allies to do the same. The United States should also provide technical advice and offer the participation of its most knowledgeable scientists, while supporting the participation of scientists from a wide range of other nations and communities to ensure their perspectives are included in the scoping and execution of the study.

Last week, I traveled to Puerto Rico for the opening of a much-needed Social Security office in San Juan. There, I spoke at a forum marking the opening alongside Martin O’Malley, the Commissioner of the Social Security Administration (SSA) appointed by the Biden-Harris administration.

After the previous office closed due to a private landlord evicting SSA, Puerto Ricans living in San Juan were forced to travel hours just to claim their earned Social Security benefits. Back in March, I first visited Puerto Rico, at the invitation of Puerto Rico Senator at Large William E. Villafañe, for a roundtable discussion and community meeting calling on the Biden-Harris administration to open a new office.

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The administration listened to the people of Puerto Rico. Commissioner O’Malley and his team expedited the timeline for opening the new office, originally several years, to only five months. And O’Malley personally traveled to Puerto Rico to mark the opening of the new office.

At the forum, O’Malley called for an end to unequal treatment of Puerto Ricans, including a grievous injustice — their ineligibility for Supplemental Security Income (SSI), an anti-poverty program administered by the Social Security Administration.

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A few days after the forum, Donald Trump held a rally at Madison Square Garden. His opening speaker, so-called comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, took the opportunity to call Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean.” Hinchcliffe said the quiet part out loud: Trump and the people around him have no respect for Puerto Ricans, and don’t consider them real Americans.

In contrast, the opening of San Juan’s new Social Security office shows that the Biden-Harris administration is listening to Puerto Ricans. When O’Malley decided to prioritize reopening the office, he didn’t know that Puerto Rico was about to be all over the news. He just knew it was the right thing to do.

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O’Malley’s term as Commissioner of Social Security ends in January. It’s highly likely that if elected President, Kamala Harris would reappoint him. Donald Trump would not. Instead, he’s likely to reinstate Andrew Saul (the commissioner during Trump’s first term, who used his position to attack Social Security’s workforce and make it harder for people with disabilities to get their earned benefits) or another handpicked crony.

This is what’s on the ballot next Tuesday, not just policy and personnel, but decency and respect. Donald Trump has spent days whining “it was only a joke.” What Trump forgets is that for it to be a joke, it has to be funny.

And there is nothing funny at all about calling Puerto Rico, the Isla del Encanto, a “floating island of garbage.”

Like millions of Americans, we watched in horror on January 6, 2021 as a riotous, Confederate-flag-wielding mob ransacked the U.S. Capitol, assaulted police officers, and strode the halls of Congress chanting, “Hang Mike Pence!” and “Where’s Nancy?” The rioters’ goals were not just violence and mayhem; they did their best to overturn a free and fair election. It was an insurrection, and they almost succeeded.

In early 2021, with the Capitol still in shambles, we began writing a comic book series that would imagine a dystopian world in which that was the case.

Shockingly, or perhaps not, we’ve seen many elements that we only imagined becoming reality in recent months. And it should be a stark reminder to Americans everywhere that our democracy remains fragile.

The message is clear and straight out of the playbook: Violence in the name of an autocrat is, in fact, patriotic heroism. The leader is the law.

Issue #1 of 1/6: The Graphic Novel, which debuted in January of 2023, featured a fictional, government-sponsored rally honoring “patriots” who raided the Capitol on January 6 and an Iwo Jima-style monument to J6 “martyrs.” In reality, a gala honoring insurrectionists was scheduled at former U.S. President Donald Trump’s Bedminster golf club earlier this year, albeit later canceled. And evidence unsealed this month from the federal case against Trump for trying to overturn the 2020 election nearly mirrored conversations we imagined in Issue #2 that took place from the Oval Office.

Many other elements of our series (which we won’t spoil here) have also come to pass in recent months.

To be clear, we’re neither soothsayers nor futurists. But between the Republican National Committee announcing it has recruited thousands of “poll watchers,” Georgia officials already planning how to undermine election results, and the FBI warning of election-related domestic terrorism, it is clear efforts to undermine our right to vote are already in progress.

We must stay vigilant to these efforts, so that our fiction does not further become reality.

In researching the book, we spoke with dozens of journalists, scholars, eyewitnesses, and at least one participant in the insurrection. It quickly became clear not only how close we came to a successful coup d’état, but that Trump consistently follows what many experts call an “Authoritarian Playbook,” employed by tyrants and dictators around the world.

The playbook includes attacking the press, scapegoating and demonizing vulnerable groups, trafficking in conspiracy theories, fostering a loyal cult of personality, and encouraging violence by acolytes and followers. We incorporated each of these themes into our series, thinking that we were writing a speculative cautionary tale for the future.

What seemed like science fiction now feels more like a prediction. Trump has deepened his hatred of the free press, even insulting the right-leaning Wall Street Journal this month. He has made ridiculous claims about immigrants eating pets, one of many false conspiracy theories he’s trafficked.

He also doubled down on the insurrection this month, calling it an event with “love and peace” and insisting there was a “peaceful transfer of power.” Meanwhile, both he and his vice presidential pick JD Vance have refused to admit that the former president lost the 2020 election, and have dodged questions as to whether they would seek to challenge this year’s election, even if every governor certifies the results.

Perhaps most ominously, Trump has said he would pardon some or all of the 1,400 people charged in connection with the attack on the Capitol, calling them “hostages,” “political prisoners,” and “unbelievable patriots.” They include over 200 who pleaded guilty to assaulting federal officers, obstructing law enforcement, committing seditious conspiracy, and other felonies. Hundreds more have been convicted or pleaded guilty to other crimes.

The message is clear and straight out of the playbook: Violence in the name of an autocrat is, in fact, patriotic heroism. The leader is the law.

In much of our series, the former president is depicted in shadow as others do his bidding. That’s because our research made clear to us that, whoever wins the presidential election in November, the threat of authoritarianism in America will be with us for years to come.

But our series also carries hope and surprising optimism, fueled by those same conversations with experts and observers. Voting, it turns out, is necessary but not sufficient to preserve democracy. Fending off tyranny also requires broad and diverse civil resistance, strategic organizing and communications, disrupting and persuading business and other elites, and solidarity in the face of repression.

Art, artists, and creative expression are also essential, which brings us back to comic books. From Captain America socking Hitler in the jaw months before the U.S. entered World War II to Wonder Woman fighting misogyny and repression, to Black Panther fighting the KKK, comics have long been used to oppose hate and oppression. We hope that our series will continue that tradition. And that it’s not too late.

In 1964, Senator Barry Goldwater, the Republican from Arizona, captured his party's presidential nomination and unabashedly conducted an extremist, right-wing campaign. He opposed civil rights legislation and New Deal social welfare programs. He implied a willingness to use nuclear weapons, saying he would give U.S. field commanders and the NATO Supreme Commander the freedom to launch them without presidential approval.

As Goldwater famously said in his acceptance speech at the Republican convention, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”

The Johnson campaign exploited Goldwater’s extremism with what may be the most effective and chilling TV ad of all time.

If you watch the famous campaign ad, you’ll see a very young girl standing in a field, pulling petals off a daisy while counting them out one by one. Then, we hear the voice of a military commander (with a strong southern accent) doing a similar countdown that ends in a nuclear explosion which takes over the screen. The ad finishes with a voice-over, Lyndon Johnson offering a few pious words about love and peace. Johnson is never seen. Goldwater is never mentioned.

Lyndon Johnson crushed Goldwater 61.1 percent to 38.5, winning 486 electoral votes to 52.

This year’s election also features a self-declared extremist. Yet today, the presidential race is a toss-up. Trump’s extremism promotes lies about immigrants eating pets and the poisoning of our blood. Trump calls Democrats the enemy within and he praises those who stormed the capital on January 6th. And in total violation of the history of American electioneering, he continues to argue that the 2020 election was stolen from him. A vast majority of Republicans agree with him. Goldwater and his party of 1964 look like centrists in comparison.

Given Trump’s blatant extremism, how can the election be so close? Why isn’t Harris 20 points ahead? What is so different between now and 1964?

Hillary Clinton, in 2016, provided an explanation, shared by many, that about half of all Trump voters are bigots:

You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. (Laughter/applause) Right? (Laughter/applause) They're racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic – you name it.

Voters are willing to elect Trump, the ultra-extremist, because he voices their fears about the rise of women, people of color, and the LGBTQ+ communities. More than anything, they and Trump want to make America white again!

If that theory is correct, we’d expect white working-class voters to be very illiberal on those issues and to have become even more so over the last several decades. We tested that theory in my book, Wall Street’s War on Workers, tracking 23 divisive social issues questions found in long-term voter surveys. It turns out that in 13 of the questions, the responses shifted in a more liberal direction over the years, and none of the 23 became more illiberal. Here are two stunning examples:

“Should gay or lesbian couples be legally permitted to adopt children?”

Said Yes in 2000: 38.2%
Said Yes in 2020: 76.0%

“Should legal status be granted to all illegal immigrants who have held jobs and paid taxes for at least 3 years and have not been convicted of any felony crimes?”

Said Yes in 2010: 32.1%
Said Yes in 2020: 61.8%

If the deplorable argument is wanting, as our research suggests, what is a better explanation for the enormous support Trump is receiving?

A disclaimer is in order. It’s impossible to address all the factors in one short article. But this question shouldn’t be ignored, so here goes.

Let’s start with trust in government. In 1964, an amazing 77 percent of Americans agreed that “they trust the government to do what is right just about always/most of the time.” In 2024 it was 22 percent.

That means the incumbent President in 1964, Lyndon Johnson, was viewed as the leader of a government that protected it’s people. Kamala Harris, as the current incumbent Vice-President, is mostly viewed as a leader of a government that is not protecting the average person. Harris is perceived as part of the establishment, the elites who have benefited during the years of runaway inequality, while Trump is perceived as its wrecking ball.

But that displeasure with government today suggests another set of explanations, including the collapse of unionization and the rise of job insecurity facing working people over the past four decades. More than 29 percent of the total U.S. workforce were union members in 1964. Add in their families and at last half of all Americans had close union connections. Today, 94 percent of all private sector workers are not in unions.

As a result, nearly all workers have had little or no protection against the mass layoffs that have regularly afflicted the country since the 1970s, even when the economy is prospering. During the Johnson years, the union ecosystem was so dense that Democratic politicians had no choice but to appeal to the interests of working people. They had to be the party of workers whether they liked it or not.

But starting with Bill Clinton, unions became small enough to ignore. Appealing to and appeasing Wall Street and corporate interests became central to the Democratic Party’s path to power. They wrongly believed that workers had no place else to turn.

And white workers, in particular, fled the Democrats. The research for my book strongly suggests that the main culprit was mass layoffs and the failure of the Democrats to address them.

Take Mingo County, West Virginia, with a population 25,000. It had 3,300 coal mining jobs in 1996. In that year Bill Clinton received 69.7 percent of the vote. By 2020, Mingo County had lost 3,000 of those coal mining jobs, and Joe Biden received only 13.9 percent.

Is this cherry-picking one country to make a point? No. For Wall Street’s War on Workers, we tested all the counties in the Blue Wall states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Our findings showed that as the county mass layoff rate went up, the Democratic vote declined. In short, the Democrats are being blamed for failing to protect working-class people from the destruction of their jobs. While working people may not know all the details about stock buybacks and leveraged buyouts, they know that Wall Street has been walking all over them and the Democrats have done little to stop them.

In discussing with my colleagues why this election is so different than 1964, one noted that the problem may be that Harris didn’t have enough time to mount a full campaign. But another jumped in and said, maybe she had too much time. Say what?

“She’s a corporate Democrat,” my colleague responded, meaning that the more Harris campaigns the more she sends that corporate-friendly signal to working-class voters. When they say she isn’t specific enough about her plans, they’re also saying she isn’t speaking directly enough to them about their issues.

The transformation of the Democratic Party from the party of the working class to the party of prosperous elites can’t be ignored or wished away. It is one reason why this election is so close and why an extremist may capture the electoral college. If Trump wins, he will surely wield his axe against government, and that is certain to negatively impact the most vulnerable among us.

It doesn’t have to be this way. My research and that of the Center for Working Class Politics show that a strong progressive populist message is very attractive to working people, especially in the Blue Wall states. It’s a damn shame that so many Democratic politicians can’t see the writing on the wall.

If you’re like many of my friends, I know what you’re thinking: OMG, how is it even possible that half the country is going to vote for that guy? And there’s a slightly less common corollary to that: I mean, really, who are these people who say that they’re undecided? Who doesn’t know enough to know which way they’re going to vote?

Well, it turns out that I’ve met a fair number of those undecided voters in person, going door to door canvassing in eastern Pennsylvania, where, it’s fair to say, the 2024 election may be decided. They’re real people, with perfectly real everyday concerns. They have families living in pleasant suburbs in and around Easton, Bethlehem, and Allentown, their neatly tended lawns a mix of grass, crabgrass, and dandelions, and older model SUVs, minivans, and pickup trucks in their driveways. And I’d dare you to knock on one of their doors and, when someone answers, say, “So, who the hell are you?”

I get it: they’re easy to demonize, especially if you’re a liberal or leftist news junkie living on the Upper West Side of New York or in Takoma Park, Maryland, or Cambridge, Massachusetts; you read the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, or Politico; and your Monday nights are built around watching Rachel Maddow and Jon Stewart. I’m not surprised if, like Anne Enright, the novelist from University College Dublin, writing for “On the Election” in the New York Review of Books, you vent your pent-up frustration over undecideds who are “lonely and sometimes pathetically grandiose.” It upsets Enright to be “watching twelve billion election dollars chase down a few thousand anxious minds in Pennsylvania.” Can’t they just make up those minds of theirs?

To my mind, the forehead-slapping awe at those undecided in this presidential election took its purest form in a commentary by comedian and satirist Lewis Black on a recent episode of The Daily Show:

“We still have no idea who the fuck is gonna win! And that’s all thanks to one very special group of morons… Oh yes, undecided voters: the same people you see at the ice cream shop asking for 12 mini spoon samples. It’s a $3 cone, asshole! How is anyone still undecided in this election? … This election still comes down to winning over a few dozen Pennsylvanians with carbon monoxide poisoning. Now, don’t get me wrong. Maybe these undecided voters aren’t stupid. Maybe they have a good reason for being idiots.”

But one Sunday afternoon, while crisscrossing several blocks in a neighborhood of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, knocking on perhaps 40 front doors over several hours, I had the opportunity to talk to a number of those very undecideds. Out of the 40 homes curated from lists of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents — those who had, in fact, voted in recent elections — about half of them were home and came to the door. And of those 20, maybe half a dozen told me that they hadn’t yet decided who they were going to vote for or if they planned to vote at all.

As a start, it turns out, a number of them haven’t really been following the news. According to research by the campaigns, many of them work two jobs. They don’t get the Times or the Post. Many, in fact, don’t even get the local paper. They know who’s running, but while they seemingly know a fair amount about Donald Trump, they know a lot less about Kamala Harris. They didn’t watch the two conventions on TV or even get around to watching the presidential debate between Harris and Trump. And, by the way, that puts them among the majority of Americans: an estimated 67 million people watched that event on September 10th, while 158 million people voted in 2020 and an additional 81 million eligible voters who didn’t cast a ballot back then missed it or skipped it.

My sense, from the voters I talked to — totally unscientific, yes, but backed up by some polling and research — is that voters who say they’re undecided have largely tuned out politics in these years. Maybe that’s because they’ve long come to believe that all politicians are corrupt or feckless; or maybe it’s because they’ve been around long enough to have concluded that “things never change” and that their own lives are only marginally affected by whoever’s in office; maybe it’s because with kids, a job (or two), caring for older parents or relatives with special needs, and struggling to make ends meet, they just don’t have space in their lives for “the news”; or maybe they just didn’t care to share their thoughts with a stranger at their door. Whatever the reasoning, not a single undecided voter I spoke to rejected the message I was carrying or pushed back hard against the idea that maybe Harris deserves a genuine look.

And they’re still up for grabs. The lead story in the October 22nd New York Times was headlined: “Battle is Fierce for Sliver of Pie: Undecided Votes.” Its subhead: “Election Could Hinge on People Who Aren’t ‘Super Political.’”

Harris Chipping Away at Undecideds?

So, how many are there? With the polls showing a razor-thin difference between Harris and Trump among those who have indeed made up their minds, it’s hard to pin down exactly how many people may still be undecided. By some measure, since early summer, things may have been moving toward the Democrats when evaluating undecided voters. According to a PBS News/NPR/Marist poll and analysis, before President Biden quit the race the number of undecideds was just 3%. But when he quit, that number jumped to 9%, reflecting the fact that Harris was an unknown quantity to many Americans. According to PBS, that number shrank after the September debate, as potential voters, women in particular, learned more about Harris, especially over the abortion rights issue. The New York Times reported that the Trump campaign has found that the number of undecideds has fallen from around 10% in August to perhaps 5% today.

And according to Newsweek, citing an Emerson College survey of undecided voters, in recent weeks those voters have been breaking Harris’s way by an almost 2-1 margin. “Emerson College polling, conducted between October 14 and 16,” that magazine reported, “shows that among undecided voters who chose who they would vote for in the past week or month, 60 percent opted for the Democratic vice president, while 36 percent opted for Republican former President Donald Trump.”

It’s impossible, of course, to determine precisely how many voters are actually undecided. Some surveys put the number at about 13%, others at just 3% or so. A Times/Siena survey found that, in the “swing states” alone, the undecideds are 3.7%, or 1.2 million potential voters. Whatever their numbers, in an election in which polls have consistently recorded essentially a swing-state dead heat between Harris and Trump, even that tiny number might be enough to tilt the final result. However, undecided voters could also simply decide to sit out the election (as many analysts suggest they might do) or, if their votes split evenly, have no effect at all on the final tally.

In addition to partisan voters, and those enthusiastic about one candidate or the other, there are those characterized as “swing voters,” “low-information voters,” or simply infrequent voters. All of those categories can reasonably be imagined as “persuadable,” though the cost-benefit ratio involved in efforts to reach them and get them to the polls could be prohibitive. A pair of professors and election specialists, Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and Stephen Henriques, writing for Time, argue that so-called swing voters — “who do lean towards one candidate but are open to voting for the alternative” — will be critical on November 5th. And surprisingly enough, swing voters (including undecideds) may add up to as much as 15% of the current electorate, according to a Times/Siena poll that the two authors cite.

Unfortunately, Harris may not be helping herself, given how she’s running her campaign. At its start, she benefited enormously from a skyrocketing burst of enthusiasm triggered by President Biden’s decision to drop out. His age, seeming infirmity, and catastrophically bad debate performance against Trump cast a pall of depression over many Democratic organizations and activists, and it seemed Trump then had a path toward a clear victory. But Harris’s emergence, her emphasis on “joy” and optimism (and Tim Walz’s effective use of the term “weird” to describe the GOP ticket) touched off a swell of — yes! — optimism. According to Forbes, when Biden was the Democratic candidate, just 30% of Democrats claimed to be enthusiastic about voting in November versus 59% of Trump supporters. By early September, however, 68% of Harris supporters expressed enthusiasm against just 60% of Trump backers.

Since then, however, some have argued that her campaign has been lackluster, her speeches too carefully scripted and vetted, too cautious and repetitive, dampening some of the enthusiasm that erupted over the summer. As Robert Kuttner wrote in “Harris and the Enthusiasm Gap” for The American Prospect, “Interviews and focus groups keep quoting undecided or Trump-leaning voters as saying that they don’t really know what Harris stands for. Could that be because her own message is blurred?”

Still, Harris has maintained a slight but consistent lead over Trump in national polls ever since the Democratic convention and has lately scheduled a burst of interviews on 60 Minutes, Fox News, “The View,” Stephen Colbert’s late show, the popular women’s podcast “Call Her Daddy,” Univision, and a CNN town hall.

The Turnout Imperative

By all accounts, the Democratic ground game — canvassing, phone banking, text banking, postcard writing, local candidate rallies, tables at local events, and more — has been far superior to the GOP’s. Even when taking into account efforts like Elon Musk’s supposed army of paid volunteers, Harris’s on-the-ground efforts are three times the size of Trump’s, according to the Washington Post: “She boasts more staff, more volunteers, a larger surrogate operation, more digital advertising, a more sophisticated smartphone-based organizing program and extra money for extraneous bells and whistles typically reserved for corporate product launches and professional sports championships.”

In eastern Pennsylvania, as I saw, local and out-of-state unions are going all-out in canvassing, voter registration, and GOTV drives. When I visited Democratic headquarters in Easton, Pennsylvania, in early October, its large meeting hall was filled with what looked like a hundred union volunteers in matching T-shirts from Local 1199 SEIU (Service Employees International Union), who had traveled to Easton from Newark, New Jersey.

That area, part of Northampton County, just north of the Democratic stronghold of Philadelphia, is a mostly working-class region of 320,000 people, increasingly diverse and still bearing the mark of a fading heavy manufacturing base. (Billy Joel’s 1982 anthem, “Allentown” — like Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” — is an ode to what Allentown once was and what it was becoming: “Well, we’re living here in Allentown/And they’re closing all the factories down/Out in Bethlehem they’re killing time/Filling out forms, standing in line.”) For the Harris campaign, it’s a vital area.

In a feature story on the 2024 campaigns in Northampton County, the Washington Post noted that the county has voted for the winner in almost every election for a century:

“The battle over voters in Northampton County reflects some of the biggest themes and tensions running through the presidential contest all across America less than three weeks from Election Day. Strategists view Pennsylvania as perhaps the most important swing state on the map this year and believe its 19 electoral college votes could be the tipping point. Northampton is an unusual cross-section of the country — one of 26 ‘pivot’ counties nationwide that backed Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, Trump in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020.”

If you’re not from one of the swing states, much of the presidential campaign has undoubtedly gone largely unnoticed, since electioneering and campaign ads are targeted and often particularly designed for the states, cities, and communities that are most in play. If you live in a place like Allentown or Bethlehem, on the other hand, you’ve been inundated. “I’m a Pennsylvania native and have been through many election cycles in a state that is no stranger to high-profile competitive campaigns, but I haven’t seen anything like what is playing out here this fall,” Christopher Borick, a political science professor at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, told the Times. “I share a laugh with my mailman when he drops off our mail because of the size of the pile of mailers he brings each day, and I’m getting used to evenings and weekends full of knocks on my door.”

The Harris campaign, especially, has gone high tech and there are a host of phone apps and websites that have emerged in recent election cycles to apply technology to local campaigning. Many of them, like Reach, allow canvassers and campaigners to chat with each other, keep track of voter conversations and results from door-knocking and phone banking, while updating information as it’s collected, and maintaining a file on which voters are interested, say, in volunteering or making a donation.

When canvassing myself in Bethlehem, I used Minivan, another popular phone app from NGP, which describes itself as “the leading technology provider to Democratic and progressive political campaigns and organizations, nonprofits, municipalities and other groups.” Through it, activists can “access an integrated platform of the best fundraising, compliance, field, organizing, digital and social networking products.” Even for the uninitiated (like me) Minivan is simple to use. After visiting a voter on a neighborhood walking tour, it’s easy to report whether that voter is home or away, record notes on your conversation, and enter other data that’s instantly synced into the system for follow-up.

Reach, Minivan, and other systems (including the progressive donation site ActBlue) can be accessed through Mobilize.us, which claims to have connected 5.5 million volunteers to local political actions nationwide. (That, too, for a novice like me, was blessedly easy to use.) Saying that it provides “the most powerful tools for organizing,” Mobilize.us can link any volunteer with “single-shift events,” recurring events, virtual events (like Zoom programs), in-person events (like rallies, speeches, and debates), and phone call campaigns to legislative offices.

In Pennsylvania, as in many parts of the country, voting is already underway. It’s far too early to make sense of what’s known so far, but it’s at least encouraging for Harris partisans that, of the more than one million mail-in ballots already returned, 62% came from Democrats and just 29% from Republicans. Even in Northampton County, hardly a Democratic Party bulwark, mail-in ballots are running about two to one in favor of the Democrats. And canvassers like me, the phalanx from 1199 SEIU, made sure that every voter we spoke to knew how to cast their votes early or by mail.

At this point, of course, it’s just fingers crossed and keep ringing those doorbells until November 5th, since the one thing none of us can afford is a Project 2025 version of a Trump presidency.

One day after a warm up speaker at Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s closing campaign rally in New York City on Sunday night called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage,” the island’s largest circulation newspaper El Nuevo Día October 28 endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for President.

The first paragraph of the editorial observed, “This is what Donald Trump and the Republican Party thinks of Puerto Ricans?” Signed by the signed by the editor M. Ferre Rangel, the editorial concluded, “We ask that every Puerto Rican that can vote please represent those of us who cannot vote. Vote for Kamala Harris.”

The racist slur by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe quickly reverberated across the U.S., especially in Puerto Rico and to states with large Puerto Rican populations, including critical Pennsylvania where an estimated 470,000 out of 600,000 registered Latino voters are of Puerto Rican descent. That fear prompted a feeble effort of damage control by the Trump campaign, which claimed the hateful comment did not “reflect the views of Trump or the campaign.” But notably there was no apology by Trump, or from the campaign about the multiple other racist jibes by various speakers targeting Latinos in general, African Americans, Jews, and, of course, Harris.

Ironically, the hate rally also came the same day Harris, campaigning in Philadelphia, presented a new policy platform for Puerto Rico, premised on economic development and improved disaster relief. She also reminded everyone of Trump of having "abandoned and insulted" the island during Hurricane Maria in 2017.

Indeed, as the New York Times reported Tuesday, the memories of Trump’s long, and ineffectual delay of aid to the island from a super storm that caused thousands of deaths and massive devastation, were quickly noted by those on the island, including his insulting image of tossing paper towels to a crowd at his one stop in San Juan two weeks after Maria made landfall.

“Well, this isn’t the first time. Three thousand Puerto Ricans died because he weaponized the aid. Because he didn’t think our lives were worth saving, and because of his inability to do his job,” said former San Juan, Puerto Rico Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz.

“You have to understand the context of how hurtful this is by understanding the botched and deadly response to Hurricane Maria,” said U.S. Rep. Darren Soto, a Florida Democrat of Puerto Rican descent. Even the chairman of Puerto Rico’s Republican Party said that he would withhold his support from Mr. Trump unless he apologized.

Hurricane Maria slammed into Puerto Rico as a Category 4 storm on September 20, 2017, with a huge storm surge, very heavy rains, and wind gusts over 100 miles per hour. The hurricane's power was magnified nearly five times by climate change, a preview of what the nation would see again this year with Hurricane’s Helene and Milton.

As the federal response by the Trump administration was glacially slow, hospitals were rapidly overwhelmed, struggled to meet medical needs, clinics and doctor’s offices failed to re-open, patients with chronic illnesses did not have access to needed medications, and concerns emerged about the potential of cholera and other epidemics.

Where Trump failed, nurses and labor responded. Within days, National Nurses United’s Registered Nurse Response Network played a leading role in a 300-member AFL-CIO sponsored humanitarian mission, working with the Puerto Rican Federation of Labor and the San Juan mayor’s office. It launched on October 3, 2017, with NNU dispatching 50 volunteer RNs, the first of several delegations to provide medical aid in local hospitals, nursing homes, and other sites based on the immediate need for island residents.

Two weeks in, RNs reported that many people had yet to receive any food, water, and other supplies from FEMA or any other agency. Others stood in line for hours in blistering heat waiting for desperately needed water and food. They cited houses with roofs blown off and soaked interiors with dangerous black mold growing that creates respiratory distress and illness, and a breakout of leptospirosis, a dangerous bacterial disease that had already claimed lives.

“Our nurses have seen firsthand, on the ground, even in the past few days, that FEMA aid, which was far too slow and inadequate to begin with, is still necessary to save lives,” stated Cathy Kennedy, RN, lead volunteer for RNRN’s deployment in 2017, which dispatched nurses across the island.

“What nurses witness daily,” said NNU executive director Bonnie Castillo at the time “is the harsh reality of a woefully inadequate government response and the brutal, inhumane impact on the Puerto Rican people. People are still without food and water. That poses an enormous humanitarian threat in terms of disease, life, and death and who succumbs first.”

“When we arrived we were really the first responders there,” recalled Kennedy, now a co-president of NNU. “Puerto Rico is part of the United States. We never saw such a lack of basic necessities. The power grid was down. There was no access to get the medications people needed for their blood pressure, their diabetes medication, they couldn’t even keep vials of insulin because there was no refrigeration. Everybody felt like they were thrown away and treated like second class citizens.

“They were really happy to see all of the nurses and doctors, and said we were the first ones to come to their homes. A lot of our work was getting water, food, and some meds to them. We were not only the first responders, we also worked to show people how to navigate FEMA. It was unconscionable,” remembered Kennedy, contrasting Trump’s response to how quickly the Biden/Harris administration was responding to provide assistance following Hurricanes Helene and Milton.

NNU volunteers documented their experiences. In Rio Grande, outside San Juan, “we set up a clinic at a FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) site. People lined up for blocks. But FEMA was only handing out papers which need to be filled out in order that they might receive some reimbursement eventually,” reported Erin Carerra, RN.

RN volunteers in 2017, recently back from Puerto Rico hurricane relief efforts, briefed members of Congress and Senator Bernie Sanders on the public health crisis that was taking place on the island due to an inadequate response by the Trump administration.(Photo: National Nurses United)

“We did home visits with public health liaisons who identify those in need and help them do basic blood pressure checks, blood sugar checks, refill their meds, etc. They have already had chronic diseases going on and now their environment is full of hazardous materials and sanitation is so poor. They could not get a hold of their doctors due to closure of many clinics in the area,” said RN Hau Cheng.

With another RNRN team, RN Kent Savary described how “they went to a man’s home. He had no roof, all his belonging were soaking wet due to the rain and no tarp. He is living in a garage beneath where he's in a 3x3 area. It’s an impoverished area with no access to clean water. There’s black mold built up in most of the houses on the second floor, which can cause upper respiratory infections, renal failure, and scarring of the lungs. There is a lack of relief communication and no FEMA in sight. Nebulizers are needed for asthma patients, but there is nowhere to plug in. FEMA is demanding folks apply online or via their cellphone app and provide bank account info by November 30 or they get no aid. Most people don't have cell phones, cell service, power or laptops.”

By late October 2017, NNU was alerting the press to the disastrous conditions. "Our people are being left to suffer, and the nurses hope that our elected officials work to change this before people die," said Kennedy, who had recently returned from the island.

“People were so desperate for water they started drinking it from the river, where rodents had died during the storms," Kennedy reported, citing concern about the spread of water born leptospirosis. "People are going to get sicker. What the nurses have uncovered, is that there’s still standing water. There’s black mold. There are homes that have no roofs. These are people’s homes, and they want to stay in their homes. And their health is at risk."

On October 26, 2017, RNRN volunteers back from Puerto Rico joined a Capitol Hill press conference with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Nydia Velázquez and other members of Congress to call for increased aid to confront the ongoing humanitarian and health care crisis in Puerto Rico.

“It pains us to know that for many Puerto Ricans, the volunteers on this deployment provided the only aid they received—and were a temporary buffer between life and death. If our volunteer nurses can provide this aid, how has our government, with all of its resources, been unable to do the same?” asked Kennedy. “While we are so proud of our nurses for stepping up to help, even sourcing food and water for desperate Puerto Ricans, using the nurses’ own resources. Their service begs a question: Where is our government?” asked Castillo.

A NNU report in later October of 2017 noted that one million people lacked access to running water in those weeks following the storm. The report also cataloged a daily shortfall of 1.8 million meals, devastated healthcare infrastructure and disease outbreaks, and concluded that “the response to the crisis in Puerto Rico from the U.S. federal government has been unacceptable for the wealthiest country in the world.”

Four years later, in another press conference citing the still disastrous recovery, Rep. Velazquez reported that “Puerto Ricans are experiencing blackouts almost daily” and “thousands of homes (still covered) with blue tarps. This is happening in America.”

“And it was painful,” said Cruz this week following the insults against Puerto Ricans once again from Trump, “because you think, ‘My God, it’s not like this person hasn’t showed who he is to the world.”

“Racism has always been present, but they feel emboldened (under Trump) about them and us,” says Kennedy today. “It’s very divisive, disrespectful language that shows hate. I went into nursing to provide care and compassion. When you have someone running for President who has such disregard for people other than himself, we can’t have that. I struggle to understand why anyone would vote for him.”

A recent UCLA study found that 2 million people with felony convictions have the right to vote, but misinformation and lack of clarity can prevent them from exercising this right. Similar trends are pervasive in other marginalized communities – such as those experiencing homelessness and recent immigrants – which is why social workers are uniquely positioned to help empower citizens to vote this election cycle. As the 2024 presidential and state elections approach, doing so is more important than ever.

Many of the individuals we work with are politically and socially disenfranchised, and thus turn out to the polls in much lower numbers. However, low voter turnout in these communities reinforces a cycle of neglect, as elected officials are less inclined to allocate resources to areas that don’t engage in the political process. It also means that their voice isn’t heard, even when issues that directly impact them are on the line.

Social workers can help break this cycle by showing clients how their personal struggles are linked to policy decisions. For example, as few as 10% of unhoused individuals vote in elections, while this year alone more than 2,000 bills about housing and homelessness were introduced in 48 of 50 states—not to mention the other economic and social policies enacted that affect the state of homelessness and welfare of unhoused individuals. In essence, the clients that we work with are often disproportionately affected by the outcomes of elections—and deserve a voice.

Voting is one of the most direct ways individuals can influence policies on education, healthcare, housing and social services. Research from the University of Connecticut shows that higher voter turnout leads to better health, education and economic outcomes, particularly for low-income populations. When communities vote, they compel elected officials to pay attention. Social workers, as trusted advocates, can help bridge the gap between disempowered individuals and the political system that governs their lives.

Voting is one of the most direct ways individuals can influence policies on education, healthcare, housing and social services.

Doing so means first becoming more informed about the voting process ourselves. For many of the people we serve, voting feels daunting. Some don’t know if they are eligible, how to register, or where to vote. Social workers can demystify the process by providing clear, factual information about registration, poll locations, absentee ballots and early voting. Our role is to ensure our clients know these rules and are prepared to vote.

Armed with information, we can better help clients identify registration deadlines, voting locations and nonpartisan resources on candidates and issues. By integrating voter education into our practice, we can impact voter turnout in communities often overlooked by policymakers.

Beyond registration, social workers can help clients make informed decisions at the ballot box. We can help identify the issues that matter most to them: For instance, many of our clients are directly affected by policy decisions on food assistance, education reform, healthcare access, and criminal justice. Whatever the topic, we can help them find reliable, nonpartisan information about candidates, and encourage thoughtful participation in the election. This isn’t about endorsing any candidate – it’s about ensuring our clients have the information they need to vote for the candidates and policies that align with their best interests.

Voting is more than a civic duty. It is a form of empowerment. When people vote, they have a say in decisions that affect their lives, from local issues like school funding to national debates on healthcare and immigration. For those who have been marginalized or feel disconnected from society, this ability to effect change can be incredibly empowering.

With the 2024 elections nearing, social workers have a crucial role to play in creating a stronger and more inclusive democracy. Many of the people we serve are from marginalized and traditionally underserved communities, and feel disconnected from not just politics, but their civic community. They may have been taught their voice doesn’t matter, and thus believe that voting won’t have an impact—and doesn’t have the power to change their lives. This is where social workers can make a difference.

We have an opportunity to educate and encourage participation in a system that directly affects the well-being of our clients and communities. Our work doesn’t stop with addressing the immediate needs of our clients—it extends to advocating for systemic change that can improve the lives of entire communities. And few actions are as powerful in shaping systems as casting a vote.

Israel has annihilated the institutions and infrastructure that made Gaza a society—public schools, hospitals, places of worship, universities, housing, farms, the agencies that distribute food to the needy, utilities, water supplies. Israel’s relentless bombing and shelling have killed or wounded well over 138,000 Palestinians, and Israel is inflicting a famine on Gaza, using starvation as a weapon of war.

Kamala Harris’ continued support for Israel’s genocidal war on the people of Gaza is despicable. But Donald Trump is a fascist who poses an imminent danger to America, and must be stopped.

Many people are saying they can’t bring themselves to vote for Harris in light of her position on Gaza. But those who plan instead to vote for the Green Party or to sit out the election have a bad misunderstanding of what voting means. If enough people share their confusion, disaster lies ahead—because along with a Trump victory will come Middle East policies that are even worse for Palestine.

Supporting the people of Gaza is imperative. But voting for the Green Party is no way to support them. Whatever Jill Steins says about Gaza, there is zero chance she will be our next president. And Donald Trump, the de facto beneficiary of the Green Party campaign, would certainly be no better for Gaza.

If Harris gets my vote for president, it does not mean I approve of her acts or her statements on Gaza. It only means I think our country, our way of life, and the future of Gazans, too, will likely be better if Harris holds that position of power than if Donald Trump does.

Refusing to vote for Harris misapprehends the meaning of voting. There is nothing on the ballot next to Kamala Harris’s name that says, “By checking here, I express my approval of all Kamala Harris has done, affirm that I share her values, and convey my deep admiration for her.”

Voting does not mean any of these things. Voting is not speech. It is action, action that advances one candidate over another, makes one state of affairs more likely than another. Voting means playing a role in a collective decision that one candidate will win and another will lose. Its content is not personal expression but what one political leader may do that the other opposes.

If Harris gets my vote for president, it does not mean I approve of her acts or her statements on Gaza. It only means I think our country, our way of life, and the future of Gazans, too, will likely be better if Harris holds that position of power than if Donald Trump does.

Either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump will be elected president. One or the other, no one else. No one can argue with a straight face that it doesn’t matter which.

A Trump victory would be a calamity. A calamity for the eleven million immigrants Trump means to deport—a calamity for everyone on a planet Earth impacted by climate change—a calamity for the people of color Trump demonizes, degrades and disenfranchises—a calamity for women entitled to control their own bodies and fates—a calamity for those who rely on the social safety net—a calamity for Jews fearful of the rising power of antisemites befriended by Donald Trump—a calamity for activists and public officials targeted by MAGA threats and violence—and a calamity for our fragile and imperfect constitutional democracy.

A Trump victory would be a calamity for the Palestinian people as well, likely to exacerbate the second nakba already engulfing Gaza and the West Bank.

Either Kamala Harris or Donald Trump will be elected president. One or the other, no one else. No one can argue with a straight face that it doesn’t matter which.

Trump opposes the creation of an actual Palestinian state, and suspended U.S. opposition to West Bank settlements when he was president—resulting in “an aggressive Israeli settlement spree” that “pushed deeper than ever into the occupied West Bank.” Trump opposes calls for an immediate cease-fire, and his response to the broad student protest movement of support for Gaza is only: “Deport pro-Hamas radicals.”

“Israel has to do what they have to do,” says Trump. Only last week Trump promised, “We’re going to do a lot for Israel, we’re going to take care of Israel.”

On January 20, 2025, we can have a flawed individual as president, Kamala Harris, and attempt to pressure her to do the right thing, as the Congressional Progressive Caucus and many others have attempted. We can have a President Harris who will, by and large, adhere to the rule of law. A President Harris who will move us in the right direction on climate change. A President Harris who is grounded in reality and will seek to protect our democracy and our rights.

Or we can have the deranged fascist Donald Trump, who will annihilate our Constitution, our democracy and our freedoms in a maelstrom of political violence, misogynist aggression, mass deportation, racism and antisemitism, accelerating inequality, nepotistic corruption, and plutocratic fascism.

Harris and Trump are the only alternatives. This is our only real choice.

Opinion by opinion, the U.S. Supreme Court has moved toward a judicial framework that insulates justices from growing public concern about their own corruption. In a series of cases, the court has overturned corruption convictions of public officials who received substantial gifts and other things of value in exchange for government favors in decisions that detail the officials’ egregious behavior and yet absolve them of it.

In his law review article “Corruption and the Supreme Court,” Georgetown law professor Josh Chafetz exposes the self-serving nature of these decisions: The court is letting other government officials off the hook to shelter itself from scrutiny about the justices’ own deep-seated corruption.

Professor Chafetz’s disturbing theory is borne out by the evidence. In five cases concerning public corruption heard within the past decade, the Supreme Court issued in each one an opinion that diminished anti-corruption statutes by either framing them as too broad and vague, or by recategorizing corrupt behavior as simple acts natural to government life. As Chafetz stated to The New York Times, which recently wrote an article about his work:

In all five of the decisions, the court’s message has been that “federal law must be interpreted so as not to cover behavior that looks, to any reasonable observer, sketchy as hell...” Taken together, he added, the decisions make a basic point and a more subtle one. The basic one, he said, is that “the justices keep letting crooked politicians off the hook.”

From honest services fraud to quid pro quo bribery, in case after case in which the Department of Justice, a U.S. district court, a unanimous jury, and a U.S. court of appeals have found the official’s conduct to be egregious enough to warrant a felony conviction, the Supreme Court has thrown out convictions and shielded government officials from accountability. And as Chafetz explained, it has done this to shield its own misconduct from criticism. The justices responsible for weakening our anti-corruption laws include not just Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, whose records of lavish gifts have recently been exposed, but all justices who in at least some cases voted unanimously to throw out the convictions of corrupt government officials.

The Supreme Court’s forgiving rhetoric on corruption is not new. Its recent opinions emerge from dangerous precedent set in campaign finance law cases, like Citizens United. The Supreme Court has overlooked evidence of undue influence in elections by entities capable of vast political spending, and instead informed the federal and state governments that their only legitimate anti-corruption state interest is in blocking quid pro quo corruption or its appearance. That skyscraper bar, which notoriously is difficult to document, has proven deficient and led to unprecedented levels of campaign spending where the risk of corruption can only be higher. The court’s early refusal to enforce a thorough and meaningful framework of corruption created a slippery slope, unraveling corruption law altogether. And now, the Supreme Court is relieving public officials accused of serious misconduct at all levels.

The Supreme Court’s shocking leniency on matters of corruption does not quell growing concerns about public erosion of trust in government systems, but rather pushes to the public a reimagination of its own corruption as being equally ordinary. It is not. The Supreme Court’s tolerance of public corruption is a self-serving feat to insulate the justices from growing reports about the court’s own corruption. It must end now.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump must be defeated in November. Under his leadership, the country saw some of our darkest days of climate denialism, antidemocratic authoritarianism, and planet destruction. As the leader of a national environmental organization, Friends of the Earth Action, I am certain that the Democratic candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris, is the only one who can defeat Trump.

While I have been dissatisfied with many policies of the Biden-Harris administration, I recognize that there are no other candidates with viable experience and platforms. Jill Stein and the Green Party may seem to be an obvious choice for environmental advocates, yet they have failed to demonstrate that they are a real national party or can build a real national party.

This election comes down to a choice between a catastrophic dictator and a livable future for our planet.

Out of more than 519,000 elected offices in the United States, the Green Party currently holds 142 offices, none of which are statewide or federal offices. Even in California and New York, where there is rank-choice balloting and fusion battling, the Green Party has failed to make headway in electing candidates. The mayor of Oakland, California remains the party’s greatest electoral victory. Clearly this is not a political party worthy of a national ballot.

In contrast, Vice President Kamala Harris is a strong candidate with a climate record. As California attorney general, Kamala Harris stood up to corporate polluters and worked to further environmental justice. In California she vigorously defended multiple state-level consumer, public health, and animal welfare laws. And as vice president, she cast the deciding vote to pass the Inflation Reduction Act, one of the most important federal climate actions to date.

This election comes down to a choice between a catastrophic dictator and a livable future for our planet. Trump did irreparable damage under his first administration, handing favors to Big Oil billionaires and rolling back over 100 environmental rules and protections. Trump has repeatedly proven his presidential bid is solely for selfish gain, and that he will always put his own interests and his rich buddies above the American people.

If you deeply care about the fight for a more healthy and just planet, and if you deeply care about building power, then I believe—regardless of our policy disagreements with Vice President Harris—that we must support her in this election. Third-party candidates threaten to take votes away from Harris by painting themselves as an alternative to Democrats, but they will only spoil votes in Trump’s favor. I urge those who care about climate, democracy, and social justice to reject the Stein smokescreen and instead support Vice President Harris for President of the United States. Vote like the future of our planet depends on it, because it does.

Back in 2020--during the BLM protests following the murder of George Floyd—NBA and especially WNBA support for the Biden-Harris campaign played an important role.

Now Kamala Harris—the first Black woman to run as a major candidate—has a very real chance of winning the presidency.

And she is running against a Donald Trump that is even more racist, and angry, than he was in 2020, spreading lies about the Haitian community, promising to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants, and publicly calling for a “very rough day” in which police could violently punish suspected criminals—a nod to the racist police brutality that sparked the 2020 protests. He even ranted against President Biden for rescuing WNBA star Britney Griner from Putin’s Russian prison.

This would seem to be an all-hands-on-deck moment for the NBA and WNBA, many of whom care deeply about these things and often act on their convictions. Yet little seems to be happening, especially compared to 2020.

An active campaign by top NBA and WNBA players to support Harris could have a major impact in mobilizing voters...

There are some promising signs.

Back in July many high-profile WNBA players publicly backed Harris.

Both Steve Kerr and Steph Curry publicly endorsed Harris at the DNC Convention in Chicago (both enjoy a Bay-area connection to Harris, a Golden State Warriors fan).

An Athletes for Harris group was recently formed, whose co-chairs include Earvin “Magic” Johnson, Steve Kerr, Candace Parker, Doc Rivers, Dawn Staley, and Chris Paul. Johnson spoke clearly for the group, declaring: “I’m so happy to be a part of Athletes for Harris . . . For all of the athletes out there, don’t be afraid to use your platforms – we need all of you to get involved.”

These things matter.

But there was so much more in 2020.

Back in 2018, when LeBron James was scolded by Laura Ingraham to “shut up and dribble,” he responded: "I get to sit up here and talk about social injustice. We will definitely not shut up and dribble. ... I mean too much to society, too much to the youth, too much to so many kids who feel like they don't have a way out.” In July of 2020 he joined with other players to form “More Than a Vote.” The following month he publicly praised Biden for nominating Harris as his vice-presidential candidate. In October he endorsed the ticket. And in November, he celebrated the Biden-Harris ticket victory.

But where is James now? As far as I can tell, he has said little about the presidential race.

In August, James publicly turned over leadership of “More Than a Vote” to Nneka Ogwumike--a 9-time WNBA All-Star and current president of the players union. The group pledged to focus its attention on reproductive freedom—a theme obviously resonant with the Harris campaign, as James alluded: “I started More Than a Vote to give athletes a place to educate themselves and get active authentically to who we are. It’s only right that this election be about women athletes. We’re all following their lead right now and Nneka is the perfect person for this election. I’m excited to support her vision.” But neither James nor “More Than a Vote” has publicly endorsed Harris. The group’s Instagram account features powerful posts on reproductive freedom, but nothing about the election, even though Trump opposes reproductive freedom and it is the centerpiece of the Harris campaign.

To be fair, like “More Than a Vote,” the NBA has “teamed up” with Power the Polls to promote poll worker volunteerism, and has also promoted non-partisan voter registration. But this is a far cry from making a strong political statement or endorsing the Harris-Walz campaign.

An active campaign by top NBA and WNBA players to support Harris could have a major impact in mobilizing voters, especially in large cities of hugely important swing states. Cleveland, Philadelphia, Detroit, Milwaukee, Atlanta, Charlotte, Phoenix—these are cities with major NBA and/or WNBA teams that feature some of the sport’s most revered stars.

Is there a television network in the country that would say “no” to interviews with James or Curry or A’ja Wilson or Breanna Stewart or Candace Parker? Where is the Kamala campaign ad featuring “Magic” Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar? Where is the warm-up gear with the slogan “Kamala, We Won’t Go Back?”

One very promising development: Stephen Jackson and Matt Barnes, two outspoken retired NBA champions, recently hosted Harris on their popular webcast, “All the Smoke.” The 47-minute interview has had 605,000 YouTube viewings in two weeks. It’s a great interview, highlighting Harris’s affinities with millions of NBA fans.

Professional basketball is big business, for the league and for its players. There are serious economic risks to being “too political,” as the recent controversy surrounding Celtics star Jaylen Brown’s exclusion from the U.S. Olympic team because of a dispute with Nike make clear. And NBA professionals are certainly no more “obliged” to take a stand than any other professionals or citizens.

At the same time, many NBA stars, and increasingly WNBA stars as well, are huge celebrities with their own “brands” and media companies. As James himself stated back in 2018, “the Association” furnishes a huge platform for professional athletes to promote social and racial justice. In 2020 these athletes very visibly, and heroically, used this platform at a moment of real decision.

The current moment is perhaps even more serious.

Kamala Harris represents the promise of social justice and democracy.

Donald Trump represents contempt for them and contempt for everyone who does not share his racist and xenophobic vision of “American Greatness.”

The choice is clear. And time is running out.

I’ve crossed paths with Vice President Harris multiple times over the last decade at various phases in her political career. In 2014, I attended a luncheon in Los Angeles featuring then-Attorney General Harris sponsored by Junior State of America, the largest high school student-led organization in the United States, where I served as Southern California State Speaker of the Assembly. In 2019, I saw then-Senator Harris campaign for President in Iowa, where I served as a Field Organizer on the Bernie 2020 presidential campaign in rural areas outside of Iowa City. In 2023, as Climate Campaign Manager at the West Coast-based environmental nonprofit Pacific Environment, I was invited to greet Vice President Harris at LAX following my successful advocacy for the Biden-Harris Administration’s approval of an air quality regulation for California.

Fast forward to the presidential election season of fall 2024, and Kamala Harris is the Democratic Nominee for President going against Republican Nominee Donald Trump. Trump is running on a white Christian nationalist Project 2025 agenda of restructuring the contours of U.S. democratic government to dramatically increase the powers of the executive branch to limit abortion access nationwide, discriminate against transgender people, deport immigrants in mass, surveil Americans’ data without warrants, unleash undue force on First Amendment protestors, and censor critical theory in classrooms.

I am voting for Harris-Walz for the best realistically-possible political conditions for pro-Palestine organizing—and other forms of progressive organizing—in the United States for the next four years.

Harris is the Vice President of an Administration that spent $22.76 billion in arms transfers to Israel between October 7, 2023—September 30, 2024 as Israel’s religious extremist, apartheid government has conducted a full-blown ethnic cleansing campaign of the vulnerable Palestinian refugee population that Israel mass incarcerates within the 160 square mile Gaza Strip. The Biden-Harris Administration has enabled Israel’s Jewish supremacist government to weaponize Israeli suffering caused by Hamas’s October 7 attacks to carry out a systematic genocide of Palestinian non-citizens intergenerationally mass incarcerated in the Gaza Strip and under the control of the Israeli state. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) has attacked Gaza with the equivalent force of several nuclear bombs, killing over 40,000 Palestinians and destroying 80% of schools in Gaza, 60% of buildings overall, and 57% of agricultural land. Recently, the American-armed IDF has attacked Lebanon with the stated goal of targeting Hezbollah, leading to mass civilian casualties including the killings of over 1,640 people.

Meanwhile, during this election, I’m a first-year Ph.D. student in Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley focusing my research on post-World War II U.S.-Israel-Palestine-Iran relations. I’m an Iranian American transgender woman with relatives who live in Iran, including Tehran, where the Israeli military just attacked with the blessing of the Biden-Harris Administration. I’ve also been a volunteer Palestine solidarity activist since 2017 with Students for Justice in Palestine at Yale University, the Democratic Socialists of America’s BDS and Palestine Solidarity Working Group, and other organizations. How do I vote and advance my political interests in and beyond this election?

Some Americans in my position who care about Palestinian, Lebanese, and Iranian dignity, freedom, human rights, and peace and want to make their interests known in this election are opting to vote for third party candidates. They seek a candidate who does not have a track-record of financing Israel’s 76-year-long, Jewish-supremacist military occupation and systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. They seek a candidate that can be trusted with protecting human life during this moment of global crisis that the Biden-Harris Administration’s reckless decision-making has worsened.

I’m highly sympathetic to these Americans and I even voted third party in the presidential primaries. That said, for the presidential general election, I respectfully disagree with voting third party most especially in swing states. I will be voting for Harris-Walz, even though it’s quite hard to stomach given how Harris has positioned herself in relation to Israel-Palestine and Iran over the course of her career, in her Vice Presidency, and in this election. I am voting this way not out of an overabundance of enthusiasm for Harris, but due to a realpolitik calculation of what is necessary to defeat Trump and prevent our global crisis from getting even worse.

The reality is that most Americans think of politics through the lens of the two-party system. This, I believe is a flaw in our democracy that prohibits creativity, but it is a current reality. The project of strengthening additional parties to be able to compete in presidential elections is noble, but it is going to more time than we have available before November 5, 2024. Third party presidential candidates are not realistically going to win enough electoral college votes to secure the presidency. This means our two realistic choices for our next President are Harris and Trump. A pro-Palestine voter’s vote for a third party candidate in a swing state may thus inadvertently help Trump win that state and ultimately the Presidency.

I am voting this way not out of an overabundance of enthusiasm for Harris, but due to a realpolitik calculation of what is necessary to defeat Trump and prevent our global crisis from getting even worse.

While the Biden-Harris Administration’s management of this moment of global crisis has been nothing short of abhorrent, a Trump-Vance Administration would be materially worse. In addition to campaigning on cracking down on rights of transgender people and women domestically, denying climate change and opposing climate action, and revoking the visas of pro-Palestine international students at U.S. universities, Trump believes in an unqualified Israeli offensive on Palestine, Lebanon, and Iran. He told Netanyahu in response to Iran’s missile attack on Israel an unrestricted “do what you have to do,” and has explicitly stated that Biden has gotten in the way of Israel’s war. Meanwhile, while the Biden-Harris Administration has armed Israel in its war, it has recently threatened to stop the flow of arms to Israel, openly criticized Netanyahu’s tactics in the war, and pressured Israel into narrowing its attack on Iran to targeted non-nuclear military sites. As an Iranian American with family in Iran, I worry for the possibilities that could arise with someone as unstable as Donald Trump as Commander-in-Chief of the United States Armed Forces during this moment of global crisis. Trump should be nowhere near in charge of American nuclear weaponry in a time as fragile as this.

That said, my political action is not confined to my vote. Just as important as voting is organizing. I am voting for Harris-Walz for the best realistically-possible political conditions for pro-Palestine organizing—and other forms of progressive organizing—in the United States for the next four years. I see my vote as a prayer for the possibility of a shift toward a U.S.-policy of peace, justice, reparations, democracy, freedom, and equality in the Middle East against the current status quo of institutionalized supremacy and political violence—possible only with good political conditions and good organizing. Trump, an open white nationalist and warmonger with a wide religious fundamentalist following, as President would foreclose many possibilities for peace in Israel-Palestine. Harris at least represents more of a multiracial coalition and speaks the language of pluralism. Between these options, there is more political room under a potential Harris presidency to organize for advancing a pro-Palestinian, pro-human political agenda.

While my emotions have been high surrounding the election and the genocide in Gaza, I am finding it important to take a step back and rationally assess my choices on November 5 in the context of this moment of global crisis. It’s clear—even if hard to stomach —that Harris-Walz is the best realistic choice.

The morning before Donald Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden on October 27, Brendan Buck, a former communications aide to Speakers of the House John Boehner and Paul Ryan, appeared on MSNBC. Buck said that comparing Trump’s event with the infamous pro-Nazi gathering at the Garden in 1939 was “silly” and “completely obnoxious.”

“It is an arena,” a visibly angry Buck insisted. “I don’t think setting foot in Madison Square Garden makes anybody who goes there a Nazi.”

Professing to be a Trump critic, Buck said that comparing Trump to Hitler—and his views to Naziism—alienated undecided voters who might vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.

“That’s the kind of rhetoric that just tells people like ‘it doesn’t matter.’ They’re going to say anything they want.’” Buck continued. “I can’t tell you how much that upsets those people who are on the fence on Donald Trump, and they say, ‘They’re just out to get him. They’re going to say anything.’”

Now that Buck has seen the rally, I wonder if he is still offended at the Trump/Hitler comparison.

Trump’s Rally v. Hitler’s Reich

If Trump regains the presidency, he has told everyone what he’ll do with it. Take him at his word.

Lies at the Heart of Trump’s Sales Pitch

TRUMP: Rode to the White House on the wings of his “birther” lie about President Barack Obama. His lies at the Madison Square Garden rally flowed so quickly that fact checkers couldn’t keep up. And his media echo chambers are repeating those lies over and over again until they stick.

As Jonathan Swift observed, “Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it.”

HITLER: “[A]t a given sign it unleashes a veritable barrage of lies and slanders against whatever adversary seems most dangerous, until the nerves of the attacked persons break down… This is a tactic based on precise calculation of all human weaknesses, and its result will lead to success with almost mathematical certainty…” (Shirer quoting Hitler, p. 22-23)

Immigrants Are Trump’s Centerpiece Lie

TRUMP: Trump and his vice-presidential pick, JD Vance, portray immigrants as subhuman. In their fantasy world, immigrants are responsible for everything that ails American voters: inflation, high prices, exorbitant rents, housing shortages, crime, everything. They lie to feed that narrative.

Vance’s admitted that he made up his claim that immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were stealing household pets and eating them. But Trump still repeated and amplified the lie, turning the community inside out.

Trump claims that he’ll “liberate” Aurora, Colorado, from non-existent immigrant gangs he claimed run the city.

He calls America a “garbage can” of the world’s worst people—another lie..

He refers to immigrants as “vermin” who are “poisoning the blood” of the country. He says, falsely, that millions of them are criminals from “prisons,” “mental institutions,” and “insane asylums.”

HITLER: Wrote in Mein Kampf that he “was repelled by the conglomeration of races…repelled by this whole mixture of Czechs, Poles, Hungarians, Ruthenians, Serbs, and Croats, and everywhere the eternal mushroom of humanity – Jews and more Jews… [His] hatred grew for the foreign mixture of peoples….” (W. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, p. 27) And, similar to Vance’s views on the need to increase birth rates, he spoke repeatedly about the need to “increase and preserve the species and the race.” (Shirer, p. 86)

“The Enemy From Within” Comprises Trump’s Retribution Agenda

TRUMP: “We’re running against something far bigger than Joe or Kamala, and far more powerful than them, which is a massive, vicious, crooked, radical left machine that runs today’s Democrat party,” Trump told the Madison Square Garden crowd, singling out Reps. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). “They’ve done very bad things to this country. They are indeed the enemy from within.”

In fact, their only crime was to disagree with and criticize Trump publicly.

Pledging that he will be “dictator for a day,” Trump has said that he will use the military against his foes and tell the Justice Department to target his adversaries. He has vowed publicly to “root out” his political opponents and imprison them.

And he promises to stack the federal government with loyalists who will never disagree with him.

HITLER: “I will know neither rest nor peace until the November criminals [who, he falsely claimed, had ‘stabbed Germany in the back’ with the onerous Versailles Treaty of 1918] had been overthrown.” (Schirer quoting Hitler, p. 70) He banished or executed those who crossed him and surrounded himself with sycophants.

TRUMP: During his first term, Trump stacked the courts, including a federal judge in Florida who dismissed a criminal case against him. Like many of his appointees, she is manifestly unqualified for her position. But now she is reportedly on a list of candidates to be Trump’s next attorney general.

HITLER: Co-opted the judiciary and then established his own special courts. Shredding Germany’s constitution, he alone became the law. (Shirer, 268-274)

Phony Populism

TRUMP: Promising to pursue corporate-friendly policies in return for financial support of his campaign, Trump has pre-sold the presidency. Examples abound: He promised to reverse climate initiatives affecting the major oil companies in return for $1 billion in contributions to his campaign; he now supports cryptocurrency (which he called a “scam” until recently); he adopted a new position favoring the legalization of marijuana; and he vowed to put Elon Musk, who is pouring tens of millions of dollars into Trump’s campaign, in charge of slashing government regulation—which would create stunning conflicts of interest between Musk’s sprawling commercial interests and his government contracts.

Trump got surprising help from media owners Jeff Bezos, who killed a Washington Post editorial endorsing Harris, and Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, who refused to let his paper endorse a candidate, which also would have been Harris. At a time requiring courage, they buckled.

HITLER: Cultivated industry leaders who thought they could control the dictator as they supported his rise to power—until it was too late to stop him. They reaped short-term profits, but Germany and the world suffered devastating long-run consequences. (Shirer, p. 143)

Fear, Anger and Terror Are His Favorite Tactics

TRUMP: After losing the election, he encouraged the January 6, 2021 insurrection to remain in power.

HITLER: “I achieved an equal understanding of the importance of physical terror toward the individual and the masses… For while in the ranks of their supporters the victory achieved seems a triumph of the justice of their own cause, the defeated adversary in most cases despairs of the success of any further resistance.” (Shirer, p. 23)

Trump’s Role Models

TRUMP: Trump praises authoritarian leaders of other countries, including Vladimir Putin, Victor Orban, Kim Jong Un, and Xi Jinping. His longest-serving chief of staff and retired four-star general John Kelly reported Trump’s statement to him that “Hitler did some good things” and that Trump wanted generals who gave the kind of deference that Hitler’s generals gave him.

According to Kelly, Trump meets the definition of a fascist: “Well, looking at the definition of fascism: It’s a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy. So certainly, in my experience, those are the kinds of things that he thinks would work better in terms of running America.”

Trump’s former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, said that Trump is “fascist to the core” and “the most dangerous person to the country.” More than 100 other former top Trump advisers agree. Every day, the list grows.

HITLER: His professor described him as lacking “self-control and, to say the least, he was considered argumentative, autocratic, self-opinionated, and bad-tempered, and unable to submit to school discipline.” (Shirer, p. 13)

Here’s the Scariest Part

Whether Trump wins or loses in November, more than 70 million Americans will cast their ballots for him. Most of them know who Trump is. They hear his vile words and heinous promises to destroy democracy and the rule of law in America.

And they are the reason the election will be close. As Brendan Buck asserted, maybe they become upset at Trump/Hitler comparisons.

Or maybe it’s because they can’t handle the truth.

This presidential contest has generated an intense debate within the Arab American community. If it were a normal election year, I’d be out in the field urging my community to vote for Democrats. I’d be warning Arab Americans that we needed to do everything we could to stop Donald Trump from re-entering the White House. I’d remind them of his racism, xenophobia, and anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant rhetoric. I’d point to the danger he poses to women’s rights, civil rights and civil liberties, the environment, health and safety protections in the workplace, health care, academic freedom, civil discourse, and the Constitution. It would be, as we say, “A slam dunk.” But this isn’t a normal election.

My community has been deeply traumatized by the genocide in Gaza and now the devastating war on Lebanon. They are justifiably furious at the Biden administration’s refusal to enforce U.S. laws that could rein in Israel’s unconscionable and illegal actions, and accuse them of enabling Israel’s impunity.

Given this, there’s been a significant decline in Arab American support for Democrats, an uptick in support for the GOP, and many saying that they want to punish Democrats by voting for a third-party candidate. I, too, feel this pain and am torn as to how to move forward. I wish it were different, but it just isn’t.

However, I have some questions for those who rightly hold this Democratic administration responsible for genocide and want to punish the Democratic nominee for president. When they say they are voting their conscience by supporting a third party, I ask them to explain how punishing Vice-President Harris and enabling Donald Trump to become president will end the genocide—especially as we have allies in the progressive side of the Democratic Party who support and have been working with us to advance our foreign and domestic policy concerns and will be with us to pressure a Harris White House?

I wish it were different, but it just isn’t.

Meanwhile, the party of Trump is dominated by hardline hawks who have little or no concern for Palestinians or our civil rights. Or how voting for parties that have been around for decades and struggle to gain even 1% of the vote will advance anything other than helping elect Donald Trump? Or how turning our backs on all of the groups who have been our allies in the struggles for our civil and political rights and for a just foreign policy adds up to “voting one’s conscience”?

It reminds me of a lesson I learned from the late Julian Bond in the aftermath of the 1968 election. A decade ago, I wrote a reflection on that lesson. I ask you to consider it again:

***
It was 1968 and the U.S. was reeling from the Vietnam War, urban unrest, and the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Senator Robert Kennedy.

In the wake of voter opposition to the war, President Lyndon Johnson had been forced to end his reelection bid in favor of his Vice President Hubert Humphrey.

All of this was in the air when Democrats met for their convention to formally nominate Humphrey. On the first night of the convention, there was a fight over whether to recognize the all-white Georgia delegation or the mixed black and white delegation led by a young Georgia civil rights leader Julian Bond. The mixed delegation won a partial victory. On the second night, the convention wrestled with an effort to amend the platform to oppose the continuation of the war. Bond was a leader in this fight too. The amendment lost.

On the third night, when the convention met to nominate Humphrey’s vice-presidential running mate, the anti-war delegates proposed Bond to run against the party leaders’ hand-picked choice, Senator Ed Muskie. When the party leaders couldn’t silence the anti-war opposition, they brought in the police who were televised beating delegates who were chanting Bond’s name.

On the final day of the convention, after Humphrey and Muskie gave their acceptance speeches, Julian Bond came on stage and in a show of unity held up Humphrey’s and Muskie’s hands. Many young activists, like myself, were devastated.

A few years later, I got to know Julian Bond, and asked him why he did that and told him how let down I had felt. In response, he told me that there were two types of people. Those who looked down at the evils of the world and said, “I’m going to stand on my principles because it’s got to get a lot worse before it gets better.” Then there are those who say, “I’ve got to get to work to see if I can make it at least a little bit better.”

He told me “I’m with the second group because if I took the first view, I’d be allowing too many people to continue to suffer while I maintained my purity and refused to do anything to help. At the convention, it wasn’t Julian Bond versus Ed Muskie. It was Hubert Humphrey versus Richard Nixon, and I had to make a choice as to who would help make life at least a little bit better.”

I never forgot that lesson and am challenged daily to apply it. It is the reason why I have so little patience for ideologues from the right or the left.

They often miss the muck of the reality in which most of us live and the tough, and often less-than-perfect, choices with which we are confronted in the never-ending challenge to make life a little bit better—whether in the struggle for human rights, improvements in the quality of life, or the provision of security for those who are most vulnerable.

Before Barack Obama ran for president, I remember thinking there would never be a black president in my lifetime. And I remember feeling overwhelmed, even tearful, when I watched on television as the new First Family walked on the stage at Grant Park in Chicago. It wasn’t so much the sight of President Obama that got to me. It was seeing Michelle and the girls, and Barak’s aged mother-in-law who would be living in dignity and esteem in the White House.

I was born in the segregated south, and there black women were mainly consigned to domestic work. But back in 2008, a majority of Americans voted to elect a young black man with a foreign-sounding name, and then four years later re-elected him.

Now we have the question—in a time of heightened stress and deepened divides, and a time of post-pandemic malaise, social isolation, an affordability crisis, and a corrupted social media—can we take another step forward in our democracy and elect a black woman as president?

Watching the DNC renewed my hope. So many men stood up for one black woman brave enough to run for the highest office in the nation, but also for each woman and girl of all colors who face the terrible vulnerability of simply having a body that can both bring new life into the world and endanger her life with a pregnancy, voluntarily and otherwise, that can end her life. So many of these men said that they would use some of their political capital to make right for women what the Supreme Court made wrong.

Change takes bottom-up organizing, building a base, doing the hard work of governing locally and building up to national participation, not parachuting in during razor-thin elections.

But the dread has crept back in recently as I hear people say they don’t really know Kamala. Is the real question about whether she is like me and, perhaps even more to the point, would she like me? Would I still belong, as a white person, or as a man, if a black woman holds the highest office in the land?

Or would I be reminded that our nation has not always been kind or just to people who look like her? Might her presence force me to question where I stand given our nation’s legacy of exclusion and violence directed at women and people of color. Will I feel uncomfortable or even shame?

Since the pandemic, so much of our anxiety, political and otherwise, has centered on the question of belonging. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy declared loneliness a public health crisis. Perhaps that contributes to the fear, especially In places with large immigrant populations, where some long-time residents wonder if they will still belong in their communities, or if they will feel excluded, not able to understand an unfamiliar language or new cultural norms.

So what do the two candidates offer the public in terms of belonging? Kamala Harris has promised to govern for everyone, and instead of giving priority to the rich, to especially focus on those who work hard to support their families. Those who see her in person or on the media often speak of her personal warmth.

Donald Trump’s track record shows he will govern not based on policies or the best interests of the country, but based on what benefits himself and favored members of his family and inner circle. Billionaires and right-wing ideologues are salivating at the money and power they can extract from Americans when given the green light by Trump. All they have to do is turn on the flattery.

Trump gives some people a sense of belonging—wearing those red hats, laughing at his jokes about who he is going to rough up, creating an out-group—all that seems to scratch the itch for many people who are angry and feeling excluded. But the truth is that he has nothing but contempt for people who aren’t wealthy, and for men and women who served in the military (who he calls suckers), especially if they had the misfortune of being wounded, captured, or to have died in the line of duty.

Yes, his thirst for power and flattery, his threats of violence against those who fail to follow his most unhinged directives, and his ugly rhetoric mark him has a fascist.

The truth is that we create belonging at the local level, not by vilifying our neighbors but by fostering relationships of mutual respect, supporting small business, civic groups, and other local institutions that keep us connected, and showing up for one another during times of need.

We need the political space to do this work, and we need leaders willing to be swayed by the things we the people (not the billionaires) are asking for.

Belonging is, of course, just one of the issues raised by Kamala’s candidacy. What about Gaza? This is the most painful question for me. I was hoping for a much more robust commitment to stopping the killing and starvation in Gaza, and preventing the war from spreading through the region.

But a vote for Trump will not help Palestinians. Recall that Trump was the one who moved the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, turning their back on hopes for peace with Palestinians. And he told Netanyahu, “Finish the problem” in reference to the sustained killing which some now are calling genocide.

Harris has at least said that the killing must stop. A vote for her is not a vote for everything I would like, but I believe it is a harm reduction strategy compared to the alternative.

And here is the bottom line for me. Voting for Harris is not a vote for a savior who will make everything right—anyone who claims to be able to do that is a cult leader or a demagogue, not a serious political leader.

Voting for Harris is a vote for someone who authentically cares about people, and is a smart and capable leader.

To get the deeper changes we need to make housing and child care affordable, to straighten out the mess in our health care system, to combat the climate crisis, to bring peace to the world—all of these and so many other changes will require work by “we the people.” Even if we have an ideal candidate, the future is largely up to us. When we fight, we win. Or more specifically, when we organize and mobilize, we can get real change.

A vote for Kamala is a vote for someone who will not direct the National Guard to shoot at demonstrators, as Trump has tried to do.

Third party candidates rightly point out ways both of the two parties fall short. But change takes bottom-up organizing, building a base, doing the hard work of governing locally and building up to national participation, not parachuting in during razor-thin elections.

A vote for Kamala is a vote for someone who will not direct the National Guard to shoot at demonstrators, as Trump has tried to do. Under her presidency, we can do our work as the people of this nation to build powerful social movements that empower people to make change.

We need the political space to do this work, and we need leaders willing to be swayed by the things we the people (not the billionaires) are asking for.

Under a Kamala presidency, ordinary people can be heard, even if we make powerful interests uncomfortable, and we can achieve real wins for ordinary people and for our future. And as imperfect as it is, democracy of and by the people has a chance at working.

As I head back from Cali, Colombia after attending the Convention on Biological Diversity this week, I’ve been thinking a lot about the attempts by countless advocates around the world to take on one of the biggest drivers of biodiversity collapse: toxic pesticides. Reducing the use of pesticides is one of the key ways we can help beneficial insect species rebound, protect vital pollinators, ensure thriving aquatic ecosystems, and much more—all while protecting human health.

With all that we know about the benefits to biodiversity of reducing pesticides, why haven’t we made more progress in tackling these toxic substances? The latest clue came to us last month thanks to an investigation by Lighthouse Reports, which revealed that the Trump administration had used taxpayer dollars to fund a pesticide industry PR operation targeting advocates, journalists, scientists, and UN officials around the world calling for pesticide reforms.

The investigation exposed the details of a private online social network, funded by U.S. government dollars, with detailed profiles of more than 500 people—a kind of Wikipedia-meets-doxxing of pesticide opponents. It showed how the network was activated to block a conference on pesticide reform in East Africa, among other actions.

My interest in the leaked private network is also personal: I’m one of those profiled, attacked for working on numerous reports, articles, and education campaigns on pesticides. In my dossier, I’m described among other things as collaborating on a campaign alleging pesticide companies “use ‘tobacco PR’ tactics to hide health and environmental risk.” Guilty as charged. While it may be creepy to read an industry-funded dossier on you online, it pales in comparison to what other pesticide industry critics have faced.

When you don’t have science on your side, you have to rely on slime.

There’s Dr. Tyrone Hayes, the esteemed UC Berkeley professor, who has persevered through a yearslong campaign to destroy his reputation by the pesticide company Syngenta whose herbicide atrazine Hayes’s exacting research has linked to endocrine disruption in frogs. There’s journalist Carey Gillam who faced a Monsanto-funded public relations onslaught for raising substantive questions about the safety of the company’s banner herbicide product, Roundup. There’s Gary Hooser, former Hawaii State Senator and Kauaʻi County Councilmember who weathered a barrage of industry attacks for his advocacy for common sense pesticide reform—a barrage so effective he lost his seat in office. The list goes on.

Why develop elaborate attacks on journalists and scientists raising serious concerns about your products? It’s simple: When you don’t have science on your side, you have to rely on slime.

This latest exposé does not surprise me, of course, nor many colleagues who are also listed in this private online network. I’ve been tracking industry disinformation and its attacks on those working to raise the alarm about the environmental and human health impacts of pesticides for decades: this is what companies do. They try to defame, marginalize, and silence scientists, journalists, and community advocates who raise concerns about the health harms of their products.

Growing up, I saw this up close. My father, the toxicologist and epidemiologist Marc Lappé, was a professor of medical ethics and a frequent expert witness in legal cases where chemicals were a concern. He died at age 62 of brain cancer. By the time he passed away, I had heard countless tales of his legal wranglings in depositions and on the stand. Cases where he served as an expert witness for lawsuits on behalf of people harmed by exposure to dangerous chemicals, lawsuits against some of the biggest chemical companies in the world.

Thanks to this investigation, we now have another example of how the pesticide industry tries to shift attention away from these very real concerns, even using taxpayer dollars to do it.

The defense attorney’s strategy with my father was always the same: undermine his expertise, rattle his equanimity so juries would trust well-paid lawyers, not my dad. There was the time they quoted an excerpt of one of his journal articles to make it sound like he was contradicting himself, which backfired when he asked the lawyer to read for the jury the rest of the paragraph, putting the words in context and solidifying his point. The worst story was from a trial not long after my stepmother died in a tragic accident, leaving behind my three younger half-siblings. As my dad walked to the stand, one of the defense lawyers said under his breath, “Marc, how was Mother’s Day at your house this year?” Slime indeed.

But while they have the slime, we have the science: We know that many of the pesticides now ubiquitous in industrial agriculture are linked to serious health concerns, from ADHD to infertility, Parkinson’s, depression, a swath of cancers, and more. The insecticide chlorpyrifos is so toxic there are no determined safe levels for children or infants. Paraquat, linked to Parkinson’s, is so acutely deadly a teaspoon of the stuff can kill you—something its largest producer, Syngenta, has known for decades. And, 2,4-D, the defoliant used in the Vietnam War to wipe out forest cover in that country has been linked to birth defects among children there—and in the United States—even decades after the war.

The threat for biodiversity is severe, too. A 2019 comprehensive review of more than 70 studies around the world powerfully tied widespread pesticide use to insect declines worldwide. And, as reported in the Pesticide Atlas (I edited the U.S. edition), despite these known risks, pesticide use is increasing in many regions in the world. In South America, pesticide use went up 484 percent from 1990 to 2017. In Brazil, alone, pesticide sales have shot up nearly 1000% between 1998 and 2008

Thanks to this investigation, we now have another example of how the pesticide industry tries to shift attention away from these very real concerns, even using taxpayer dollars to do it. As I land in Colombia, where tens of thousands are gathered to envision a world conducive to thriving biodiversity, I hope this reporting will remind policymakers to rely on science, not spin.

Images of homes that collapsed under mudslides or falling trees, waterlogged farms, and debris-filled roads drove home (yes, home!) to me recently the impact of Hurricane Helene on rural areas in the southeastern United States. That hurricane and the no-less-devastating Hurricane Milton that followed it only exacerbated already existing underlying problems for rural America. Those would include federal insurance programs that prioritize rising sea levels over flooding from heavy rainfall, deepening poverty, and unequal access to private home insurance — issues, in other words, faced by poor inland farming communities. And for millions of rural Americans impacted by Helene, don’t forget limited access to healthcare services, widespread electricity outages, and of course, difficulty getting to the ballot box. Case in point: some 80% of North Carolinians under major disaster declarations live in rural areas.

Given that Helene’s human impact was plain for all to see, what struck me was that significant numbers of headlines about that storm’s devastation centered not on those people hardest hit, but on the bizarre conspiracy theories of extremist observers: that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is funneling tens of millions in funds and supplies meant for hurricane survivors to migrants, that the Biden administration has been in cahoots with meteorologists to control the weather, or that Biden and crew actually planned the storm! One of my personal favorites came from a neighbor I encountered at the post office in our rural Maryland town: we don’t have enough money for FEMA rescue operations, she told me, because we’re funding Israeli healthcare and housing — a reference, undoubtedly, to the tens of billions of dollars of bombs and other aid this country has sent Israel’s military in its war in Gaza and beyond.

Of course, some conspiracy theories have a grain of truth at their core: if only we had focused long ago on issues of human welfare here instead of funding decades of foreign wars, it’s possible we might not be living in such an inequitable, infrastructurally weak country, or one increasingly devastated by climate-change-affected weather. But why did it take the deranged rantings of figures like former President Donald Trump and multibillionaire Elon Musk on social media to begin a discussion about how we choose to spend limited federal dollars? If only more government relief money was indeed spent on basic human necessities like housing and healthcare, anywhere at all, and not on war!

All of this ambient chatter has had an impact as real as the 140 mile-per-hour-plus winds and severe flooding that razed communities in six states across the Southeast in the last month and killed hundreds of Americans, with more still missing. In a region where death remains so omnipresent that observers can smell human bodies as they drive through mountain passes, conspiracy theories have led to real threats that forced FEMA crews to relocate from hard-hit Rutherford County, North Carolina, after reports of armed militia members who said they were “hunting FEMA.”

Given the truly destructive nature of all that chatter, I wasn’t surprised to hear New York Times “The Daily” host Michael Barbaro open one of his podcasts about Hurricane Milton with a question to fellow political journalist Maggie Haberman that would have seemed odd in any other context: “How quickly do we expect this storm to become political?”

How quickly do we expect this storm to become political? How about: How long before the next storm hits category 4 or even 5 status and makes landfall? It seems as if the world we’re living in isn’t Helene’s or Milton’s but the alternative-factual world of former Trump staffer Kellyanne Conway and forecasting what nonsense will pop up next about the weather (or almost anything else) has become more real than the weather itself.

The Complex Identity of Rural America

At the start of the Covid pandemic, I moved to a fairly progressive rural community in Maryland after my family purchased a small farm there where we have an orchard, a large produce garden, and a flock of egg-laying chickens (all of which are, I suppose, our versions of hobbies). I remain confounded by the fact that so many Americans — especially rural ones — vote for the party whose leaders divert aid and attention from solving problems that affect their communities, including the hurricane season and other kinds of extreme weather, not to speak of the rescue work that follows such natural disasters, and the need to provide services and protection for migrants who work on such farms and in rural businesses. Case in point: Republican members of the House and Senate voted against stopgap funding for FEMA a few weeks before Helene hit, doing their part to jeopardize aid to so many of their supporters, even though such efforts may ultimately prove unsuccessful.

It’s well known that many rural Americans provide a bulwark of support for Republican candidates and far-right causes. During the 2016 presidential elections, Donald Trump gained more backing from that group than any other president had in modern American history. The impact of rural America on his coalition of voters in the 2020 presidential elections was comparable to that of labor unions for Democrats.

Some rural voters also have spoken up loudly when it comes to far-right causes and identity politics. Typically, Tractor Supply Company, which bills itself as the “largest rural lifestyle retailer” and sells gardening tools, feed, small livestock, clothing, and guns, among other things, succumbed last summer to a pressure campaign from its customers to stop anti-discrimination and awareness-raising diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) hiring programs that had previously earned it national recognition. Its management also pledged to stop participating in LGBTQ+ pride events and eliminate its previous goals to cut carbon emissions in its operations. The campaign kicked off after a right-wing influencer in Tennessee, who ran unsuccessfully for a congressional seat in 2022, posted on X that the company was funding sex changes, among other baseless accusations.

Rural America and Climate Change

I had to balk at such a campaign. Anywhere you look in my town, you can find evidence of how initiatives like Tractor Supply Company’s serve to benefit our community.

To consider (at least to my mind) the most pressing case in point, it’s increasingly difficult for people to farm in today’s climate because governments are not curbing greenhouse gas emissions fast enough. The Biden administration has significantly chipped away at the problem by investing in clean energy, reining in the worst corporate polluters, and curbing emissions and coal usage. Unfortunately, this country still produces record amounts of oil and natural gas, and the ravages of extreme weather in my mid-Atlantic agricultural community are plain to see, as is also true nationally.

Let me share a few small-scale, personal examples. A few years ago, I found that there was enough water locally and nighttime temperatures dipped sufficiently low to grow vegetables, meaning my family wouldn’t have to purchase much produce during the summer months. The past two summers, however, heat, wildfire smoke, and more recently, drought, have made small-scale farming prohibitively difficult, at least for my less experienced hands. My tomatoes haven’t cooled enough at night to ripen sufficiently. More than half of the new fruit trees I purchased to add to our orchard died for lack of sufficient water, and I found myself having to stay up in our barn with one of my best laying hens that I found collapsed from heat stroke one summer day. Dipping her little feet in cool water and forcing electrolytes down her beak ultimately revived her, but the near death of that tiny animal that the local Tractor Supply branch had sold me and advertised as “heat hardy” shook me.

Worse yet, earlier this spring, wildfires swept through my back woods and neighborhood, burning down one of my neighbor’s sheds, threatening numerous homes, including mine, and forcing a neighboring farm to evacuate their livestock. And even worse than that, there wasn’t enough water in my once robust creek for the local fire department to extinguish the flames quickly before the fire impacted several properties.

Our family is lucky. We each have a full-time job to sustain us and so don’t have to rely on farming to do anything but enrich our lives. Unfortunately, other families who have bravely sought to feed more people for a living can’t always say the same. Hurricane Helene is a case in point. According to the American Farm Bureau, that storm (and Milton on its heels) had a unique impact on rural communities and agriculture, with billions of dollars in fruit, nuts, and poultry lost. Food supply in rural communities across the Southeast has already been impacted and grocery price increases throughout the country will be likely.

In the U.S., where more than half of all land is used for agricultural purposes, the number of farms has been decreasing since the 1930s. And while climate change has made growing seasons longer, it’s also made the weather far less predictable. Despite farmers scaling up production and adapting their methods, doing everything from bringing horticulture indoors to using recycled human food waste as feed, yield has fallen and it’s growing ever more difficult to stay in the black. The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the crucial global research body tracking that phenomenon, recently found that the largest casualty of our overheating planet is the struggle of agriculture to produce enough food for people to live, leading to growing food insecurity in regions around the world.

Worse yet, government efforts to help farmers survive sometimes create more problems than they solve. For example, financial and tax incentives for farmers who can demonstrate that they are using their crops to capture carbon require large amounts of paperwork, while climate regulations that may help farms in the long run entail red tape and restrictions that make paying the bills far harder in the short term. Yet some of the more vulnerable farmers like those in communities of color have welcomed recent government interventions as reparations for decades of discrimination in federal loan programs, as have indigenous communities who benefit from grants to develop more sustainable farming practices.

Nonetheless, if voting patterns and consumer pressure campaigns are any harbinger of the future, too many rural voters and consumers don’t seem to be thinking about how to create just such sustainable farming practices in a climate-changing world. Instead, the loudest voices in rural America seem focused on fear-based identity politics and anger rather than what elected officials have — and have not — said and done to aid their everyday lives in increasingly difficult times.

By some indicators, rural lives have only grown far more precarious in our moment and maybe that helps explain why so many farm families are frustrated with the powers that be. Farmers in this country are more than three times as likely to die by suicide as people in the general population. Factors like high rates of gun ownership and social isolation have an impact, but so do unpredictable weather, supply chain interruptions born of the Covid-19 pandemic, and our government’s slow and haphazard response to so much in the Trump years.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

I find it perplexing that the rural customers of Tractor Supply rejected diversity, equity, and inclusion campaigns from that rural retailer, since people of color, women, and LGBTQ+ folks make up a significant part of rural communities, just not the well-paid or well supported ones. Most farmworkers who tend crops and livestock and engage in other forms of manual labor like processing or transporting our food are, in fact, foreign born and work for only the little more than half of the year that encompasses the growing season. Those workers or others in their families need to get second jobs just to make ends meet. They are more at risk of climate- and access-related health issues because of air pollution and heat-stroke. Such risks were compounded by Trump-era policies that cut federal funding for rural health centers and curbed insurance regulations in struggling rural clinics and hospitals.

In an America where discrimination as well as pay gaps based on race, gender, and sexual orientation remain rampant, making equity a priority can only help those who actually sustain this country’s farming communities. In my county, where equity and inclusiveness are central to social policy, about a third of the children at our small rural school receive free lunches and other services. That portion of the school population consists significantly of kids whose parents are willing to do low-wage work on local farms and that’s not generally white, American-born families.

What’s clear is that Donald Trump’s politics of grievance appeals to voters who see their lives and those of their children worsening, not getting better, as time goes by. Social science research has identified emotions like anger, fear, and nostalgia as key to his appeal to rural Americans and other groups whose health indicators, isolation, and economic well-being are only worsening. If his recent seemingly unhinged “dance party” in Pennsylvania is anything to go by, I suspect he’s hearkening back to a time in American history when communities were smaller, life was simpler, and racism was rampant and — yes! — unhinged. (Note, by the way, his inclusion of “Dixie,” the unofficial Confederate anthem, on that playlist he danced to for 39 straight minutes.) While rural America certainly struggles in more ways than I can describe, it’s precisely the things that Democratic candidates are trying to do now that would bring them back to a healthier, more sustainable way of life.

In a world where the weather’s only growing worse, if my community is a good example — and I suspect it’s as good as any — rural Americans need to think hard when they go to the ballot box (or the cash register) and consider the universe of hard scientific facts rather than just listening to the latest conspiracy monger on X or Instagram. Their lives and their livelihoods may just depend on it.

I cancelled my Washington Post subscription Friday evening. Jeff Bezos, Mister “Democracy Dies In Darkness” (the Post’s slogan on their masthead), by blocking his editorial staff from endorsing Harris chose darkness over his nation’s future, and I can’t support that.

The big mistake John D. Rockefeller made back in the day—that Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk appear committed to not repeating—was not buying a media outlet like a newspaper. Had John D. had that sort of a vehicle to mold public opinion, American history may be very different.

By 1880, Rockefeller’s Ohio-based company controlled over 90 percent of the nation’s oil, owned 4000 miles of pipelines, and employed over 100,000 people. As Rockefeller’s oil empire got larger and larger, eating alive hundreds of smaller operations, ruthlessly driving up prices, destroying his competitors, and throwing workers out of a job, public outrage grew.

At some point, America is going to have to confront its oligarch problem.

In 1887, Ohio sued him, arguing that he was operating in ways that were detrimental to the state and its citizens and businesses; in 1892 the Ohio Supreme Court ordered his company dissolved. As I lay out in detail in Unequal Protection: How Corporations Became “People,” this led Rockefeller to move Standard Oil to New Jersey after that state changed its corporation laws to allow for his monopolistic behavior.

Which brought in the federal government; in 1890, Ohio Senator John Sherman introduced and saw passed into law the Sherman Anti-Trust Act which provided not just fines but jail sentences against people like Rockefeller who were committed to destroying competition and owning entire markets. The law was flawed with a few loopholes and ambiguities, so it was amended in 1914 with the Clayton Anti-Trust Act.

Nonetheless, in 1906 progressive Republican Teddy Roosevelt’s administration filed an antitrust action against Rockefeller that went to the Supreme Court in 1911 during the administration of progressive Republican President William Howard Taft. The behemoth was broken up into 34 separate companies, an action that, like the breakup of AT&T by Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, led to an explosion of competition in the marketplace and a dramatic increase in shareholder value.

But back to Jeff Bezos and his 2013 purchase of The Washington Post.

It was reporters and editors for the hundreds of independent newspapers during the First Gilded Age (1880-1900) era that led the crusades against Rockefeller and his fellow monopolists. Investigative journalism was all the rage then, and it fed public demand for a return to competition and the de-throning of that age’s oligarchs.

The vast majority of workers were struggling and they worked for a very small 10 percent of the population who controlled most of the nation’s wealth (a situation we’re at again).

The result was constant strife, strikes, and the murder of labor leaders; entire towns were in arms (and sometimes ablaze) with labor conflict. The “problem of labor”was the number one issue of the day. As President Grover Cleveland — the only Democrat elected during that period — proclaimed in his 1887 State of the Union address:

“As we view the achievements of aggregated capital, we discover the existence of trusts, combinations, and monopolies, while the citizen is struggling far in the rear or is trampled to death beneath an iron heel. Corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people’s masters.”

There was a broad consensus across American society that those “Robber Barons” were feathering their own nests at the expense of the American public, hurting both working class people and small businesses. The Supreme Court endorsed breaking up Standard Oil in 1911, and even broke up the Associated Press in 1944.

The law was so rigorously enforced — so the game of business could be played by all comers, not just the “big boys” — that in the 1960s the Supreme Court barred the merger of the Kinney and Buster Brown shoe companies because the new combined company would control a mere 5 percent of the shoe market.

Back in the ’60s every mall and downtown in America was filled with small, locally-owned businesses; there might be a Sears to anchor the shopping center or a retail part of town, but most shops, restaurants, and hotels were family-owned.

But then Reagan, in 1983, ordered the DOJ, SEC, and FTC to stop enforcing the Sherman Act, which is why today Nike, for example, controls about a fifth of the entire nation’s shoe market. It’s the same across industry after industry, from retail to grocery stores to railroads to computer software to social media to chip manufacturing to airlines to hotels…and on and on. In virtually every industry, a handful of massive companies control 80 percent or more of the market.

The Biden administration is the first to seriously try enforcement of the nation’s anti-trust laws since Carter broke up AT&T, going after Google and blocking mergers in multiple industries. It’s led a bunch of American billionaires to demand that the Federal Trade Commission’s head, Lina Kahn, be fired.

Kahn and her FTC went after Bezos last year, suing Amazon for running a monopoly that price-gouges customers and blocks out competition. The trial is scheduled for 2026 if Kahn keeps her job; a Trump administration would fire her immediately, and pressure from major corporate donors and billionaires is building on Harris to do the same.

Bezos also must remember well when he got on the wrong side of then-President Trump because of the Post’s coverage of the orange oligarch’s lies and crimes; Trump, in a fit of pique, awarded a $10 billion Pentagon contract for cloud computing to Microsoft, shocking analysts across the industry.

Bezos is also working for his Blue Origin spaceship company to get more billions in NASA and Pentagon contracts. He and his companies also own billions in Google and AirBNB stock as well as owning outright almost a hundred other companies.

Might be a good time to own one of the two most influential newspapers in America, eh?

Similarly, billionaire oligarch Elon Musk, in addition to apparently taking orders from Russian President Vladimir Putin, is fighting numerous government efforts to regulate his companies (which exist in large part because Obama bailed out Tesla in 2010 with $465 million, and NASA is now pouring hundreds of millions into SpaceX):

— Tesla is fighting the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) over union-related issues, with Musk taking a lawsuit to the Supreme Court alleging government protections of unions are unconstitutional.
— SpaceX is battling the NLRB over employee firings.
— The SEC is investigating Musk’s acquisition of Twitter (now X) and his “funding secured” tweets about taking Tesla private.
— The FTC is investigating X’s compliance with a $150 million privacy settlement.
— The Federal Communications Commission recently denied SpaceX’s Starlink a $886 million rural broadband award.
— The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is suing Tesla over alleged racial harassment.
— The FAA is in conflict with SpaceX over launch licensing and environmental reviews.
— The EPA has fined SpaceX for water-related violations.
— The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened multiple investigations into Tesla’s vehicle safety and Autopilot system.
— SpaceX faces scrutiny over its environmental impact at its Texas launch site.

To avoid the Rockefeller mistake, Musk — with the apparent help of two Russian oligarchs and the leader of Saudi Arabia — purchased Twitter, the online digital equivalent of our nation’s largest newspaper.

Now that we’re in America’s Second Gilded Age — with today’s billionaires vastly richer than Rockefeller’s wildest dreams — we confront a similar crossroads to that of previous generations.

And he’s now using it to try to get Trump and Republicans into office, presumably so they can gut the FTC, FCC, SEC, NLRB, and any other regulator that might take him on to protect workers, the public, and the national interest.

We took on the superrich with success during the First Gilded Age, and our enforcement of antitrust laws lasted all the way to 1983, when Reagan blocked them, leading to the “merger mania” of the 1980s and bringing us today’s oligarchic business empires across multiple industries.

Now that we’re in America’s Second Gilded Age — with today’s billionaires vastly richer than Rockefeller’s wildest dreams — we confront a similar crossroads to that of previous generations.

Is it okay, for example, for billionaires to own media properties they can use to manipulate politics and government agencies to amplify their other business interests? Or that five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court have ruled that our morbidly rich plutocrats can own judges and politicians? Most Americans would probably say “No” to both.

At some point, America is going to have to confront its oligarch problem. And the sooner the better, if we don’t want darkness to entirely subsume our democracy.

First the Los Angeles Times, then the Washington Post. Two of the country’s largest newspapers, including the one based in the nation’s capital, have now declared that they won’t endorse either major-party candidate for president. That’s irrefutable evidence that, in today’s United States of America, the self-interest of billionaires will always come before the needs of democracy. The financialization of journalism, which is so vital to a functioning democracy, has crushed the concept of a “free press.”

This is what oligarchy looks like.

This is why Democratic rhetoric about “saving democracy” has been so unpersuasive for undecided voters. Anti-Trump voters may know that democracy is important, but working people know something else: that what the billionaires want, they get. It’s hard to ask people to save something they feel they’ve already lost.

We’ve reached the point where a caudillo—a strongman figure—can openly threaten supposedly independent institutions and suppress opinions he doesn’t like.

Would a second Trump term do profound harm to democratic principles? Yes. Would this country’s vital institutions be cowed and manipulated with threats, hate speech, revenge, and the hideous lineaments of pseudo-Christian fascism? Yes. It’s a frightening prospect.

That may not be a big deal to this country’s elites, but they’d prefer the stability of a Kamala Harris presidency to the unpredictability of another Trump term. It’s better for their business interests. That’s why she’s raising so much more money than Trump.

But the billionaire owners of the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post don’t dare act against Trump, who has been open about his pursuit of vengeance and equally clear that he’ll reward his friends with government contracts.

These are the signs that an already-damaged democracy is entering a new stage of decay. We’ve reached the point where a caudillo—a strongman figure—can openly threaten supposedly independent institutions and suppress opinions he doesn’t like.

These newspapers’ cowardly actions prove, in one way, that Trump has already won. He has stripped the veneer off our democracy and revealed the cowardice and greed beneath it. It is the latest in the series of political innovations Trump has brought to American politics: rule by fear.

Whoever wins the election, we know now that naked intimidation works. The owners of American media are financially dependent on government contracts, tax breaks, and the good graces of the executive branch. Their reporters depend on government officials as sources. That’s why Trump’s threats are working.

These newspapers’ cowardly actions prove, in one way, that Trump has already won. He has stripped the veneer off our democracy and revealed the cowardice and greed beneath it.

Democrats could take Trump’s cynical lesson to heart, as Lyndon Johnson might if he were still around. But it would be better to call out a system that allows billionaires to censor the news because a bully is pressuring the billionaires.

What they shouldn’t do is talk about “saving” a democracy so few voters believe in. It would be wiser to talk about “restoring” it—although it never functioned perfectly, especially for Black voters and the poor.

Polling bears that out. A July 2024 Pew Research survey found that an overwhelming 72 percent of Americans don’t believe the United States is a good example of democracy. Democrats were slightly more likely to believe in American democracy than Republicans, but they’re hardly starry-eyed. Less than one-fourth of Democrats think we have an exemplary democracy.

The best way to talk about democracy is as an unrealized ideal. That would mean renouncing the endorsement of anti-democratic figures like Dick Cheney, who ascended to the vice presidency in an undemocratic power grab by the Supreme Court; Gen. John Kelly, who defended pro-slavery Civil War insurgents and committed ethical lapses; James Clapper, who gave false testimony to Congress; and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who approved illegal torture programs under President George W. Bush.

I understand that they’re trying to reach Republican voters who are uncomfortable with Trump’s totalitarian tendencies, but how many voters like that are there? This approach may alienate more people than it gains.

Trump may regain the presidency, or he may not. But either way, he has changed politics forever, reshaping it in his own image.

In any case, this campaign is almost over—“all over but the shouting,” as the old saying goes. Trump may regain the presidency, or he may not. But either way, he has changed politics forever, reshaping it in his own image. There will be candidates who don’t hesitate to use what he’s taught them this year.

Americans who believe in the ideal of democracy will have to fight even harder for it—now, and for generations to come.

There are the laws on the books and the laws that ought to be on the books. There are the laws of nature and the laws that are an abomination of nature. And there are the egalitarian laws of self-governance and the authoritarian laws of the oligarchy.

In most presidential elections for the last forty years, there has really only been one issue that should have been the focus of every voter: Do you favor taking money out of politics or not?

All other issues, such as health care, immigration, criminal justice reform, literally saving the planet, are truly secondary because we can’t address any of them while our system of self-governance is paralyzed by legalized oligarchic bribery.

There has only been one issue for forty years, and until we learn to focus on it, we are wasting the precious time we have left to prevent the Earth’s ecosystem from becoming incredibly hostile to civilization as we currently know it.

So, this has been the question: Do you favor taking money out of politics or not? Because if you don’t favor taking money out of politics, then you are an outlaw in a self-governing society. If you don’t favor taking money out of politics, you favor authoritarian oligarchy that says, “we the few can lord it over the rest,” and that justifies its oppression of others with deceitful justification ideologies claiming moral supremacy based on lies to which the commitment can become so strong it drives the liar into psychological self-delusion. And this delusion does not excuse the people who believe their own lies from the crimes they advance based on those lies. As a mass-psychosis, these delusions are driving civilization off a cliff in an absolutely criminal manner. We do the MAGA-mad among us a favor by holding them accountable for their madness before the election so that they don’t rue it after when the consequences may be unbearable.

Don’t let anyone frame the issue in any other way. Use your words to hold people accountable to declare themselves for or against self-government. Any other discussion is a distraction and irrelevant.

So, here’s some accountability: Bat-sh*t crazy or not, if you, like Justice Kennedy, argue that “independent expenditures, including those by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption,” then you support an agenda that is criminal in the eyes of the laws of self-governance. But in this election, the sickness of authoritarian oligarchy has spread its delusion so extensively throughout society, that the question is no longer even as far removed to the very immediate issue of taking money out of politics. This election season, the question is absolutely direct: Are you for or against self-government? This is the only issue that matters. This time, we have a candidate we know incited insurrection.

This election, that means the accountability we do our people a favor in insisting upon is this: Supreme Court Justice or not, looney-toon self-deluded Billionaire narcissist or not, proud-to-be-a-MAGA-manipulated-lie-swallower or not, if you believe there is justification for Donald Trump’s instigation of the January 6, 2021 insurrection and so cast your vote for him in the presidential election, then you are an abettor of a sacrilege against egalitarian human nature, and you are breaking the code of your own honor, giving your self-governance away like a beast-of-burden kneeling to his yoke in the field.

It does not matter if the corrupt Supreme Court excuses him with phony arguments, insurrectionist Donald Trump is a criminal. He has been accorded every procedural opportunity. The investigations have been multiple, the evidence is overwhelming, and the record of Donald Trump’s lies is also irrefutable. Everyone knows the Republican nominee for the presidency presumed the authority to try to establish himself as President against the people’s exercise of self-government on January 6, 2021. There is no going back from that assault on our democratic process. Donald Trump is an outlaw. People who would vote him back into power are abetting a crime, obstructing justice, and defying the natural order of civil society.

Journalists, in particular—but all of us who favor and believe in self-government as the law of the land, the law of nature, and the law of a moral society—cannot commit the mistake of arguing the merits of every issue out there. As bystanders or participants in the public debate, there is one and only one issue: Do you favor self-government or not?

We see billionaire Elon Musk spreading misinformation to advance Donald Trump’s campaign, we see him giving people million dollar checks at campaign events, and somehow, the press wants to know why Elon Musk says Trump will be better for our nation. That’s not the question. The question is: Mr. Musk, do you favor self-governance or not? Because if you favor self-governance, we will not allow you to deny that Donald Trump is a criminal who broke the law of self-government. You either denounce Trump and demand his prosecution or we take your conduct as an admission that you are a criminal abettor of a known insurrectionist. There is no other option now that you’ve jumped up and down on his stage.

We see billionaire Jeff Bezos afraid that publishing an endorsement of Kamala Harris in his newspaper, The Washington Post, might cost him devastating damage if Donald Trump returned to power, and the press wants to talk about the corruption of the press, but that’s not the issue. The issue is this, Mr. Bezos: Do you favor the self-government that allowed you to become so successful or not? Because if you favor self-governance, we will not allow you to deny that Donald Trump is a criminal who irrevocably broke the law of self-government on January 6, 2021, and we will force you to either denounce him in your newspaper as a criminal or we take your silence as an admission that you too are a criminal abettor of a known insurrectionist. You wanted to be a newspaper publisher. Now, you are learning that a publisher has to publish. So publish: Is your allegiance to that law of self-government or are you are a criminal oligarch abetting a fascist lunatic? Staying silent is the wrong answer.

And it is not just billionaires we must hold accountable to the law of self-government. It’s every person who appears on a political news show to discuss the issues. There is only one issue. “Are you for self-government or against it?”

It’s all of your friends: “Are you for self-government or are you against it?”

It’s the family member at your dinner table. “Are you for self-government or against it?”

There is no disputing Donald Trump is an insurrectionist. The 2020 election was not stolen. There is no evidence it was. There never has been any such evidence. Donald Trump knew there was no evidence from the start. He rehearsed his lies even before the election day, anticipating he would lose. He is rehearsing them again now, with the same strategy deliberately in mind. Countless court cases and an extensive congressional investigation make clear: Joe Biden won the election and Donald Trump is an insurrectionist. There is no evidence anywhere that allows for any other conclusion.

And even if there was evidence supporting Trump’s lies, under the law of self-government, he still has to follow the law; he doesn't get to violently take over the Capitol. In the 2000 election, Al Gore conceded the election when the corrupt Supreme Court illegitimately threw it to George W. Bush. Gore recognized, win or lose, he did not have the authority to incite insurrection. Self-government required the people to take action through their peaceful political process. The 2000 election result was an abomination before the law of self-government, but that was the Supreme Court majority’s dishonor and abomination. Al Gore was a law-abiding candidate. He left self-government intact to the people, honorably, dutifully.

The 2020 election result, by contrast, actually abided by the law of self-government. Trump lost and Joe Biden won and became President. But whether Trump won or lost is not the issue today; the issue today is that Trump’s actions in fomenting the January 6, 2021 insurrection make him an enemy of self-government, an outlaw whom a self-governing people cannot allow to hold office.

In the remaining days of this election, we, the law-abiding people who are for self-government, need to be absolutely disciplined, civil, polite, but disciplined, firm, and unsparing in our analysis, keeping the conversation always focused on this one question: Are you in favor of self-government or not?

And if someone at your dinner table tries to assert that Trump had the right to incite violent insurrection or that the rioters were not engaged in violent insurrection or that Trump will be better for America, then, if you want your self-government to survive, you need to insist they answer you when you ask: “Are you for self-government or against it? Have you really thought about what it means to lose self-government? It’s not the same as losing an election; it is losing the vote entirely forever.”

And then you need to tell them:

“There has been ample investigation. The facts are clear. Trump’s lies are clear. Your denial of the facts and commitment to Donald Trump’s lies are not an excuse for you continuing to abet a crime against self-government by voting for an insurrectionist whose criminal actions are widely in evidence. If you stole a car to drive to our house for dinner, I would not simply pass you the potatoes. I tell you now, your vote for Donald Trump is a crime that changes my relationship to you the same way it would if you deliberately sought to hurt my neighbor. You need to respect the law of self-government. Nothing is more basic than that. Wake up.”

Don’t let anyone frame the issue in any other way. Use your words to hold people accountable to declare themselves for or against self-government. Any other discussion is a distraction and irrelevant. Help people understand the choice they are making. They will thank you for it, when they come to their senses.