When Bad Bunny took the Super Bowl halftime stage, he performed one of the most beautiful examples of refusal I have witnessed in a long time.

In a moment when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are conducting mass raids in American cities designed as a spectacle for social media, when families are being torn apart and warehoused in cages in hastily constructed concentration camps, when President DonaldTrump calls Somali immigrants “garbage,” Bad Bunny showed up as the embodiment of flourishing. Vibrant. Alive. Unapologetically present, resulting in the most watched Super Bowl halftime in history.

And that presence, those enormous ratings, and that contagious joy was too much for some white supremacists to bear. I do not recommend you waste your time on Trump's knockoff social media to understand his eugenic ideology. You know what he wrote without looking, and Fox News will parrot it for him anyways.

As a psychologist who studies the roots of my discipline in eugenics, I recognized immediately what made this performance so threatening, so necessary, so brilliant. While Bad Bunny was leaving us speechless at America's most-watched sporting event, he was refusing the fundamental premise of a resurgent eugenic ideology that has always been about one question: What should America look like?

Trump Is a Knockoff Eugenicist

The resemblance between our current moment and the height of the eugenics movement is striking, and it is very intentional. Donald Trump is driven by the same goals as those who shaped American policy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Eugenics was a pseudoscientific movement aimed at "improving" the human population by deciding who was worthy of reproducing and who deserved to live in America. Through forced sterilizations (that famous Buck v Bell case that you may have heard about allowed for this), immigration restrictions, and pseudoscientific classifications, eugenicists worked to eliminate people they deemed genetically inferior, always targeting immigrants, people of color, the disabled, and the poor. The movement operated by equating non-white and certain immigrant groups with violence and insanity.

In the US, the struggle to fuse whiteness and being American has been central to our national politics.

In the 19th century, academic psychiatrists shamefully claimed that Black people were psychologically unfit for freedom. Medical journals described "drapetomania" as an alleged illness that caused enslaved African Americans to run away from their white masters. Another fabricated condition, "dysaesthesia aethiopica," was characterized as a form of madness manifest by "rascality" and "disrespect for the master's property," supposedly cured by "extensive whipping."

Today, we see carbon copies of this dehumanization. Trump shares videos depicting the Obamas as monkeys. His administration unconstitutionally deports our neighbors to Venezuela, treating human beings as disposable contaminants. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem stages photo ops at concentration camps, transforming sites of human suffering into backdrops for political theater.

Manufacturing Exclusion Through "Science"

My discipline of psychology, under the guise of rationality and objectivity, has been able to cause tremendous harm. This is the trick of eugenic projects: By cloaking racist ideology under the seemingly objective rubric of biological science, it becomes nearly impossible to discern or critique. Psychology created the institutional infrastructure that made them policy. IQ tests are one of these manufactured tricks. In 1912, immigrants arriving at Ellis Island became the first group to have these tests administered to them. And like today, different classes experienced different encounters with justice, as the Epstein Files make so palpable for us. Back in 1912, only those in steerage were subject to examination; those who could afford more posh accommodations were exempt. According to the supposed "scientific" results produced by psychologist Henry Goddard, over 80% of all Jewish, Polish, Italian, Hungarian, and Russian immigrants were "feeble-minded defectives."

Carl Brigham, one of these eugenic psychologists, went on to develop the SAT. The direct line from eugenic IQ tests to college gatekeeping runs straight through to today. Current "merit-based immigration" proposals echo this same logic: using supposedly objective measures to determine who deserves to be American, who gets to stay, whose children get opportunities.

And these psychologists have frequently collaborated with the US government, including in recent decades when they helped the government devise the most effective torture methods, breaking many ethics codes along the way. Lewis Terman, a psychologist who worked on the Army intelligence tests in the early 20th century, bragged that the exam "enabled psychology to become a beacon of light in the eugenics movement" and was especially proud of how these tests could be used to reshape national policy on immigrants. Terman’s wish was unfortunately granted, and these eugenic legacies were braided into the fabric of American policy including immigration law, education, criminal justice, voting rights.

Deportation as Eugenic Self-Defense

Between 1875 and 1924, Congress entertained many immigration bills and if we study them we can see the strategies that are playing out today with more clarity as well. For instance in 1915, Assistant Attorney General LE Cofer was openly advocating deportations on eugenic grounds. Another legislation in 1917 allotted a five-year period for deportation of immigrants who were later found to be in "excludible classes." Deportations were considered by these eugenicists as self-defense. In 1928, Eugenical News listed as a priority "the deportation of all aliens illegally entered." They wrote: "The man whose introduction to American life comes through breaking the quota act is prima facie an undesirable."

The eugenic resurgence fueled by the terror of losing dominance fuels the crises we are living through today.

This is sounding eerily familiar, isn't it? Listen to current administration officials. Trump. Pam Bondi. JD Vance. Karoline Leavitt. This exact rhetoric is being repeated today. Equating people from other countries with criminals is a basic eugenic principle. Today's "border crisis" framing, the claims that undocumented immigrants are inherently criminal, the mass deportation plans, these are old-school eugenic principles with a fresh coat of white paint.

In the US, the struggle to fuse whiteness and being American has been central to our national politics. Immigrants during the height of eugenics were viewed as interlopers; along with Black Americans, they were seen as less pure bodies polluting the well-being of the entire country. Psychologists and other supposed experts made these sentiments appear scientifically valid and politically viable by arming themselves with photographs, charts, statistics, and quantified statements.

The Great Replacement, Then and Now

The goal of these eugenicists was "bettering and protecting the white race," the same obsession we see in the Great Replacement Theory today. This is not fringe conspiracy anymore. In 2022, a white supremacist murdered 10 Black people at a Buffalo supermarket, explicitly motivated by Great Replacement ideology. In 2019, another killed 23 people at an El Paso Walmart, targeting Latinx shoppers with the same beliefs. Tucker Carlson promotes this theory every chance he gets. Congressional Republicans now use this language openly, warning about "demographic replacement" and the need to preserve "Western civilization."

History has taught us that progress toward justice can be met with pushback, and the burden of this pushback is often heaviest on those who for various reasons have fewer resources to defend themselves. Eugenics never left us. It transmuted, it became absorbed into insidious institutions, into redlining, into the school system, into the carceral state. But there were also real movements toward justice, civil rights organizers, community activists, families, and advocates who fought for decades to untangle eugenic legacies from our policies and institutions. They won important victories. And it is precisely these gains that white supremacists cannot bear. When the status of their imagined racial hierarchy is questioned, when their power is genuinely threatened, they respond with violence and state power. The eugenic resurgence fueled by the terror of losing dominance fuels the crises we are living through today.

Economic Scapegoating as Eugenic Strategy

Eugenicist Robert Ward, influential in getting the Immigration Act of 1924 passed, said with awful transparency: "We constantly speak of the need of more hands to do our labor. We forget that we are importing not hands alone but bodies also." Eugenicists repeatedly claimed to champion American workers while actually protecting white supremacy. It was never about labor, it was about bodies, about whose body was to be protected and whose body was to be disposable.

Where Trump represents all-consuming exclusion, Bad Bunny embodied refusal, joy, and reunification.

Today's anti-immigrant rhetoric follows the same script. Trump campaigned on protecting working-class jobs from immigrant "invasion," despite no evidence of that happening. But his administration's actual policies tell a different story: Mass deportations intensify the already overwhelming labor shortage in the construction industry, creating labor shortages that hurt local economies as farms and business are forced to close. Meanwhile, the administration busts unions, enriches billionaire donors (under Trump billionaires have gotten $1.5 trillion richer in the past year) and himself, and imposes tariffs that drive up prices for working families.

Many voted for Trump because they desperately wanted someone to address economic inequity. Instead, they got eugenic scapegoating, blaming immigrants for problems caused by the wealthy and powerful. The claim is protecting American workers. The reality is a war on poor and working people of all backgrounds, while the rich face zero accountability for devastating our communities.

Bad Bunny's Counternarrative

Which brings us back to the Super Bowl halftime show. The great American sport. The NFL. And there, at the center of it all, was an unabashed celebration of the Americans who are very much the target of ICE's raids today.

Bad Bunny didn't offer a speech or a slogan. He offered his entire being. The visual references to Hurricane Maria were unmistakable, the storm that killed nearly 3,000 Puerto Ricans while Trump threw paper towels and claimed they "want everything done for them." The ongoing refusal of statehood. The deliberate undercount of the death toll. This is eugenic neglect: the decision to let "undesirable" populations suffer and die because their lives are deemed less valuable.

The whole performance was dynamic, alive, vibrating with joy. It refused the fusion of whiteness and American identity that eugenics has always demanded. This is resistance through presence braided with brilliant critical analysis. Resistance through flourishing in his full humanity, in the full humanity of his community, on the biggest stage in America. Where Trump represents all-consuming exclusion, Bad Bunny embodied refusal, joy, and reunification. Not just saying but doing. His presence was an embodiment of flourishing that the eugenic imagination cannot accommodate.

The only thing stronger than hate is love.

What This Moment Demands of Us

Understanding eugenics helps us understand the present. It reveals that what we're witnessing is not an aberration but a recurrence, a resurgence of an ideology with a long life, an ideology that has been picked up by many political agendas over the decades. Trump has never been original once his entire life.

In my studies, I look at who is considered criminal or immoral. It has always been the immigrant. The disabled. It has always been Black people and people of color. Studying eugenics teaches us that policies presented as common sense, as economic necessity, as protecting American workers, as maintaining order, they are often merely covers for racial elimination.

He showed up and said: This is America too.

Our communities cannot be eliminated. "Seguimos aquí"—we are still here—Bad Bunny ended the performance with those words. Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio refused to be erased, refused to shrink, refused to disappear. Showing up with joy is indeed a form of power, and gorgeous, infectious resistance. While the administration builds concentration camps, rips apart families, and unleashes violence against communities exercising their constitutional rights, Bad Bunny danced, swaggered, made us all fall in love with freedom itself. He showed up and said: This is America too.

That kind of presence, that kind of refusal, that kind of joy, it's too much for the eugenicists to bear.

Let's do more of this, America.

Last week, the US government announced it would be sending $6 million in aid to Cuba, on top of the $3 million it sent in January after Hurricane Melissa. This aid package might appear contrary to the significant escalation of the 66-year-long US criminal blockade, which has expanded to an all-out fuel blockade since December, with attacks on Venezuela, but it is in fact a core tenet of it.

This maneuver seeks to exploit the US-manufactured energy and fuel crisis to bolster opposition groups, substantiate propaganda against the Cuban government and revolution, and force the island into total dependency and submission to the United States. This frankly genocidal strategy closely mirrors that of the US and Israeli “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation,” and the weaponization of starvation and aid for colonial and imperialist ends. In both Cuba and Gaza, this is a deliberate strategy by the US to make people suffer from its actions, then place blame on the governing authority to justify regime change.

In November of last year, the US first announced an aid package to Cuba in response to Hurricane Melissa. While the hurricane hit the east of the island with force, Cuba did not suffer mass casualties and crisis because of the people-first policies of the Cuban government, which continues to distribute resources and prevent casualties from natural disasters, despite US suffocation.

Hurricane Melissa killed over 54 people in Jamaica, at least 43 people in Haiti, four in the Dominican Republic, yet only one person in Cuba. The success of the Cuban government’s response is not only totally ignored by the US organizations, but also used to justify operations and propaganda. For instance, the Archdiocese of Miami said about its aid distribution: “Dozens were killed, mostly in Jamaica and Haiti, but Cuba’s weakening economic situation prompted action from a small group of donors.” Surely, when a country’s response to a natural disaster is to successfully evacuate 735,000 people, prevent a major death toll, and prioritize people’s survival, it is worthy of praise. Of course, this would be in total opposition to the US propaganda line that Cuba is a “failed state.”

In Cuba and Palestine, the US is manufacturing a crisis in order to push blame onto the governments that the imperialist power seeks to topple.

When Hurricane Katrina hit the US in 2005, Cuba offered a medical brigade of 1,586 doctors and 37 tons of medical supplies. The US refused outright. The hurricane and lack of response led to the deaths of over 1,800 people, many due to a lack of medical assistance and supplies, some of which Cuba could have provided, and 1.5 million people were displaced—many have never returned. The US government was happy to let people die rather than to accept the unconditional help of a Cuban medical brigade, which underscores its willingness to sacrifice its own population to pursue its aggression against Cuba. The stark difference between the US and Cuba in responding to natural disasters is at its core the polarity between a war economy based on extraction and profit, and a peace economy based on solidarity and common well-being.

Siege on Cuba, Siege on Gaza

The same genocidal motivations for the US-Israeli siege on Gaza have been imposed to isolate and suffocate Cuba. The US has banned the entry of goods into Cuba, imposed a total blockade on oil, and increased sanctions, which cause billions of dollars in losses each year, which is impoverishing the country. While it suffocates the infrastructure of even and efficient food distribution in Cuba, the US aid is being given only to the Catholic Church and US-backed NGOs, specifically to bypass distribution through the state. This is eerily consistent with the US and Israel’s horrific and deadly “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).” In Gaza, they laid a total barbaric siege on Gaza, refused the entry of any goods and aid, and banned international aid groups in order to justify US mercenaries providing meager amounts of aid between firing bullets. The US and Israel massacred at least 2,603 people and wounded 19,034 more at GHF distribution points. There was absolutely no accountability for or action against these barbaric killing fields.

In both Palestine and Cuba, the US is overtly and brazenly violating the humanitarian principle of working with governments in affected countries. It is using the same propaganda lines to do so. For Cuba, the US says it is “bypassing regime interference, and ensuring transparency and accountability” and that the aid is “part of a broader effort to stand with the Cuban people as they seek a better future.” For Gaza, the US says it is “the only viable way to get aid into Gaza without empowering Hamas” and “is a results-focused alternative to a broken aid system.”

In both places, the US openly claims it is undermining governments and organizations that it claims “steal” the aid. This accusation is a confession. Israeli occupation forces (IOF) set on fire, burnt, and buried more than 1,000 trucks of aid in Gaza as Israel manufactured a famine that killed at least 10,000 people, and for which the United Nations described as the “failure of humanity itself.” An IOF reservist said he “accompanied aid convoys supplying a militia in Rafah” and Israeli security added “closed boxes with unknown contents” to justify lies that Hamas was weaponizing aid. Israel also funded and coordinated militia groups in Gaza to loot aid, and protected Israeli settlers looting and destroying aid from trucks. Not to mention the many videos of IOF soldiers gleefully and jeeringly consuming this food aid. All of these actions, with the brazen refusal to allow passage for thousands of aid trucks in Gaza, provided the conditions to justify the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” and its killing fields.

Similarly, it is the United States that is stopping goods from entering Cuba. Since 1962, the US has imposed a blockade that bans all trade and economic activity with Cuba. This is banned outright in the US with severe consequences, and spans the entire world, as the US imposes secondary sanctions, tariffs, and other punitive measures against any country, organization, company, or individual that does not comply with its blockade. In recent weeks and months, this has been tightened further. No oil has entered Cuba since December, and the government has rolled out a plan to ration limited energy for only the most urgent uses, such as hospitals, schools, and food. Cuba can no longer fuel airplanes, which may halt all air travel. The US, on one hand, is threatening tariffs and sanctions on any country that tries to trade oil and goods with Cuba, and on the other, it is pushing propaganda that the country is not able to feed and provide energy for its people. In Cuba and Palestine, the US is manufacturing a crisis in order to push blame onto the governments that the imperialist power seeks to topple.

Made in Israel and Miami

The aid is also political at its source. All supplies through the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” were from Israeli suppliers, directly creating profit for Israeli venture capitalists, tech investors, and other occupation personnel like Michael Eisenberg, Liran Tancman, and Yotam HaCohen. It also funneled public funds into private and shady mercenary companies, UG Solutions and Safe Reach Solutions. This strategy utilizes aid as a weapon of colonial regime-change efforts, with the US aiming to install its proxies firmly in power in Cuba and Palestine, in opposition to the interests and will of the people.

For those of us invested in a better world based on humanity, it is imperative we stand steadfast with Palestinians and Cubans as they struggle against the most barbarous face of the US empire.

The US aid supplies to Cuba originate in Miami, Florida, long known as the site of the most vocal and brazen pro-US, fascist sentiments in the Cuban diaspora. The aid is being distributed by the Catholic Church and Caritas, a US-funded NGO set up in 1991 during the ‘Special Period’ in Cuba, which has funded regime-change operations on the island. Catholic Relief Services, one of the three organizations in Caritas North America, receives over half of its funding ($1.5 billion) directly from the US government. The other organization involved is the Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Miami, which was the architect of the covert CIA “Operation Pedro Pan,” where over 14,000 Cuban children were taken from their homes to the US in the years after the revolution. Also included on the board of the charity is Justice of the Supreme Court of Florida, John Couriel. The headline $9 million figure of aid to Cuba is being absorbed by organizations like this. In fact, in 2024, over 72% of all US aid to Cuba went to US organizations. This must pose the urgent question of how much of this aid is a way to direct resources to opposition groups in Cuba under the guise of sending food.

Gathering Intelligence

The strategy of deploying aid also pertains to a significant element of covert surveillance and intelligence. At the end of January last year, the US deployed around 100 mercenaries, mostly former US Special Forces soldiers, to patrol Gaza and set up the deadly “aid hubs.” US soldiers shot and killed starving Palestinians seeking aid while cheering and ordering Domino’s Pizza. These sites were death traps, used to lure Palestinians into an area where they were surveiled and shot at. People risked their lives to receive a meager amount of aid that was often rotten. It has been revealed that a significant element of this operation was surveillance. A UG Solutions contractor revealed that American and Israeli soldier-spies are using facial recognition software “on top of real-time footage of distribution sites” from CCTV and aerial surveillance footage. This was beyond merely a method of massacre, but of surveillance through the proxy of “aid.” The US and Israel confirmed there was surveillance after specifically recruiting intelligence operatives.

Similarly, the State Department announced that US government officials have been “making sure that the regime does not take the assistance, divert it, try to politicize it.” They went on to explain that “we have been watching” and “speaking with everyday Cubans…understanding the challenges they have been facing, both in the wake of the hurricane and due to the broader humanitarian crisis in Cuba.” This is worrying, as it is clear the US is using this as an opportunity, in tandem with NGO networks, to collect intelligence and push pro-US propaganda and lies across the country under the guise of “aid.”

In both Cuba and Palestine, the United States is deploying its barbaric methods of producing mass suffering in order to bring about political and economic submission. The tactics being used in distributing aid in Cuba now are a softer model of the killing fields in Gaza that seek to force the entire population into submission and occupy the entirety of Palestine.

Beyond this playbook, it is important to recognize the historic connections between Palestine and Cuba, particularly as they resist the violence of the US empire that seeks to starve them into submission. Cuba was one of 13 countries to vote against the UN partition of Palestine in 1947; in the months after the triumph of the revolution, Che Guevara and Raúl Castro traveled to Gaza; they were one of the first to recognize the Palestinian Liberation Organization in 1964; they severed all ties with Israel in 1973; and labelled Israel’s action a genocide in 1979. Since 1982, Cuba has been providing education for Palestinian students in Cuba; it helped to get Palestine observer status at the United Nations in 2012; it supported South Africa’s genocide case at the International Court of Justice in 2024; and has been one of Palestine’s staunchest supporters diplomatically and materially.

This historic friendship and solidarity are what the United States fears. This is why it is hellbent on destroying the Cuban Revolution and its continued ability to provide for its people, while refusing to let US companies pillage and extract from the island and its inhabitants. For those of us invested in a better world based on humanity, it is imperative we stand steadfast with Palestinians and Cubans as they struggle against the most barbarous face of the US empire. The situation is urgent and requires action. Like Fidel Castro said to the UN in 1979: “If we do not resolve today’s injustices and inequalities peacefully and wisely, the future will be apocalyptic.”

Right now, Americans are rightly alarmed by profound assaults on our democracy. Less in the limelight, but of critical importance, is the substantial backsliding and ongoing procrastination on the climate crisis. While the broader anti-democracy movement and stalling climate policy are both being driven by a highly destructive Trump Administration, too little attention has been devoted to exploring their common roots. Indeed, these issues may seem, at the surface, to be unrelated, or so vast that they require their own solutions.

However, if we want to make progress on either front, we need to understand just how deeply our climate and democracy crises are connected. They not only share roots but also feed into each other.

One of the most impactful threads tying these crises together is the misuse of corporate-led lobbying, Super PAC donations, and dark money groups. The biggest aggressor here is the fossil fuel industry. In 2022, companies including Exxon Mobil and Shell spent $124.4 million on lobbying. In 2023, the Congressional Leadership Fund, a Republican super PAC, received nearly $1 million from oil and gas companies. Plus, organizations like Republican Attorney General Association (RAGA) and other political advocacy groups are funded largely by dark money and corporations. RAGA, for example, received nearly $6 million in donations from gas and oil companies from 2020-2024.

Likewise on the individual level, Kelcy Warren--whose company is behind the Dakota Access Pipeline--donated around $18 million across Trump’s three campaigns. CEO of one the country’s largest oil companies, Timothy Dunn shelled out $5 million to Trump-backed super PACS in 2024.

All this private influence overpowers the will of American voters. Over half of us want a shift to clean energy, with even young Republicans supporting investing in clean energy and funding states to address the climate crisis. Despite this clear consensus, little progress has been made because of our campaign finance laws.

Disinformation is another powerful shared root of our climate and democracy crises. It threatens our democracy: Fake news stories have had real political consequences in our elections. In 2024, for example, we saw how destructive narratives surrounding undocumented immigrants eating pets and receiving hurricane relief funds had real sway on voters.

When it comes to the climate crisis, the same issues persist. A meta-study conducted by the International Panel on the Information Environment found that corporations, conservative politicians, and even national governments have contributed to rampant climate misinformation. It's not news that Trump is a key contributor here, having “called climate science ‘a giant hoax’ and ‘bullshit.’” And, too, it’s well documented that oil companies such as Exxon Mobil have for decades deliberately “led a coordinated effort to spread disinformation to mislead the public and prevent crucial action to address climate change.”

Election and climate disinformation feed off of our declining trust in each other and institutions that serve the common good. A 2025 Partnership for Public Service survey found that only a third of Americans trust the federal government, for example.

We can see the cycle of disinformation and distrust play out among climate change skeptics. A Pew Research Center survey found that many feel apprehensive when faced with “alarmist” facts about the climate. Participants feel suspicious that climate change advocates have a secret agenda—a problem fueled by a lack of trust and disinformation which only further perpetuates the issue. But here’s the kicker: This dynamic has opened the door for fossil fuel companies to control narratives about the climate crisis.

Absent fact-checking tools and coupled with the unregulated rise of generative AI, mis/dis-information will continue to circulate online with significant impact on how people vote and understand of key issues including the climate crisis.

Addressing these deep issues—from money in politics to waning trust—takes work. But he stakes are high and the harm to communities are real, so we must tackle these roots.

It comes as no surprise that climate chaos disproportionately impacts marginalized communities including people of color, low-income communities, children, the elderly, and those who reside in coastal communities. An uneven distribution of resources needed to prepare for climate disasters and recover from them is also a key part of the problem.

It’s no coincidence that the populations most impacted by the climate crisis are the same communities that have been systemically disenfranchised in our democracy. Take the disenfranchisement of Black voters: laws preventing felons from voting are one of many tactics used to stifle the Black vote. Note our prison population is notably disproportionately Black due to decades of discriminatory mass incarceration practices including over policing. This systemic exclusion means that citizens—particularly the most impacted—are denied a voice on the very issues that most harm them.

Clearly the playing field is deeply uneven: Corporate powers wreak havoc on our communities all while undermining the democratic process through campaign financing and misinformation. Meanwhile, as Trump violently deploys ICE agents to wreak havoc in Minneapolis and beyond, he pillages the woods next door (note Congress’s revocation of a 20-year mining moratorium in Minnesota’s boundary waters this January).

There’s no denying that climate chaos and democracy are deeply interrelated. The task at hand is substantial, but by digging to these shared roots, we can form the broad coalitions and solidaristic networks of cross-issue advocates that we need to build a more just and democratic world for all.

News broke this week that President Donald Trump was conditioning approval of an infrastructure spending bill on renaming New York City’s Penn Station and Washington’s Dulles Airport in his honor. It was unsurprising because there’s a disturbing pattern in Mr. Trump’s approach to governing that includes the glorification of the leader, the erasure of norms, the use of threats of retribution to stifle critics, and a reliance on “alternate facts” to keep the faithful in tow.

Because I am once again writing about President Trump, I know that some will accuse me of having what the president calls “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” I confess to being obsessed with his incendiary speech, his behavior, and the movement he has inspired, precisely because of the danger they pose to American democracy.

During Mr. Trump’s first term we dreaded turning on the news each morning and learning about the threatening tweets he had posted overnight. But because there were guardrails in place—senior staff who would slow walk his demands or simply refuse to act on them, or Congress or the courts that served as a check on his behavior—most often the threats turned out to be hollow.

As has been noted, in his second term, because the guardrails are gone, the president has become emboldened to move beyond empty words to actions which his minions faithfully attempt to execute. As a result, we are entering uncharted waters in which an imperial presidency is testing the resilience of our system of “checks and balances.”

Entering the second year of his second term in office, the pattern is clear. He employs bullying tactics to get his way—with other individuals, institutions, or countries. He “floods the zone,” disorienting opponents by daily confronting them with a barrage of new challenges. And following lessons learned from his mentor, Roy Cohn, he always attacks, never admits mistakes, and always claims victory.

In just the past few weeks, Mr. Trump has undertaken several deeply disturbing initiatives. Individually, each pose a problem, but when viewed collectively they suggest something far more ominous.

He ordered the FBI to seize the 2020 election ballots from Fulton County, Georgia, presumably because he still believes he was cheated out of victory—even though the official who controlled the Georgia balloting in 2020 was a Republican. It is unprecedented for a president to take an action of this sort and to accompany it with a statement saying:

"Remember, the states are merely an 'agent' for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes…They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them, FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY, to do.”

In this one statement, the president calls for violating the Constitution and the prerogative it gives states in running elections. And by equating himself with the federal government and saying that when he speaks, he does so on behalf of and for the good of the country, he is laying the groundwork for an imperial presidency.

The president also made what appears to be a spur of the moment decision to shutter the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. He said that the reason for closing the Center was that the building was in such disrepair that it was a danger to patrons. However, given that just a few days before the announced closure, the White House had used this very same venue to host the premiere of the documentary about his wife “Melania,” insiders suggest another reason behind the abrupt decision to shutter the Center.

Unilaterally changing the name of the Center, removing its board, and adding his supporters as board members with himself as chair has made the once-revered institution partisan and toxic. It was losing members and donors, performers were cancelling, and it was bleeding money. Rather than admit defeat, the president shut it down.

One of the president’s earliest actions was to try to bring the nation’s most prestigious universities to heel. He did so by charging them with chronic antisemitism and using “diversity quotas” in hiring and admissions. Because these two issues resonate with his base, he was determined to win. He began by withholding federal grants until universities complied with his demands to rid their campuses of antisemitism (which meant ending protests against Israel) and make admissions and hiring blind. A number of smaller schools submitted to the threats, but Harvard held out. Finally, after a year or fruitless negotiations and threats, the story came out that the White House was backing down on its threat to fine Harvard. This suggestion of defeat so enraged the president that he both denied it and announced that instead of penalizing Harvard $200 million if they didn’t agree to his demands, he was raising Harvard’s penalty to $1 billion, an example of personal peeve becoming policy.

These recent actions by the president are part of a pattern that grows more pronounced each day. He makes decisions unilaterally without regard to the Constitution or established procedure. He acts to punish those who do not submit to his dictates. And he governs as if “L’État, c’est moi.” With the support of a compliant Congress and a base of true believers, right now this president appears to be untouchable. But should he push too far or should Republicans lose control of Congress in November, the tide could turn, leaving Mr. Trump’s effort to create an “Imperial Presidency” to die on the vine.

The decline of Keynesian economic theory in the 1970s marked a tipping point in the evolution of capitalism in the United States. Beginning with the Great Depression, Keynesian economic policy facilitated the expansion of social welfare programs to mitigate the social inequities of the nation's economic system. In the last quarter of the 20th century, however, rising political conservatism targeted public expenditures for social services. Cuts in education and health, including reductions in social welfare programs and the weakening of the social safety network for the poor, were then and continue today to be goals of political conservatives. Conservatives, furthermore, argue that cutting taxes for the wealthy and corporations promotes investment, economic growth and job creation; and that smaller government and less regulation of market forces distributes wealth the most equitably. These ideas are variously known as supply-side economics, neoliberal economics or simply “trickle-down theory.” Historically, though, trickle-down theory has failed to benefit American working families. In fact, during the course of the last several decades this market strategy has encouraged vast accumulation of private wealth and accelerated its concentration on both a national and global scale. Tragically, it has had deeply injurious social consequences. The societal crisis America finds itself in today relates directly to extreme concentration of wealth.

Absent effective public regulation of economic activities, government and law protect investors and corporations in their aggressive pursuit of wealth. The distribution of wealth in the U.S. is a primary indicator of who benefits most from the political and legal organization of American society. In the third quarter of 2025, according to Federal Reserve data, the top 1% of Americans held 31.7% of all wealth while the bottom 50% held 2.5% (Federal Reserve 2025). That is the highest concentration of wealth in the post-WWII era (Economic Inequality), greater than almost any other developed country. Another indicator of the government's weak support for workers and their families is the federal minimum wage. It is $7.25/hour. At forty hours per week this represents a monthly income of $1160 and a yearly income of $13,920. In 2025, the federal poverty level for individuals was $15,650 and $32,150 for families of four (Poverty Level). These dismal figures show how dire wages are for many millions of Americans. In real terms (inflation-adjusted) the average wage of American workers peaked 48 years ago in 1978 (Wages Peaked).

If one takes a closer look at wealth concentration and the average American’s opportunity to accrue wealth since the 1970s and 1980s, it offers more evidence of how the last few decades of capitalism's development have denied workers a fair share of the tremendous wealth that has been generated. Indeed, a 2023 Rand Corporation analysis revealed that, since 1975, $79 trillion in wealth had been transferred from the bottom 90% to the top 1%. (Massive Wealth Transfer ). This massive redistribution of wealth continues today. In 2023 alone, $3.9 trillion in wealth was siphoned from working Americans to the richest Americans, enough to give every full-time worker in the bottom 90% a $32,000 raise for the year (2023 Wealth Transfer). When it comes to gaining wealth for the average working American, owning a home is the principal path. Home ownership, however, is completely out of reach for the poor and millions more in today's middle class find it unattainable. The median home price to annual income ratio was 5 in 2025. In other words, the median price of a home was equal to 5 years of salary. The ratio was 3.7 in 1985 when a median-price home was $82,800. Today a median-price home is $416,900. Not only is the distribution of wealth radically unequal, the pathway to increased wealth in home ownership has narrowed dramatically.

The political division and violence in America today stems in large measure from a political system whose policies have encouraged radical disparities in incomes and wealth.

These data amply illustrate the crisis poor and increasingly middle income people in the United States face. The poorest Americans, the bottom 20%, simply do not have enough money to meet their daily needs. Nearly a third of all households lives on less than $50,000 annual income (Household Income). In the richest country in the world 36.8 million Americans live in poverty (Poverty), including 9 million children without adequate access to food, shelter and healthcare (Children). At the same time, the more than 900 billionaires in the U.S. have a collective wealth of $6.9 trillion, their wealth increasing 18% in 2025 alone (Fortune). As reported in Forbes, Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, now has wealth of $778 billion (Elon Musk). It would take the average American worker 16 million years to make that much (Extrapolated).

The US government simply has not done enough to ensure that the livelihoods of all Americans are protected in this new Gilded Age. In fact, the government actually provides 40% more benefits to the wealthy than to the impoverished. In his 2023 book Poverty, By America, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Matthew Desmond draws attention to this fact. From recent government data “compiling spending on social insurance, means-tested programs, tax benefits, and financial aid for higher education,” Desmond calculates that the top 20% of income earners on average receives $35,363 in government benefits and individuals in the bottom 20% receive an average $25,733 (p. 99). This reality is a result of policies, policies that benefit wealthy Americans and corporations at the expense of working people. Public policy, in turn, is shaped by corporate lobbying and political contributions as well as professional research that supports goals of the wealthiest and most influential: smaller government, broad corporate deregulation, limited worker protections, and tax breaks favoring the wealthy over working Americans.

It has not always been this way. Between 1947 and 1979, the period when Keynesian economic theory and policies prevailed, “hourly wages grew 2.2 percent. From 1979 to the present, average growth in hourly wages fell to 0.7 percent per year, only one-third of the average rate in the earlier postwar period” (Economic Policy Institute). In the first three decades after WWII labor unions tripled weekly earnings of manufacturing workers across the nation. Collective bargaining gained “for union workers an unprecedented measure of security against old age, illness and unemployment, and, through contractual protections, greatly strengthening their right to fair treatment at the workplace” (Labor Unions). Significantly, one-third of workers (32.3% in 1959) were unionized in this post-war period (Bureau of Labor Statistics ). By 2024, the percentage of wage and salary workers in unions fell to 9.9 percent (Bureau of Labor Statistics). Concentrated wealth, particularly corporate wealth, and government failure to protect workers dampened wages. Also, in the 1950s the statutory taxes on U.S.corporate and personal wealth were much higher, though the effective tax rate was considerably lower due to corporate tax loopholes and rich taxpayers recategorizing income as derived from investments (Tax Rates). The statutory corporate income tax was over 50 percent (Economic Policy Institute). Today it is 21 percent (Corporate Tax). While it is difficult to determine the percentage of taxes actually paid by wealthy individuals and corporations in the early post-war era, it is clear that the statutory personal and corporate income tax is lower today than it was 70 years ago. Of course, enforcement of steeply progressive taxation would make billions of dollars, even trillions, available to fund social programs that distribute income and wealth more fairly.

The pro-democracy citizenry must organize around a political vision that emphasizes several political projects: a just, progressive taxation system; a guaranteed household income; universal healthcare; quality public education; free preschool education; and scientific and technological initiatives for a sustainable economy.

A society riven by such income and wealth inequality is inherently unstable. The political division and violence in America today stems in large measure from a political system whose policies have encouraged radical disparities in incomes and wealth. The loss of 6.5 million manufacturing jobs since 1979 (1979 and 2025), for example, has been facilitated by trade agreements that enable corporations to chase the cheapest wages throughout the world. Runaway companies have gutted industrial towns without consequence, leaving behind poorer communities of people with limited resources to rebuild their lives and neighborhoods. The federal government, moreover, has done virtually nothing to force corporations to pay reparations for the social disintegration left in their wake. As the coastal regions and large metropolitan centers of the nation were generally integrated into the surging commerce of unbridled globalization, distant rural regions experienced economic stagnation and decline. It is little wonder that an authoritarian political figure that exploits these divisions has risen to the presidency of the United States.

In his seminal book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, French economist Thomas Piketty provides an analysis of capitalism in which he notes that “the history of the distribution of wealth has always been deeply political” (p. 20). Reduction of taxes that favors the wealthy is one political determination reflecting the unstemmed power of concentrated wealth. While this political maneuver undermines a primary income and wealth distributive mechanism (taxation system), it further restricts the resources for funding other re-distributive projects such as social welfare, public education and healthcare. Smaller government and privatization of public services are corollary results.

A principal dynamic factor in the process of wealth accumulation and concentration over the last several decades is the growth of profits as the economic growth rate has slowed down. Put another way, the wealthy are taking a larger and larger slice of diminishing income and wealth production. As the vast inequalities in the distribution of income and wealth deny the provision of basic living necessities to tens of millions and circumscribe opportunity for most Americans, social instability and political division and violence escalate. In response, an authoritarian regime consolidates its power around armed force to repress those protesting its anti-democratic policies. Its armed repression inevitably leads to bloodshed.

The pro-democracy citizenry must organize around a political vision that emphasizes several political projects: a just, progressive taxation system; a guaranteed household income; universal healthcare; quality public education; free preschool education; and scientific and technological initiatives for a sustainable economy. These political goals stand in stark contrast to an authoritarian regime that advances the interests of the one percent. They offer a view of the future that is constructive and inspirational, one that generates broad social justice and appeals to the vast majority of Americans.

I’ve been in Washington, DC for the past week battling the icy and snow piled sidewalks and streets, one week after the big snow and ice storm that immobilized the city for days.

While using the city’s buses and Metros, it was very apparent the most probable danger in DC is falling on sidewalk ice and at unshoveled bus stops.

The National Guard, the group that was brought into the city by President Trump for the soc=-called "protection" of the residents of the city, was doing nothing to protect its residents.

Of the thousands of National Guard personnel sent to Washington, every day at least 15 National Guard personnel in groups of three or four were at various corners around the Eastern Market Metro stop. These young men and women in uniform watched as residents slid, climbed over, and fell through piles of snow and ice.

Never did I see one of the young National Guard soldiers help the mothers with babies in strollers that were pushing through piles of snow to get onto a bus or help a person with a cane or walker.

I introduced myself as a retired US Army Reserve Colonel. I asked if their officers had told them not to help residents, something I would have hoped that each would have done out of uniform as pure courtesy toward others. The polite answer, “No ma’am, but that’s not our job. We are to protect you from criminals.”

Have you apprehended any criminals? “No ma’am, but we are always ready.”

Have you thought to ask if the National Guard could buy some shovels for you to help protect citizens from injury? “Yes, but no one has.”

A total of 2,188 National Guard troops have been assigned to the joint task force in Washington, DC, according to a government update reported by the Associated Press. Of those, there are 949 DC National Guard troops, as well as close to 1,200 troops from several outside states, with West Virginia having deployed 416 guardsmen.

So much for a good use of the National Guard deployment in Washington, DC.

If they're going to stay, I have a simple demand: put down the guns and pick up some shovels.

Those who cut our artificial stone countertops are breathing in silica dust and dying. Not just a few. In fact, so many that in Australia they’ve banned the product and adopted safer substitutes. In the US, however, the industry wants to ban workers from suing the manufacturers and Republicans are doing their bidding, introducing H.R. 5437, The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Stone Slab Products Act.

Dr. David Michaels, the former head of OSHA, points us to California’s tearless Silicosis Surveillance Dashboard: 511 cases of silicosis have been diagnosed among these workers; 29 have died (average age 46); 54 underwent lung transplants; and 98 percent of these workers are Latino.

In 2021, there were only two diagnosed silicosis cases in California. In 2025 there were 214. “The number of cases is rising rapidly,” Dr. Michaels wrote to me, “That’s the important point.”

Here’s the more tearful description form Dr. Michaels during testimony last month before the House:

The hallmarks of the disease: shortness of breath and diminished exercise capacity that progresses to an inability to climb even one flight of stairs. A short walk that should take just 20 minutes can take an hour. Working is difficult or impossible. People cough incessantly. They can’t sleep because it is difficult to breathe and they are kept awake coughing. Over time, people with more advanced silicosis require supplemental oxygen and can’t leave home without an oxygen tank. And they are at increased risk of dying from lung cancer.

The crime behind this slaughter is that safer, profitable substitutes are available. As Michaels testified:

There are substitute products that are comparable in use and cost, but which do not kill workers. Many substitutes are made from amorphous silica—a different and a safer material than crystalline silica. Since Australia banned countertops containing crystalline silica, countertops are fabricated from alternative products that look and cost the same but are safer for workers.

But switching to safer products involves costs that the manufacturers would prefer to avoid. Why lose any profits at all? Why go through the disruptions involved in producing new products? Better to be shielded by your political allies.

The countertop manufacturing industry doesn’t want to protect workers from harm; it wants protection from the workers it harms. It worries this could become another asbestos epidemic that has cost asbestos manufacturers billions of dollars in payments to the victims. This time around, the industry is in position to nip it in the bud, given that the Republicans are in full control of all three branches of government.

What the industry dreads are third-party suits. Workers are not permitted, in nearly all circumstances, to sue their own employers for illnesses and exposures at work. Those claims are covered by state workers’ compensation programs. But harmed workers can and do sue manufacturers of equipment or substances that cause them harm. And if the harm can be proved to a jury, the compensation can be steep. It doesn’t make up for the damage to the exposed workers, but it provides some support to their families and pressures the industry to find safer substitutes for its harmful products.

The solution preferred by the countertop industry is simple: get a free pass, which is what this killer legislation would do. It would shield the entire industry from “persons who claim personal injuries as a result of exposure to silica dust produced during the alteration of such products in the course of their employment by third-party fabricators.”

Nice. No change needed, no interruption of profitable production, no switching to new products. No nothing except a few political donations to grease the skids. And at least some of that corporate-funded grease comes from millionaire Marty Davis, the CEO of Cambria, a large counter manufacturer, who has donated more than $800,000 to Republicans, and encouraged Trump to challenged the outcome of the 2020 election.

On this piece of legislation, the Democrats are saying the right things. Rep. Henry C. “Hank” Johnson (D-Ga.), the ranking Democrat on the House Courts, Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence and the Internet Subcommittee committee, which is pushing this legislation, said it as clearly as could be said:

The bill behind today’s hearing would give blanket immunity to artificial stone manufacturers and suppliers, preventing injured workers from seeking justice in court. It would dismiss the hundreds of cases pending against these manufacturers.

…Our courts determine liability all the time. People petition the court, have their grievances heard, a judge and jury consider the evidence, and a judgment is rendered.

Manufacturers are asking for a different scenario – one where the deep pockets go to Congress, Congress makes a snap judgment, and the big businesses never have to go to court again. That’s not how our justice system is supposed to work, and I condemn the blatant misuse of this committee to shield corporations at the expense of the American worker.

If only more Democrats would speak like this more often, millions of working people might hear them.

The quote in the headline of this article is attributed to journalist Paul Brodeur, author of "Expendable Americans."

History occasionally presents moments when the truth about a conflict is stated plainly enough that it becomes impossible to ignore. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi’s February 7 address in Doha, Qatar (transcript here) should prove to be such a moment. His important and constructive remarks responded to the US call for comprehensive negotiations, and he laid out a sound proposal for peace across the Middle East.

Last week, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called for comprehensive negotiations: "If the Iranians want to meet, we're ready." He proposed for talks to include the nuclear issue, Iran’s military capabilities, and its support for proxy groups around the region. On its surface, this sounds like a serious and constructive proposal. The Middle East’s security crises are interconnected, and diplomacy that isolates nuclear issues from broader regional dynamics is unlikely to endure.

On February 7, Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi’s responded to the United States’ proposal for a comprehensive peace. In his speech at the Al Jazeera Forum, the foreign minister addressed the root cause of regional instability – “Palestine… is the defining question of justice in West Asia and beyond” and he proposed a path forward.

The Foreign Minister’s statement is correct. The failure to resolve the issue of Palestinian statehood has indeed fueled every major regional conflict since 1948. The Arab-Israeli wars, the rise of anti-Israel militancy, the regional polarization, and the repeated cycles of violence, all derive from the failure to create a State of Palestine alongside the State of Israel. Gaza represents the most devastating chapter in this conflict, where Israel’s brutal occupation of Palestine was followed by Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, and then by Israel’s genocide against the people of Gaza.

In his speech, Araghchi condemned Israel’s expansionist project “pursued under the banner of security.” He warned of the annexation of the West Bank, which Israeli government officials, as National Security Minister Ben Gvir, continually call for, and for which the Knesset has already passed a motion.

Araghchi also highlighted another fundamental dimension of Israeli strategy which is the pursuit of permanent military supremacy across the region. He said that Israel’s expansionist project requires that “neighboring countries be weakened—militarily, technologically, economically, and socially—so that the Israeli regime permanently enjoys the upper hand.” This is indeed the Clean Break doctrine of Prime Minister Netanyahu, dating back 30 years. It has been avidly supported by the US through 100 billion dollars in military assistance to Israel since 2000, diplomatic cover at the UN via repeated vetoes, and the consistent US rejection of accountability measures for Israel’s violations of international humanitarian law.

Israel’s impunity has destabilized the region, fueling arms races, proxy wars, and cycles of revenge. It has also corroded what remains of the international legal order. The abuse of international law by the US and Israel with much of Europe remaining silent, has gravely weakened the UN Charter, leaving the UN close to collapse.

In the concluding remarks of his speech, he offered the US a political solution and path forward. “The path to stability is clear: justice for Palestine, accountability for crimes, an end to occupation and apartheid, and a regional order built on sovereignty, equality, and cooperation. If the world wants peace, it must stop rewarding aggression. If the world wants stability, it must stop enabling expansionism.”

This is a valid and constructive response to Rubio’s call for comprehensive diplomacy.

This framework could address all the interlocking dimensions of the region’s conflict. The end of Israel’s expansion and occupation of Palestine, and Israel’s return to the borders of June 4, 1967, would bring an end to outside funding and arming of proxy groups in the region. The creation of a Palestinian state alongside the state of Israel would enhance Israel’s security as well as that of its neighbors. A renewed nuclear agreement with Iran, strictly limiting Iran to peaceful nuclear activities and paired with the lifting of US and EU sanctions, would add a crucial pillar of regional stability. Iran already agreed to such a nuclear framework a decade ago, in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that was adopted by the UN Security Council in Resolution 2231. It was the US during Trump's first term, not Iran, that withdrew from the agreement.

A comprehensive peace reflects the foundation of modern collective security doctrine, including the United Nations Charter itself. Durable peace requires mutual recognition of sovereignty, territorial integrity, and equal security guarantees for all states.

Regional security is the shared responsibility of all states in the region, and each of them faces a historic obligation. This comprehensive peace proposal is not new, it has been advocated for decades by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (57 Muslim‑majority countries) and the League of Arab States (22 Arab States). Ever since the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, all of these countries have endorsed, on a yearly basis, the framework of land-for-peace. All major Arab and Islamic states, allies of the US, have played a crucial role in facilitating the latest round of US-Iranian negotiations in Oman. Additionally, Saudi Arabia has clearly reminded the US that it will normalize relations with Israel only on the condition of the establishment of a Palestinian State.

The United States faces a moment of truth. Does it really want peace, or does it want to follow Israel’s extremism? For decades, the US has blindly followed Israeli misguided objectives. Domestic political pressures, powerful lobbying networks, strategic miscalculations, and perhaps a bit of blackmail lurking in the Epstein files (who knows?) have combined to subordinate American diplomacy to Israel’s regional ambitions.

The US subservience to Israel does not serve American interests. It has drawn the United States into repeated regional wars, undermined global trust in American foreign policy, and weakened the international legal order that Washington itself helped to construct after 1945.

A comprehensive peace offers the US a rare opportunity to correct course. By negotiating a comprehensive regional peace grounded in international law, the United States could reclaim genuine diplomacy and help to establish a stable regional security architecture that benefits all parties, including Israel and Palestine.

The Middle East stands at a crossroads between endless war and comprehensive peace. The framework for peace exists. It requires first and foremost Palestinian statehood, security guarantees for Israel and the rest of the region, a peaceful nuclear deal restoring the basic agreement adopted by the UN a decade ago, lifting of economic sanctions, the unbiased enforcement of international law, and a diplomatic architecture that replaces military force with security cooperation. The world should rally behind a comprehensive framework and take this historic opportunity to achieve regional peace.

Democracy is not merely a collection of institutions, laws, and elections; democracy is, above all, a language. A language grounded in minimum respect, legitimate competition, and recognition of human dignity. When this language collapses, even if ballot boxes remain in place, the substance and meaning of democracy are hollowed out. The publication—and subsequent removal—of a humiliating video targeting Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama on a social media platform affiliated with Donald Trump must be understood precisely from this perspective: not as a communication mishap or a failed joke, but as a sign of the deliberate erosion of political language in the United States.

This video, released through a platform formally associated with the President of the United States, was not merely a harsh political message; it carried symbolism deeply rooted in a long history of racial degradation. More important than the image itself is the fact that such content could be disseminated at the highest level of American political power without first being stopped by ethical, institutional, or even purely strategic filters. This was no accident, but rather the product of a distinctive style of politics that Trump has cultivated for years.

From the moment he entered politics, Trump made clear that he had no intention of playing by the classical rules of political competition. He not only discarded the unwritten norms of political civility, but consciously sought to destroy them. In this model, insult, mockery, and humiliation are not costs but political capital. The harsher the reactions, the deeper the polarization, and the more brutal the language of politics becomes, the more victorious Trump perceives himself to be. Within this framework, the publication of a humiliating video targeting a former USpresident—particularly the country’s first Black president—is not a slip, but a logical continuation of the same strategy. This behavior is less about Obama himself than it is a message to Trump’s social base: that no red lines exist and that politics can be reduced to the realm of absolute derision.

The core problem is that when such images and metaphors are circulated by an ordinary citizen, they can be relegated to the margins of online hate speech. But when they are disseminated by a president or by a network affiliated with him, they enter an entirely different realm of meaning and impact. This is no longer a matter of “political satire,” but rather the normalization of a language of humiliation at the center of power. Animalistic metaphors used to describe human beings—especially racial minorities—carry a dark and bloody historical legacy. Reproducing them, even in the form of jokes or digital imagery, sends a clear message: a return to a politics in which human dignity is sacrificed for political entertainment. Trump may deny direct responsibility for this message, but denial does not absolve responsibility.

When a president turns a platform into a personal instrument of power, the ethical and political responsibility for all its messages rests squarely with him.

The removal of the video following waves of criticism should not be mistaken for reformism or accountability. This retreat resembled a tactical maneuver more than a genuine change of course. Experience over recent years shows that Trump and the media ecosystem around him have repeatedly employed the same pattern: release provocative content, gauge reactions, and, if necessary, execute a limited retreat without a real apology or acknowledgment of wrongdoing. This pattern is dangerous because it gradually shifts the boundaries of what is considered acceptable in politics. What is deemed “removable” today may become normalized tomorrow. In this way, society is not confronted with a single dramatic shock, but with a slow erosion of norms.

Truth Social is not merely a social media platform; it is the symbol of a mode of politics in which the president, the media, the message, and the audience all operate within a closed circuit. In this space, independent journalism plays no mediating role, nor do party institutions possess the capacity to moderate messaging. The result is a politics that depends less on public persuasion and more on the mobilization of loyal supporters. Within this ecosystem, Trump is not just a user but the architect of the space itself. Therefore, he cannot be absolved of responsibility for the content disseminated within it. When a president turns a platform into a personal instrument of power, the ethical and political responsibility for all its messages rests squarely with him.

The issue extends far beyond US domestic politics. For decades, the United States has sought to present itself as a defender of values such as human dignity, equality, and the fight against discrimination. Each time the official language of American politics slides toward humiliation and mockery, these claims lose credibility in the eyes of the world. For America’s rivals, such moments are a golden opportunity: living evidence of the contradiction between rhetoric and behavior. For allies, they signal troubling normative instability. And for societies grappling with racism and discrimination, they deliver a bitter message—that even at the highest levels of power, this language still enjoys legitimacy.

Ultimately, the question is not whether a single video was offensive or not; the question is what kind of politics allows such a video to be produced and circulated in the first place. Trump is not merely an individual; he represents a style of politics in which the destruction of the language of democracy has become an ordinary tactic. If democracy is to remain more than an electoral mechanism, it must protect its language. A politics built on humiliation may win votes in the short term, but in the long run it will lose public trust, institutional credibility, and moral standing. And this is a cost that not only Trump, but American society as a whole—and the global political order—will inevitably be forced to pay.

In late 2025, federal immigration authorities detained a non-union janitor who’d accused contractors for Minnesota’s Ramsey County of wage theft.

The worker is now in deportation proceedings. But his courage helped win policy changes in Ramsey County, and his fierce advocacy in a similar wage theft case in nearby Hennepin County also paid off: More than 70 subcontracted workers for Hennepin County received nearly $400,000 in back pay in December 2025.

When someone who fights for workers is detained, “it sends a chill,” Greg Nammacher, president of SEIU Local 26, told me. “When the workers who are stepping up to try and reveal violations are silenced, the standard comes down for the whole industry.”

The Trump administration claims that its assault on immigrants will protect American workers. But its masked, armed federal agents are creating hostile environments for all workers, not just immigrants.

“They treated us like animals. And it’s not some immigrants who are affected—it’s everybody.”

In Minneapolis, federal agents abducted an educator trying to ensure safe dismissal at a high school. In Southern California, they chased a day laborer at a Home Depot onto a freeway, where he was hit and killed by a vehicle. In Chicago, they detained a childcare worker as children watched.

Agents have even directly harassed striking workers.

On December 16, Juanita Robinson was out on the picket line in Chicago when armed federal agents—including border chief Gregory Bovino—approached and demanded identification. The group “interrogated and laughed at our members while they were on the picket line,” according to a press statement from Teamsters Local 705.

“It was scary when they pulled up on us,” said Robinson, who was born in Chicago but calls her immigrant coworkers family. “We’re out there trying to make ends meet, and y’all abusing us,” she said of the agents. “They treated us like animals. And it’s not some immigrants who are affected—it’s everybody.”

The scholarly research backs Robinson up.

By studying “Secure Communities,” a federal program that resulted in the deportation of nearly half a million people from 2008 to 2014, scholars found that upticks in immigration enforcement are associated with increased minimum wage violations and more dangerous workplaces for all workers.

“If I complain to the Wage and Hour Division that I’m not getting paid minimum wage, it might mean that my wages get restored,” said Matt Johnson, a professor at Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy. “But it also might affect my coworkers, who were facing similar violations. So when one worker becomes more reluctant to complain,” he told me, it ultimately affects “the rest of the labor market.”

Research also shows that immigration crackdowns actually reduce jobs for US-born workers. Chloe East, an economics professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, says that’s because immigrants and US-born workers “complement” each other rather than compete directly.

For example, in order for a restaurant “to hire waiters, waitresses, hosts, and hostesses, which are jobs typically taken by US-born people, they also have to be able to hire cooks and dishwashers, jobs more often taken by immigrants,” she explained. When they “can’t find anybody to do the dishwashing, they may have to reduce their hiring overall.”

The effect ripples out. “When many people are all of a sudden removed from a local area because of detention or deportation, or afraid to leave their homes to get haircuts and eat at restaurants,” she explained, that hurts the economy “for everybody, including US-born workers.”

The GOP’s so-called ”Big Beautiful Bill” gave the Trump administration an unprecedented $170 billion over and above existing funding to carry out abuses like these. That enormous sum comes directly at the expense of programs that were cut, like Medicaid and SNAP, and could end up hurting all workers and their communities.

They’re trying to “break the unity that we have to have to be able to actually get raises and health insurance and retirement,” Nummacher told me. “Working people have never been able to win these things without being organized.”

On February 5, a video was posted on President Donald Trump’s Truth Social account depicting former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as apes in a jungle. The racist depiction of Black people as primates dates back centuries. It is meant to represent them as ugly, savage, and unintelligent—as fundamentally incapable of building a human (white) civilization.

The post was deleted 12 hours later. The White House initially blamed an unnamed staffer for posting it. One White House adviser told reporters, “The president was not aware of that video, and was very let down by the staffer who put it out.” Apparently, they forgot that Trump himself had claimed that only he and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino have access to his social media account.

Later that day, Trump admitted that he knew about the video before its posting. He told reporters, “I looked at the beginning of [the video]. It was fine.” He then added, “Nobody knew that that was at the end. If they would have looked, they would have had the sense to take it down.” Neither the current president of the United States nor his staff is apparently capable of watching a 1-minute video before posting it.

Trump refused to apologize, insisting that he “didn’t make a mistake.”

In some respects, Leavitt is right—that Truth Social post shouldn’t surprise anyone. Trump is the nation’s Racist-in-Chief.

Notably, even conservatives condemned the post (albeit meekly). Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) posted on Twitter-X that this is “the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House.” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) shared Scott’s post, writing, “Tim is right. This was appalling.” Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) similarly wrote: “This post was offensive. I’m glad the White House took it down.”

Democrats, by contrast, used stronger language. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said, “Fuck Donald Trump and his vile, racist, and malignant behavior.” Finally, bipartisanship has been achieved!

Despite this outcry, the White House was quick to dismiss the post as being anything newsworthy. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt demanded that journalists “please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.”

MAGA and Anti-Black Racism

In some respects, Leavitt is right—that Truth Social post shouldn’t surprise anyone. Trump is the nation’s Racist-in-Chief. It’s a slow day indeed if that video is the only racist thing Trump did all day.

In recent months, he has referred to Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), a sitting Black congresswoman, as “a disgusting person, a loser,” and “garbage.” Trump says that she, a US citizen, “should be thrown the hell out of our country.” To emphasize, not her country, but “our country.”

More broadly, he says that Somalis are “low IQ people” and that Somalia is “barely a nation.” It “stinks” and is “filthy, dirty, disgusting, ridden with crime.” For Trump, Somalis are savage, ugly, uncivilized, and unintelligent people—fundamentally distinct from the “nice people” from civilized societies like Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Notice the direct parallels between how Trump explicitly describes Somalis on the one hand, and the underlying racist meaning behind comparing Black people to primates on the other. Trump is applying the exact same set of stereotypes in both instances.

For MAGA Republicans, that success is always vulnerable to the threat of “foreign cultures” and Black immigrants, which in this case include both Ilhan Omar and Barack Obama.

Somalia is not the only example. He refers to Haiti as a “shithole” and “hellhole.” That Haitians are “eating the dogs. They’re eating the cats.” This narrative—not only wildly racist, but demonstrably false—was amplified by several Republicans, including Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.), Representative Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) and then-Vice President-Elect JD Vance.

Trump’s racism is not an anomaly among MAGA Republicans. Homeland Security Adviser Stephen Miller remarks, “If Somalians cannot make Somalia successful, why would we think that the track will be any different in the United States? If Libya keeps failing, if the Central African Republic keeps failing, if Somalia keeps failing, right? If these societies all over the world continue to fail, you have to ask yourself, […] what do we think is going to happen?" For Miller, no matter where those people go, the result will be the same: “consistent high rates of welfare use, consistent high rates of criminal activity, consistent failures to assimilate.” Test scores will also consistently drop: “If you subtract immigration out of test scores, all of a sudden our test scores skyrocket!” Like Trump, for Miller, Africans and their descendants are incapable of building a human (white) civilization.

Indirectly, Trump applies this standard to Obama too. Per Trump’s birther conspiracy theory, Obama was born in Kenya. At the same time he promoted that lie, Trump insisted that Obama allowed the US to collapse to the level of “a third world country.” Taken together, from Trump’s perspective, Obama is an African immigrant whose “destructive” policies led to the country “dying.” This is precisely what he and others in his administration allege that African immigrants always do.

A MAGA Black History Month

One might (confusedly) object that all of this is xenophobia, not anti-Black racism specifically—truly a distinction without a difference.

On February 3, Trump issued a proclamation emphasizing that “the history of black Americans is an indispensable chapter in our grand American country.” Thus, he calls upon “public officials, educators, librarians, and all the people of the United States to observe [Black History Month] with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities.”

Yet, this objection overlooks a crucial detail: Trump’s proclamation is explicitly not a recognition of diversity—“This month, however, we do not celebrate our differences.” For Trump, Black History Month is not a celebration of Black people, but rather of the ability of “black American heroes” to successfully embrace and defend the “very special culture” that America and Europe inherited. Importantly, for Trump and his allies, the values, beliefs, and principles of that special culture are uniquely white.

This is the white-washed version of Black History Month that MAGA recognizes—one where Black people’s contributions to America are completely divorced from their lived experiences; where it is white values that abolish slavery, end discrimination, and save the nation.

Trump is not honoring Black arts, culture, or philosophy. He is calling on us to remember Black people’s “enduring commitment to the American principles of liberty, justice and equality.” It is those principles that freed the Western Hemisphere from “empires, ended slavery, saved Europe, put a man on the moon, and built the freest, most just, and most prosperous society ever known to mankind.” Black patriots like Coretta Scott King, Booker T. Washington, and Thomas Sowell “fiercely defended the values set forth in the Declaration of Independence and helped to make our Republic the greatest country in the history of the world.”

For Trump, America’s “bedrock belief in equality” is inextricably tied to the nation’s Christian foundation and the belief that all are equal under God. It is that belief “that drove black American icons to help fulfill the promise of [America’s] principles.”

What Trump is expressing here is entirely consistent with the racist worldview that he and other MAGA Republicans endorse. Black values and cultures ruin societies, while white values uplift them. This is why Haiti, Somalia, Central African Republic, and Libya fail to develop, while the US thrives. If Black people succeed, it is because they have championed Christian and Enlightenment (white) principles and values. This is the white-washed version of Black History Month that MAGA recognizes—one where Black people’s contributions to America are completely divorced from their lived experiences; where it is white values that abolish slavery, end discrimination, and save the nation.

For MAGA Republicans, that success is always vulnerable to the threat of “foreign cultures” and Black immigrants, which in this case include both Ilhan Omar and Barack Obama. This vulnerability is why US cities like Baltimore, where more than half the residents are Black, can become “dangerous,” “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess.”

No matter what Trump or his allies allege, the video depicting the Obamas as apes is entirely consistent with their racist worldview. In every instance, their comments reflect the same underlying dichotomy: Black is ugly, dangerous, and savage, while white is beautiful, safe, and civilized. This is true whether they explicitly state it or metaphorically represent it.

It is this racism that leads Trump to blame Black Americans for violent crimes. It is this racism that leads the Trump administration to invade Minnesota. It is this “racial and national origin animus” that spurs their desire to end Temporary Protection Status for Haitians. It is this racism that makes everyone, regardless of race or citizenship status, vulnerable to the Trump administration’s Christian and ethnonationalist agenda. It is this racism that we must all resist.

In California, as in the rest of the country, there is a war going on between two visions of the future. In one we have affordability, sustainability, and democracy. In the other we have poverty, extreme inequality, authoritarianism, and environmental disaster. Movement toward the first is powered by many organizations and a variety of forms of people power. Movement toward the second is powered by the fossil fuel industry, big tech, white nationalism, and the neofascist wing of the Republican Party. Deciding who will win that battle is the most dramatic question of our time.

The fossil fuel industry is a central player in this story. At the federal level, this was exemplified by President Donald Trump choosing the head of ExxonMobil to be secretary of state in his first term. In the run-up to the 2024 election it was exemplified by the $450 million dollars the industry donated to Republican candidates, with $96 million going directly to Trump’s election campaign. We will probably never know the extent of indirect donations. The industry’s centrality to the story is exemplified by the work done to shut down clean energy projects funded by the Biden administration. It is exemplified by the kidnapping of the president of Venezuela to take over that country’s fossil fuel resources. The industry is showing no signs of changing its strategy of putting profits over climate, over affordability, and over democracy.

Here in California we are at the crux of that battle. California is a global leader in making the transition to a clean energy economy. We have some of the strongest environmental legislation in the world. At the same time, California also produces 118 million barrels of oil per year. The fossil fuel industry is the largest contributor to our state’s politicians. The Western States Petroleum Association is the largest political contributor. Chevron is the second largest.

Most of our politicians would like for California to be a leader in building an affordable and sustainable society, and yet the structural limitations imposed by the political power of the fossil fuel industry are making the transition difficult. Finding a way through that contradiction at the core of our politics is an urgent need for those of us wanting to build a just, sustainable society in California.

In this period, environmentalists cannot afford to ignore the issues of energy prices and job loss. But neither can we allow the fossil fuel industry to slow our progress on getting off of fossil fuels.

Californians, like most people in the US, are being squeezed economically. Prices are rising and wages are stagnating. Politicians who focus on affordability are finding deep resonance with voters and the public. Some California politicians are becoming wary of bold climate legislation, out of concern that voters’ struggles with affordability will lead them to blame politicians’ support for clean energy for rising energy prices. Gas prices in California are some of the highest in the country. No Democratic lawmaker wants to be blamed for high energy bills. Gov. Gavin Newsom is more wary of that than anyone, as he positions himself to run for the presidency.

There are real challenges that must be addressed to transition to a clean energy economy while maintaining affordability. And there are difficulties that are intentionally caused by the fossil fuel industry’s insistence on fighting a transition away from dependence on its products. Politicians and advocacy organizations need to be wary of the traps that the fossil fuel industry is laying to prevent the transition to a just, sustainable society. Industry has laid traps by spiking gas prices and blaming environmental regulation for prices and by pretending that environmental laws are bad for labor. As the world weans itself from fossil fuels, it needs to wean itself from the political power of the fossil fuel industry and from its manipulative messaging.

To fight the traps laid by the fossil fuel industry, environmental organizations need to redouble their efforts to build alliances with those in labor who are not beholden to the fossil fuel industry; to work for regulations that prevent industry from spiking gas prices for political reasons; and to work to keep energy affordable. In this period, environmentalists cannot afford to ignore the issues of energy prices and job loss. But neither can we allow the fossil fuel industry to slow our progress on getting off of fossil fuels. In order to work our way through the maze of challenges in this struggle it is important to understand what impacts gas prices and the tools we have to combat the climate crisis while maintaining affordability and protecting democracy.

The Reality of California Gas Prices

In California, Chevron stations have QR codes prominently displayed that will take you to a site that will tell you how much of the price of gas can be attributed to taxes. They hope to build political support for lowering those taxes and to put the blame for high gas prices on environmental regulations. On those sites, Chevron fails to tell you the amount of the price that is attributed to profits, or even to the cost of the lobbying they do to convince you they need to be able to continue to despoil our environment.

The price of gas at the pump is driven by many things: 37% of the price of gas in California is set by the price of crude oil on the global market, 25% comes from California taxes and fees, and 4% is from federal taxes. Finally, 33% goes to the fossil fuel industry for refining and distribution costs, and profits.

How much of that 33% that goes to the industry is profits? According to the Environmental Working Group, in 2022, the year of a major price spike that made gas prices a political football, “Four of California refiners posted a combined $72.5 billion in record-breaking windfall profits last year, nearly tripling 2021 profits.”

In 2023 Gov. Newsom called a special session of the legislature to pass a law to limit price gouging. The bill created a new agency, the Division of Petroleum Market Oversight, to monitor profits within the industry. It was supposed to also charge penalties for price gouging, but in 2025 the governor put a 5-year moratorium on that out of fears of backlash from refinery closures.

In 2024 the agency published a report that showed that after accounting for other legitimate reasons for California gas to be more expensive than in other states, between 2015 and 2024 excess profits over industry averages of profits in other states were “$0.41 per gallon, costing Californians $59 billion.” If gas is at $4.10 per gallon now, that means that 10% of the price at the pump can be attributed to excess profits. Excess, or windfall profits, are profits over the industry average.

Californians get good roads and clean air as a result of the 25% of the price of gas that comes from state taxes. They gain nothing positive from the 10% that goes to excess profits for fossil fuel companies.

Gas production in California is complicated by a few factors. One is that we have high clean air standards, so gas cannot easily come from other places. Refiners are able to make excess profits because there are very few of them in the state. They are able to act as an oligopoly. Twenty-nine of California’s refineries closed between 1982 and 2024. At the present moment, 90% of our state’s refining capacity is controlled by four companies. We are in a very, very difficult situation of dependence on those few companies.

As we transition to a just and clean economy, we will see more refinery closures. California is slowly and steadily consuming less gasoline: “In-state consumption of gasoline has been declining since 2017, a trend projected to continue. Californians consumed around 13.8 billion gallons of gasoline in 2021, this is expected to drop to 8 billion by 2030 and to less than 2 billion gallons by the 2040s.”

The state has found a few ways to deal with this difficult situation. In 2024 California Attorney General Rob Bonta won a $50 million settlement with two gas trading firms for price manipulations. That same year the legislature passed ABX21, which required refiners to keep a certain amount of supply on hand to help deal with temporary refinery closures. A longer-term solution may need to involve the state taking refineries over and running them in the public interest to smooth the transition away from the use of fossil fuels.

Impacts for Fossil Fuel Industry Workers

Refinery closures are good news for the health of people living in the communities near them. They are not such great news for the tax base of those communities or for the people who work at them. There are around 100,000 people employed by the fossil fuel industry in California now, and several thousand have already lost their jobs in recent years.

A major study on a just transition for California was published in 2021. It was done by economists at the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) and commissioned by the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Local 3299, the California Federation of Teachers, and the United Steelworkers Local 675. The report lays out in detail the kinds of policies needed to help workers transition to new jobs at comparable pay to what they have had, and what is needed to support the economic viability of communities facing the transition, and ways to pay for a just transition.

As we have learned with Trump, you don't deal with a bully by giving them your sandwich.

One of the most promising ways the state can support displaced refinery workers is by employing them in the work of plugging abandoned wells. In 2022 the state appropriated $20 million to a Displaced Oil and Gas Worker Fund. The 2022 budget included $20 million to train workers to plug oil wells. The state has budgeted $30 million to workforce organizations to retrain refinery workers for new jobs.

It is possible for California to transition to a clean energy economy while maintaining price affordability, good jobs, and a just transition for fossil fuel industry workers and impacted communities. But that possibility will only be a reality if we get the politics of the transition right. If we don't get it right the industry will continue to continue to punish consumers as a way to threaten politicians, while maintaining excess profits.

The Fight in 2025

In October of 2025 Gov. Newsom shepherded through a set of bills aimed at taming energy prices. Some of them were supported by environmentalists and some of them were opposed. The one that was most forcefully opposed by environmentalists was SB 237, which streamlines permitting for oil extraction in Kern County. It supersedes laws that restrict production near communities and ecologically sensitive areas.

In the lead up to that fight a coalition of environmental groups sent a letter to the governor and legislature arguing that there were other ways to deal with the affordability problem. Their argument boiled down to two main points.

The first was that the sooner we reduce our dependency on fossil fuels, the sooner we are freed from the price of gas. We free ourselves from dependence on oil with renewable energy, public transportation, electric vehicles, and charging infrastructure. California is well along the way in making this transition happen.

The other point they made was that there are ways to regulate the fossil fuel industry to prevent it from punishing consumers. Politicians need to lean into and expand ABX21, the bill that requires refiners to keep a certain amount of supply on hand to help deal with temporary closures. The organizations called for the bill to be expanded to prevent future supply shocks.

The other big thing that happened in 2025 was that a bill that would raise money to clean up the mess left behind by the fossil fuel industry was stopped for the time being, in part because politicians were afraid of a backlash by consumers over the price of gas. The Polluters Pay Climate Superfund Act was pulled by supporters when it became clear that legislators, many of whom have been strong environmental allies, did not have the stomach to push the bill forward. Supporters continue to do the groundwork to pass the bill in the future.

That bill would raise money for public goods and would only be paid for by the companies which have caused environmental damage in the state. It would be very good for consumers. But as long as the fossil fuel industry has the power to punish California consumers and blame politicians, the bill is not likely to pass.

The Solutions, an Agenda for 2026, and Beyond: Labor and Environmental Solidarity

For years many in the environmental movement have called for a just transition, where we take seriously the needs of workers whose good union jobs are being displaced in the transition to a clean energy economy. The PERI report of 2021 lays out in detail how that transition could happen with minimal suffering for workers or consumers. But of course the dirty energy industry is not interested in a just transition away from the use of their products. Rather than working to help society wean itself off of its dependence on fossil fuels, the industry has denied the reality of the climate crisis; propagated misinformation; formed alliances with the right wing of labor; and bought politicians willing to use the levers of government to suppress alternatives, stop regulation, and subsidize their dirty energy.

We need to always be sure that we propose solutions that don't benefit one part of society while causing another to suffer.

There are many unions in California ready to fight hard for policies that sit at the intersection of affordability, environment, and democracy. Several of them came out in support of the Polluters Pay Climate Superfund Act. But many unions are wary of supporting anything that labor is not unified on. And part of labor in California is committed to supporting the interests of the fossil fuel industry. The Western States Petroleum Association has an alliance with the Building Trades Council, which advocates for shared interests. The building trades have consistently come out in opposition to environmental legislation, even when there were no jobs the legislation put at risk.

Finding ways to form an alliance between labor and environment that is stronger than the alliance between the Building Trades and WSPA is an important part of freeing California politicians to be able to support moves toward a pro-affordability, democracy, and sustainability agenda.

Conclusion

We are in the middle of a transition from a dirty energy economy that requires political control over geographies, which requires dictators and war, to an economy based on sunshine and wind, which can develop into a sustainable system where no concentrations of power are needed, and where all people can have access to the things they need to live well.

Navigating the bumps and difficult spots in the transition requires us to be very thoughtful about how our work sits at the intersection of affordability, sustainability, and democracy. It requires that we maintain as much solidarity as possible among those who are fighting for a world that works for us all. And it requires that we be proactive in dealing with the political machinations of an industry that will stop at nothing to protect its ability to profit.

Solidarity means we are all in this together, we look for solutions that serve a multiplicity of needs, and use our intersectional lenses to make sure no one is left behind. We need to always be sure that we propose solutions that don't benefit one part of society while causing another to suffer.

One response to refinery closure and rising gas prices is to give industry what it wants and hope that they will not punish the state too much. We can slow the transition and allow industry to continue to profit, allow frontline communities to continue to suffer health impacts, and the climate to be destroyed. The other approach is to challenge industry head on, and risk them causing all sorts of damage in retaliation. As we have learned with Trump, you don't deal with a bully by giving them your sandwich. Bullies need to be taken on directly. But as we are also learning from Trump you need to be smart in how you disarm a bully; you need to be proactive in managing and limiting his ability to retaliate.

Some of the steps we need to take to move through the difficult phase of the transition we are in in California are:

1. Expose the politicians who do the industry's bidding, so that we have politicians who are more willing to be bold in their support for policies that help us move forward on an agenda that supports affordability, environment, and democracy;
2. Pass laws that prevent retaliatory actions and price gauging. This can include amending and expanding the scope of ABX21;
3. Encourage the state to be ready to take over our oil and refining resources if needed;
4. Keep communicating with the public about who is to blame for the high prices of gasoline, and to not allow those prices to go so high as to harm California consumers;
5. Build stronger bridges between labor and environmental organizations; and
6. Remind the public that we are on their side and committed to pushing for win-win goals that promote affordability, labor strength, environmental goals, and democracy.

Update: The number of refineries closed in California has been corrected from 46 between 2018 and 2024 to 29 between 1982 and 2024.

Here’s a small suggestion from the two authors of this piece (us): Don’t be young in Donald Trump’s America if you can help it. Being young in America right now means you’ll have to contend with stalling job markets, rampant inflation, deep political and economic instability, and impending climate disaster. If you point these things out, you’re labeled a dangerous (and misguided) radical. If you’re too busy trying to make ends meet for you and your family, you get labeled as lazy, apathetic, and defeatist.

This is not to say that older generations are doing okay. They’re not. But at least they’ll get to receive (and not just pay into) social security, which has to make the fascism go down easier. Before we explain or suggest what the young can do about all that, let us start by introducing ourselves, since one of us is indeed still Gen Z.

The authors of this piece are both co-workers and family members. “Theohari,” as some of our colleagues like to call us. Liz is Sam’s aunt and a long-time antipoverty organizer, mother, pastor, and theologian. Sam is a recent college graduate, student organizer, and law nerd. Recently, we were roommates at The Young Organizers Survival Corps boot camp.

Gathering in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains on a 157-acre farm owned and run by the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF), The Young Organizers Survival Corps kicked off a six-month leadership development program to help prepare the next generation of leaders to resist authoritarianism—something all too crucial in Donald Trump’s America. A hundred young people converged from more than 22 states, representing dozens of campuses and grassroots organizations. Most of them had already been struggling around issues of tenants’ rights, peace and militarism, immigrant rights, abortion rights, mass incarceration, homelessness, healthcare access, LGBTQ+ advocacy, and so much more in this increasingly disturbed country.

To stand any chance of successfully fighting back, we must offer a competing and more attractive vision of the future—one in which young people come to believe that they will not only survive, but lead secure, fulfilling lives.

In our days at that farm, we studied the hard-won lessons of past social movements, trained young people in the tactics of nonviolent resistance and grassroots organizing, practiced hands-on skills in arts and culture, and learned new methods for and reasons to reclaim the power of our faith traditions.

Movement Education

Haley Farm was the perfect setting for just such a boot camp. The farm once belonged to Alex Haley, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Roots and The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Both of those masterpieces educated millions of Americans about African-American history and the importance of genealogy, as well as radical political organizing and thought. Urging readers to investigate their own heritage, Haley used storytelling to make the country’s history accessible and inspiring.

The educational mission of Alex Haley and his farm has endured for decades, long past the era in which he and so many others struggled to discover their own political bearings in the Black freedom movement. Since the Children’s Defense Fund bought the Haley Farm in 1994, it has hosted trainings for CDF Freedom Schools, deepened and inspired faith-based child advocacy, convened children’s authors and librarians, hosted the “National Council of Elders” (where young activists and civil rights veterans are able to strategize about the future), and gathered working groups for the Black Community Crusade for Children and the Black Student Leadership Network—and that’s just to begin a list of its work. A couple of months back, for instance, movement elders and Black organizers convened there for training in how to resist this deepening Trumpian moment of growing violence and authoritarianism.

For decades, the leafy folds of the Great Smoky Mountains in the southern Appalachians have housed other epicenters of movement training as well. Haley Farm is just towns away from the Highlander Research and Education Center (once the Highlander Folk School), another freedom training ground. Highlander was founded by popular educator Myles Horton, whose thinking has shaped the work of generations of grassroots leaders, including both of ours.

The Highlander Folk School first emerged as a cradle for organizing during the late 1930s and early 1940s. Led by the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), it became the official education arm of the industrial labor movement in the South. Over the next two decades, it played an even bigger role in supporting the civil rights movement. Highlander was where the “mother of the movement,” Septima Clark, first experimented with the literacy programs that would become its “citizenship schools”—a network of some 900 community-based schools that taught tens of thousands of Black Southerners to read and pass Jim Crow literacy tests. Highlander was also where a young Rosa Parks studied before the Montgomery Bus Boycott, where the civil rights anthem "We Shall Overcome" was popularized, and where generations of organizers and leaders—especially those from the South and Appalachia—discovered the world of activism into which they had been born.

At the Young Organizers boot camp recently, we adorned our classroom with quotes from various movement elders and ancestors, including Black Freedom movement giants who had spent time at Haley Farm and Highlander. One quote from Highlander founder Myles Horton stuck out to us for its prescience. In his autobiography, The Long Haul, he writes:

It’s only in a movement that an idea is often made simple enough and direct enough that it can spread rapidly. Then your leadership multiplies very rapidly, because there’s something explosive going on. People see that other people not so different from themselves do things that they thought could never be done... They’re emboldened and challenged by that to step into the water, and once they get in the water, it’s as if they’ve never not been there… During movement times, the people involved have the same problems and can go from one community to the next, start a conversation in one place, and finish it in another.

At our boot camp, it was clear that, amid much pain in this country, young leaders could start conversations about hope and suggest new strategies for community care and social protest. These conversations were possible only because of the leaders’ clarity around connection. From places like Richmond, Indiana, and Ithaca, New York, to Atlanta, Georgia, and Portland, Oregon, they understood that, no matter their backgrounds, they faced many of the same brutal conditions.

A Turning Point?

Consider the social, political, and economic environment that’s producing the multi-layered crises faced by today’s younger generations. In this rich land of ours, about 45 million people regularly experience hunger and food insecurity, nearly 80 million are uninsured or underinsured when it comes to healthcare, and close to 10 million live without housing or on the brink of homelessness, while our education system continues to score near the bottom compared to the other 37 countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. Even before Donald Trump reassumed power, young people were affected disproportionately. One year into his second term as president, he and his billionaire lackies have only deepened this suffering.

Indeed, the conditions for discontent among young people are now boiling over. Young workers, students, and children are poised to lose more than any other age group from the Trump administration’s “austerity” policies (which, of course, are anything but “austere” for his billionaire buddies and him). Minors make up 2 in every 5 people currently receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits, and the young will disproportionately go hungry as that program is further eroded. (The Trump administration is already threatening to withhold such benefits from some Democratic-controlled states!) Low economic growth, rising inflation, and deepening unemployment are hurting everyone. However, young workers, regardless of their educational background, are seeing a steeper rise in unemployment than the average worker. Compounded by increasing costs of living, mounting debt, and ever more ecological disasters, Gen Z and Gen Alpha are projected to be distinctly worse off than their parents.

Despite a seemingly endless barrage of think pieces bemoaning the fickleness and apathy of the young, teenagers and young adults have been at the forefront of every significant struggle of this moment.

It’s been this very real pain and insecurity that the MAGA crew and Christian nationalist organizers have successfully leveraged to build a strong base among young workers and students. Organizations like Turning Point USA are now leading massive organizing drives on high school and college campuses, tapping into the real fear and instability experienced by students and other young people. Those groups fob off the real problems of this country (only intensified by Donald Trump) on scapegoats like trans athletes and Somali childcare workers, while offering an alluring vision of an authoritarian Christian future. It matters little that, for most Americans, the vision on offer will be impossible to achieve. And were it to be achieved, it would benefit only the whitest, wealthiest, and “most” Christian Americans. Therein lies both a contradiction and an opening.

Historically, we know that once fascism solidifies power, it can take years of unyielding resistance to revive a democratic society. That means we need mobilization now, while preparing for the fight already at hand that’s likely to stretch on for years to come. Tending to real-time crises while preparing for the long haul will require leadership from many in both Gen Z and Gen Alpha. To stand any chance of successfully fighting back, we must offer a competing and more attractive vision of the future—one in which young people come to believe that they will not only survive, but lead secure, fulfilling lives. And on-the-ground organizing infrastructure must be built up to make that vision a reality.

The Kids Aren’t Alright. But They Could Be.

This moment offers us a heartbreaking reminder of just how vulnerable most young people now are. The young organizers gathered at Haley Farm talked about not being able to afford the basics of life, while some who lived close to the farm asked us to bring leftover food to community members and church friends because so many of them are now living hand-to-mouth.

And such vulnerability and economic precarity are anything but the exception. Dozens of young people indicated that they are hurting in so many ways: by family members being abducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), by being unable to acquire the healthcare they need, or even by being harassed by the feds for protecting their neighbors from state violence. Avenues of traditional politics feel inaccessible as a means of addressing so many of their problems and, where accessible, regularly proved critically insufficient.

We were astounded by the diversity of people and struggles in that room, but we were even more surprised by the ease with which those young leaders grasped their interconnectedness. They hardly needed convincing that some lessons one might draw from the difficulty of running an abortion fund in the midst of attacks on women and the right to choose could also apply to the needs immigrants have in facing ICE’s militarization of their communities. They knew such things to be true because many had lived through them.

Despite a seemingly endless barrage of think pieces bemoaning the fickleness and apathy of the young, teenagers and young adults have been at the forefront of every significant struggle of this moment. Indeed, young people have long taken leadership roles in bottom-up social movements because they so often bear the brunt of our nation’s social and economic inequalities, with few avenues for relief in traditional American politics.

It’s an underappreciated reality of this century that young people have been showing up in a remarkable fashion, leading on-the-ground movements to ensure that Black lives do matter, dealing vividly with the onrushing horror of climate change, while defending economic justice and living wages, not to speak of abortion access, LGBTQ rights, and an end to gun violence. Just this month, inside Dilley Detention Center in Texas, hundreds of imprisoned children led their families in righteous protest after learning of ICE’s kidnapping of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his imminent transfer to Dilley.

The stakes are only getting higher for those of us coming of age at a moment when this country is changing from something like a democracy to Donald Trump’s chilling autocratic version of America. Yet if we know anything from decades of antipoverty organizing, it’s that the unfettered imaginations, moral clarity, and capacity for decisive action of young Americans can always triumph over the misguided political liaisons of their elders. As our communities struggle righteously to wrest this nation from the clutches of full-throated authoritarianism, isn’t it time to cultivate the untapped might of those potentially dispossessed generations?

We need their courageous leadership now more than ever. We have no time to lose!

Trump and Noem’s strategy of deploying federal agents to punish our cities is backfiring.

Here’s why: Local elected officials have enormous power to resist federal immigration enforcement. Sheriffs can refuse ICE detainer requests. City councils can pass sanctuary policies. County commissioners control jail access. State legislators can restrict cooperation with federal agents and protect residents' civil rights.

But this is only possible if those offices are filled with people who will fight back.

If you are looking at your leaders and wondering why they aren’t taking a stand against these human rights violations, this is where you can and must step in.

In 2026, thousands of local seats are up for election across the country. Sheriff. County commissioner. City council. State representative. School board. These are the frontline defense against Trump's overreach, and unfortunately, the violence being inflicted on communities across the country.

The reality is brutal to face but can’t be ignored: Alex Pretti is at least the sixth person to die during ICE’s nationwide reign of terror since last year, with at least five shootings in January alone involving federal agents. This will keep happening in communities where there's no local resistance.

People are done staying silent, and we can’t let up the pressure. Since Alex's murder, nurses across the country have organized vigils and acts of resistance. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has demanded that all ICE and Border Patrol agents leave the state. Protests are growing, not shrinking. I'm seeing people who've “never been political before” suddenly asking what they can do to help.

My answer is always to run for office or recruit someone who will. Some of us must step up to build long-term power that defends our communities, while others hold down the immediate fight on the front lines.

We have three more years of MAGA-proofing to do. The organization I started, NDTC, is already investing in building up the resistance down ballot – at no cost to campaigns. Since Trump took office again in January 2025, over 970 campaigns chose us to lead them to victory. This weekend in Texas, NDTC-learner Menefee won his House seat and shrunk the GOP majority to one vote.

We are already filling crucial roles in school boards, councils, and legislatures – we need thousands more to mount a real challenge. No race should go unchallenged.

So one path forward is clear:

1. Run yourself — Explore what offices are open (or unchallenged!) in your area and get all the tools and information you need to run (for free).
2. Recruit someone - Know a teacher, nurse, social worker, or community organizer who'd be amazing on your city council? Forward them this post. Direct them to Emily’s List. Direct them to Run for Something. Direct them to us. We want to help them run.
3. Support candidates who will resist — Local campaigns rely on volunteers, donations, and voters who spread their message and show up.
4. Organize your community — Get involved in your local Democratic party, immigrant rights group, or other active coalition near you.

Filing deadlines for the 2026 elections are approaching fast in many states. In most places, it's not too late to get on the ballot this year. But you need to move now.

Trump and his administration want us to be afraid. They want us to believe resistance is futile. They want us to stay home. We're not going to do that.

I have supported thousands of campaigns over my career, training more than 120,000 candidates, staffers, and volunteers in the last ten years through the organization I founded. Together, we’ve won in red districts, swing districts, and everything in between. We’ve seen people less qualified than you do it. The fact that you’ve read this far proves that you have a spark. Answer the call, and let us teach you how to win.

The MAGA plan is to exhaust us by flooding the zone with muzzle velocity. They are betting on us giving up. We’ve already mobilized thousands to prove them catastrophically wrong; we need you to be next.

For some time, there has been something of a political ‘bromance’ between Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary and US President Donald Trump. Orbán has been a frequent visitor to the US to meet Trump even meeting him during the election campaign in the run up to Trump’s second term. During a visit in late 2025 Trump lauded Orbán “You are fantastic. I know a lot of people don’t agree with me, but I’m the only one that matters.” In response Orbán (2025) spoke of a "golden age between the United States and Hungary." Such is the high regard Orbán is held in by Trump that Budapest was touted as a possible venue for a peace summit for the Ukraine war between Putin and Zelenskyy.

Vice President Vance has long praised Orbán for promoting conservative family policies and the exertion of greater control over higher education which critics claim is undermining academic freedom. Vance, like Orbán, has also been critical of Ukraine. Tucker Carlson, Fox News, and other elements of the MAGA media network often heap praise on Orbán as a visionary and outrider that America could follow.

This article seeks to inform readers about what Orbán represents and highlights the similarities between him and Trump and where this might take America. We speak from a position of experience being academics and civic voices based in Hungary who have closely followed the trajectory of Orbánism.

Cultural – Economic Drivers

Deindustrialization and decline in rustbelt areas in both countries exacerbated by the global financial crisis of 2008, creating unprecedented unemployment and anxiety, formed a significant group of ‘have-nots’ (people at the margins) in both countries, susceptible to nativist and exceptionalist rhetoric. More broadly cultural insecurities prompted by an ever-changing highly globalized world have been disorientating for some, especially older voters or those in the countryside. These are the demographic groups that have played an active role in forming the electoral base for authoritarian populism in both countries.

Although Orbán is something of a poster boy for the MAGA network, in Europe his reputation is more controversial. Hungary has experienced frequent criticism and sanction from the European Union for rule of law violations most notably relating to media, civil and academic freedoms and independence of the judiciary during the premiership of Orbán.

One point of difference is Hungary has a limited tradition of liberal democracy which existed for a brief twenty-year period from the end of communism in 1990 up to Orbán’s second premiership that started in 2010. With the interwar autocratic leader Admiral Horthy and the postwar Communist leader János Kádár authoritarianism could be seen as the norm for Hungary unlike the USA that until recently was seen as a model of liberal democracy and rule of law conventions. However, things are changing rapidly with a second Trump term terms being marked by an assertive and rapid upending of the political system.

That Authoritarian Style

Both Orbán and Trump are classified as being authoritarian populists. Both are framed as strongman, battling modern day folk devils, namely immigrants, liberals and other minorities cast as an ‘enemy within’ in an emergency politics where the strongman through a performative hypermasculinity takes assertive and often polarizing action, championing a perceived majority of the ‘good’ and ‘pure’ people.

At the centre of the political narrative of these two leaders is a sense of exceptionalism. The Make America Great Again slogan reveals a sense that the US is losing its place in the world and is in need of reorientation. Of course, Hungary was never a superpower, but it sees itself as a bridge to the East and West and an out-rider, or champion, to the challenge of liberalism. Both have a nostalgic and rigid conception of national identity which for them makes migration and diversity an anathema to their monocultural and conservative conception of national identity.

Decision Making and Public Sphere

Both Orbán and Trump can be viewed as counter-enlightenment figures in the sense that their analysis is not driven by scientific and rationalist decision-making principles where decisions might be based on a proper evaluation of evidence and notion of public good. Both display an element of what has come to be called ‘Post Truth Politics’, where emotions and conspiracy theory shape political narrative. Orbán and Vance have for example actively espoused the ‘replacement theory’ that contends there is a shadowy plan to flood Europe with migrants to replace domestic European workers and reverse demographic decline but also weaken sovereignty through diluting national identities enabling the creation of a European super-state.

Disregard for fact has led to both Orbán and Trump nurturing a partisan public sphere, in Hungary this is more advanced with newspapers and television stations largely in the control of figures loyal to Orbán, it has been estimated that 80 percent of the Hungarian media is aligned to Orbán, often providing a platform to campaigns steered by polarizing rhetoric which at its core is guided by a ‘politics of fear’ hence immigrants, especially if Muslim, LGBTQI, George Soros and the European Union have been framed as an existential threat, with the media failing to challenge these assertions or giving space to counterviews and generally replicating such views in reporting.

Orbán and Trump also view academia as a bootcamp for liberalism and as bastions of the tyranny of political correctness, thus in Hungary Orbán government has placed most of the public universities in the control of appointed cronies through what has been described as model change. In addition, the government has refused to validate courses like Gender Studies, seeing it as a threat to conservative conceptions of the family. The George Soros supported Central European University was pushed out of Hungary because Orbán, feared the political and intellectual influence of a university with a commitment to open society in its mission. Trump’s attacks on universities with accusations of left-wing bias and the withholding of Federal funding can be seen as a similar effort to exert great control over academia.

Policy Positions

In terms of a number of key policy areas there are some striking similarities between Orbán and Trump. Orbán has accused the EU of undermining national sovereignty and the recent and controversial US security strategy indicated that America in its international relations would prioritize alliances with countries like Hungary that place a strong premium on sovereignty. It is a view of state power and sovereignty that relies on a strong executive unencumbered by checks and balances, hence both Orbán and Trump have been accused of rule of law violations that weaken the guardrails and safeguards of democracy, creating a ‘Deep State’ in the sense that public officials are expected to be obedient and align closely to the political narrative and interests of these two leaders. This has created profound constitutional shocks in both countries.

The nativism of Orbán and Trump has led to the securitization of migration, both have constructed ramped up border protection, basically walls, with increased border enforcement often framed as a masculinized and militarized show of strength and determination to keep migrants out and most recently demonstrated in the performance of ICE roundups in some parts of America.

As noted earlier both leaders court moral conservativism and have formed a strategic alliance with traditional and conservative Christian leaders, with both seeking to limit reproductive rights. In 2025 Orbán banned the annual LGBTQ Pride march in Budapest and threatening to fine those who attended with fines based on biometric surveillance, an act that was heavily denounced by the European Union and civil rights defenders like Amnesty International.

In terms of economics both Orbán and Trump have been prepared to use state power to intervene in markets. Orbán has been willing to use state power to freeze utility bills and Trump has interfered with market freedom through protectionism and tariffs. Both, despite their rhetoric and appeals to the ‘have-nots’ seem to support tax, welfare and regulatory frameworks, that favour the interests of oligarchs over workers in a ‘race to the bottom’ of social protection. The alliance with oligarchs in both countries reflects a relational conception of economic strategy where political power is used to further the interests of sections of the economic elite willing to express loyalty and put patronal networks at the service of political leaders.

Putin, Europe, and the World

Trump with his desire to annex Greenland and sympathy for Putin’s expansionism in Ukraine and disparagement of the value of NATO to US interests is perceived as turning his back on the postwar international order of global rules to deter the aggressive expansionism that triggered World War Two. Critics of this postwar order might question whether America really was the ‘Shinning Beacon’ it was held to be, but some would argue this framework strove to give the world a sense of order and stability and stemmed the advance of Soviet totalitarianism.

Orbán has drawn strong criticism for continuing to court Putin and his use of veto power to thwart within the EU support for Ukraine and sanctions against Russia. The sympathy and alliance with Russia are a surprising and contradictory phenomena given Hungary’s historic antipathy to Russian expansionism as reflected by the 1956 uprising where Hungarians sought to eject Soviet occupiers. Such sympathies toward Putin by Trump are surprising too given that in America a deep political consensus once existed in postwar US politics that Russian expansionism, especially in the Cold war, was a major threat to global security. In this new global order both Orbán and Trump seem to support a world dominated by regional hegemons, with the US and Russia appearing to have the right to impose regional hegemonies capable of interfering in the affairs of its neighbors, a Monroe doctrine for the 21st century.

In terms of the Putinization of America and Hungary one of the most significant features may be the spread of cronyism and corruption. As noted, both Orbán and Trump have created a network of cronyism giving patronage and protection to influential supporters. Orbán’s family and network of friends have grown fabulously rich and some would argue Trump has not been averse to using presidential power to advance his business interests and the Trump brand.

Framing the Democratic Decline

There are different possible framings of democratic backsliding, which started in smaller countries, such as Hungary, but after reaching the US as the main geopolitical power, and once the model for democracy, it became a worldwide threat. The first possibility is to call Trump and Orbán populists. Indeed, in their rhetoric they often refer to the ‘people’ in a moral battle against the ‘elites’ to which they both belong to. But as opposed to some pluralist populists their main characteristics are that they are illiberal autocrats willing to use unlimited executive power disregarding any checks and balances and fundamental rights. Moreover, Orbán’s ‘mafia state’ and Trump’s own family and business interests, which some would argue are the main determinators of his decisions as President. And this is not just tyranny, but also oligarchy, the other deviant form of government according to Aristotle.

One may ask, why is it important to emphasize that Trump’s and Orbán’s systems are not only populist and authoritarian but also oligarchic. Because restoring democracy requires different resilience capacities in the three cases. Populism is the easiest to remedy. Sometimes it only requires taking back democratic politics to the needs of ordinary citizens, for example ‘farmers’ and ‘workers’ as the Populist Party sought to in the US in the late 19th century. For reversing democratic backsliding, strong institutional resilience and resistance are necessary, which also presupposes the longstanding structural elements, such as constitutional culture, civil society. The almost 250 years long endurance of the US constitution will most probably enough to preserve constitutional democracy, but the twenty years of liberal constitutionalism in Hungary after 1989 isn’t a guarantee for the same. But the hardest task ahead for both countries will be to get rid of oligarchy, as long as Wall Street supports Trump rather than a democratic populist.

Hungary at a Crossroads

The outcome of the April election in Hungary will determine if Hungary is willing to turn a page, the moderate Conservative leader Péter Magyar seems to be riding high in the polls. If Orbán losses in Hungary it will be an important setback for authoritarian populism that could have impact on the US mid-terms. The turning point in Hungary was that the public stopped believing the Orbán narrative, scandals and corruption eroded public trust. The pardoning of an orphanage manager who had attempted to cover up pedophilia by close supporters of Orbán gave a deeply dark insight into the nature of Hungarian politics which a large section of the public found deeply disturbing. It remains to be seen whether personal and public scandals hovering around Trump provide an equally revelatory moment.

In the USA, worries about an executive overreaching its authority, perhaps most evident in the manner of ICE roundups in some major cities are prompting American citizens to deeply reflect on the nature of the political crossroads facing them. Perhaps in both countries there is a realization that the politics of demagoguery is a distraction from the genuine crises facing the world today, namely ruthless and corrupt leaders who do not respect the rule of law, a failing and unfair economy and global warming and environmental change. There is indeed an emergency, a global one or ‘polycrisis’ and a need for exigency, the problem is we are following the wrong plan in Hungary and America.

The recent posted image by President Donald Trump depicting the Obamas as primates is unsurprising. This image represents what is believed, what is undoubtedly said behind closed doors. What remains unreal to me is that a sitting president flagrantly posted this. If the Republican Party does not denounce this, they are proclaiming what they truly value. Perhaps that's just as well: The racism has truly not been covert for some time. For so many, this is just another day at the office—another way racist ideology within the Republican Party asserts itself. In posting this, one must question whether the president is unhinged and strategic at the same time. I believe that, surely, he is laughing about just how much he is able to get away with, as befits his temperament and historically documented pattern of behavior.

Already, the White House defends the indefensible: White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has publicly defended the president’s sharing of the video by framing it as a meme inspired by The Lion King—saying critics should stop what she calls “fake outrage” and focus on more important issues. The White House has repeatedly expressed that the imagery was taken from an internet meme meant to depict the president as “King of the Jungle” and Democrats as animal characters, not intended as racist content.

This disgusting portrayal is distraction while simultaneously challenging the masses to disbelieve what they see with their own eyes. Fascist politics often relies on propaganda and media spectacle to distract the public, undermine shared reality, and redirect attention away from policy consequences toward emotionally charged narratives (Stanley, 2018). This pushes any thinking person to ask, about what are the masses being distracted?

Advancements to curtail Immigration and Customs Enforcement seems the most apt and logical answer. Indeed, politicians must remain steadfast and resolved in their efforts to contain ICE. However, as an education environmental researcher, I am convicted to take a step back to examine the broader landscape and the long-term trends.

If distraction is the strategy, then sustained attention is resistance.

The planetary boundaries framework reminds us that Earth’s stability is shaped by interconnected systems—climate, biodiversity, water, land, and chemical cycles—whose disruption increases the risk of large-scale ecological destabilization. Seen in this light, the severe and lingering cold snaps recently experienced in the US Northeast do not contradict global warming but rather illustrate the volatility of a climate system pushed beyond its historical range of variability. As scientists note, destabilizing the climate system can intensify extremes across seasons, producing not only heatwaves but also disrupted jet streams, polar air incursions, and unusual persistence of cold events. Situating a regional cold spell within this broader planetary context reframes it from an isolated anomaly to a symptom of systemic strain: local weather variability unfolding against a backdrop of transgressed ecological limits. In other words, the discomfort and disruption of a harsh winter can be read as a lived reminder that Earth’s regulatory systems are under pressure, and that climatic instability—whether expressed as heat, cold, drought, or flood—is part of the same planetary story.

Despite overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change is real and accelerating, the current White House under President Trump has repeatedly signaled opposition to aggressive climate mitigation, undercutting efforts to address the crisis while publicly downplaying its urgency. At the United Nations General Assembly in September 2025, Trump referred to climate change as “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world,” dismissing expert predictions and climate science in broad terms even as global averages continue to rise and impacts intensify. Domestically, his administration has pursued policies that limit federal engagement in climate leadership—such as rescinding foundational greenhouse gas regulations by challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s scientific endangerment finding and refusing to send senior officials to the COP30 climate summit—and rolling back environmental protections while promoting expanded fossil fuel extraction.

These actions illustrate a pattern of rhetoric and policymaking that accepts the existence of environmental change but rejects concerted governmental action to confront the climate crisis at the scale scientists say is necessary.

Unchecked climate change is already reshaping Earth’s systems in ways that pose severe risks to human and ecological well-being, often in counterintuitive ways. In the northeastern United States, unseasonably severe cold spells have contributed to fatalities and widespread disruption, reflecting how a destabilized climate system can produce more extreme and erratic weather patterns even as the planet warms overall. Scientific assessments show that critical components of the climate system—such as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a major ocean current system that redistributes heat around the globe—are showing signs of disruption associated with warming and freshwater influx from melting ice, with potential large-scale impacts on regional climates, precipitation patterns, and food security if thresholds are crossed. Researchers warn that such a weakening of ocean currents could intensify weather extremes and disrupt agricultural systems and ecosystems worldwide, compounding other alarming indicators like mass species loss and coral reef die-off under thermal stress.

Reflecting the convergence of climate change, geopolitical tension, and emerging technological risks, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has moved the symbolic Doomsday Clock closer to midnight than at any point in its history, signaling growing vulnerability to existential threats driven by human actions and inaction. As of the latest update, the clock stood at a historically high proximity to midnight—indicating an elevated sense of global peril tied in part to the accelerating impacts of climate change alongside nuclear and disruptive technologies—underscoring that societies worldwide have not yet mounted an adequate policy or governance response to the mounting evidence of planetary destabilization.

Far from being speculative or alarmist rhetoric, these warnings are grounded in measurable scientific trends that reveal cascading risks to ecosystems and societies, even as elites prepare for worst-case futures: Reports describe wealthy investors and defense planners expanding private bunkers and survival retreats in anticipation of climatic and geopolitical disruption, while the broader public’s attention is often diverted to the latest political scandal rather than sustained policy engagement with structural risks.

There is circumstantial evidence that the current White House is using distraction as a communication strategy, one consistent with well-studied political diversion tactics, but there is no direct proof that this is an intentionally orchestrated White House policy without formal investigation. Analysts and critics of Project 2025—the extensive conservative policy blueprint authored by the Heritage Foundation and many associates of this administration—have raised alarms about proposals that would restructure media oversight, diminish independent journalism, and alter technology and communications policies in ways that could reduce scrutiny of executive power, a move some see as creating fertile terrain for distraction over accountability.

Political commentators have documented how sensational statements and provocative posts often dominate headlines at the expense of in-depth coverage of systemic risks like climate change or immigration enforcement priorities, consistent with agenda-setting research showing how political actors can shift public attention.

Additionally, scholars studying messaging patterns around scandals suggest that shifts in provocative communications often occur simultaneously with increased media focus on crisis narratives, although establishing intentional coordination by an administration would require formal oversight or committee inquiry, not journalistic inference alone. In short, critics interpret these developments as strategic distraction tactics, but distinguishing intent from effect is a matter for official investigation and evidence beyond public reporting.

In the end, the question is not whether a single post is offensive—it is whether we allow cycles of warranted outrage to consume the very attention required for collective survival. Racism must be named and opposed wherever it appears, especially when amplified by the highest office, but we must also recognize when spectacle functions to fracture public focus. The climate crisis does not pause for political theater, nor do ecological thresholds wait for electoral cycles. If distraction is the strategy, then sustained attention is resistance. The work before us is to hold moral clarity and planetary reality together, refusing to let either be eclipsed by the churn of the news cycle, and insisting that democratic accountability includes safeguarding the conditions for life itself.

While the NFL is promising the American public a Super Bowl they can dance to, keep in mind that half-time show headliner Bad Bunny is way more than just the world’s most-played recording artist of 2025 and Latin Grammy and Grammy winner: Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio is also a bona fide environmental justice educator.

As a former public school educator, a professor, and an author of two books on teaching climate change and environmental justice, I know that climate change disproportionately impacts marginalized communities, which means you can’t teach about the climate crisis without also teaching about equity, race, and justice.

Bad Bunny knows this, too.

Consider that Mr. Ocasio was born in Puerto Rico (where he recently held an extensive concert residency that reportedly boosted the economy of the unincorporated US territory by up to $400 million), where he reportedly has held or holds property, along with Los Angeles, Miami, and San Juan. It is not lost on Bad Bunny that all of these areas face severe climate change impacts, from record-breaking wildfire seasons to rising waters to extreme heat.

His call to action also aligns with the environmentally just future that Puerto Ricans have been envisioning.

Mr. Ocasio frequently incorporates commentary about social and political issues into his music and has spoken out about Immigration and Customs Enforcement Raids, transphobia, and racial justice. As a recording artist, the world is his classroom, and his performances function as public pedagogy. K-12 teachers, college professors, and environmental leaders alike may draw inspiration from his work to develop their own environmental justice curricula, projects, and investigations as they take action in their communities.

Bad Bunny’s music video, El Apagón, embeds an 18-minute documentary featuring investigative journalist Bianca Graulau and provides evidence of unparalleled gentrification driven by outsiders, the widespread displacement of families with decades of roots in their lost communities, and the purposeful and profound persistence of colonialism.

Moreover, the video takes its title from the rolling blackouts that occurred in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria in 2017. Hurricane Maria resulted in the largest blackout in US history and the second-largest in the world.

Puerto Rico’s power grid was devastated by Hurricane Maria, prompting privatization by LUMA Energy, which was met with fierce resistance and protest. However, since privatization, blackouts have persisted, including those caused by a 6.4-magnitude earthquake in 2020, Hurricane Fiona in 2022, and a blackout in 2025. Even without natural disasters, Puerto Ricans lose about 27 hours of power per year.

More than just time spent in the dark, blackouts disrupt access to clean water and air conditioning, both of which are essential in tropical climates. In addition, reliance on generators during blackouts has increased respiratory health impacts, such as asthma.

Children are among the most vulnerable, and blackouts have also resulted in mental health impacts for Puerto Rico’s K-12 students, such as a sense of hopelessness and isolation.

Add it all up, and you get systemic environmental racism. And it leads to the disproportionate impact of environmental hazards on people of color. A concerted push toward environmental justice is the only antidote.

The preparation of students and community members to work toward environmental justice began more than 30 years ago at the First National People of Color Leadership Summit. The 1,100-person delegation drafted 17 Principles of Environmental Justice and the Principles of Working Together. They significantly redefined the meaning of what constitutes the “environment.”

Historically, “environment” referred to pristine natural areas outside cities. At the summit, “environment” was redefined to capture the places where people (particularly those of color) live, work, study, play, and pray. This enabled the inclusion of issues such as toxic pollution, worker safety, transportation, housing, health, and recurring blackouts, such as those in Puerto Rico.

To combat local environmental racism in any community, it is imperative to begin with community-generated solutions and to view residents through a lens of self-determination, as they are the most knowledgeable about the issues that directly affect their communities. This includes K-12 students, who are capable and eager to take action.

Young students can apply an investigative journalism lens to their communities by conducting research to address environmental issues of concern. For example, students can interview residents and conduct community surveys in their neighborhood to identify environmental injustices. Students can also create an oral history project to archive local perspectives of environmental injustices and partner with their local public library to host a showcase or a display of their findings.

Elementary, middle, and high school teachers can also encourage students to develop their historical literacy, social consciousness, and critical thinking skills by comparing the US response time to Hurricane Maria with that of other natural disasters, with particular attention to US states versus US territories.

Again, look no further than Bad Bunny. He is intentionally and powerfully elevating Puerto Rico to the national consciousness while simultaneously using his global platform to highlight environmental racism.

Bad Bunny has turned his global stage into a worldwide classroom.

More pointedly, his call to action also aligns with the environmentally just future that Puerto Ricans have been envisioning. Teachers, students, and environmental leaders are well-positioned to respond to this call. However, we can’t rely on our global pop stars to teach our K-12 students about environmental racism and environmental justice; it must start in public schools.

As people are watching online and in person, American federal immigration enforcement is stepping up a policy of an authoritarian police state using violence against immigrants and their native-born backers. Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis is a primary case in point. It's a thing of beauty to see the multiracial working class resistance rising there and across the US.

Let us pay tribute to those who have lost their lives at the hands of federal immigration enforcement. Federal immigration agents have killed two US citizens—Renee Good and Alex Pretti—in 2026. Meanwhile, six immigrants—Heber Sanchaz Domínguez, Victor Manuel Diaz, Parady La, Luis Beltran Yanez-Cruz, Luis Gustavo Nunez Caceres, and Geraldo Lunas Campos—have died in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention in 2026.

One thing is clear to me. Resisting Operation Metro Surge is expanding working-class consciousness about the corporate state's responses to people's resistance to oppression. The political point is that given such current circumstances, conditions of adversity can and do serve as a basis for working-class solidarity across demographic differences. Working-class people of all backgrounds struggle against an authoritarian police state of brute force waging a "might makes right" battle against freedoms enshrined in the Constitution.

Whether born abroad like Maryse Balthazar, a Haitian journalist and elder-care nurse caring for a World War II veteran, or stateside, like ICU nurse Alex Pretti, a union employee for the Veterans Administration whom ICE agents executed, workers sell their labor services to buyers, or employers. This marketplace transaction defines the class relationship between employees and employers, sellers and buyers of labor services.

Organized labor's awakening is a positive action for the working class.

Halting this buying and selling of labor services, or “shutting it down,” hits at the power of the capitalist marketplace to rule people’s lives. In our time of a decaying US empire, the capitalists ruling the marketplace are the billionaires and monopoly corporations that fund Democrats and Republicans, America’s political duopoly. Their voter coalitions differ demographically but are similar economically. Both coalitions are majority working class, sellers of labor services, but the ruling class funds the two political parties. The so-called left-right, blue-red demographic lacks a political party that advances its material interests. Why? The donors' votes cast with millions of dollars before elections set the policies of both political parties.

Additional differences between the sellers of labor services range from gender to race (a biological fiction) to religion and sexual orientation. These identities matter. However, class relations are at the center of these identities. The Democratic Party and GOP weaponize their coalitions’ identities as political strategies to compel voters to oppose their class interests.

Ideology from the start plays a big part in this political equation. In the US, for example, its beginning gets ideological spin as a great founding of democracy and freedom versus a slave-holding republic waging genocide against the native inhabitants. This fictionalized national history whitewashes (heh) the meaning of democracy and freedom so central to a national narrative. We hear some working-class people say the following in the face of an authoritarian police state waging war on US soil: “This isn’t America. We are a nation of immigrants.”

It’s easy to blame, deservedly, the GOP’s attack on the teaching of history. Republicans’ efforts to ban some books is a transparent attempt to miseducate a new generation of Americans about the past. (S)he who controls the past controls the present. The Trump administration's bid to end the teaching of chattel slavery is a case in point. It's as if 250 years of enslaved Africans toiling for the wealth of a Caucasian slavocracy never happened stateside.

Against this backdrop, the corporate state’s use of force to attack workers trying to organize to bargain collectively is a consistent theme in US history. While collective bargaining is not center stage in Operation Metro Surge, corporate state-sanctioned violence against the working class is a chip off the block of coercive measures against dissent.

Organized labor is pushing back against Operation Metro Surge flooding Minneapolis with violent federal immigration enforcement agents. “The Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation, AFL-CIO along with regional bodies throughout the state, including the Saint Paul Regional Labor Federation, the West Area Labor Council, the North East Area Labor Council, and the East Central Labor Council, have joined in solidarity to endorse a powerful unified statewide action on January 23: Day of Truth and Freedom.” A US working-class pushback didn't stop there.

One week later, working class people of all backgrounds, in and out of unions, across the US took part in a national action: “Shut It Down. No work, no school, no shopping.” Hundreds of thousands of adults and youth protested peacefully against the violence of federal immigration forces following the marching orders of the White House. Those orders to target brown people for arrest and deportation flow from a white supremacist orientation that fundamentally misinterprets that fact the US itself lies on lands stolen from the native inhabitants and enriched via the unpaid labor of enslaved Africans.

Organized labor's awakening is a positive action for the working class. Yet it would be remiss of us to ignore the role of the AFL-CIO in supporting the Democratic Party’s backing of the US empire and its dozens of militarized foreign interventions since the end of World War II.

The violence of federal fiscal policy is also a weapon to discipline the working class. Take the Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services' announcement on January 5 that it would freeze over $10 billion in federal funding for childcare providers in five Democrat-led states based on baseless and racist claims of fraud against Somali childcare providers. In the Golden State, this fiscal move represents over $2.2 billion dollars in annual funding that could be lost during a freeze. Working families would have to borrow money to bridge the funding gap, relying in part on credit cards with their 22-plus percent interest rates that enrich the big banks.

Meanwhile in California, there has been a rise in harassment from white supremacists against San Diego’s Somali community, including its childcare providers, according to the United Domestic Workers (UDW/AFSCME Local 3930). San Diego is home to the country’s second-largest Somali community, after the Twin Cities. Immigrants who perform caring labor there and across the US are essential workers.

Johanna Hester is the UDW deputy executive director and co-chair of Child Care Providers United. “For over a month,” she said in a statement, “Somali childcare providers have endured harassment by internet vigilantes who are dead set on exposing fraud in California’s highly regulated government childcare system. In the process, they are stalking and intimidating our members at their homes and places of business."

“These provocateurs are sowing seeds of hatred and distrust of our neighbors after taking cues from the president who referred to Somalians as ‘garbage.’ We treasure our Somali members and their contributions to our families, our union, and our communities,” she concluded.

Using one part of the working class to control other parts of it is a proven method of class control. In this way, the capitalist class can and does attempt to weaken workers' solidarity. In contrast, the capitalist class does not fund the control of corporations. The corporate state's mission is to free the millionaires and billionaires from working-class influence. Economically speaking, the corporate state's political duopoly has shifted income and wealth from the working class to the capitalist class since the end of the Vietnam War.

Recently in California, citizens pushed back against the AI warlords behind the scenes of violent federal immigration enforcement.
For example, around 50 people interrupted a talk by Andrew Abranches, the vice president of wildfire mitigation for Pacific Gas & Electric, demanding the company immediately end its contract with Palantir Technologies, a Silicon Valley firm that sells mass surveillance software to ICE. Palantir also provides the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) with militarized AI tools to maim and murder Palestinians.

There are four main products that Palantir provides. Here’s one, dubbed Gotham, according to the American Friends Service Committee. Gotham is “Palantir's flagship product for military, intelligence, and law enforcement applications. It ingests, integrates, and organizes large amounts of data from many sources to detect patterns and insights. Gotham can also integrate with sensors and autonomous systems like drones and give them tasks.”

War abroad, directly in the case of military operations to capture Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, and by proxy to fund the IDF’s extermination campaign against Palestinians in Gaza, is the flip side of the class war underway globally. Stateside in the guise of federal immigration enforcement agents rampaging against workers who dare to dissent on the streets of American cities, class war is raging as a workforce from around the world laboring on US soil is finding its legs.

National polling released by Quinnipiac University on February 4 shows that just over three out of four voters (78%) say that they have seen the shooting of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis by federal immigration agents. Sixty-two percent say that the shooting was not justified, 22% say justified, and 16% are not sure. A 94% majority of Democrats see the Pretti shooting as unjustified as do 2 out of 3 (66%) Independent voters. Republicans offer a more split position (55% justified, 20% not justified, and 25% say they do not know).

Voters also strongly feel (61%) that the Trump administration has not given an honest account of the shooting of Pretti. Just 1 of 4 voters (25%) think that the Trump administration has given an honest account of the Pretti shooting. It is important to note that President Donald Trump does not receiving a ringing endorsement from Republicans (60% honest, 19% not honest, and 21% not sure). Not surprisingly Democrats (93% not honest) see the Trump administration as dishonest as do just under two-thirds (65%) of Independent voters.

The Quinnipiac University research also shows there is widespread discontent with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Fully 63% disapprove of the way ICE is enforcing immigration laws, while just over 1 in 3 (34%) approve and 4% are not sure. GOP support for ICE is quite strong but not overwhelming (77% approve). Democratic opposition to ICE is close to unanimous (97% disapprove). Independent voters are extremely critical of ICE (28% approve, 68% disapprove).

The Quinnipiac University data shows that Democrats have the political—and moral—high ground to win significant concessions about how ICE operates from Trump and the Republicans.

What must be most concerning for the Trump administration, 60% support the recent protests against ICE. Just under 2 out of 3 Independents (65%) support the anti-ICE protests. Furthermore, 56% believe that the Trump administration has deployed ICE to Minneapolis for political purposes as compared with legitimate law enforcement purposes. Independent voters strongly see Trump’s deployment of ICE to Minneapolis as a political stunt (61% political, 31% law enforcement).

Over the next two weeks, Democrats will have an opportunity to demand concessions from their GOP counterparts and President Trump as they wrangle over future appropriations for the Department of Homeland Security. The Quinnipiac University data shows that Democrats have the political—and moral—high ground to win significant concessions about how ICE operates from Trump and the Republicans. We can only hope that they have the political spine to reign in ICE. One thing is for certain: If the Democrats fail to end some of ICE’s most flagrant abuses, it will not be because a lack of political support for their positions. It will simply be because they lack the will to fight for what they know is right.

As did many fellow Americans, I chuckled when President Trump announced the creation of the US Space Force on December 20, 2019. I even remember laughing heartily while taking in the late-night circuit’s many Star Trek jokes that day. Yet, I had mostly forgotten that the Space Force still exists until last week when Secretary of War Pete Hegseth started a policy speech alongside Elon Musk at SpaceX’s headquarters by flashing the Vulcan salute and affirming Musk’s desire to “make Star Trek real.”

The absurdity of Musk’s introduction—in which he spoke of “going beyond our star system to other star systems, where we may meet aliens or discover long dead alien civilizations” as if this could happen in any of our lifetimes—belied the seriousness of the new U.S. Military Artificial Intelligence strategy that Secretary Hegseth proceeded to announce.

Before an audience of Pentagon leadership and SpaceX employees, Hegseth outlined the structures, initiatives, and objectives in place to bring about what he called “America’s military AI dominance,” with his remarks largely following the plan documented in the July 2025 report “America’s AI Action Plan.”

A core goal Hegseth specified was “becoming an AI-first warfighting force across all domains.” He elaborated that AI will be deployed in three ways: for “warfighting, intelligence, and enterprise missions.”

Hegseth shared that the military’s generative AI model, known as genai.mil, launched last month for all three million Department of War (DOW) employees and will run on “every unclassified and classified network throughout our department.” The initial model was developed with Google Gemini and will soon incorporate xAI’s Grok. In its first month, one-third of DOW’s workforce (one million people) has used the generative AI model.

In the speech, Heseth repeated phrases such as “removing red tape,” “blowing up bureaucratic barriers,” and “taking a wartime approach” to the people and policies that he called “blockers.” Specifics he voiced disdain for included regulations in “Title 10 and 50"–referring to Title 10 of the U.S. Code (the legal bedrock of the armed forces, including the configuration of each branch) and Title 50 of the U.S. Code (the laws which govern national security, intelligence, defense contracts, war powers, and more). These don’t sound like the types of data, processes, and policies to treat with a ‘move fast and break things’ approach.

How genai.mil might be used is even more frightening, especially as we learn how other AI programs are already being used to direct intelligence, surveillance, and warfare.

An April 2024 report from +972 unveiled an Israeli military AI program known as “Lavender,” which was used to generate kill lists of Palestinians. Despite the program reportedly having a known 10 percent false identification rate, no human validation was required before launching air strikes on the AI-identified targets. Another system, known as “Where’s Daddy?,” employed AI to locate targeted individuals. The program was often most confident in a target being at a specific location when they were at home, so the air strikes regularly killed entire families instead of just the targeted individual.

Hegseth eagerly addressed the need for “responsible AI,” but this proved to be another instance of doublespeak. His description was as follows: “We will not employ AI models that won't allow you to fight wars.” Perhaps the reason he needs to state this is that, in theory, a properly trained AI model would not likely recommend military action in most instances—especially if built upon the data of recent US—involved wars.

Furthermore, Hegseth echoed President Trump, promising that the military’s AI will not be ‘woke’ or ‘confused by DEI and social justice.’ Such declarations raise the question of whether this could mean military AI models will be designed with explicit white supremacist biases. A July 2025 incident involving xAI’s Grok offers a prescient case study: After Elon Musk claimed to remove ‘political correctness’ and ‘wokeness’ from Grok, the program proceeded to praise Hitler, claim to be “MechaHitler,” and spew a series of antisemitic tropes.

Regardless of how genai.mil is ultimately used, it will require extraordinary computing power. While hyperscale data centers are already massive environmental risks, Executive Order 14318, “Accelerating Federal Permitting of Data Center Infrastructure,” signed by President Trump on July 23, 2025, exempts qualifying projects from virtually all federal environmental regulations.

Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright is ‘all-in’ with the development of federal data centers and the required energy infrastructure. He’s joyfully referred to such initiatives as “the next Manhattan Project” on multiple occasions. As of July 2025, four national lab sites have been selected for data center and energy infrastructure development: Idaho National Laboratory (Idaho), Oak Ridge Reservation (Tennessee), Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant (Kentucky), and Savannah River Site (South Carolina).

On the same day as Hegseth’s SpaceX speech, a report revealed that the first four military bases to add data centers will be Fort Hood (Texas), Fort Bragg (North Carolina), Fort Bliss (Texas), and Dugway Proving Ground (Utah). Hegseth said these facilities will be developed through private partnership agreements with companies such as Google, Amazon Web Services, Oracle, SpaceX, and Microsoft.

These same companies are frequently the driving force behind commercial data centers popping up in municipalities across the nation. Regardless of where data centers are located—municipalities, national lab sites, or military bases—the environmental costs are massive. Aaron Kirshenbaum, CODEPINK’s War is Not Green Campaigner, documents power consumption, water usage, noise pollution, toxic waste, and rare mineral extraction among the many negative local impacts of data centers in our communities. “They must be fought against at all costs,” Kirshenbaum says.

For Hegseth, the tech bros, and technofascists who have infiltrated the government, all of the above represent the best of American innovation. For them, innovation is a pseudonym for constant surveillance, never-ending warfare, and widespread environmental destruction.

Yet, some wisdom never ages. George Manuel in The Fourth World: An Indian Reality speaks of the destructive tendencies of innovations developed by settlers: “Europe’s most important contributions that are still of value today seem either to be means of transport or instruments of war: ships, wagons, steelware, certain breeds of horses, guns. Most of the other things that were brought to North America by Europeans came from other parts of the world: paper, print, gunpowder, glass, mathematics, and Christianity.”

So many science fiction classics are rooted in the truth of Manuel’s observation—that western industrial development fuels a lust for warfare and environmental destruction. The authors of these sci-fi classics—unlike our technofascist ‘geniuses’—are true visionaries who are concerned with the future of humanity, and who feel compelled to warn of what might become if we follow these dangerous ideologies that have fueled centuries of colonialism, imperialism, and white supremacy to their logical conclusions.

Even Star Trek itself famously depicts a utopian future where humankind has moved beyond racism, beyond conquest, and beyond capitalism itself. “There simply couldn’t be a more anti-Trek idea than an ‘AI-first warfighting force across all domains,” says Gerry Canavan, a professor of English at Marquette University specializing in science fiction studies. “Watch just one episode of the show, and you’ll see.”

While it’s hard to take Musk and Hegseth seriously when they talk about making Star Trek real, I don’t doubt for a minute that they can find many new ways to violate our rights and destroy what we love about the natural world.

But we aren’t without hope. “For every science fiction narrative about a new technological means for violence and oppression,” Canavan says, “there’s another about what happens when the people suffering under the machine finally unite together to smash it, and take the future back for themselves.”

Just as the protagonists in our favorite science fiction stories actively struggle for and create the world they want to live in, so can we.