On the night of November 8th, 2016, the greatest soul singer of all suffered a stroke while watching the presidential election returns. Sharon Jones had, by virtue of her legendary talent, achieved fame despite "some record label" telling her that she was "too short, too fat, Black and old." Jones had one thing going for her—a voice so powerful, subtle and inhumanly flexible that she had no peer in a professional niche blessed with a ridiculous abundance of magnificent singers. She sang in harmony with world class horn players, but Sharon Jones' voice could soar and shame trumpets and saxophones. The brassy, tensile fierceness of her singing sometimes resolved into a whisper—like a virtuoso flautist drifting into silence.

Sharon Jones had held pancreatic cancer to a draw for several rounds, but metastatic cancer was one thing, and Trump's electoral college victory another. One easily imagines that Sharon Jones, the triumphant conqueror of a heartless music industry, came face to face with a terrifying and immovable barrier - the entire world had been swept into an inescapable vortex. I am not simply speculating—Jones' election night stroke did not kill her on the spot. She died ten days later, but not before identifying her assailant to her friends and bandmates. It was Donald Trump.

Sharon Jones death provides something of a blank slate - a place for the projection of our own anxiety. She may arguably be the first person to pass through the invisible threshold separating the misery and dislocation of life in neoliberal America from the fascist uncertainty to follow. You might think of her as American fascism's first casualty.

We can only speculate about what she endured on November 8th eight years ago, as we prepare to relive her trauma in a few weeks. Sharon Jones, because she did not meet the superficial standards—the image—of a peerless singer, once worked a day job. Before she achieved the big time she supported herself by working at the “correctional facility” on Rikers Island. Did she anticipate that Donald Trump would turn all of creation into an enormous Rikers Island? Sharon Jones, as both a legendary singer and a former prison guard (in one of the most notorious outposts within the prison industrial complex) had access to the whole continuum of human curses and virtues.

She only stood 4’11” but somehow survived the proximity of men at their worst. She must have seen beatings, threats, blood and humiliation until it all congealed into an existential blur. Rikers Island might have hardened Sharon Jones’s heart like a stone, but it did not. When Trump's apparition came to her on November 8th she might have stared him down like he was just one more Rikers inmate. We know that Sharon Jones had a full range of human emotions and vulnerabilities. You can hear it in her voice, and we know her story. Trump and death converged, and she went with them before anyone else.

But it wasn't just Sharon Jones—a suicide hotline serving the LGBTQ community experienced an enormous spike in calls on November 8th, 2016 as the election results imposed a cascading profusion of fearful thoughts. An awful world had suddenly morphed into something improbably worse. Millions of the most ordinary people looked into the abyss eight years ago—suicide hotlines everywhere received a glut of anxious calls. I am not Black, not gay, not Trans, not Central American, not poor, and not at all a supporter of Hillary “neoliberal stooge” Clinton, but my wife and I stared with stricken, numbed, abrupt distress at the 2016 computer screen. A nation that had been destined to drift toward fascism since a collection of white, male slave-owners signed The Declaration of Independence had bizarrely been shocked at how quickly it finally happened.

Neoliberalism has conditioned us to accept abraded environmental protections, minimal health care, defunded schools, human rights abuses, horrific military violence inflicted far away and supported by local propaganda, arbitrary police power, and expanding, privatized prisons. But fascism adds something new...

As a mental health outreach worker in small town Franklin County, Massachusetts, I expected that my poor clients (Franklin County is a collection of mostly decaying mill towns) would have responded to Trump’s 2016 victory with barely an indifferent shrug, but I was wrong. Poor people generally believe that voting is a waste of time—they rather conclude that no nexus exists to connect their struggles with the political theatrics that occasionally murmur as background noise on their TV screens. One of my clients, let's call her Alicia, caught me by surprise on November 9th when she asked, "Phil, can he send me back to Puerto Rico?" No, I told her, Puerto Rico is part of the US. That makes you a US citizen. Alicia may not have heard me at all. Her ex-husband had moved back to the Island. "If I get sent out my ex is going to kill me.”

Neoliberalism has conditioned us to accept abraded environmental protections, minimal health care, defunded schools, human rights abuses, horrific military violence inflicted far away and supported by local propaganda, arbitrary police power, and expanding, privatized prisons. But fascism adds something new—the performance of violence as a public spectacle. George Monbiot has deemed both neoliberalism and fascism as corporate responses to the problem of democracy. A society driven by the collective power of the public will inevitably collide with corporate hegemony. Whereas neoliberalism depends on an oblivious citizenry, lobotomized by the surgical blade of corporate media, fascists have less faith in brain washing alone. Fascism requires a stronger incentive for public obedience—naked fear.

A society driven by the collective power of the public will inevitably collide with corporate hegemony.

One cannot weigh and measure aggregate levels of anxiety, depression, hopelessness or fear. Some of the worst suffering that fascism inflicts takes place in the private spaces inside of our skulls. Sharon Jones was not struck in the head with a truncheon—she had been assaulted by an inevitable and widely shared vision, a sense that Donald Trump was not just another ghoul in the long line of presidential succession, but something even more rapaciously hostile, violent and unstoppable.

It is a tribute to Trump’s cultural power that he entered the awareness of my poorest clients in ways that no other political figure ever did. Over and over again I was asked if Trump’s election would end rent subsidies, Mass Health medical insurance and food stamps. I had no way to honestly reassure my clients and I resorted to platitudes about the rule of law and protections in the constitution.

Poor people are the only category of the public having the ability to experience unrestricted state violence—even within a nominally functioning democracy. Think of poverty as a paradoxical privilege—the power to see beneath the opaque curtain of capitalism. You might also think of the public housing project is an experiment in fascism—a laboratory where force and intimidation can be refined and honed for expanded use as society collapses. People in housing projects witness police beatings, local crime, evictions, arrests and child protective services taking custody of children. My poor clients had a sophisticated intuitive sense of what Trump might do. Anyone with daily exposure to arbitrary and capricious power knows that things can get worse.

Trump, if we consider him as a peculiar human/political specimen—apart from his convenient label as a fascist or authoritarian – rather stymies our efforts to analyze him. He is inarticulate, notably stupid, illogical and self-oblivious, and yet there he is – plain as a granite boulder, centered eternally within the public eye. His prominence in the media forced the invention of the term “sane-washing.” Any serious discussion of Trump leads to one conclusion—something terrible, vast and irredeemable has befallen us and we have no language to describe our predicament. Few things highlight our depths of decay more aptly than our upright, formal, straight faced, intellectualized reflections on utter madness. We talk about Trump as if he were a math equation with a correct answer. Imagine three or four pundits in free fall from atop the Grand Canyon discussing their dinner plans—that conveys the Trump-centered discourse on the nightly news.

Think of poverty as a paradoxical privilege—the power to see beneath the opaque curtain of capitalism. You might also think of the public housing project is an experiment in fascism—a laboratory where force and intimidation can be refined and honed for expanded use as society collapses.

It is as likely as not that Trump will be president within a few months. On election night there will be strokes, heart attacks and suicides in the wake of Trump’s election as people anticipate the expansion of Trump’s fascist death cult. Last time Trump occupied the throne, suicides spiked to unprecedented levels in 2017 1nd 2018. Fascism will unleash a mental health catastrophe. Obviously, the most targeted victims, sexual minorities and people without U.S. citizenship, or citizens related to those without citizenship, will be overwhelmed with anxiety.

Paradoxically, Trump’s own base will be prominent death cult victims. White men living in rural areas kill themselves at a rate higher than any other demographic, and more often than not they employ an iconic symbol of Republican Party violence —fire arms. We never know if deaths of despair involve a disproportionate contingent of Trump’s acolytes, but the COVID contrarian death event that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives defined Trump’s legacy. A death cult propaganda empire, largely funded by the oil industry (that lost profits during Covid-19 economic slowdowns) urged the public to fight back against the “emasculating” decrees of public health agencies. Research conducted by Dr. Ryon McDermott, a psychiatrist from South Alabama has linked anti-vax beliefs to fanatic masculine tropes:

“What we find is that men who endorse these beliefs are much less likely to engage in proactive health behaviors, like getting a vaccine, because it’s somehow seen as being feminine, or being weak.”

Dan Patrick, the elderly lieutenant governor of Texas, said the quiet part out loud during a COVID spike when he offered himself, and all elderly people, as a sacrifice to the greater cause of the US economy. His COVID death would be well worth the economic benefits, he argued. Patrick’s alleged bravery was nothing more than narcissistic prancing. But the strident, bellicose, confrontational display of performative anti-vax voices on social media demonstrated that macho contempt for the "decadent," fearful, feminine voices of public health drove the movement. Picture Donald Trump, the bone spur, draft dodger of the Vietnam War era, preening without a mask and boasting about it. Trump, the bone spur coward had achieved death cult redemption via Covid-19.

In the 1932 German film “The Blue Light” by Leni Riefenstahl—who would later gain fame as Hitler’s propaganda videographer— played a strange young girl with almost mystical mountain climbing skills (scaling sheer rock faces wearing cloth slippers). High on a rocky cliff, she discovers a grotto filled with magnificent crystals that glow with an ethereal brilliance. The movie juxtaposes Riefenstahl’s pristine, innocent and courageous character with the greedy townspeople who view the sacred crystals as a mere commodity. At the film’s end, the young mountain climber falls to her death after discovering that the crystals have been appropriated by ambitious town’s people. The fascist world view pivots around the eternal battle between heroism and decadence. The hero, according to the Italian philosopher Umberto Eco, seeks death fearlessly and avidly, as a means of fascist consecration. Susan Sontag noted that Riefenstahl, at every juncture of her long career, channeled a fascist aesthetic.

One might argue that the doddering figure of a maskless Trump hardly equals the youthful Riefenstahl scaling mountains. But a death cult is still a death cult, even if it teeters precariously close to self-parody.

A death cult is still a death cult, even if it teeters precariously close to self-parody.

It may not be easy to accurately imagine all the details of the Trump death cult in its enhanced 2025 version. To be sure, some of the horrors seem almost certain—the continued Gazan genocide with the Democratic Party blessing for instance. Then there is the anticipated, murderous orgy of roundups, mass transfers to concentration camps and deportations of those without legal status. This will, in and of itself, meet the criterion for genocide. But the most critical consequence will be the obliteration of public mental well being. We should all anticipate the racing heart rates, the suicides, the spiking blood pressures, the strokes and heart attacks as the soul of the American people is mobilized for mere survival.

The public is the last barrier between the U.S. military machine and a dead Gaza. We are the last stand to turn back a planned extermination of our “undocumented” people. That may sound rather dramatic, as we don’t yet know if we can even save ourselves. We would be in slightly better shape if Sharon Jones’ voice still provided refuge. It doesn’t, and she was only the first to fall.

Women's Marches are being planned across the country ahead of Election Day to "show the strength of our feminist movement." However, curiously missing from the talking points around the strength of the feminist movement is the women of Palestine—women and girls who have endured the brutality of anti-feminist policies for decades under the illegal occupation by Israel.

Nour, CodePink’s Palestinian-American organizer, shares a story of her grandmother's sacrifice to take care of her children under occupation:

In Palestine, Israeli forces routinely impose curfews on Palestinian villages, forcing Palestinians to stay confined in their homes after dusk. The penalty for the slightest movement outside—or even within their homes—can mean immediate arrest or being shot on sight. My mother often recounts a story of my grandmother risking her life during curfew one night. My uncle, who was an infant at the time, was crying for milk, and my grandmother, with no other choice, had to slip out into the night. She moved silently through the shadows, hiding from Israeli soldiers as she crossed the village to find milk for her baby. My mother still remembers the fear she felt, thinking it might be the last time she'd see her mother alive. But my grandmother returned safely because Palestinian women, shaped by decades of occupation and resistance, have learned to navigate the militarized reality that surrounds them, finding ways to perform even the most basic acts of care under unimaginable conditions.

This story is not new or singular; Palestinian families have faced it on a daily basis for decades. It sparked our reflection on the co-option of feminism in the belly of the beast—where we're writing from.

Feminism may not be definitive, but at its heart is a commitment to family and community care—a stark contrast to militarism, which injects itself into every aspect of human life and erodes these fundamental values.

Nadia Alia wrote about the 2014 Israeli invasion in Gaza, citing many reporters detailing the "disproportionate" number of women and children victims during this violent attack. She then begged the question, what is a proportionate amount of women and children harmed during war and conflict? When did gender-based violence and violence towards the oppressed become an inevitable part of world relations? And if simply men were killed, would the crime scream quieter? When did we start weighing the scale of a tragedy based on gender—and when did we decide Palestinian men being murdered and imprisoned doesn't impact their entire community?

Feminism may not be definitive, but at its heart is a commitment to family and community care—a stark contrast to militarism, which injects itself into every aspect of human life and erodes these fundamental values. Palestinian women embody this incompatible relationship between feminism and militarism through their constant resistance to the occupation's infringement on their health, education, and ability to provide for their families. When the women of Palestine are forced to become breadwinners and protectors because Israel has murdered or imprisoned every man in their family, the necessity for feminism to include the women of Palestine is undeniable.

To narrowly define feminism is to be inherently anti-feminist, as we are building new ways to be just, to be equitable, and to show up for our community every day—just as the women of Palestine do. However, co-opting feminism to enact harm and bring destruction to people and the planet is against all feminist principles and praxis. And to further assume a false sense of superiority over the communities that have been harmed by imperialism is not only inherently anti-feminist, it's anti-human. Feminism, at its core, is antithetical to all forms of oppression, exploitation, and violence. Feminism devoid of intersectionality becomes a weapon for imperialists by depriving it of its otherwise inherently liberatory nature.

Alia's writing from 2014 still rings clear today. We just passed a year marker of the October 7 act of resistance from Gazans defending their homeland and 76 years of Palestinians living in an open-air prison inside their own homes. Meanwhile, we head into an election season using feminism as a gateway towards further surveillance, policing, and genocide, both at home and in all corners of the earth. Women's marches throughout the country won't even utter the names of the hundreds of thousands of women killed in Palestine to date. What is feminist about wanting to be the most lethal force in the world? What is feminist about continuing to arm a genocidal war against Palestine and Lebanon? What is feminist about using our tax dollars that should go towards natural disaster relief and healthcare to fund murder? Supplying militarism under the guise of women's empowerment is again not new. Still, the complacency and ignorance we see from elected officials here in the U.S. and those who appear to care for the well-being of women is always horrific and devastating. It cannot be overstated: there are no feminist bombs, feminist prisons, feminist cops, or feminist wars. There are only paid actors who have convinced people that their eventual demise and the demise of the planet is what will empower their lives today.

Israel's occupation of Palestine creates a constant state of fear and instability, eroding the rights, safety, and dignity of millions, particularly Palestinian women who bear the weight of war and imperial feminism in devastating ways. CODEPINK started as an immediate reaction to the 2002 Bush Administration creeping closer to invading Iraq based on 'saving women and children' only to cause over 15,000 women in Iraq to be killed. The 'rescue' narrative we have seen play out in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Palestine, and all across the globe from imperial players like the U.S., Great Britain, and Israel has truly shown the lengths that liberal, western feminism will go to justify the oppression of the women and children it claims to save.

To support Palestinian liberation means embracing a vision of feminism that stands firmly against militarism, imperialism, and colonialism.

This destructive narrative reveals the true intent this movement has for feminism: to keep the status quo and to keep marginalized lives, as Marc Lemont Hill describes it, "directly tied to the needs and interests of the powerful." Feminist education, activism, and community care must always come from a place of love and understanding but must also be in steadfast values of abolition and divestment. We cannot let ourselves be co-opted to kill Palestinians. We cannot allow our work to be undermined to kill the people of the Congo, of Sudan, of Yemen, of Ukraine, or of Russia. And we must not let our lives and choices be tied to a small group of people reaping the benefits of war.

To support Palestinian liberation means embracing a vision of feminism that stands firmly against militarism, imperialism, and colonialism. It means committing to fight for the rights of Palestinian women and all women who are oppressed in the name of advancing imperialist interests. Feminism calls us to see the connection between the liberties we fight for at home and the rights denied to women and girls across the globe. A genuinely feminist stance fights for a world where no woman, no child, and no community live under the constant threat of violence. Supporting Palestine is about embodying this vision, standing in solidarity, and fighting for a world where imperialism and colonialism are universally resisted.

“But there'll be men enough, the scum that we used for overseers, the trash that bought and sold slaves and bred them, the kind who were men with bullwhip and filth without one, the kind who have only one virtue, a white skin. Gentlemen, we'll play a symphony on that white skin, we'll make it a badge of honor. We'll put a premium on that white skin. We'll dredge the sewers and the swamps for candidates, and we'll give them their white skin - and in return, gentlemen, they will give us back what we lost through this insane [civil] war, yes, all of it." —From "Freedom Road" by Howard Fast, a novel about Reconstruction)

The idea of “race” has always been used to divide, control, and exploit. It is not a biological category. Eugenicists and White supremacists have spent generations trying to prove that it is, and they have failed. If each of us was able to banish the carefully indoctrinated idea of biological race from our minds, the world would be better off—starting with Donald Trump.

For those supporting Trump, it’s time to face up to the fact that he really is a biological racist. He is unable or unwilling to stop using racist arguments against groups that don’t have, he thinks, the same blood and breeding that he has.

Trump is into genes. There are good genes and bad genes, he says, smart genes and dumb genes, white genes and immigrant genes. Some of those good genes he finds in the white people of Minnesota.

“You have good genes, you know that, right? You have good genes. A lot of it is about the genes, isn’t it, don’t you believe? The racehorse theory, you think we’re so different? You have good genes in Minnesota.”

Like racehorses, according to Trump, some of us are bred for comfort, some for speed, some for crime, and still others for stupidity. According to his new ally, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who hopes to become a high-ranking U.S. health official, some of us also are bred to get Covid -- or not to get it. Kennedy said:

“Covid-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”

For Trump and Kennedy, the world is littered with races that form a lovely hierarchy, and their white “race,” conveniently is at the very top. Their skin color, they say, makes them most fit to rule in a ruthless Darwinian world. In this belief they join the defenders of slavery, segregation, and the builders of the gas ovens.

Their view of the world also has much in common with that of the industrialists of the early 20th century who used “race” as a tool to divide the workforce. Trump and Kennedy might value the 1926 race chart created by the Pittsburgh Central Tube Company, which shows the skills that are found in each so-called “race.” Nationality was a race, back then. Religion was a race, too. And, of course, color was a race. Each potential worker, the chart claimed, had built-in talents that could be objectively determined by industrial “race science.”

Since the 19th century, scientists have tried to prove the validity of racial categorization. Yet each claim has later been shown to be grounded in cultural beliefs, not physical science. Biological race, as a category, does not exist, science says. Like it or not, according to the best evidence, there is only one biological race, the human race, and we’re all stuck in it.

“By the Blood of our Fathers”

Trump also is into blood. Mixing all these lowly immigrants into America’s white blood, supposedly leads to “poisoning the blood of our country.” In this Trump connects with the “one drop rule” used during Jim Crow to identify who did or didn’t have certain rights. Who could use which bathroom, who could drink from which fountain, and who could go to which school. If you had one drop of Black blood, you were designated Black and consigned to the path of second-class citizenship.

The “stable genius” seems blissfully ignorant of the fact that each and every one of us has more than a few drops of Black blood. Our common genetic ancestors came out of Africa about 60,000 years ago. Yes, by the definition of the one drop rule, we all are Black.

How the New York Times Perpetuates Race Science

Every time someone, and especially a major media outlet, uses the word “race” it triggers the idea that there is something biological involved besides skin shades. Throughout the 20th Century, “race” conjured up critical differences in pain thresholds, propensity to crime, intelligence, strength, and even lust, none of which is true.

For “races” to be equal, they must first exist as separate “races.” But they don’t. To repeat, there are no separate biological races.

Why is a Black resident of African descent in Minnesota categorically different from a white Minnesota resident of Norwegian descent? Why is one considered to be a member of a “race” and the other of an ethnic group?

Journalists would surely say that they are only using race as a social convention, that “race” is not about biology. Rather, they would explain, it is a way of describing the group of Black people in the U.S. who have formed as a result of the after effects of slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and on-going discrimination based on skin color.

To most people, however, the word “race” carries more weight than the more nuanced and accurate word “ethnicity.” The latter is viewed as benignly connected to culture and tradition. “Race,” however, after more than a century of propaganda, implies biology. If you think skin color signals a different “race,” you are more likely to think that other differences between groups are biological as well.

The commonly accepted liberal statement that “all races are created equal” also falls into the racialist trap. For “races” to be equal, they must first exist as separate “races.” But they don’t. To repeat, there are no separate biological races.

The media is very careful with words. Conventions are established in every era to describe different groups. For example, “Negro” is no longer used, nor is “Indian.” This would be a very good moment to replace the word “race” with “ethnicity,” or at least put quotations marks around it. That might help eliminate race as biology.

For those supporting Trump, it’s time to face up to the fact that he really is a biological racist. He is unable or unwilling to stop using racist arguments against groups that don’t have, he thinks, the same blood and breeding that he has. He believes in a hierarchy of races and views himself the commander-in-chief of the fictitious superior white race, the master race.

History warns us that such beliefs never work out well.

Do you know that you’re in good hands with Allstate? Or how about State Farm? Do you know that, like a good neighbor, State Farm is there? Of course you do. Insurance companies have been blasting slogans like these at us for years now. In 2022 alone, Allstate spent $617 million on advertising. State Farm spent an even more whopping $1.05 billion.

But if insurance giants like State Farm truly rated as our “good neighbors,” they’d be behaving—in real life—quite a bit differently than their award-winning advertising suggests.

In hurricane-plagued Florida, for instance, State Farm last year denied 46.4% of homeowner claims, refusals that directly impacted over 76,000 households.

Another reform approach might more quickly catch the attention of top insurance industry boards of directors: tying an insurance company’s tax rate to the ratio between that company’s CEO pay and the paychecks of the firm’s workers.

“Property insurers who deny legitimate claims,” notes Martin Weiss, the founder of the nation’s only independent insurer rating agency, “are sending the implicit message, ‘If you don’t like it, sue us.’”

To add injury to that insult, Weiss adds, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had just before last year signed into law new legislation that makes policyholder lawsuits against insurers “far more difficult.”

For recently retired State Farm CEO Michael Tipsord, insurance industry lobbying victories along that Florida line have helped him pocket some stunning personal rewards. Tipsord pulled down $24.4 million in compensation two years ago, almost $4 million more than his industry’s second-highest 2022 CEO pay total. Tipsord had pocketed even more, $24.5 million, in 2021.

“CEOs are living high on the hog while increasing insurance premiums for people living paycheck to paycheck,” the Consumer Federation of America’s Michael DeLong charged last October. “Insurers are telling regulators that ordinary consumers have to pay much more for auto and home insurance because the companies are struggling with inflation and climate change, but they are quietly handing CEOs gigantic bonuses.”

Overall, DeLong’s Consumer Federation reports, the chief execs at America’s ten largest personal insurance lines collected over a quarter-billion dollars in CEO compensation for their services in 2021 and 2022.

If we really had a “good neighbor” at State Farm—or any other insurance giant—those companies wouldn’t have been spending recent years denying relief to the victims of climate change. They would have been insisting instead that lawmakers crack down on the fossil-fuel corporate giants doing so much to foul our planet.

Top insurers did make an early feint in that direction over a half-century ago. Way back in 1973, notes Peter Bosshard, the global coordinator of the U.S.-based Insure Our Future campaign, “the insurance industry first warned about climate risks.” But that warning, in the years to come, wouldn’t stop insurers from “underwriting and investing in the expansion of fossil fuels.”

Giant insurance companies that actually took climate science seriously, Bosshard observes, would have been “suing fossil fuel companies, to make polluters pay for the growing costs of climate disasters and keep insurance affordable for climate-affected communities.”

Insurers haven’t been doing any of that.

”Insurers talk a lot about their climate commitments and supporting their clients through the energy transition, but this is plain greenwashing,” charges Ariel Le Bourdonnec, a Reclaim Finance insurance activist. “They are still profiting from providing cover that allows companies to develop new fossil fuel projects. Insurers could be a force for change, but instead they are undermining climate action.”

Other critics are emphasizing that insurance industry execs have gone beyond “greenwashing” to “bluelining,” as Lilith Fellowes-Granda, a Center for American Progress associate director, points out. These execs are increasing prices and withdrawing services “from regions they perceive to be at high environmental risk.” These moves typically hit hardest on the “communities most vulnerable to the effects of climate change.”

Climate activists are advocating for a variety of policy changes to reverse these dynamics, everything from making sure property insurers must share the risks they cover to ensuring underserved communities access to affordable insurance.

Another reform approach might more quickly catch the attention of top insurance industry boards of directors: tying an insurance company’s tax rate to the ratio between that company’s CEO pay and the paychecks of the firm’s workers.

Inside the insurance industry, as in every other major U.S. economic sector, that ratio between CEO and worker has soared over recent decades.

In 2023, the chief executive at Chubb Ltd., Evan Greenberg, took home $27.7 million, enough to make him that year’s top-paid American property and casualty insurer. Those millions added up to 452 times more than the annual pay of the typical Chubb employee. In 2022, Greenberg pocketed a mere 346 times his company’s typical employee pay.

Back in 1965, the Economic Policy Institute noted last month in its latest annual CEO pay report, the top execs at major U.S. corporations only averaged 21 times what typical American workers earned. Nearly a quarter-century later, in 1989, CEOs were still only averaging 61 times worker pay.

How could we restore greater equity to corporate compensation and, at the same time, give top corporate executives an incentive to care about more than simply maximizing their own personal compensation? Lawmakers at the state and federal levels have over recent years advanced dozens of proposals that tie corporate tax rates to the size of the gap between top executive and worker pay.

In all these proposals, the higher a corporation’s CEO-worker pay ratio, the higher that corporation’s tax rate.

The Institute for Policy Studies has compiled an exhaustive guide to these CEO-worker pay gap proposals. Maybe the winds of Hurricane Milton will help give these moves the momentum they need to turn into law—and give top execs a reason to care about something more than the size of their own personal pay.

While the world looks on with trepidation at regional wars in Israel and Ukraine, a far more dangerous global crisis is quietly building at the other end of Eurasia, along an island chain that has served as the front line for America’s national defense for endless decades. Just as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has revitalized the NATO alliance, so China’s increasingly aggressive behavior and a sustained U.S. military buildup in the region have strengthened Washington’s position on the Pacific littoral, bringing several wavering allies back into the Western fold. Yet such seeming strength contains both a heightened risk of great power conflict and possible political pressures that could fracture America’s Asia-Pacific alliance relatively soon.

Recent events illustrate the rising tensions of the new Cold War in the Pacific. From June to September of this year, for instance, the Chinese and Russian militaries conducted joint maneuvers that ranged from live-fire naval drills in the South China Sea to air patrols circling Japan and even penetrating American airspace in Alaska. To respond to what Moscow called “rising geopolitical tension around the world,” such actions culminated last month in a joint Chinese-Russian “Ocean-24” exercise that mobilized 400 ships, 120 aircraft, and 90,000 troops in a vast arc from the Baltic Sea across the Arctic to the northern Pacific Ocean. While kicking off such monumental maneuvers with China, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the United States of “trying to maintain its global military and political dominance at any cost” by “increasing [its] military presence… in the Asia-Pacific region.”

“China is not a future threat,” the U.S. Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall responded in September. “China is a threat today.” Over the past 15 years, Beijing’s ability to project power in the Western Pacific, he claimed, had risen to alarming levels, with the likelihood of war “increasing” and, he predicted, it will only “continue to do so.” An anonymous senior Pentagon official added that China “continues to be the only U.S. competitor with the intent and… the capability to overturn the rules-based infrastructure that has kept peace in the Indo-Pacific since the end of the Second World War.”

After a decade of fighting misbegotten wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Washington was stunned when a rising China began to turn its economic gains into a serious bid for global power.

Indeed, regional tensions in the Pacific have profound global implications. For the past 80 years, an island chain of military bastions running from Japan to Australia has served as a crucial fulcrum for American global power. To ensure that it will be able to continue to anchor its “defense” on that strategic shoal, Washington has recently added new overlapping alliances while encouraging a massive militarization of the Indo-Pacific region. Though bristling with armaments and seemingly strong, this ad hoc Western coalition may yet prove, like NATO in Europe, vulnerable to sudden setbacks from rising partisan pressures, both in the United States and among its allies.

Building a Pacific Bastion

For well over a century, the U.S. has struggled to secure its vulnerable western frontier from Pacific threats. During the early decades of the 20th century, Washington maneuvered against a rising Japanese presence in the region, producing geopolitical tensions that led to Tokyo’s attack on the American naval bastion at Pearl Harbor that began World War II in the Pacific. After fighting for four years and suffering nearly 300,000 casualties, the U.S. defeated Japan and won unchallenged control of the entire region.

Aware that the advent of the long-range bomber and the future possibility of atomic warfare had rendered the historic concept of coastal defense remarkably irrelevant, in the post-war years Washington extended its North American “defenses” deep into the Western Pacific. Starting with the expropriation of 100 Japanese military bases, the U.S. built its initial postwar Pacific naval bastions at Okinawa and, thanks to a 1947 agreement, at Subic Bay in the Philippines. As the Cold War engulfed Asia in 1950 with the beginning of the Korean conflict, the U.S. extended those bases for 5,000 miles along the entire Pacific littoral through mutual-defense agreements with five Asia-Pacific allies—Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Australia.

For the next 40 years to the very end of the Cold War, the Pacific littoral remained the geopolitical fulcrum of American global power, allowing it to defend one continent (North America) and dominate another (Eurasia). In many ways, in fact, the U.S. geopolitical position astride the axial ends of Eurasia would prove the key to its ultimate victory in the Cold War.

After the Cold War

Once the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and the Cold War ended, Washington cashed in its peace dividend, weakening that once-strong island chain. Between 1998 and 2014, the U.S. Navy declined from 333 ships to 271. That 20% reduction, combined with a shift to long-term deployments in the Middle East, degraded the Navy’s position in the Pacific. Even so, for the 20 years following the Cold War, the U.S. would enjoy what the Pentagon called “uncontested or dominant superiority in every operating domain. We could generally deploy our forces when we wanted, assemble them where we wanted, operate how we wanted.”

After the September 2001 terrorist attack on the U.S., Washington turned from heavy-metal strategic forces to mobile infantry readily deployed for counterterror operations against lightly armed guerrillas. After a decade of fighting misbegotten wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Washington was stunned when a rising China began to turn its economic gains into a serious bid for global power. As its opening gambit, Beijing started building bases in the South China Sea, where oil and natural gas deposits are rife, and expanding its navy, an unexpected challenge that the once-all-powerful American Pacific command was remarkably ill-prepared to meet.

In response, in 2011, President Barack Obama proclaimed a strategic “pivot to Asia” before the Australian parliament and began rebuilding the American military position on the Pacific littoral. After withdrawing some U.S. forces from Iraq in 2012 and refusing to commit significant numbers of troops for regime change in Syria, the Obama White House deployed a battalion of Marines to Darwin in northern Australia in 2014. In quick succession, Washington gained access to five Philippine bases near the South China Sea and a new South Korean naval base at Jeju Island on the Yellow Sea. According to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, to operate those installations, the Pentagon planned to “forward base 60% of our naval assets in the Pacific by 2020.” Nonetheless, the unending insurgency in Iraq continued to slow the pace of that strategic pivot to the Pacific.

Growing Chinese aggressiveness in the region and an American urge to strengthen a military alliance ominously encircling that country could threaten to turn the latest Cold War ever hotter, transforming the Pacific into a genuine powder keg.

Despite such setbacks, senior diplomatic and military officials, working under three different administrations, launched a long-term effort to slowly rebuild the U.S. military posture in the Asia-Pacific region. After proclaiming “a return to great power competition” in 2016, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson reported that China’s “growing and modernized fleet” was “shrinking” the traditional American advantage in the region. “The competition is on,” the admiral warned, adding, “We must shake off any vestiges of comfort or complacency.”

Responding to such pressure, the Trump administration added the construction of 46 new ships to the Pentagon budget, which was to raise the total fleet to 326 vessels by 2023. Still, setting aside support ships, when it came to an actual “fighting force,” by 2024 China had the world’s largest navy with 234 “warships,” while the U.S. deployed 219—with Chinese combat capacity, according to American Naval Intelligence, “increasingly of comparable quality to U.S. ships.”

Paralleling the military buildup, the State Department reinforced the U.S. position on the Pacific littoral by negotiating three relatively new diplomatic agreements with Asia-Pacific allies Australia, Britain, India, and the Philippines. Though those ententes added some depth and resilience to the U.S. posture, the truth is that this Pacific network may ultimately prove more susceptible to political rupture than a formal multilateral alliance like NATO.

Military Cooperation with the Philippines

After nearly a century as close allies through decades of colonial rule, two world wars, and the Cold War, American relations with the Philippines suffered a severe setback in 1991 when that country’s senate refused to renew a long-term military bases agreement, forcing the U.S. 7th Fleet out of its massive naval base at Subic Bay.

After just three years, however, China occupied some shoals also claimed by the Philippines in the South China Sea during a raging typhoon. Within a decade, the Chinese had started transforming them into a network of military bases, while pressing their claims to most of the rest of the South China Sea. Manila’s only response was to ground a rusting World War II naval vessel on Ayungin shoal in the Spratly Islands, where Filipino soldiers had to fish for their supper. With its external defense in tatters, in April 2014 the Philippines signed an Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement with Washington, allowing the U.S. military quasi-permanent facilities at five Filipino bases, including two on the shores of the South China Sea.

Although Manila won a unanimous ruling from the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague that Beijing’s claims to the South China Sea were “without lawful effect,” China dismissed that decision and continued to build its bases there. And when Rodrigo Duterte became president in 2016, he revealed a new policy that included a “separation” from America and a strategic tilt toward China, which that country rewarded with promises of massive developmental aid. By 2018, however, China’s army was operating anti-aircraft missiles, mobile missile launchers, and military radar on five artificial “islands” in the Spratly archipelago that it had built from sand its dredgers sucked from the seabed.

Once Duterte left office, as China’s Coast Guard harassed Filipino fishermen and blasted Philippine naval vessels with water cannons in their own territory, Manila once again started calling on Washington for help. Soon, U.S. Navy vessels were conducting “freedom of navigation” patrols in Philippine waters and the two nations had staged their biggest military maneuvers ever. In the April 2024 edition of that exercise, the U.S. deployed its mobile Typhon Mid-Range Missile Launcher capable of hitting China’s coast, sparking a bitter complaint from Beijing that such weaponry “intensifies geopolitical confrontation.”

Manila has matched its new commitment to the U.S. alliance with an unprecedented rearmament program of its own. Just last spring, it signed a $400 million deal with Tokyo to purchase five new Coast Guard cutters, started receiving Brahmos cruise missiles from India under a $375 million contract, and continued a billion-dollar deal with South Korea’s Hyundai Heavy Industries that will result in 10 new naval vessels. After the government announced a $35 billion military modernization plan, Manila has been negotiating with Korean suppliers to procure 40 modern jet fighters—a far cry from a decade earlier when it had no operational jets.

Showing the scope of the country’s reintegration into the Western alliance, just last month Manila hosted joint freedom of navigation maneuvers in the South China Sea with ships from five allied nations—Australia, Japan, New Zealand, the Philippines, and the United States.

Quadrilateral Security Dialogue

While the Philippine Defense Agreement renewed U.S. relations with an old Pacific ally, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue involving Australia, India, Japan, and the U.S., first launched in 2007, has now extended American military power into the waters of the Indian Ocean. At the 2017 ASEAN summit in Manila, four conservative national leaders led by Japan’s Shinzo Abe, India’s Narendra Modi, and Donald Trump decided to revive the “Quad” entente (after a decade-long hiatus while Australia’s Labour governments cozied up to China).

Just last month, President Joe Biden hosted a “Quad Summit” where the four leaders agreed to expand joint air operations. In a hot-mike moment, Biden bluntly said: “China continues to behave aggressively, testing us all across the region. It is true in the South China Sea, the East China Sea, South Asia, and the Taiwan Straits.” China’s Foreign Ministry replied: “The U.S. is lying through its teeth” and needs to “get rid of its obsession with perpetuating its supremacy and containing China.”

Since 2020, however, the Quad has made the annual Malabar (India) naval exercise into an elaborate four-power drill in which aircraft carrier battle groups maneuver in waters ranging from the Arabian Sea to the East China Sea. To contest “China’s growing assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific region,” India announced that the latest exercise this October would feature live-fire maneuvers in the Bay of Bengal, led by its flagship aircraft carrier and a complement of MiG-29K all-weather jet fighters. Clearly, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi put it, the Quad is “here to stay.”

AUKUS Alliance

While the Trump administration revived the Quad, the Biden White House has promoted a complementary and controversial AUKUS defense compact between Australia, Great Britain, and the U.S. (part of what Michael Klare has called the “Anglo-Saxonization” of American foreign and military policy). After months of secret negotiations, their leaders announced that agreement in September 2021 as a way to fulfill “a shared ambition to support Australia in acquiring nuclear-powered submarines for the Royal Australian Navy.”

Such a goal sparked howls of diplomatic protests. Angry over the sudden loss of a $90 billion contract to supply 12 French submarines to Australia, France called the decision “a stab in the back” and immediately recalled its ambassadors from both Canberra and Washington. With equal speed, China’s Foreign Ministry condemned the new alliance for “severely damaging regional peace… and intensifying the arms race.” In a pointed remark, Beijing’s official Global Times newspaper said Australia had now “turned itself into an adversary of China.”

To achieve extraordinary prosperity, thanks in significant part to its iron ore and other exports to China, Australia had exited the Quad entente for nearly a decade. Now, through this single defense decision, Australia has allied itself firmly with the United States and will gain access to British submarine designs and top-secret U.S. nuclear propulsion, joining the elite ranks of just six powers with such complex technology.

Not only will Australia spend a monumental $360 billion to build eight nuclear submarines at its Adelaide shipyards over a decade, but it will also host four American Virginia-class nuclear subs at a naval base in Western Australia and buy as many as five of those stealthy submarines from the U.S. in the early 2030s. Under the tripartite alliance with the U.S. and Britain, Canberra will also face additional costs for the joint development of undersea drones, hypersonic missiles, and quantum sensing. Through that stealthy arms deal, Washington has, it seems, won a major geopolitical and military ally in any future conflict with China.

Stand-Off Along the Pacific Littoral

Just as Russia’s aggression in Ukraine strengthened the NATO alliance, so China’s challenge in the fossil-fuel-rich South China Sea and elsewhere has helped the U.S. rebuild its island bastions along the Pacific littoral. Through a sedulous courtship under three successive administrations, Washington has won back two wayward allies, Australia and the Philippines, making them once again anchors for an island chain that remains the geopolitical fulcrum for American global power in the Pacific.

Still, with more than 200 times the ship-building capacity of the United States, China’s advantage in warships will almost certainly continue to grow. In compensating for such a future deficit, America’s four active allies along the Pacific littoral will likely play a critical role. (Japan’s navy has more than 50 warships and South Korea’s 30 more.)

Despite such renewed strength in what is distinctly becoming a new cold war, America’s Asia-Pacific alliances face both immediate challenges and a fraught future. Beijing is already putting relentless pressure on Taiwan’s sovereignty, breaching that island’s airspace and crossing the median line in the Taiwan Straits hundreds of times monthly. If Beijing turns those breaches into a crippling embargo of Taiwan, the U.S. Navy will face a hard choice between losing a carrier or two in a confrontation with China or backing off. Either way, the loss of Taiwan would sever America’s island chain in the Pacific littoral, pushing it back to a “second island chain” in the mid-Pacific.

As for that fraught future, the maintenance of such alliances requires a kind of national political will that is by no means assured in an age of populist nationalism. In the Philippines, the anti-American nationalism that Duterte personified retains its appeal and may well be adopted by some future leader. More immediately in Australia, the current Labour Party government has already faced strong dissent from members blasting the AUKUS entente as a dangerous transgression of their country’s sovereignty. And in the United States, Republican populism, whether Donald Trump’s or that of a future leader like JD Vance could curtail cooperation with such Asia-Pacific allies, simply walk away from a costly conflict over Taiwan, or deal directly with China in a way that would undercut that web of hard-won alliances.

And that, of course, might be the good news (so to speak), given the possibility that a growing Chinese aggressiveness in the region and an American urge to strengthen a military alliance ominously encircling that country could threaten to turn the latest Cold War ever hotter, transforming the Pacific into a genuine powder keg and leading to the possibility of a war that would, in our present world, be almost unimaginably dangerous and destructive.

t’s galling to hear policymakers in the U.S., Israel, and elsewhere suggest that the devastating blows Israel has dealt to Hezbollah and Lebanon have created “an opportunity to put Lebanon on a better path.”

First and foremost, it’s horribly insensitive. There are, to date, thousands dead, major sections of Beirut destroyed, and one-quarter of Lebanon’s people internally displaced without adequate shelter, food, and services. And the toll continues to mount. To suggest that good can from this enormous human tragedy is disgraceful. Such a view not only dishonors the victims, but also is akin to putting “ashes in the mouths” of those who’ve lost loved ones and are in mourning.

This mindset is also dangerously naive as it ignores the lessons of history. Recall how, in the face of similar nightmares in 1982 or 2006, we were told that they would also be opportunities. Each involved Israel’s overwhelming use of force. In each instance, Israel said that its “enemies would be vanquished ushering in a new day.” In the end, each only resulted in a more unsettled situation with a more virulent foe rising from the ashes left behind. This was because at the root of each of these conflicts were real grievances born of injustice, that gave rise to movements of resistance. Instead of addressing and resolving these grievances, Israel, with the full-throated support of the U.S., saw force as the only acceptable solution. What they said, in effect, is, “Once we punish them and pound them into submission, all will be well.” This approach hasn’t worked before, and it won’t work now.

Instead of naive fantasies about opportunities, the only logical step forward is to end this conflict now.

At the heart of these deep grievances is the historical injustice done to the Palestinian people. Former U.S. President Bill Clinton described it eloquently when he told an assembled group of Palestinian leaders that he knew their history of having been “dismembered, dispossessed, and dispersed among the nations.” And for the Lebanese, who have embraced Hezbollah, the grievances include both their abiding fury over Israel’s more than two-decade-long hostile occupation of the south of Lebanon that resulted in the displacement of tens of thousands of Lebanese, and the historical inequities experienced by the Shia community as a result of the country’s sectarian system of governance.

None of this is to say that the Palestinian militia groups or the Shia’s Hezbollah movement haven’t made grave errors as they’ve acted to address the grievances of their constituencies. What it does say is that this effort to violently eliminate these groups is shortsighted, at best, and is no solution, as it does not address the source of the grievances that make them appealing in the first place. This is a recipe for disaster. And finally, to ignore the responsibility that Israel bears for its actions that have created much of the pain at the heart of the problem and then refusing to press them to change direction only ensures that the grievances will metastasize into more virulent forms.

This is where we are today. In an effort to totally eliminate resistance to their occupation and annexation of Palestine, Israel is committing genocide in Gaza coupled with a reign of violent terror across the West Bank. Meanwhile with Hezbollah launching missiles into Israel to back the survival of its “resistance ally” in Palestine, Israel has now turned its attention to methodically eliminating the leadership and cadre of Hezbollah.

In both Lebanon and Gaza, Israel has pursued this effort at “total victory” without regard for civilian casualties or damage to the broader society and its infrastructure. Seeing Iran as the main backer of both Hezbollah and Hamas, Israel has gone a step further by attacking Iranian sites and assassinating Iranian allies in Lebanon, Syria, and Iran itself—bringing the Middle East to the brink of a devastating regional war.

While the U.S. worries aloud about the dangers of expanding this war, it has done nothing to restrain Israel’s behavior. We’ve established red lines that Israel continues to cross; expressed concern with civilian casualties which Israel ignores; and repeatedly put forward cease-fire proposals which Israel rejects. All the while we are flooding Israel with sophisticated deadly weaponry and unlimited diplomatic support. The result is Israeli impunity, more Arab casualties and greater suffering, and a Middle East ever further from addressing the problems at the root of the conflict. When the fighting ends, if anything, the grievances will be even greater.

If history is prologue, in the coming years we’ll most likely see: the emergence of a Hamas 2.0; a reconstituted movement of Lebanese with an ax to grind with both Israel and those whom they feel betrayed them; a bottomless well of anger and bitterness directed at both Israel and the U.S.; and a region more unstable that it has been.

That said, there is no opportunity in this tragedy. In fact, there’s only one thing about which we can be certain. And that is that Israel’s war in Lebanon and Gaza will not end well.

Instead of naive fantasies about opportunities, the only logical step forward is to end this conflict now. For that to happen, the U.S., as we say, “needs to put on its big boy pants,” tell Israel to “stop,” and back this up by suspending arms shipments. At that point, we will need to address the human cost and work to alleviate some of the suffering. Then, and only then, can we begin to assess the steps that must be taken to deal with the grievances at the root of this tragedy. That’s not an opportunity. It’s a responsibility.

Sometimes I hate being right.

Donald Trump is campaigning in Blue states right now, including California, Colorado, and New York. It has pundits scratching their heads: is it just all about his ego? Is he crazy? Or crazy like a fox?

I’d argue the latter: that this is part of a strategy to legally seize the White House after he’s lost both the popular vote and the Electoral College vote, much like Republican Rutherford B. Hayes did in the election of 1876.

Eight months before the 2020 election, I wrote a largely-ridiculed article for Alternet.org predicting that Trump would lose the election but would then use multiple phony slates of swing-state electors to try to get the Electoral College count thrown to the House of Representatives where, under the 12th Amendment, the Republican majority would crown him president.

I noted that I’d first heard of the plan that month from a Republican insider I knew from my days living and doing my radio/TV program from Washington, DC.

And, as we all now know, that’s pretty much exactly what happened.

Fortunately, Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi stopped Trump and his merry band of corrupt lawyers and lawmakers (including Mike Johnson, who led the effort in the House) from executing the plan, but not before five civilians and three police officers lay dead because Trump incited a violent attack on the Capitol in his final, desperate attempt to pull it off.

Now we know, I believe, why Donald Trump thinks it’s so important to call out the military around election day this year. He expects millions of Americans to be in the streets because his plan is for the House, Republicans in the states, and the Supreme Court to hand him the presidency regardless of the election’s outcome.

Last Friday, my SiriusXM colleague Michelangelo Signorile mentioned to me (on his program) that a prominent rightwing hate radio host had claimed Trump is campaigning in Blue states right now so he can help out down-ballot House members in those states. According to that host, it’s all about holding the House so when the time comes for the election to be certified Republicans will be able to deny that still-necessary certification and vote Trump in themselves.

Which is giving me a terrible sense of déjà vu. At the risk of again playing the reluctant role of Cassandra, here are some examples of how Trump and the GOP could try to steal the White House this winter, regardless of how the vote turns out. And how Republicans are today telegraphing this very outcome.

Article II (the Executive Branch), Section I, Clause 2 of the Constitution (and the 12th Amendment, which revises it) gives solely to the legislatures of the states the power to control the electors who will decide the presidential election.

It does not say — and there is no federal law that says — that the people of the states shall vote for their choice of president and then that vote shall be reflected in the states’ electoral votes. It’s entirely up to each state’s legislature (without any input from the governor).

“Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors…” is how it appears in Article II of the Constitution.

As Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote in the 2000 Bush v Gore decision when the US Supreme Court overturned the Florida Supreme Court’s order for a recount that would have given the election to Al Gore:

“The individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States… [T]he state legislature’s power to select the manner for appointing electors is plenary; it may, if it so chooses, select the electors itself, which indeed was the manner used by state legislatures in several States for many years after the framing of our Constitution.”

Every state’s legislature generally directs all their electors to vote for the candidate who won the majority in the state (Maine and Nebraska are the exception, allowing for split decisions), a system we call “winner takes all,” but, as Rehnquist noted, a state’s legislature (its combined house or assembly and senate) can, by simple majority vote, direct its electors to vote for any candidate they want, even over the objection of their governor.

In the 2000 election, for example, when the Florida Supreme Court ordered a complete recount of the vote for president in that state, Jeb Bush and his Republicans knew that a full, statewide recount would give Al Gore the presidency. (It would have discovered the additional 45,599 votes for Al Gore that Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris arbitrarily and illegally chose not to count, as The New York Times noted a year later.)

In other words, had the U.S. Supreme Court not intervened to stop the Florida recount, the Republicans in the Florida legislature were fully prepared to hand the entire Florida electoral college vote — and, thus, the White House — to George W. Bush, even if a recount showed that Al Gore actually won the state. It was, after all, their constitutional right, as Rehnquist later noted in Bush v Gore.

As David Barstow and Somini Sengupta wrote for the New York Times on November 28, 2000, just before the Supreme Court intervened:

“The president of Florida’s Senate said today that Gov. Jeb Bush had indicated his willingness to sign special legislation intended to award Florida’s 25 Electoral College votes to his brother Gov. George W. Bush of Texas even as the election results were being contested.”

“But,” some say, “Kamala Harris is the Vice President, so she won’t refuse to accept the Electoral College votes like Trump wanted Pence to do!”

That’s true, but irrelevant.

While the updated Electoral Count Act explicitly redefines the Vice President’s role as purely ceremonial, it does not — and could not without a constitutional amendment —alter the power of individual Republican-controlled swing states to send Trump electors (claiming that the Harris-winning results in their states are the result of voter fraud) to DC.

Regardless of how transparently dishonest such an effort would be, its primary result would be to throw to the Supreme Court the decision over which electors to count.

Multiple Court observers have noted how light the Court’s docket is this fall because, they speculate, Roberts is fully expecting to play a role in the election similar to what five Republicans on the Court did in 2000 when they stopped the Florida recount, handing the White House to George W. Bush.

The Court could then declare the election flawed because of the alleged voter fraud — Republicans across the country, as well as Trump and Vance, are already preparing the ground for this claim — and, citing the 12th Amendment, throw it to the House of Representatives.

Under that scenario, each state’s House delegation has one single vote for president (the Senate is not involved under the 12th Amendment) and right now there are 26 states controlled by Republicans: the 26-24 vote would put Trump and Vance in the White House for the next four years.

That strategy would require one or more individual states to either refuse to certify their vote, delay certifying their vote, or submit multiple slates of electors.

And we’re already hearing from both local elections officials and state legislators’ rumblings that this is exactly what they intend to do.

Another option to produce the same result would be for a majority vote in the House to refuse to certify a Harris win.

Which brings us back to Trump campaigning in Blue states. As Ed Kilgore wrote for The New Yorker:

“As it happens, there are ten highly competitive House races in California and New York, and a Trump appearance nearby could goose GOP turnout and promote party-organizing efforts in ways that could make a difference in those contests.”

This brings us back to the scenario Michelangelo shared with me. The new, 2025-2026 House is sworn in on January 3rd, whereas the presidential vote is certified on January 6th.

If Democrats win the House in November and are sworn in on January 3rd, it’s unlikely that Speaker Hakeem Jeffries would go along with Trump’s scheme on January 6th, and Republicans wouldn’t have the necessary majority in any case.

But if Republicans can hold the House, there’s a good chance that Speaker Mike Johnson would happily hold the vote to declare Harris’ win as “fraudulent.” After all, he’s the guy who corralled fully 147 votes against certifying the 2020 election in the House; his being the ringleader of that effort is the main reason he’s the speaker right now.

There are multiple razor-tight House races in California, Colorado, and New York. Trump and his co-conspirators may well believe that his holding rallies in those states represents the best bet for helping Republicans win those races, thus insuring Johnson is in charge of the House so they can refuse certification and throw the case to themselves via the Supreme Court.

Seizing control of the Senate would be the icing on the cake for this scheme, as it’s also sworn in on January 3rd and also votes to certify the Electoral College vote, but a deadlock is only necessary in one of the two legislative bodies, and if the 12th Amendment is invoked by six Republicans on the Supreme Court because of that deadlock only the House votes for president.

Keep in mind, JD Vance is still refusing to say that Trump lost the 2020 election, most recently stonewalling the question five times in a podcast interview with Lulu Garcia-Navarro of The New York Times last week. Donald Trump is also still asserting that he won, and is already signaling that he intends to declare victory in November regardless of the “official” outcome.

And, unlike in 2020, there are no longer Mitt Romneys, Adam Kinzingers, or Liz Cheneys in Congress who could gum up the works. The GOP is today unified in its assertion that voter fraud handed Joe Biden the 2020 presidency: this is the perfect setup for the scenarios I’m describing, and Republicans know it. They created it, in fact.

The most likely scenario, though, would involve local election officials gumming up the works by slow-walking counts, challenging counts, or outright refusing to certify counts at the state level long enough that several individual state votes can’t be certified by January 6th, very much like in the election of 1876.

That would provide an easy excuse for the six Republicans on the Supreme Court to intervene, invoke the 12th Amendment, and throwing the election to the House, guaranteeing Trump’s victory.

As Jim Rutenberg and Nick Corasaniti recently wrote for The New York Times:

“The Republican Party and its conservative allies are engaged in an unprecedented legal campaign targeting the American voting system. Their wide-ranging and methodical effort is laying the groundwork to contest an election that they argue, falsely, is already being rigged against former President Donald J. Trump. …
“Even if the cases fail, Mr. Trump’s allies are building excuses to dispute the results, while trying to empower thousands of local election officials to disrupt the process. Already, election board members in several states have moved to block certification of primary election tallies, including in a major swing county in Nevada last week.”

The updated Electoral Count Act sets a hard date of December 11th for states to certify the vote, but doesn’t detail any consequences or outcomes if states fail to meet that date. Thus, in the case of conflict, confusion, or multiple lawsuits the case would, again, end up before the six Republicans who control the Supreme Court.

As the Times’ Rutenberg and Corasaniti note:

“For his part, Mr. Whatley, the co-chair of the Republican National Committee, was noncommittal when reporters recently asked him if his party would seek to block certification in any states this fall.
“‘We’re not going to cross any of those bridges right now,’ he said.”

Gee, ya think? They couldn’t be telegraphing their plans any more clearly if they were skywriting them.

I wrapped up my March 2020 article predicting the GOP’s upcoming fake elector strategy by imploring Democrats and the media to ring the alarm before they tried to pull it off:

“Get it into the media and repeat it over and over again: The GOP plans to claim Democratic voter fraud in this election to steal the election for themselves, and they’re already getting people primed for it!”

It’s worth repeating today.

Pass it along.

For years, linking climate change to the growing destructive power of hurricanes was off limits for mainstream media. Now the connection is undeniable. Massive in size, rapidly intensifying, loaded with unprecedented rainfall, and firing off fatal tornadoes, the link between a warmer world and monster hurricanes like Helene and Milton is impossible to ignore—though too much coverage still does.

But even when news stories tell us that “climate change” is causing these rapidly intensifying storms, they are only telling us half the story. Climate change is not just the fuel for these disasters, it is also the result of the decades of lies from big oil and gas companies that created the climate emergency and are still fueling it today.

Scientists from ExxonMobil and other fossil fuel majors told executives decades ago that unabated use of their products could cause “catastrophic” climate disasters. Instead of sounding the alarm, the oil and gas industry launched the most consequential campaign of lies in human history, on a scale far worse and more damaging than anything before. They funded junk science, polluted our politics, and ran massive advertising campaigns all with the goal of stopping any action that could threaten their bottom line. Our climate crisis is the result of that deception, as are the super-charged hurricanes, deadly heatwaves, and mega wildfires that we now face because Big Oil stole decades from humanity that we can never get back.

The problem with only blaming “climate change” for killer weather events is that it leaves out how exactly we got into this mess—and who is responsible.

If we talk only about “climate change” during these disasters, we forgo a critical teaching moment when millions are open to learning about an issue that typically commands almost no attention at all. As painful as they are, the moments when deadly storms have our attention are precisely the times we need to talk about the elephant in the room: the fossil fuel industry. The longer we avoid the issue, the more violent these storms will become, because the industry has not stopped lying and is doubling down on the products fueling the crisis. Now that climate change is everywhere, fossil fuel companies don’t so much deny the problem as they promote “solutions” they know are bogus, like “natural gas,” which is roughly as bad for the climate as coal, or carbon capture, which is laughable as a solution in the timeframe and scale that is needed, not to mention that to date it has been used primarily to extract even more oil.

The problem with only blaming “climate change” for killer weather events is that it leaves out how exactly we got into this mess—and who is responsible. Climate change doesn’t have lobbyists, doesn’t have executives making decisions, cannot be investigated, and cannot be held accountable in the courts. As long as climate change is seen as the cause of all extreme weather destruction, the oil industry can continue pretending to be part of the solution.

It was the oil and gas industry, not climate change, that created widespread climate denial and turned climate action into a partisan political issue. It was the oil and gas industry, not climate change, that successfully blocked ratification of the Kyoto Treaty in 1998, killed Waxman-Markey in 2009, and watered down the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, ensuring the law would not place limits on climate pollution or in any way slow the expansion of the U.S. oil and gas industry.

This focus on a causal agent that can never be held accountable spawns a spectrum of negative consequences. It shields the true cause, the lying oil and gas majors, from any form of accountability. Instead of the oil and gas majors being forced to pay their fair share for disaster recovery, we hear calls for more FEMA funding, which is merely taxpayers footing the bill. And instead of reckoning with the fact that some of those who died would very likely still be alive were these storms not radically amplified by fossil fuel emissions made possible by companies who have lied about just about every aspect of their role in causing the problem, we act as if there can be no accountability for these deaths.

The question is not, “Did climate change make these two hurricanes more destructive?” We already know that along with climate change comes more powerful and deadly storms. The question is, who and what caused climate change? The answer to that question is right before us.

We have endured 50 years of unrelenting class war and culture war campaigns by corporate elites, conservatives, and neoliberals against the democratic achievements of last century's progress. Following the gains achieved from the 1930's through the end of the end of the 1960's, we've now had five decades of devastating attacks on the rights of workers, women, and people of color. It's been a half-century of creeping authoritarianism. And now, having failed to effectively counter it with truly progressive and radical democratic action, we face the threat of full-throated fascism. Just listen to what the rhetoric of Donald Trump and his MAGA followers in Congress, on-line, and at rallies portends.

So, what is to be done?

However much we may have yearned for a more progressive ticket and platform—the answer to the above question is simple: Work like hell for Harris/Walz, and their fellow Democratic nominees from top-to- bottom, to win in November. If they lose, we lose.

We lose not only the election, but also any chance of redeeming and enhancing American democratic life in the foreseeable future.

But don’t think of November 5th as merely an election to save American democratic life. Because the struggle for us, however much rooted in the long struggle to make real the revolutionary promise of the Declaration—the promise of equality and life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all Americans—will have just begun. Think of it as a vote to empower ourselves anew to take up that fight.

Don’t think of November 5th as merely an election to save American democratic life.

Having recently produced a comic strip recounting FDR’s 1944 call and the continuing fight for an Economic Bill of Rights, Matt "The Letterhack" Strackbein and I have been asking ourselves what we should do now to remind Americans of who we all are and what we need to do to truly save democracy.

To both help us confront the question and inspire us to make history anew, we invited the great radical patriot and pamphleteer Thomas Paine to join us at the bar. This is the Paine whose Common Sense turned a colonial rebellion into a revolution for independence and the making of a democratic republic; the Paine, whose Crisis papers sustained the Revolution in its darkest days; the Paine who not only called for an end to slavery, but also proposed the creation of a social security system.

As we say at the close of this comic: Stay tuned…

Eight years ago, Hillary R. Clinton seemed certain to derail Donald J. Trump’s barely begun political career. Instead, a witch’s brew of misogyny, mistakes, and the Electoral College gave us our second minority-vote president of the early 21st century.

Eight years later, here we are in the final weeks of a second presidential matchup with an equally possible stark and dark outcome, Trump versus Kamala Harris.

Demented Donald would turn America into His Own Special Hell (HOSH, not MAGA). Harris would not lead us to heaven, but she’d take us to a better place and spare us from any of Trump’s shenanigans. If she wins, she’d also finally add the United States to the list of nations together enough to elect a woman to the highest office in the land.

America’s Founding Fathers left us so much to be proud of. The Electoral College, on the other hand, is nothing to be proud of.

Now let’s examine some aspects of Election 2024, starting with the one that tops all the others: the almost laughable axiom that character counts in the race to the White House. This year, in the large, character counts for approximately zero.

The Republican candidate is a convicted felon, a sexual predator, a serial liar, a grifter, a racist, a poster boy for moral bankruptcy (and financial bankruptcy as well). None of which matters: Unfathomably, unbelievably, tens of millions of Americans will vote to put him back in the Oval Office for another four years.

Underlining the point—the irrelevance of character in Election 2024—the best comes last. A 449-page book by Vincent L. Sterling, published this June, argues (seriously) that Donald J. Trump has been chosen by God. Of course, of course; how could any character-conscious voter miss the divine clues that Sterling spies?

The Democrats pulled off a surprise by nominating little-known Tim Walz for vice president, and he returned the favor with a surprise of his own. The headline of one news report summed it up: “Tim Walz’s simple takedown of Republicans goes viral.”

Walz’s plain words, stingingly sharply, gave the Harris-Walz ticket an exhilarating liftoff: “These guys are creepy and yes, just weird as hell.”

When was the last time that major members of a political party openly opposed their chosen presidential nominee? Good for you for remembering it was only four years ago, and the candidate they couldn’t and wouldn’t vote for was Donald Trump. Among the non-Trumpers were marquee names by the scores, headed by former president George W. Bush. The nays also included three former secretaries of defense (William H. Cohen, Chuck Hagel and James Mattis) and Colin Powell, the former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff who went on serve as Bush’s secretary of state.

The number of Republicans repelled by Trump is only half the story in 2024, and it’s the other half that’s rocked and shocked both parties. In addition to opposing The Donald, droves of GOPers have also publicly declared they’ll be voting for Harris. Once again there’s a glittering roster of Republican turncoats, topped off this time by one of the most committed right-wingers ever to occupy the ranks of the right. That would be former Vice President Dick Cheney, who finally showed just a touch of the spine of his daughter Liz.

Cheney not only matched his daughter, he outmatched the man he served as vice president. Former President George W. Bush has no plans to endorse anybody in 2024. According to his office, “President Bush retired from presidential politics years ago.” (Note: Bush the retiree personally revealed that his vote in 2020 went not to Trump but to Condoleeza Rice.)

National security officials normally keep their presidential politics to themselves; not so, though, in the abnormal year of 2024.

Hundreds of high-ranking security personnel have not only thrown their support behind Harris, they’ve described Trump as “impulsive and ill-informed.” They see him as lacking in leadership and subject to a “scary authoritarian streak.” There were 741 signers to the letter that lays out their views, including U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Michael Smith, the president of National Security Leaders for America.

Come November 5, none of these ingredients will decide Election 2024; that power lies solely with the Electoral College.

America’s Founding Fathers left us so much to be proud of. The Electoral College, on the other hand, is nothing to be proud of. It’s been with us for our entire history, ever since the country was formed in Philadelphia in 1787. It was a compromise, inserted into the Constitution essentially to appease slaveholders in the colonial South.

Constitutional law expert Wilfred U. Codrington III describes it as a lasting stain: “More than two centuries after it was designed to empower southern white voters, the system continues to do just that.”

Stay tuned for November 5 (or the next day, or the next…)

Lies and rumors about the federal hurricane response serve to build the far-right’s governing power. At the expense of human lives, the far-right—which nowadays includes the Republican party, the Trump campaign, billionaire donors, GOP governors, and the advocates behind Project 2025—deliberately sows distrust in government, specifically targeting federal public administration.

Federal agencies’ roles in a disaster are to issue warnings, provide rescue and relief, and support rebuilding. Across the spectrum of public administration, agencies’ regular jobs involve the things we rely on every single day: ensure our tap water is clean, our food and medicines are safe, our collective bargaining rights are protected, our retirement checks arrive on time, and much more. Yet the far-right peddles a dangerous narrative that casts public agencies and civil servants as the “deep state,” the enemy of the people. By delegitimizing our government, they pave the way for an authoritarian takeover.

As we knock on doors to mobilize voters, we must be prepared to address widespread distrust in government, whether it manifests in anger or apathy. If people give up on government—which we formed to solve problems together that we cannot tackle alone—they retreat or turn to strongmen for answers. How do we debunk the “deep state” conspiracy and shine a light on the essential role of government in delivering on our needs?

There is a bleak logic to gutting public protections and public services: When government is unable to deliver, people become resentful and receptive to authoritarian fixes.

This summer I worked on a new toolkit, recently released by Race Forward, to help shift the narrative and block the far-right’s assault on public administration. It offers ideas for talking about what public administration is, and what it can be. While we know that the federal government produced or maintained many of the inequities and injustices we see today, it can also be part of the solution. Throughout history, movements for civil rights, workers’ rights, women’s rights, and many others taught us how to bend government towards justice.

We must begin by taking people’s affective responses to government seriously. Working class and poor people feel disaffected and disempowered because government hasn’t delivered for them. The class divide is real, the power and wealth gap between the rich and the rest of us is growing, racial injustice remains entrenched, misogyny is on the rise. Decades of neoliberal policies, pushing the commercialization of everything, have produced a full-blown crisis for working class people, disproportionately people of color. Privatization, disinvestment, and corporate capture have hollowed out public institutions and dismantled public goods. Our human rights are violated on a daily basis by unaffordable, commoditized housing and healthcare, food deserts, grocery price gauging, and hazardous workplaces, thereby shortening the lifespans of people pushed to the economic margins. Public administrative agencies are seen as bureaucratic barriers at best, and as controlling, coercing, and policing Black, brown, and poor people at worst.

This crisis has produced a fertile ground for a far-right plan, laid out by Project 2025, to capture the institutions of public administration. By delegitimizing government and setting it up to fail, authoritarians make it easier for themselves to take it over and turn government against communities.

Lying about federal disaster response fits neatly into this strategy. Rumors about the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) seizing people’s property and spending aid dollars on migrants sow distrust, division, and hate and undercut the agency’s ability to deliver. This sets the stage for the far-right’s goal to end any government action to address the climate crisis. Project 2025 plans to drastically shrink federal disaster aid, shift costs to localities, privatize federal flood insurance, and terminate grants for community preparedness. Because climate research and planning are seen as harmful to what Project 2025 calls “prosperity,” the plan is to break up the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), including the National Weather Service that sends out hurricane warnings, and commercialize weather forecasting, likely putting warnings behind paywalls.

There is a bleak logic to gutting public protections and public services: When government is unable to deliver, people become resentful and receptive to authoritarian fixes.

This is particularly painful because it comes at a time when the Biden-Harris administration has taken some steps toward making federal agencies more responsive to people’s needs. This includes not only climate-related investments and jobs, but also new regulations that advance environmental justice, protect workers from heat exposure, increase overtime eligibility, ban non-compete clauses, and limit credit card penalty fees. But such agency actions often remain invisible, obscured by bureaucratic procedures, buried in the tax code, or held up in courts. We can surface these tangible efforts when we talk to potential voters and point to the purpose and possibilities of public administration.

A Trump presidency would reverse both recent progress and systemic protections embedded in the work of federal agencies. Project 2025 is not shy about terminating the enforcement of hard-won civil rights laws and privileging the narrow interests of corporations that price gauge, pollute, and exploit our communities. It would staff agencies with white Christian nationalists who seek to divide and dominate us.

These threats cannot be averted through a merely defensive stance. By calling on people to defend “democracy,” establishment politicians ignore popular anger, rooted in persistent experiences of inequity and injustice. Promoting an “opportunity economy” that relinquishes the goal of equitable outcomes simply doesn’t cut it. We can only block a far-right power grab if we tackle the injustices that fuel resentment. To mobilize people, we must have a compelling vision for turning government into a force for equity and justice. The job of public agencies is to protect our rights and deliver on our needs, and we can make them do just that—as long as we stand together, united.

In this election and beyond, we must contest the far-right narrative that undermines government and public administration. When people are reluctant to engage because the system is not working for them, let’s raise their expectations of government as a protector of rights, a provider of public goods and services, and a site for exercising our collective power.

This summer, with the stunning landscape of the Mongolian steppe as a backdrop, Indigenous Peoples from all corners of the world gathered together around a fire as instrumental music played and animals grazed freely in the fields. At a time of immense social, economic, and environmental upheaval globally, the gathering celebrated Indigenous unity, spirituality, and shared respect for the Earth.

The experience in Mongolia marked a momentary pause from the relentless mistreatment and oppression that Indigenous Peoples' cultures have endured for centuries and that we continue to endure to this day.

Despite the fact that Indigenous Peoples sustain approximately 40% of Earth's remaining intact ecosystems, agribusiness, mining, and extractive companies are driving deforestation across our land, while climate change sets our homes on fire. At the same time, Indigenous Peoples' languages, which represent a deep tie to our cultures and values, are fading out. Every two weeks, an Indigenous language dies. These realities are frightening, but we cannot ignore them. Instead, we must address them head-on and remain resilient.

It's time for the world to recognize that in preserving our way of life, we are also contributing significantly to preserving life on Earth.

The ceremony in Mongolia marked the start of the second in-person gathering of the Wayfinders Circle, a global network of Indigenous Peoples who have successfully kept alive our ways of life, along with our land, languages, traditions, and cultures. The Wayfinders Circle is composed of 15 member groups from across the seven sociocultural regions of the world, protecting 47 million hectares of land and 72 million hectares of oceans. The alliance gathers experts in the care and management of Indigenous territories, marked by guardianship, self-governance, and ancestral knowledge rooted in spirituality and passed down through generations.

Members of the Wayfinders Circle are seeking to address the challenges, threats, and difficulties Indigenous Peoples face and re-empower our communities as a collective by coming together, learning, and exchanging experiences related to ways of life, belief systems, and traditional practices. Together, we are using new mediums and methods to preserve the world in which we live.

I was fortunate to witness the initial formation of the alliance, and last month, I had the honor of sharing welcoming words during the premiere of the new film series, The Wayfinders, which brings attention to our work preserving our cultures and protecting our planet. The series, which premiered at the American Museum of Natural History during Climate Week NYC, allows Indigenous Peoples to tell our story from our perspective. It highlights Indigenous Peoples' deep connection to the environment and our role in protecting our sacred land, from the lush forests of Borneo, to the ancient territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy and the biodiverse Northern Territory of Australia. In each corner of the world, we are connected and fighting together to protect who we are.

Even though Indigenous Peoples have distinct perspectives and experiences, speak different languages, and represent diverse cultures and beliefs, what brings us together now is our profound connection to our homelands, a relationship built across millennia. Through the creation of The Wayfinders, what became abundantly clear is that we are all dedicated to the preservation of Indigenous cultures, from territorial management to the protection of sacred sites and languages.

Language in particular is a core aspect of who we are. It is more than just a means of communication—it is a living and sacred link between our past, present, and future. Language connects Indigenous Peoples' communities to our ancestors, carrying forward our history, beliefs, and traditions. It plays a vital role in preserving culture and ensuring its continuity for future generations.

I am Saami from Norway. As Sámi people, we are considered the only Indigenous Peoples in Europe, including Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Russia. We feel proud that, despite the challenges, we maintain our language. Our rich vocabulary is essential for our traditional livelihoods, such as reindeer herding, as it allows us to describe conditions crucial for navigation and survival in the Arctic landscape. It's estimated that the Sámi languages have more than 300 words specifically for snow and ice. These words capture subtle variations in snow's texture, quality, form, and changes over time, reflecting our people's deep connection to and understanding of our environment.

As Indigenous Peoples around the world continue to face growing threats to our cultures, land, languages, and spirituality, we are thinking expansively and creatively to fight back. Through children's books, modern songs, cultural camps, digital platforms, and more, Indigenous Peoples are preserving our way of life. The success of these efforts is not only a testament to the resilience of Indigenous Peoples but also a profound statement about the importance of our cultural and spiritual identity. It's time for the world to recognize that in preserving our way of life, we are also contributing significantly to preserving life on Earth.

As a lot of places in the U.S. have made the switch from "Columbus Day" to "Indigenous Peoples Day," honoring and recognizing the rich history, cultures, and contributions of Indigenous Peoples, as well as acknowledging the effects of colonialism and the injustices they've faced, I invite you to take a step further. Just changing the name isn't enough. I encourage everyone to look for ways to respect Indigenous Peoples and embrace the wayfinding guiding wisdom of our ancestors as we tackle the global challenges we're facing today.

With Election Day just three weeks off and voting already underway in some states, the race for president is down to the wire. Progressives could make the difference.

While no one in their left mind plans to vote for the fascistic and unhinged former U.S. President Donald Trump, some say they won’t vote for Vice President Kamala Harris because of her loyalty to President Joe Biden’s support for the Israeli war on Gaza. That might enable Trump to win with enough electoral votes from swing states—Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Those seven states are where progressives may well hold the future in their voting hands.

If it becomes a reality, the Trump-Vance administration will force progressives back on their heels, necessarily preoccupied with trying to mitigate the onslaught of massive damage being inflicted by right-wing zealots with vast government power.

The policy that Harris has defended for the war on Gaza is despicable. At the same time, she is the only candidate who can spare us from another Trump presidency, which—from all indications—would be far worse than the first one.

The need is urgent for dialectics—“a method of examining and discussing opposing ideas in order to find the truth”—in this case, the truth of what’s most needed at this electoral crossroads of fateful history.

“The harms of the other options” mean that the best course of action is to vote for Harris, 25 Islamic clerics said in a letter released last week. They focused on an overarching truth: “Particularly in swing states, a vote for a third party could enable Trump to win that state and therefore the election.” The U.S. clerics called such a vote “both a moral and a strategic failure.”

Personally, as a resident of solid-blue California, I have no intention of voting for Harris. But if I lived in one of the seven swing states, I wouldn’t hesitate to join in voting for her as the only way to defeat Trump.

Some speak of the need to exercise conscience rather than voting for Harris. Yet in swing states, what kind of “conscience” is so self-focused that it risks doing harm to others as a result of a Trump presidency?

If it becomes a reality, the Trump-Vance administration will force progressives back on their heels, necessarily preoccupied with trying to mitigate the onslaught of massive damage being inflicted by right-wing zealots with vast government power.

On domestic policies—involving racism, reproductive rights, civil liberties, the environment, climate, labor rights, the social safety net, civil rights, voting rights, LGBTQ rights, freedom of speech and the right to organize, the judicial system, and so much more—the differences between the Trump and Harris forces are huge. To claim that those differences are insignificant is a nonsensical version of elitism, no matter how garbed in leftist rhetoric.

On foreign policy, Harris is the vice president in an administration fully on board with bipartisan militarism that keeps boosting the Pentagon budget, bypassing diplomacy for ending the Ukraine war while stoking the cold war, and—with vast arms shipments to Israel—literally making possible the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

At the same time, anyone who thinks that Trump (“finish the job”) wouldn’t be even worse for Palestinian people—hard as that is to imagine—doesn’t grasp why Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is so eager for Trump to win.

The leadership of the Uncommitted Movement has sorted out the political options. The terrain was well described by Uncommitted leader Abbas Alawieh, who said last month: “At this time, our movement opposes a Donald Trump presidency whose agenda includes plans to accelerate the killing in Gaza while intensifying the suppression of anti-war organizing. And our movement is not recommending a third-party vote in the presidential election, especially as third-party votes in key swing states could help inadvertently deliver a Trump presidency, given our country’s broken Electoral College system.”

As his frequent collaborator C.J. Polychroniou noted last month, Noam Chomsky “has repeatedly made the argument that voting for a third-party or independent candidate in a swing state would accomplish nothing but increase the possibility of the most extreme and positively nuts candidate winning the election.”

In an interview with Jacobin a few weeks ago, Alawieh had this to say:

As someone who has family who lives in South Lebanon right now—who are living under the terror of U.S. weapons raining down on them from the Israeli military—I do not have the luxury of giving up on the only one of the two major parties where there is room for this debate. To be clear, there’s room for this debate not because the Democratic Party is friendly to Palestinian human rights. There’s room for this debate because A) the Republican Party is not the party where we can have this conversation; not a single federal elected official on the Republican side even supports a cease-fire as this genocide has raged on, and B) the Democratic Party speaks of being the party of justice and inclusion, and there are more and more of us within the party who are insisting that the party change its immoral and illegal support of sending weapons to harm and kill civilians.

Similarly, another prominent Uncommitted Movement leader, Palestinian American Layla Elabed, said: “We urge Uncommitted voters to register anti-Trump votes and vote up and down the ballot. Our focus remains on building this anti-war coalition, both inside and outside the Democratic Party.”

This is certainly not the presidential election that we want, but it’s the one we have. The immediate task is to prevent a Trump victory. His defeat is essential to keep doors open for progressive change that a new Trump presidency would slam shut with extreme right-wing power.

As violence spreads across Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and beyond, the Middle East stands on the brink of a direct regional war between Israel and Iran. Following Israel's assassinations of Hassan Nasrallah and Ismail Haniyeh then Iran's retaliatory missile strikes, tensions are nearing a dangerous tipping point.

Armed groups throughout the region, including Hezbollah, have long declared that their military actions are directly tied to the ongoing genocide of Gaza. Despite U.S. efforts to frame Lebanon as an isolated front, Hezbollah has made clear there will be no deescalation without a cease-fire in Gaza. Only an end to the assault on Gaza can prevent further escalation.

Last week, a U.S. State Department spokesperson claimed that Hezbollah had " delinked" its call for a cease-fire in Lebanon from the original calls for a cease-fire in Gaza. This assertion, however, is not grounded in reality. In the 33-minute speech referenced by the State Department, Hezbollah's deputy leader actually reaffirmed the importance of maintaining solidarity with Palestine. He explicitly tied Hezbollah's military operations to the situation in Gaza. Moreover, Hezbollah issues daily statements—announcing its military activities in the ongoing conformation with Israel, and all of these statements start with the same template: "In support of the steadfast Palestinian people in Gaza and in defense of Lebanon, the Islamic Resistance carried out..." These statements continuous to underscore Hezbollah's ongoing alignment with Palestine and their unwillingness to cease operations in Lebanon without a simultaneous cease-fire in Gaza.

By halting military aid to Israel and enforcing U.S. law, [Biden] can help bring about a regional cease-fire that saves lives—not just in Gaza, but across the Middle East.

In a major statement issued on October 11, Hezbollah reaffirmed its commitment to maintaining alignment with Gaza. As the message read: "The settlements of northern occupied Palestine will remain empty of settlers until the war on Gaza and Lebanon stops." This declaration makes it clear that there can be no cease-fire in Lebanon without a simultaneous cease-fire in Gaza, directly contradicting the U.S. narrative of decoupling the two fronts.

Since last October, Hezbollah, as well as armed groups in Iraq and Yemen, have made it clear that their involvement in the armed conflict is directly tied to the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza. They have explicitly linked their attacks on Israel to the violence in Gaza, stating that they are acting in solidarity with the Palestinian people living under a decades-long occupation, apartheid, and genocide. Without a cease-fire agreement in Gaza, there will be no deescalation of violence from these groups across the region. The Biden administration's focus on Lebanon alone ignores this fundamental reality.

Compounding this flawed approach is the Biden administration's contradictory and dangerous military aid policy. At the same time as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to openly defy U.S. calls for a cease-fire in both Lebanon and Gaza, the Biden administration approved a staggering $8.7 billion in military aid to Israel just last month, bringing the total for the past year closer to $20 billion of U.S. tax dollars sent to Israel—arms that have been used by the Israeli military to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity in the occupied Palestinian territories and elsewhere in the region.

This approach is not only morally indefensible but also violates U.S. law. Under Sections 620i and 620m of the Foreign Assistance Act, the U.S. is prohibited from providing military assistance to foreign security forces involved in gross violations of human rights or to entities obstructing humanitarian aid. Israel's ongoing blockade of Gaza and its military operations, which have resulted in thousands of civilian deaths and widespread destruction, clearly fall within these prohibitions. By continuing to send weapons to Israel, the Biden administration is disregarding its legal obligations and deepening its complicity in the violence.

The Biden administration's failed policies have led to a crisis not only in Gaza but across the region. Hezbollah's rocket fire, Iraqi militia activity, and Yemeni missile strikes are all part of a broader response to the situation in Gaza. Armed groups throughout the Middle East have made it clear: Until the assault on Gaza ends, they will continue to retaliate. The U.S. cannot hope to achieve a cease-fire in Lebanon while ignoring the root of the violence in Gaza.

As U.S. President Joe Biden approaches the final months of his presidency, he has an opportunity to course correct. By halting military aid to Israel and enforcing U.S. law, he can help bring about a regional cease-fire that saves lives—not just in Gaza, but across the Middle East. Achieving peace in the Middle East is a long process, but it begins with ending U.S. complicity in the brutal and ongoing genocide and pushing for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza.

This is the second-ever presidential election as conscious adults for many young folks. I remember during my first, in 2020, I was freshly 18 and brimming with an almost egoistic confidence in my decision to abstain from voting. I did not have faith in either the Democratic Party or their nominee, Joe Biden, to represent me.

Four years later, my view of the Democratic Party has only worsened, especially as Palestinian blood continues to spill by their hands. And yet, at the same time, the threat of fascism from the Republican Party is becoming ever more real. The far-right has intensified its attacks on the bodily autonomy of women, the LGTBQ community, and on the rotting carcass that is American Democracy. Now that I am 22, and in stark contrast to my past self, this election leaves me writhing in a pool of self-doubt. The same question repeats over and over in my head: Can I really sit this one out?

It is within this tension that I found myself sitting down with three next-system thinkers about the upcoming election. These activists and scholars have dedicated their lives to challenging systemic poverty and economic injustice through decades of combined experience in grassroots organizing in the United States. Our discussion touched not only on the significance of the 2024 election but the increasingly acute political crisis in the United States and the current prospects for system change.

We're living globally in a period of a profound economic crisis and environmental catastrophe.

What I learned, in some ways, reflected my own ambivalence. They too were divided on the question that Bill Fletcher described in our interview as "the politics of moral outrage versus the politics of power." As Cheri Honkala shared with me, it is important that Americans vote their conscience in the face of a genocide carried out in Palestine by the Democratic Party. However, Stephanie Luce offered an opposing perspective, urging the left to "get realistic about our power" in the context of an increasingly emboldened, fascistic right wing. Ultimately, what these contrasting tendencies represent is an ongoing historical debate between two different philosophies for the American left.

These interviews have been edited for brevity and clarity.

Q: There seems to be a general sense that, regardless of who wins the 2024 presidential election, the system as a whole—the social, ecological, economic, and political system of which we are all a part—has some very serious issues. What systemic problems do you see today and how serious are they?

Cheri Honkola: Our capitalist system has created a situation where people just can't live… People have absolutely no rights to land, no rights to free speech, and no rights to live anywhere. And there's a serious increasing criminalization just of being poor and just of being homeless in this country. People just can't live right now, so people are being forced to set up co-ops and a cooperative economy and all of those kinds of things. And the approach, I think, for folks that are on the absolute bottom, it's a little different. There's a growing equality of misery; we're very clear that there's going to be no utopia under capitalism.

Bill Fletcher Jr.: We're living globally in a period of a profound economic crisis and environmental catastrophe, and this convergence runs us into the equivalent of two tectonic plates that are crashing against one another. And in that situation, you have mountains that are built, and you have earthquakes, and we're seeing both, and so this is creating great instability and anxiety.

In the United States, in part as a reflection of that, we're living through a cold Civil War. And this cold Civil War really became very evident with Newt Gingrich and the Contract With America, there were clear signs of counterattack against the victories that had been won in the 20th century. Now since then, key elements in the Republican establishment have made use of mass movements on the right that have been developing since the late 60s and have thought that they could manipulate them, but instead, what they've done is follow the course of Dr. Frankenstein in creating a monster that they can't control, and that's why the MAGA movement smacked out of the way the opponents to former U.S. President Donald Trump both in 2016 and this year. So, it's a very dangerous situation, and the danger's compounded by an armed wing of the right-wing authoritarian movement, plus the recklessness of very wealthy men, so it creates a very unstable situation.

If we go down a path of authoritarian rule, I don't see any hope for addressing a more functioning economy or a more sustainable climate situation that's going to protect the most impacted.

Stephanie Luce: Well, I think it's multidimensional. The crises are from a number of angles. Some of the most pressing issues are certainly related to climate. There is really no way of turning back, so our choices are to slow down the worst of it and mitigate the worst impacts. But in any case, it seems, we're already in it, and a lot of people are already experiencing a climate crisis, and then certainly, there are growing threats to democracy around the world, of people even electing authoritarian leaders and losing faith in democracy. And I would say the U.S. certainly has never had a real democracy even to begin with. So, it's not like I'm romanticizing what came before, but it is possible that even that can go backwards, instead of forwards, in terms of creating a real multiracial democracy. And then how we think about the economy, there are a lot of measures that would suggest things are relatively stable right now, but underneath it is certainly not a sustainable system, it's an economy that's producing for profit instead of human need and producing for growth instead of sustainability. So, I would say those are the underlying crises that will be there no matter what the outcome of the election is.

Q: Given what you just shared, what kinds of changes to the system do you see as absolutely necessary? And what changes do you think are opening up that you are really excited about?

Cheri: One of the things I see is that this growing equality of misery is a different form of unity that is developing. The ruling class has really figured out how to keep us divided in regard to gender, race, and all of these other kinds of things. And I think that the positive side of the negative is that it's forcing us to figure out how to work together to create something very different in order to stay alive.

One of the closest people I work with is an African American male who was formerly homeless and incarcerated, served some time in the military, has seven kids, and is married. There's no way we would have been working together for 30 years just because he's a nice guy. We have nothing in common. But we've had to figure out ways to work together. People need each other desperately in order to stay alive.

For us, it's really about organizing. To literally take back land, organize to take back food, working together to demand the other half of the operation for a kid's mouth, and that's why we've just recently written this book Takeover. It's a little bit of our history, but it's also a manual on teaching homeless people across this country how to house themselves in abandoned government homes that are vacant because there are more abandoned properties than there are homeless people. And I think that the other positive thing is that there's so much surplus right now that it really is a question of redistribution and getting organized to take back our human rights.

We have to create a block that's capable of winning and introducing substantive, structural changes.

Bill: Well, the system itself is a rock, so I start there. Capitalism is antithetical to the future of humanity. Now, on top of that, the U.S. sociopolitical system that's based on or built upon, capitalism is itself rigged against people of color, women, against working-class people. And one of the things about the way it's rigged, particularly when it comes to people of color, is that when we try to play by the rules, the rules get changed. We see this in elections by different things that the Republicans have been doing in terms of voter suppression. You see this in the economy and business. The demand needs to be for consistent democracy, an expansion of democracy into all spheres, not a retraction or a retrenchment, and so we need to make it easier for people to vote, not more difficult. We need to make it easier for workers to form unions, not more difficult. We need to make it easier for women to control their own bodies, not more difficult. We need to make it easier for LGBTQ folks to live their lives in harmony and not more difficult. We need to be addressing the fact that the planet is burning rather than ignoring it. Those are the kinds of things that we need to be doing, and those are the changes that need to be introduced and that we need to demand of our political leaders.

Stephanie: Well for me, in a sense, the building of a multiracial democracy is an outcome and a way to address the other two. I don't see how if we go down a path of authoritarian rule, I don't see any hope for addressing a more functioning economy or a more sustainable climate situation that's going to protect the most impacted. So I guess for me, some of my effort has been focusing on deepening and expanding and making democracy real, because I feel like that's one of our only hopes for addressing those other serious crises.

I think it's a strange moment of kind of real highs and lows. So, I have been involved myself in a number of efforts to engage more people in this fight around democracy, acknowledging, again, like I said, the ways in which it has failed many of us up until now. It's not about just saying, let's revive the status quo or what's done been before, but can we deepen it and make it more real, whether it's in the workplace, through having a voice at work and even thinking about worker control, whether it's in our communities, and thinking about what it would look like if we had people who are most impacted making real decisions about things like housing and transportation.

Some of the training and discussion about what democracy could look like, the ways in which it's failed us, and the historic role that working people have played in fighting off authoritarian governments, I think that's interesting. There are people definitely worried about that and engaged in that. My other arena is particularly around worker organizing, just tons of interest. I've never seen this level of interest in the entire time I've worked on this, particularly among young people, about how it's not just about fighting for things, like a union that's important, but like, really questioning, why do we even work at all? What is it for? What's the purpose of work, and who makes the decisions about how the economy runs?

Q: Staying on the theme of new possibilities: What kinds of new combinations do you see as possible—unusual allies, new ways of coming together, new sets of approaches—in the 2020s that may have been more difficult to achieve in the past?

Cheri: Well, there really is this thing that we call a growing, developing new class. And so that's like a nurse friend of mine that just figured she was going to be a nurse the rest of her life and everything would be great. And now she's an older woman, and she couldn't figure out the technology, and so she was replaced by a bunch of younger people that are going into nursing that were born and raised with computers. Or it's the person that has worked someplace, and they've totally eliminated that industry that used to pay enough so you could have a two-car garage or thought that they were going to be great for the rest of their life because they worked at a union and paid union dues their whole life, and then they close down that shop. These are the new people that are coming to the bottom and that we're working together with, and that's a huge fall. And these are people who really believe that they have an entitlement.

You know capitalism has really done a job on poor people period, to have them believe that they don't really deserve any of these things, and they don't have rights, and they've been individual failures, and it's not a part of a larger system. And I think that that's harder to buy when you're part of this growing new class of people that are becoming expendable.

Bill: We have been witnessing the rise of new and renovated social movements. We have not yet built a conscious majoritarian block that can win power. That's what we need to do. We need to first block or stop MAGA, but stopping MAGA is not enough. We have to create a block that's capable of winning and introducing substantive, structural changes.

I think that the two corporate political parties in this country are going to fight like hell to remain relevant.

So, I'm not sure that there are any new combinations as such. It's more about making the combinations more conscious and standing up against ethno-nationalism and identity-exclusive politics.

Stephanie: On the one hand, there are a lot of young people, and not just only young people, but a lot of energy from young people looking to rebuild an internationalist movement particularly focused on Gaza, but that brings people to renew their interest in learning about other parts of the world, and we do have more tools to communicate across borders and talk to and learn from activists across the globe. So that's a positive place for me. I also think there are a number of issues that are really contentious, but actually kind of divide our political parties or divide our coalitions. I think immigration is one, for example, it tends to be portrayed as if there's a Republican position and a Democratic position. I don't actually think that's true.

I think there's actually a lot of division within the Democratic Party and also division within the Republican Party, because a lot of people who are truly Christian or religious have a belief in rights. Employers, for example, have historically been wanting to embrace immigrants and bring more immigrants to the country. So, there's these issues that divide the coalitions as they stand and could make space for reconfiguration of new alliances, certainly also around things like healthcare, that crosses party lines. And it's more about 1% versus 99%—and climate as well, I think climate is another area of possibly renewed alliances, and some of that's generational, but it's also about some people's values that that they hold and it's like, Okay, actually, the parties aren't speaking for these values.

Q: It looks like system change is coming whether we like it or not. There are endless possibilities for what the next system might look like, good and bad. What do you see as the organizing and movement building challenges that absolutely must be overcome in order to build a better world?

Cheri: I think we're in an in-between stage right now, and those who are already facing fascism are terrified and having to confront that. That's immigrants in this country, and people that are already living behind bars. And neighborhoods like Kensington are already dealing with a system where the government and the police there and the politicians are all working together, and where they have mobile jails, and there is no due process, and there is no media covering our day-to-day reality. Like in Kensington and other areas of the country, they want absolute control, there already has been a genocide of different sections of the population with the fentanyl crisis, and more people have died now from fentanyl than died during the Vietnam War. And that is crippling people and killing people, and nothing is being done about it.

I think that the two corporate political parties in this country are going to fight like hell to remain relevant. They will buy or offer cabinet positions or large amounts of resources for their organizations to divert the population from system change and keep them in some kind of reform. Have the people's leaders take them in the direction of reform. So, what you see happening now in this country is the immense threat of anybody that's talking about the creation of a different kind of system, versus getting on the bandwagon for Kamala Harris. I have so many Democrat bots on my social media. It's like a full-time job for them. I'm old enough to remember back in the day when there was a real anti-war movement in this country, and you would never think of any civil rights organizations not being involved. There are so many people who are in the financial pockets right now of the Democratic Party for their places of faith. While, literally, children are being slaughtered and the genocide is going on in Gaza; it's just devastating.

Internally, I think we need to really up our internal training about long-term strategy and be realistic about our power.

Bill: One of the big dangers is purism. We see it in the electoral realm all the time, and it's the idea that if a politician does not have exactly my platform, they are a sellout and not worthy of support. It's also reflective of the politics of moral outrage versus the politics of power. So, the politics of moral outrage are represented by "we are furious about this, that, or whatever, and therefore we're not going to vote for this candidate, or we're not going to vote at all." And that view is objectively apocalyptic. Basically, it means that no change can come about until there's a total collapse. And some people believe that you have this kind of pure streak that is waiting. I often analogize it to a surfer who paddles out into the ocean waiting for the ideal wave, believing that once they get it, they can ride it straight into shore. And that's not politics. That's something else. Sectarianism is related. It's sort of the notion that it's my way or the highway.

Mountain Stronghold Mentality is something that Bill Gallegos and I have written about, and it's a notion that comes from an era in the Chinese Revolution when there were guerrilla bands that were literally on mountaintops that would be their base area. They'd come down and attack the enemy and then go back to the base areas. The revolution shifted, and they needed mobile units to engage the enemy in a different way. Many of the guerrilla commanders didn't want to come down from mountaintops, because they were comfortable. They were secure. They didn't believe that they could be captured or destroyed by the enemy, and so they basically, despite the change in conditions, sought comfort. We see this with organizations that are afraid to take risks and to unite with others because they're comfortable where they are.

Another problem is the lack of strategy and strategic thinking. We progressives are very used to fighting defensive battles when we have difficulty thinking offensively. So, I'll give you an example. I often use this example. A number of years ago, maybe 10 years ago, I was in Texas on a speaking engagement, and it was before [Greg] Abbott was elected governor. And so, I was giving a talk about something, and during the Q and A, people were telling me how bad the situation was in Texas. So, I listened. They wanted to know what I thought needed to be done. And I said, How do we take over Texas? They took a deep breath, sat back, couldn't figure out what I was thinking, whether I had lost my mind, and I said to them, look, you've told me how bad the situation is. I get it. We have two alternatives. One, we can give up, go off, and get high, right? The other is that we develop a strategy to win. And the strategy to win needs to look at everything, from which are the key cities in Texas, which are the key counties, which are the counties that we can afford to ignore? What are the social movements that are in operation? Who are the key opinion makers? Where can resources be obtained? All of these things. And then read a little bit of Sun Tzu, you know The Art of War, and think strategically about how we win.

Stephanie: Oh, there's so many. Yeah. I mean, this is a long list, but for me, I sometimes think about it as, what do we need to do internally, within our organizations and movements? I think we need to think about that. And then there's the set of external challenges. And so internally, I think we need to really up our internal training about long-term strategy and be realistic about our power. A lot of us don't have power, and instead, we tend to look for a moral stance like, what's the right thing to do? That's important, but if it doesn't come with building power, then it's not a strategy. I worked on this book called Practical Radicals because people have tended to be either radicals with big dreams and visions but with no plan to win, or very pragmatic and with a small, winnable goal, but it's too small to really change much. So, I think as organizations and movements, we have to really get better trained on how to do long-term strategy, and that includes also getting better about how to work in alliance with one another across our organizations and sectors where we don't agree on everything. People in the climate movement might not share the same goals and visions as some people in labor unions, for example, but we have to find those common-ground ways in which we're all better off. We're stronger together than we are apart.

And then I think the external challenges are massive. Because the U.S. state is well armed and powerful. The police state is massive. People will be deported, shot at, arrested. So, we have to be realistic about the powers that we are up against, not just in the United States, but globally. And really also get strategic about how to divide that ruling coalition. They don't all benefit from it, or they benefit unequally, and that means that we need to think about peeling off certain segments of that. That means working with people we really don't like and whom we disagree with on a lot of things, but we might share common end goals, such as climate sustainability or defending democracy as a system. So those external threats are real, and we just don't have the power on our own to really make those kinds of changes.

Decades long conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has ravaged lives of millions. Nearly six million people have been killed since 1996 and the country has the largest population of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Africa with 7.1 million people forced from their home or community. North Kivu Province is particularly impacted with almost one million IDPs living in makeshift camps with limited access to essential services like water, shelter, sanitation and food around the capital city of Goma.

Sexual Violence – A Weapon of War

One of the most distinct elements of this conflict is the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war. From 2021 to 2022, there was a 91 percent rise in reports of gender-based violence (GBV) in North Kivu. Between January and March 2024, more than 12,600 cases of sexual violence were recorded. These numbers, however, are only the tip of the iceberg. Many survivors are unable to access life-saving GBV services; and many do not report abuse out of fear of stigmatization by their communities or retaliation by perpetrators. Both Human rights groups to humanitarian relief organizations report that tens of thousands of women and girls have been victims of systemic sexual violence, including rape, sexual slavery, and forced prostitution.

Most cases of sexual violence involve armed combatants and militias with majority of victims being women and girls—some as young as three years old and others as old as 80. These acts have profound and lasting health consequences for the victims, ranging from physical injuries and psychological trauma to the risk of sexually transmitted infections and unintended pregnancies. Unfortunately, 2024 has been marked by an increase in this violence against women and girls in North Kivu. According to a recently released report, We Are Calling for Help, Medecins Sans Frontières (MSF) provided treatment to 25,166 victims and survivors of sexual violence across the country in 2023. Between January and May 2024, it had already treated 17,363 victims and survivors in North Kivu alone – 69 percent of the total number of victims treated in 2023.

Displacement resulting from heavy fighting between the Congolese armed forces (FARDC) and the M23 rebel group has exacerbated the vulnerability of individuals to sexual violence. Victims are often attacked when they venture outside the IDP camps to gather firewood or seek food. The disruption of humanitarian aid due to insecurity has compounded the challenges. Women and girls are being forced to take greater risks to meet critical needs. Food insecurity and the lack of livelihood opportunities have also led to women being forced to resort to harmful coping mechanisms, including prostitution.

Urgent International Response Needed to Protect Women & Children

The situation in North Kivu is an ugly reminder of the human toll of armed conflicts, with the worst price paid by women and children. Despite the horrors unleashed on the most vulnerable, international response has yet to meet the need of the hour.

With 25.4 million people affected, DRC has the highest number of people in need of humanitarian aid in the world and yet remains one of the most underfunded crises. The United Nations $2.6 billion Humanitarian Response Plan to assist 8.7 million people in 2024, is only 16% funded. At the end of 2023, World Food Programme reported the need for $546 million to sustain its emergency response in the region over the next six months, or be forced to sharply cut assistance, provide reduced support to fewer people — and over a shorter time period. The UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR, received only 41% of the required $298.9 million for the emergency situation in DRC. In the absence of sustained humanitarian support, strengthened protection measures for civilian populations, and increased funding for the Humanitarian Response Plan, especially for programs addressing GBV, displaced women are endlessly enduring violence day after day.

A Resource Curse

The conflict raging in DRC is largely for the control of the country's important raw materials—tin, tungsten, coltan and gold, collectively known as 3T or 3TG. Electronic products from cell phones, laptops to the surge in electric cars have boosted the demand and competition for DRC’s mineral wealth. 2018 Nobel Prize winner, Denis Mukwege, a Congolese doctor, condemned the global demand for these minerals for fueling conflict and consequently, rape in his country. In April 2024, lawyers representing the Congolese government notified Apple of concerns about its supply chain, stating “their products are tainted by the blood of the Congolese people.” International community and the multinational corporations who benefit from Congo’s mineral wealth have the primary responsibility to ensure the return of peace in the country.

Two neighboring countries, Rwanda and Uganda, are extensively involved in illegal exploitation of DRC’s mineral resources and the violence that has plagued the eastern region in the past three decades. The Rwanda-backed M23 has intensified its activities in recent years, resulting in the resurgence of widespread violence and massive displacement of people. For years, the United Nations has sounded the alarm over Rwanda’s continued assistance to the M23, putting forward solid evidence of the “direct involvement” of Rwandan Defense Forces in the conflict in eastern Congo-Kinshasa, as well as Rwanda’s provision of “weapons, ammunitions, and uniforms” to the M23 rebels. The United Nations has also implicated Uganda, which has allowed M23 “unhindered” access to its territory during its operations.

Despite this evidence, Western countries, especially the United States, have continued to provide support to the two countries, including military aid. This, despite the legal restrictions that are supposed to prohibit the U.S. from releasing International Military Education & Training (IMET) funds to countries in the African Great Lakes region that “facilitate or otherwise participate in destabilizing activities in a neighboring country, including aiding and abetting armed groups.” It was only in October 2023 that the U.S. State Department placed Rwanda on a blacklist for violating the Child Soldiers Prevention Act (CSPA) due to Rwandan support for M23, which recruits child soldiers. Support to Uganda continues.

Armed groups, competing for control of profitable minerals, will continue to unleash terror and perpetrate violent crimes against humanity until the impunity for the warring parties is brought to an end; Rwanda and Uganda end military support for M23; and the international community, including the United States, suspends military assistance to governments supporting armed groups. If not, the price of war and conflict will continue to be paid by women and children—victims of DRC’s “resource curse.”

The stories about Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, eating pets have been debunked. Even the woman who filed a police report accusing Haitian migrants of stealing her cat apologized when she later found her cat in her own basement. Sadly, despite being proven false, the damage from these unfounded claims has been severe. Haitians living in Springfield have been subject to hate crimes and threats from people who believe the lie and have coupled their outrage with bigotry to terrorize a community of migrants who are living and working legally in the community through the Temporary Protective Status designation.

Despite the fact that there is no substantiation for the stories, a friend tried to convince me that Haitians are really, truly eating cats and dogs. The evidence, he insisted, came from police bodycam footage. As it turned out, the footage he was talking about was from an arrest of a woman—who was not Haitian—in another part of Ohio who allegedly killed and ate a cat. This woman was born and raised in America and apparently has a mental health disorder. When I pointed these facts out to my friend, he still didn’t acknowledge his error. Instead, he sent me a description of Vodou (aka Voodoo), a religion practiced by many Haitians, which included descriptions of animal sacrifice. He wrote that it would be better if this religion died out and its immigrant practitioners assimilated into American culture.

Perhaps this particularly pernicious and bigoted moment in our polarized society could be a wake-up call to become a bit more introspective and cultivate some moral consistency in how we treat others.

My head was spinning. There were so many ways I could respond. Should I focus on helping him to acknowledge that his original claim was false? Should I point out that his Irish family and my Jewish family were vilified for their cultural differences when they came to this country and invite him to reflect upon his negative judgments about newer immigrants? Should I talk about the range of religious injunctions, not confined to Vodou, which cause harm to animals? I didn’t know where to begin.

Because we’d discussed animal cruelty many times in the past, after mentioning all the points above, I further responded that what we do to billions of animals legally in the U.S. food system is far more extensive, not to mention ghastly, than much of the animal sacrifices that may occur in other people’s religious rituals. Moreover, I pointed out, he was an enthusiastic participant in the cruelty we inflict on cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, and other animals raised for food because he regularly consumes meat, dairy, and eggs. Until now, he’d never expressed much concern about the welfare of animals, often telling me that he cares more about people than animals. Suddenly, along with millions of other Americans who erroneously believe Haitians are eating dogs and cats, he claims to care a lot.

In our culture, most people recoil at the thought of eating dogs and cats and believe it would be wrong to do so. But if it’s wrong to eat dogs and cats, then how is it right to eat pigs—known to be as or more intelligent than dogs—or to consume cows and chickens, both able to feel pain just as acutely as cats and cockatiels do? If we look inward to consider who we eat, we may discover justifications but little disgust or moral outrage.

And yet, the abuse we inflict upon billions of farmed animals each year is on a scale nearly unimaginable. For example, dairy cows in the United States are forced to produce a calf every year, and when they are born, the newborns are taken away from their distraught mothers on their first day of life. We then take the milk meant for the calves for ourselves. The cows are then forced to produce 5 to 10 times the amount of milk they would naturally produce to feed their young, resulting in mastitis, a painful udder infection necessitating antibiotic treatment in about half the dairy cows in the United States. After years of this cycle of artificial insemination, birth, and perpetual milking, their milk production declines. At that point, the cows are sent to slaughter, usually to become hamburger or processed meat.

What about chickens and turkeys, whose names we hurl as an insult of cowardice (for the former) and stupidity (for the latter) even though these birds are brave and intelligent? Almost all of them live the entirety of their lives in crowded, ammonia-saturated buildings; are debeaked without painkillers to prevent them from pecking each other to death in their confinement; and, if they are being used for egg production, are likely caged so tightly they cannot even stretch a wing.

Where is the outrage? Where is the disgust? In her book Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows, psychologist Melanie Joy describes the invisible belief system, which she calls carnism, that leads us to eat certain animals while protecting others. It is this invisible belief system that explains our horror at the thought of people eating pets—a horror we might conceivably express around the dinner table as we gnaw on the rib of a pig or the wing of a hen.

I’d like to hope that the false accusations made against Haitian migrants will help us realize the glass houses we’re living in so that we stop throwing stones. Perhaps this particularly pernicious and bigoted moment in our polarized society could be a wake-up call to become a bit more introspective and cultivate some moral consistency in how we treat others. And then maybe we’ll each take a step toward minimizing the harm we cause humans and nonhumans alike.

Some of the oldest and largest U.S. Department of Agriculture-accredited certifiers have partnered with corporate agribusiness to change the working definition of organics, allowing large livestock factories; certified, uninspected imports; and soilless hydroponic produce grown in giant industrial greenhouses to be certified organic.

Organic certifiers are mixing lobbying, marketing, and activism with their certification responsibilities, and taking payola from the clients they certify. They are also certifying “producer groups” in Eastern Europe, Central America, and Asia without inspecting and certifying each individual farm.

This is against the law and an egregious conflict of interest—and it’s crushing U.S. farmers in the marketplace while raking in billions of dollars in profit for these large certifiers.

The corrupt practices employed by these certifiers have left authentic organic farmers, who focus on sound soil stewardship and humane animal husbandry based on pasture, highly disadvantaged in the marketplace.

In 1990, Congress passed the Organic Foods Production Act (OFPA), tasking the USDA with oversight of dozens of certifiers to ensure their independence and harmonization of standards.

Fast forward to today and the USDA is now allowing a handful of the largest certifiers to collude with corporate agribusiness to industrialize or import the organic food supply at the expense of high standards and the livelihoods of U.S. farmers who adhere to them.

As executive director of OrganicEye, an organic industry watchdog, I’ve witnessed family-scale organic farmers who abide by the USDA’s organic standards get crushed in the marketplace by dubious organic imports allowed into the U.S. without the certification or inspection that federal law requires.

In September, OrganicEye requested that the USDA Office of Inspector General investigate the National Organic Program for failing to prevent corporate influence—including financial payments made to certifiers over and above inspection fees—and failing to enforce other USDA regulations that prevent conflicts of interest, thus lowering the quality of certified organic food.

OrganicEye recently filed a third formal legal complaint against a certifier, Florida Organic Growers (FOG), and their certification arm, Quality Certification Services (QCS), for accepting contributions, conference sponsorships, and other payments over and above certification fees from operations they oversee.

FOG has joined two of the other largest “independent” certifiers in the country, California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF) and Oregon Tilth, in selling out hard-working produce and livestock farmers by certifying giant industrial operations, many allegedly flagrantly breaking the law. Legal complaints against all three are currently pending.

When money changes hands between agribusiness clients and the profiting organizations that certify them, we call that “payola,” classically defined as corruption. These certifiers are acting as agents of the USDA. And the regulators in Washington responsible for auditing them are looking the other way.

Large organic certifiers should not be partnering with corporate agribusiness and cashing in on the growth of organics, especially while other certifiers are upholding the traditionally high standards.

In its first action to reign in certification abuses, OrganicEye filed an administrative law complaint against CCOF, the nation’s largest certifier, in November 2023 to address this out-of-control certification system.

We’ve seen organizations like CCOF, Oregon Tilth, and FOG morph from being among the founding farmer-led groups facilitating the growth of organic farming in the U.S. to multimillion-dollar business enterprises certifying multibillion-dollar corporate agribusinesses.

Recent IRS filings show these certification giants have reaped tens of millions of dollars a year in revenue while “masquerading” as tax-exempt public charities, with the vast preponderance of income derived from service fees paid by their business clients.

In addition to the controversies surrounding certification of livestock factories, a number of prominent certifiers, along with the industry’s primary lobby group, the Organic Trade Association, executed a stealthy campaign in 2017 that resulted in regulators allowing mammoth hydroponic greenhouses (soilless production) to be certified as organic, despite statutory and regulatory language requiring careful soil stewardship before a farm can be certified as organic under the USDA program.

That rich, organically-curated soil microbiome is the foundation of organic farming practices, resulting in superior nutrition density and flavor. That’s lacking in hydroponics, which uses liquid fertilizers derived from materials like conventional soybean meal.

The corrupt practices employed by these certifiers have left authentic organic farmers, who focus on sound soil stewardship and humane animal husbandry based on pasture, highly disadvantaged in the marketplace. With many small organic farms struggling economically—and hundreds more being forced out altogether—the devastating impacts are clear.

It doesn’t have to be this way. And not all certifiers are behaving badly.

For example, Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association is universally viewed as one of the most ethical certifiers. They do not approve hydroponic greenhouses or factory farms as organic.

Since OrganicEye began publishing its research concerning alleged improprieties at the nation’s largest certifiers, we have received numerous inquiries from farmers indicating interest in switching certifiers.

We hope that our research inspires ethical farmers and certified organic business operations to consider switching their allegiance and economic patronage to certifiers who share their values and interpretations of federal law.

In the meantime, consumers and eaters can use the same guide that we have prepared for farmers to help identify some of the most creditable organic food in the marketplace. Federal law requires every package with the word “organic” on the front label to include the name of the certifier supervising the production process. This is commonly found on the back or side panel near the ingredient list.

With the USDA delegating so much authority to certifiers, there are now effectively two organic labels: corporate brands affiliated with OTA lobbyists and certified by their members, motivated by profit and industry growth, and other ethical brands that have not lost touch with the foundational precepts of the organic movement.

OrganicEye is offering free consulting and other resources to farmers around the country who are switching their patronage to certifiers who share their values rather than undercutting their livelihoods.

The precautionary principle—the ethical equivalent of the common sense notion that it’s “better to be safe than sorry”—means that when some economic or policy change may endanger the public, business and government leaders ought to thoroughly conduct research so as to avoid exposing anyone to unnecessary risks.

Unfortunately, with our food system, our government continues to ignore ethics and common sense, recently approving as “safe for breeding and growing” a new genetically modified (GM) variety of wheat—HB4. Copying and combining certain genes from sunflowers to create this new variety, HB4 is not only pitched to farmers as a tool they could use to battle our ever increasingly dire climate crisis, but also to increase yields.

The truth is another, as this latest proposed tech solution to address our climate crisis stands to improve the financial situation of agribusiness corporations more than farmers, while also likely harming our environment instead of helping it. Not only should the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) rethink their decision, but our officials ought to instead support publicly financing regional and local varieties of seed. Strengthening key provisions of the Farm Bill that is currently in Congress could make such proposals a reality.

We need to develop diverse kinds of seeds that suit different ecosystems instead of global “one size fits all” varieties like we find with GM options.

The overarching problem with HB4—particularly for U.S. farmers—is economic.

According to USDA data from the past 25 years, operating costs for wheat farmers have more than tripled in terms of dollars spent per acre—increasing from just over $57 in 1998, to more than $187 in 2023. Also during this time, while the input cost of seed has more than doubled, going from $7 to $16, chemicals have tripled, climbing from $7 to $22. Fertilizer expenses have risen the most—going from $18 to over $78—representing nearly half of what farmers spend per acre.

Wheat is more than a crop, or ingredient that ends up in bread, but an industry, with chemical, fertilizer, and seed companies each clawing for a share.

Meanwhile, wheat prices in our global marketplace have been volatile. The 28% price jump that farmers experienced in the first months of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 quickly stabilized thanks to the Black Sea Grain Initiative—the plan that allowed grain to leave the region for a time until Russia left the agreement in 2023—and different countries easing their export restrictions. Prices then fell, as Ukraine, regularly one of the world’s top wheat exporters, saw its production rebound to pre-invasion levels. Russia’s 2023-2024 exports also exceeded expectations, increasing by 7% over the prior year, making this country the world’s leader in export sales by far.

Meanwhile, the U.S.’ share of wheat exports has steadily fallen for decades, from about 45% in 1980 to just over 15% in 2014. With worldwide production increasing, U.S. wheat farmers may take a loss in 2024.

Maintaining open export markets for wheat can spell the difference between financial life or death for U.S. farmers. On this point, there is no indication that world markets are currently willing to accept HB4, as major international buyers of U.S. wheat have not approved it. With contamination of non-GM wheat a problem that we have been aware of for years, we need to be careful as U.S. farmers can only sell what importers will accept.

The other issue with HB4 wheat is that the seed not only resists drought, but also glufosinate herbicides. Farmers who purchase the seed will have to buy this chemical, in addition to fertilizer. And despite what the USDA claims about safety, studies show that this class of herbicides is toxic to wildlife and humans.

Overall, in addition to potential environmental harm, we have a case of the “price-cost” squeeze that farmers suffer too often, with the inputs that they need taking a significant chunk of their earnings, while the prices that they receive for their labor either shrinking or fluctuating in ways that are largely out of their control.

Accordingly, if we really want safety—for farmers’ finances and the environment—we ought to work more on promoting regional and local seed varieties instead of looking to multinational corporations for guidance.

Both versions of our beleaguered Farm Bill contain such provisions, with the House and Senate versions of the legislation dedicating grant funding to the development of regional seed varieties (referred to as “cultivars” in the legislation).

The operative word here is “regional,” as grant funding may lead to the creation of new seed varieties that would be suited to particular areas and climates. Droughts in general entail a lack of water; but soil conditions and weather patterns vary significantly by region. As a result, we need to develop diverse kinds of seeds that suit different ecosystems instead of global “one size fits all” varieties like we find with GM options.

When the USDA decided that HB4 was “safe,” they must have left out considerations for farmer financial well-being and the environment. But our legislators can make up for this mistake with the Farm Bill—whether it emerges in a lame duck session this year following the elections in November or awaits our next Congress—taking heed of the risks that GM crops pose, and supporting more local and regional food system development.

Wouldn’t you think the Republican Party, that is as gung-ho for Empire and Genocide as the Democratic Party, but domestically is blatantly open about its policies against women, children, workers, the environment, climate crisis, public lands, public education, and fair share taxes for the wealthy, would be easy to defeat? Not when you see how the Dems, whose campaigns are controlled by corporate-conflicted political consultants using corporate campaign cash, keep making the election razor close.

In 1988, the formidable spouse of Senator Pat Moynihan—Elizabeth Moynihan—told me “Ralph, these consultants are destroying the Democratic Party,” right after she fired them and took over managing Pat’s last re-election campaign.

Elizabeth Moynihan’s observation is true now more than ever, as corporate money looms gigantically over all elections with no limits on how much these PACs can spend.

Still, with three and a half weeks before November 5th, the Party of the Donkey can lighten some of its self-imposed burdens and prevail in congressional races and the presidential race.

First, Bibi-Biden and Bibi-Blinken have to end their serfdom and stand up for American interests. Tell Netanyahu to stop dissembling, agree to a ceasefire in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon, and open up Gaza to all those thousands of U.S.-funded humanitarian aid trucks with food, medicine, water, and other critical supplies. Tell him to open up occupied Gaza to American reporters—along with Israeli and other nations’ journalists—prohibited from independently reporting the realities of the genocidal destruction of that Palestinian enclave and its dying 2.3 million people. Otherwise, no more U.S. weapons of mass destruction, no more vetoes at the U.N., and no more arm-twisting other critical countries. These just and proper moves could be vote-getters in swing states.

Second, give the media vote-getting authentic commitments to benefit millions of voters. A serious commitment to a living wage would move millions of low-paid workers to vote.

Raise Social Security benefits, frozen for over 50 years. This would get the attention of 65 million elderly (See the Social Security 2100 Act, a bill introduced on July 12, 2023, by Congressman John B. Larson and Senator Richard Blumenthal).

Demand with specifics the raising of taxes on the wealthy. This taps into the 85% of the people backing such a decision.

Crack down on corporate crooks, with specific illustrations on how they harm daily lives and livelihoods. This issue comes in with heavy left-right support.

Respect the millions of midnight shift workers who keep our society going while we sleep. Campaign before midnight shifts at hospitals, factories, all-night stores, police, and fire stations.

The few Democratic operatives who approve the strategies, tactics, and messaging are notoriously tone-deaf, defiantly incommunicado to citizen group input—activists who know how, what, and when to communicate to all workers, consumers, patients, and parents, regardless of their labels. (For effective elaborations, see winningamerica.net).

The Dems have huge amounts of money and when used to pay for ads, often vacuous and irritatingly repetitive, these consulting profiteers reap 15% commissions. More of this money should be used for an advanced ground game of locating voters, persuading them, transporting them to the polls if need be, and festively celebrating with a snack or supper. Australians, where voting (for anyone) is a civic duty, are known to make voting a joyous social occasion.

Massively assailing Trump for his lawbreaking, his lies, his bigotry, his corruption, his delusions, his incitements to violence, voter suppression and precinct worker harassment does not seem to diminish support from his base. Why not concentrate laser-like on getting out more of the 80 or 90 million non-voters, instead of pushing off the ballot and harassing the small Green Party with frivolous suits and political bigotry?

Many of these non-voting eligible voters are low-wage workers. Listen to Rev. William Barber who says just increasing their vote by ten to fifteen percent from 2020 would win the election. Few people have interacted with as many impoverished Americans as has Rev. Barber. Even fewer can match the details and inspirations of his oratory. (See, breachrepairers.org).

The media covers the horse race—give them more horses. They cover the money raised—tell them you’re using it for people-to-people voter turnout behind explicit progressive mandates. The media covers spontaneous comments that magnify as faux pas—give them spontaneous statements that mean something—like increasing the number of federal cops on the corporate crime beat.

Or support the expanding interstate compact of states that gives the anti-democratic Electoral College votes to the candidate who wins the national presidential vote (See, NationalPopularVote.com).

Or why not support more consumer cooperatives, or repeal handcuffs on union organizing and expression embodied by the notorious Taft-Hartley Act of 1947?

The media gets bored with the same old stump speech day after day. Give them some variety that invigorates a democratic society. Especially tell them ways you would empower the powerless people to overcome corporatism, apathy, indifference, and withdrawal from elections and politics. These could be short educational addresses on TV.

Above all, open up electoral campaigning to regular input by the citizenry and citizen groups from the grassroots to Washington, D.C. Drop the force fields around you, Nancy Pelosi, Gary Peters, Suzan DelBene, Pete Aguilar, Jaime Harrison, Et al. None of you are smarter than all of us. Ignoring that truism is why you will be needlessly sweating on election night. (See my book “Let’s Start the Revolution: Tools for Displacing the Corporate State and Building a Country that Works for the People” and the report, “Crushing the GOP, 2022.”)