This will be an account of where we stand—mostly with regard to the new and much-touted United Nations report on climate change. But since it’s the day after Labor Day, traditionally the start of fall campaigning (a quaint and lovely notion that), let’s start with the midterm elections. Where we stand is: All the polling shows Americans ready to vote out as many Republicans as gerrymandering allows. We’ve done our job over the last 22 months, driving up President Donald Trump’s negatives (with plenty of help from him) and making MAGA electoral poison.

Now we have to turn that into facts on the ground, with votes, and wins, and actually putting good people in Congress where they can begin to staunch a bit of the damage. Which means the next 56 days need to be real, practical effort. This newsletter may be a little unpredictable in its timing, because I’m going to be on the road in swing states, helping Third Act and GrayPac in close races; you can help too, by signing up to phone bank or door knock or fundraise or the other chores that add up to electoral success (and this time around, I fear you need to sign up for “election protection” chores as well, something that shouldn’t be necessary but is). If for some reason you’re finding yourself in need of words from me, you’ll be able to hear me helping out the wonderful Ayana Johnson at her podcast all fall—it’s a season totally focused on climate and the midterms, and it begins tomorrow when we talk with Leah Stokes. (I’ll send a special email in the morning, with the link).

And now on to the major climate news of the moment, which is the report from the UN detailing the fact that we’re not going to hit the 1.5°C climate target we set in Paris. I assume that this came as shocking news to exactly no one who reads this newsletter regularly; it was clear even in Paris that it represented a target that only a combination of extremely aggressive national policies and lots of scientific luck could hit, and it’s been very clear for years that we’ve been blessed with neither. I think it is very likely that we’re going to temporarily cross the 2°C line during the hottest phase of the now-developing El Niño (by some measurements now on track to be the strongest in a millennium), and as I’ve been writing for a long time, our current trajectory is taking us toward 3°C, and quite possibly higher.

The term we’ve been using for this condition is “overshoot,” and so indeed we’ve overshot the 1.5°C target. But in fact we’ve been in “overshoot” for decades now. In 2008 I helped start 350.org, which took its name from the carbon dioxide concentration—350 parts per million—scientists said was the upper limit for any kind of safety. We passed that in the spring of... 1986, which by my back-of-the-envelope calculation would be… 40 years ago.

Remember—every tenth of a degree that the temperature goes up moves 140 million people into a more dangerous climate zone.

The danger with reports like this new one from the UN is that they may shock some people into thinking we’re living in a suddenly different world with suddenly different requirements. Chico Harlan wrote a perfectly fine piece about the UN document for the Times, but he was ill-served by whoever furnished the headline:

"Climate Goals Missed, U.N. Says World Must Now Remove Carbon at Scale."

There are two problems with that formulation, and one is that it misses the thrust of the UN recommendations. As the aforementioned Ayana Johnson points out, in the most cogent summary of the document I’ve read:

CDR (planting trees + some much higher tech stuff that’s not yet proven at scale) is a big focus of this report, but UNEP is very clear that it’s not a silver bullet. And it’s certainly not a get out of jail free card for continuing to burn fossil fuels. In their words:“Overall, even optimistic CDR scaling is unlikely to deliver a temperature reversal beyond a few tenths of a degree this century. This emphasizes the importance of focusing on reducing greenhouse gas emissions now.”

And the reason that the UN is clear that it’s not a silver bullet is that “Now,” to use the word from the NYT headline, we have no idea how to do it at scale. I mean, the Netherlands yesterday announced that it had opened the “largest carbon capture facility” in Europe. Here’s how the company involved put it in a press release:

Yara Sluiskil, Europe’s largest ammonia and fertilizer plant can capture and liquefy up to 800,000 tons of CO2 annually from ammonia production thereby avoiding carbon taxation on these volumes. The CO2 will be transported by ship to Norway, where it will be permanently stored beneath the seabed by Northern Lights.

Important to note the “up to 800,000 tons,” because so far these systems have had abysmal success in meeting even their own Lilliputian goals. And for context, Europe produces 3.3 billion tons of greenhouse gases annually, and that in turn is about 6%of the world’s total, so this is a hair on a mole on the quite ugly backside of the world’s hydrocarbon system. So far, the main use of this technology is precisely to allow us to go on burning fossil fuels. As the Yara press release continued, in the measured tones of those who don’t want to quite blow their own cover:

The technology makes it possible to reduce emissions from energy intensive industries like fertilizers, ammonia, cement, and waste management while maintaining production, jobs, and value creation in Europe.

It is entirely prudent to keep researching and testing carbon capture technology—someday it may be part of the solution to the greatest problem humanity has ever faced. But as for “Now,” well, there is actually one thing we do know how to do, and that is build out lots of cheap solar, wind, and batteries. Doing this makes sense because it can displace fossil fuels (solar-heavy California is using 50% less natural gas than it was three years ago to produce electricity), and because it’s cheaper than the alternative, and because you don’t have to go to war to procure sunshine, and because wind turbines don’t fill your lungs with particulates. As the UN points out, there’s simply no way around it—net zero may be politically controversial, but it’s physically required, “an essential milestone that cannot be skipped.”

Indeed, as the UN points out:

Accelerating the renewable energy revolution is crucial. On the supply side, limited-overshoot scenarios suggest scaling renewables to 60-70% of global electricity generation by 2030, supported by grid expansion, storage, and demand flexibility

We’re already doing this to some extent, of course—a far far greater extent than we’re scrubbing carbon from the atmosphere. But we could be doing it far faster—the Chinese are closing down solar factories to raise the price of the panels, and a new study from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis finds that India is using less than half of its solar-panel factory capacity.

It is therefore entirely possible to imagine a worldwide campaign, led by the UN, to double or triple the pace at which we’re putting up solar panels around the world, and coupling them with the wind turbines and batteries that make them fully functional in every season. This is in fact the one thing we could actually be doing at scale and right now that really responds to the numbers about climate overshoot. It is why we’re busy preparing for Sun Day next summer.

Even that doesn’t “solve” the problem—nothing “solves” the problem—but it would reduce the ultimate temperature we are going to hit on this planet, and it would reduce the eventual amount of carbon some future people are going to have to figure out how to pull out of the sky. Remember—every tenth of a degree that the temperature goes up moves 140 million people into a more dangerous climate zone.

Building clean energy is much more likely, and much more effective, if we’re also shutting down dirty energy. The UN, under Antonio Guterres, has been consistently and powerfully calling out banks and other investors for continuing to fund fossil fuel projects, and the new report is no exception. Again, Johnson highlights the key paragraph:

Avoiding carbon lock-in in infrastructure is central to this effort. Investments in long-lived, high-emission infrastructure, such as fossil-based power plants, transport systems, and industrial facilities, can constrain future emissions reductions and lock countries into high-carbon trajectories (Seto et al. 2016; Smith et al. 2019a). Existing and planned fossil fuel infrastructure alone could exceed the CO2 emissions consistent with 1.5°C in 2030 by 120%.

The possibilities were tantalizingly displayed in China this summer, where new data shows CO2 emissions fell 1%. As Lauri Myllyvirta pointed out:

The country’s use of oil fell by 9% overall and by 16% for transport, after the disruptions to supply from the Gulf through the strait.

But it could have been far better. As the Centre for Energy on Research and Clean Air documented last week, China has built a lot of coal power for backup, but too often they’re using it instead of the clean energy they’ve built in such abundance:

Estimated wind and solar curtailment, including both reported and unreported curtailment, reached 360 TWh in H1 2026, up 49% year-on-year. Had this electricity been absorbed, the additional power supply could have met all demand growth and allowed coal power generation to fall.

The problem in China is long-term contracts that continue to reserve a “substantial share of limited electricity demand for coal.” They’re protecting the industry, at the cost of the climate, something that should be highly familiar to Americans, because under Trump we’re subsidizing ancient coal plants instead of shutting them down, and even, as of this summer, spending big to build new ones.

And all of this brings us inextricably back to where this essay began, which is with politics. If the US is to play any kind of role (except as obstacle) in this transformation, it begins with resetting the politics around energy and climate. And that begins with the upcoming elections.

A Democratic Congress will not be able to pass important new climate programs—those would be blocked by the Trump White House. But it might be able to use its oversight and budget authority to blunt the worst of the administration’s attack on clean energy. And if the Democrats start to stabilize the country, then they can turn their attention to the next election—one where energy and climate will need to play a central role, because among other things “affordability” is a dead letter without addressing them.

Which is why the next eight weeks (precisely) are so crucial. We’ve overshot—and not just in terms of climate. We need to start reining the horrors back in, so we can go to work not on solving them but at least on keeping them from destroying all that we’ve inherited. I hope you’ll figure out ways to join me in helping make November 3 the most useful day of the last few years. Usefulness may not be sexy, but it’s what we’ve got.

Editor's Note: The following is the second excerpt from Nancy J. Altman's latest book, The Road to Medicare for All: A Call to Action (Routledge, 2026), now available for purchase wherever quality books are sold. Read the first excerpt published by Common Dreams here. As the United States continues to spend substantially more on health care than other wealthy nations but with poorer health outcomes, Altman's book analyzes the dysfunction of the current system and sets forth the solution. "Medicare for All won’t happen without a fight," she argues, "but it is a fight we can win."

Imagine having more money in your pocket. Imagine being able to see any doctor you want without checking whether the provider is in your network and covered by your insurance. Imagine having more time with your doctor and, at the end of the appointment, simply walking out the door without having to take out your wallet or even ask what you owe for the visit. Imagine being free of filing insurance claims. Imagine being able to simply get any medicine your doctor prescribes without discovering it is exorbitantly expensive and asking your doctor what, if anything, they can prescribe that is covered by your insurance. Imagine no such thing as medical debt. Imagine simply getting the care, procedures, hospital stays, therapies, and medications your doctor prescribes with your only focus and thought being on how to restore and optimize your health. That is what you will experience.

Where is that destination? It is tantalizingly close. In fact, those who, on average, have the greatest medical needs—seniors and people with disabilities—are already almost there. Medicare, having recently celebrated its 61st anniversary, is well known to Americans. Most people are either covered by Medicare or know someone who is. It already covers Americans from age 65 to the grave. To reach the destination that health care is a right, not a privilege, with all those imaginations a reality, it has to be extended back to the cradle and improved, so that its coverage is completely comprehensive and available without premiums, co-payments, co-insurance, or deductibles. (To be clear, the destination is the expansion of traditional Medicare, not privatized Medicare—the deceptively named Medicare Advantage—whose serious shortcomings are discussed throughout this book.)

As important as Medicare is... it should be improved.

Medicare, which currently covers only seniors and people with disabilities—those who, on average, have the highest healthcare costs—does so more efficiently, comprehensively, and fairly than commercial insurance does, or indeed can. Medicare is the most important birthday gift those turning age 65 get. Too many Americans in their late fifties and early sixties lack adequate health insurance and desperately seek to hang on until they reach that special birthday that brings Medicare. As important as Medicare is, though, it should be improved. As Chapter 3 explains, soon after Medicare was enacted and expanded to people with disabilities, the most powerful forces organized against it. They succeeded in stopping further expansion of its coverage and the services and treatment it provides. They also stood in the way of reducing the costs of those it covers.

On the road to Improved Medicare for All, traditional Medicare should be expanded to cover all essential services. As the nation is driving toward Improved Medicare for All, traditional Medicare should be expanded to cover all safe and effective prescription drugs, also. Under the current system, without Medicare simply covering all safe and effective prescription drugs automatically at no cost, beneficiaries must repeatedly answer the following impossible, ludicrous questions: What illnesses will you contract next year? What medications will your doctor prescribe to treat those yet-to-be-contracted illnesses? Only if you know the answers to those unanswerable questions, can you intelligently decide, in today’s dysfunctional system, which insurance plan has the right drug formulary or list of covered drugs at a price you can afford.

Expanding traditional Medicare to cover all prescription drugs will mean that people can fill all of their prescriptions without worry about their cost. In addition, Medicare should be expanded to cover long-term care—both care at home and in nursing homes.

If Medicare were expanded to cover in-home services and supports as well as nursing home care for those who had no other alternatives, people who were able could age at home, as most want, with the security to know that they would not be a financial burden to those they love. An expanded Medicare for All would meet Americans’ needs today and their unforeseeable needs in the future. As it does today for seniors who have traditional Medicare, it would pool risk among everyone so that everyone is protected; people with costly and complex medical conditions would not be saddled with huge costs.

Under today’s patchwork system, out-of-pocket costs in the form of deductibles, co-pays and co-insurance force people into the arms of commercial insurance, whether they like it or not. Those with traditional Medicare must buy, if they can afford it, private supplemental insurance, colloquially known as Medigap, since traditional Medicare lacks an overall cap on out-of-pocket expenses. Those who can’t afford Medigap may be forced to purchase an inadequate Medicare Advantage plan which includes an overall cap, one more thumb on the scale placed by those who are hostile to single-payer health insurance.

With comprehensive coverage, without co-pays, co-insurance, deductibles, or premiums, there will be no need for supplemental, so-called Medigap, private insurance. We do not pay out of pocket for public libraries, schools, fire protection, or the military. Rather, those services are paid from taxes. We should not be required to pay out of pocket for health care, either. Like those other services, we should have universal, national health insurance, paid for completely out of taxes. The United States is the wealthiest nation in the world at the wealthiest moment in its history. It doesn’t feel that way to many, because so much of that wealth is concentrated in the hands of the very few. A fairer system of taxation which finances an Improved Medicare for All would allow all of us to share the wealth that all of us have created.

We do not pay out of pocket for public libraries, schools, fire protection, or the military. Rather, those services are paid from taxes. We should not be required to pay out of pocket for health care, either.

The nationwide network of Improved Medicare for All providers, which would likely cover all doctors and hospitals nationwide, would ensure that people can continue to get care from the doctors they know and trust. Everyone would be free to see doctors and use hospitals anywhere in the nation. There would be no restrictive networks that keep people from using centers of excellence and seeing the doctors they want to see, including the best specialists. Improved Medicare for All would ensure that everyone—people with costly and complex conditions, people who want good specialty care from doctors and hospitals they know and trust, people who need continuity of care, and those who are currently in excellent health—could get needed health care without financial stress or anxiety.

Improved Medicare for All is fully affordable. Given the unsustainability of the current system, as described in the last chapter, the wrong question is how can we afford Improved Medicare for All. Rather, the right question is how can we afford not to enact it. Relatedly, Improved Medicare for All will cost less than we pay currently. Consequently, the other correct question is not how are we going to pay for Improved Medicare for All, but, rather, how should we divvy up the savings!

Improved Medicare for All will save the nation trillions of dollars while covering everyone comprehensively. In addition to money saved, Improved Medicare for All will save lives. It will result in a higher quality of life for individuals and also a healthier population overall, generating greater productivity for the nation as a whole. Doctors will have more freedom and flexibility. They will be free from the micro-management of commercial insurance companies, concerned about turning a profit.

An Improved Medicare for All system will provide dependable income to healthcare providers. They can count on their bills being paid in a timely manner without the need to chase patients or, even more dispiriting, seek the assistance of loan collection agencies.

Part of the savings should go to doctors, nurses, and other providers to ensure that they are well compensated. They should do better under Improved Medicare for All, not just financially, but also in terms of job satisfaction and time to focus on healing, not paperwork.

Hospitals and those they serve will do better, as well. Improved Medicare for All can reduce physician shortages in underserved areas, often described as healthcare deserts, and help to reduce shortages in areas of medicine where they exist now or are projected to exist. Rural hospitals too often have limited staff without backup. The loss of a surgeon can cause the surgical unit to close, which, in turn, can have a cascading effect, ultimately resulting in the inability to receive care close by, quickly, in an emergency.

Despite all the advantages, Improved Medicare for All won’t happen without a fight.

Like the need to reimburse doctors fairly, in a timely manner, hospitals must be, as well. Whether for-profit, nonprofit, or governmental, hospitals want to remain state-of-the-art, with the latest equipment, and be fully staffed. Consequently, they need to cover their costs and ideally, maintain reserves. Under Improved Medicare for All, hospitals will have reduced costs along with more certainty and dependability of payments, free from charitable cases, which will become a thing of the past. In addition to fairly reimbursing hospitals and other facilities, the costs of maintaining, updating, and constructing them should be a priority, so that all communities are adequately served. At base, under Improved Medicare for All, hospitals, physicians, nurses, and other practitioners should be paid generously. They can and should be paid fully and on a timely basis for care given to every patient. Improved Medicare for All can and should be structured to ensure that providers have the ability to spend the time required to see patients.

In addition to all of the health and health-related advantages that Improved Medicare for All will bring, it can also usher in improvements unrelated to health care. They include a fairer federal tax system, together with reduced income and wealth inequality; more revenue for Social Security; an improved system of workers’ compensation, and more funds for state governments. Improved Medicare for All will provide intangible benefits for everyone, including reduced stress, less paperwork with the accompanying added free time, and, most importantly, greater peace of mind. All of those byproducts are explained at length in the book. They are just some of the fortuitous byproducts that will accompany the enactment of Improved Medicare for All.

Despite all the advantages, Improved Medicare for All won’t happen without a fight. The special interests will fight ferociously, but they will be no match for the hundreds of millions of Americans who will be benefited, as long as the public is engaged and active.

Twenty-five years ago, 19 hijackers took control of four American airliners and crashed them into symbols of American power, killing upwards of 3000 people. The American population watched the events unfold in real time. It was an emotionally jarring event that changed the country.

In some respects, the events of 9/11 needed no explanation. The destruction of the World Trade Center buildings and the massive, and random, loss of life were horrifying to all. The meaning of the attacks, however – and the motivations of the hijackers – were less clear.

The effort to explain the motives behind the attack, and to understand “why they hate us,” brought a pre-existing debate over Islamist militancy to the center of American public life. In the decade leading up to 9/11, the Washington policy community had been divided over how to deal with the Islamist movement and particularly those extremists who sought to use violence to impose a narrow vision of religious orthodoxy upon reluctant societies.

At the heart of the 1990s policy debate was a dispute over causation: are religion and ideology the sources of violent extremism, or are poverty, marginalization and authoritarian misrule to blame? Commentators and politicians on the political right viewed the issue in terms reminiscent of the Cold War. The conflict with Islamism (or “Islamic fundamentalism”) was ideological in nature and, like international communism, had to be confronted with force. Hence, American foreign policy should prioritize security and support our regional allies in their efforts to eradicate both the Islamist opposition and violent extremists.

Those on the other side of the debate rejected this vision of a new “green peril” and saw the underlying claims as inaccurate and misleading. To operate from such flawed assumptions, it was argued, would result in a foreign policy that served neither American interests nor those of the Arab (and Muslim) populations most directly affected. The best strategy for dealing with both militant violence and the non-violent opposition was economic development and political reform.

Both the George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations sought to find a common ground between these two perspectives, one that addressed both security concerns and the need for reform. The terrorist attacks of 9/11, however, upended this balance. The shock and horror of that day provided the George W. Bush administration a free hand to reshape American foreign policy. In doing so, the second Bush administration embraced the security side of the argument and the corresponding policy prescriptions. What motivated the administration was a view that this new war on terror was – like WWII and the Cold War – an existential “conflict between freedom and tyranny.” In the face of such a dire threat, the “gloves come off.”

Many experts now recognize that the militarized response to 9/11 was counter-productive. In the two decades that followed, the number of groups and fighters that claimed allegiance to the jihadist cause increased, as did their geographic areas of operation. Even as U.S. forces made gains against al-Qaida, new groups such as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) emerged that were even more extreme and violent. The precipitous demise of the Afghan government in August 2021 – and the return of the Taliban to power – further illustrated the limits of American military power.

All of this occurred despite the concerted effort by the U.S. government and others to rein in Islamist militancy and counter the ideology of violent extremism. The problem, in short, got worse, not better.

Misdiagnosing the problem

The failures of America’s war on terror were rooted in a misdiagnosis of the problem. The Bush administration promoted the idea that the 9/11 hijackers were motivated by their hatred of American values and rejected any notion that U.S. policies contributed to either anti-American sentiment or violent extremism. “They” hated us for who we are, it was argued, not what we do.

By framing the challenge of Islamist militancy within a discourse of terrorism and civilizational struggle, governmental leaders embraced a belief common on the political right that “the application of [military] power is the most important thing in winning the war on terrorism.” American policy makers subsequently pursued a military strategy to effect political change in the Middle East, South Asia and Africa at the expense of diplomatic, legal and other alternatives. The 1990s debate was effectively over; those arguing for a policy of confrontation had won.

While the intent of the American military strategy was to deny terrorist groups safe havens, the practical effect was the opposite. American military interventions destabilized entire regions and created the kind of lawless anarchy in which militant groups proliferated. U.S. interventions also exacerbated anti-American sentiments and allowed militant groups to portray themselves as nationalist defenders fighting an occupying enemy.

The 2003 invasion of Iraq exemplified this trend, with the American occupation becoming a “‘cause celebre’ for jihadists” and inadvertently breathing new life into the militant movement. American policy in the Sahel, the Horn of Africa, and Yemen paint a similar picture. In each instance, military intervention created the conditions in which Islamist militancy flourished. This, in turn, justified further U.S. interventions, creating a vicious cycle of perpetual conflict.

American military strategy also relied upon regional autocracies to prosecute the war on terror. This aspect of American policy represented a key paradox. While U.S. actions were said to be defending freedom, the reality is that U.S. government agencies prioritized support for the militaries and security services of authoritarian allies. Little was done to promote democratic accountability or protect civilian populations from abuses inflicted by these same governments. The prosecution of the war on terror, thus, meant diminished freedom for populations living under authoritarian rule and failed to address the relationship between government repression and radicalization.

The failure of America’s military strategy reflected a tendency to focus on symptoms, rather than causes. While the budgets of the Department of Defense, various intelligence agencies and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) expanded dramatically in the post-9/11 period, similar investments were not made in other aspects of American power. There was no corresponding expansion of the mission or budgets for the U.S. Department of State or for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Funding for democracy promotion, moreover, paled in comparison to military spending and little was done to address the economic stagnation and marginalization that fueled extremism.

While this lopsided approach to counterterrorism was, in part, a continuation of past American policy, it was also due to the wartime paradigm that prioritized military power over all else. The result was “indiscipline and disappointments” as military operations failed to fix problems and Americans tired of the country’s wars.

As we reflect on the terrible events of 9/11, we can honor those who perished by learning the central lesson of the war on terror: the overreliance on military power to accomplish political objectives does not serve American national security interests. As in the current war with Iran, the U.S. military has consistently demonstrated that it can secure tactical victories while still failing to achieve strategic ends.

What is needed is not just a change in policy, but a shift in the way that the United States political leadership thinks about the problems that it is trying to solve. We owe it to those millions of Americans who have grown up in the shadow of 9/11 not to repeat the mistakes of the past.

On September 1, a US airstrike hit a family compound in Kuhestak, southern Iran, as women and children gathered for a wedding celebration. At least five people were killed and dozens more injured. Associated Press reporters who visited the town documented extensive damage and civilian suffering. Reuters later reported that imagery, debris, and weapons assessments were consistent with a direct hit by a US munition, while US officials said the incident was under review. The immediate facts matter. But the larger question is already unavoidable: What happens to the laws of war when civilian spaces repeatedly become part of the battlefield?

The significance of Kuhestak extends beyond the number of casualties or the identity of the weapon. The deeper danger is what incidents like this can do to the norms meant to limit warfare. If homes, schools, hospitals, wedding gatherings, or refugee sites are repeatedly treated as tolerable consequences of military necessity, the distinction between battlefield and civilian life begins to lose practical meaning.

International humanitarian law was designed precisely to prevent that erosion. Its rules do not make war safe, and they do not prohibit every attack that may harm civilians. They do, however, require parties to distinguish between civilians and military objectives, prohibit attacks expected to cause excessive incidental civilian harm in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated, and require feasible precautions to minimize civilian loss. The principles of distinction, proportionality, and precaution are not political preferences. They are the legal architecture intended to preserve a minimum boundary between military necessity and human life.

International law rarely collapses in a single dramatic moment. More often, norms weaken when exceptional conduct is repeated, defended, or left without meaningful scrutiny.

That distinction matters when assessing the US position as well. Washington says it does not target civilians and that its operations in southern Iran were aimed at military infrastructure, including air-defense, communications, and maritime assets. The Associated Press reported those stated objectives alongside the civilian toll in Kuhestak. Under the laws of war, the existence of a legitimate military objective can matter greatly. Civilian casualties, by themselves, do not automatically prove an unlawful attack. But that is precisely why transparent investigation is essential: Was the target properly identified? Were the expected civilian risks assessed? Were feasible precautions taken? And was the anticipated military advantage sufficient to justify those risks?

Kuhestak is especially troubling because it follows another catastrophic episode in the same province. On February 28, a strike hit a school in Minab. In March, Amnesty International said its investigation found US forces responsible for the attack, which killed 156 people, including 120 children, and concluded that the United States had failed to take all feasible precautions to avoid civilian harm. Amnesty called for a transparent and thorough investigation and accountability for those responsible. Minab therefore cannot simply be treated as an unresolved rumor in the background of the current war.

Seen together, Minab and Kuhestak raise a deeper concern. One catastrophic civilian strike may be explained as a failure of intelligence, targeting, weapon performance, or judgment. A pattern of incidents, however, raises a different question: whether civilian protection is being pushed too far to the margins of operational decision-making. The danger is not only the immediate loss of life. It is the gradual normalization of exceptions.

If civilian protection becomes a principle honored only when convenient, the damage will not stop with one town or one conflict.

International law rarely collapses in a single dramatic moment. More often, norms weaken when exceptional conduct is repeated, defended, or left without meaningful scrutiny. Each time a serious civilian-harm incident is absorbed into the routine language of war without transparent findings or accountability, the practical force of the rule diminishes. What is described today as an exceptional mistake can become tomorrow's accepted risk.

Some will argue that this concern overstates the implications of incidents that occur in a high-intensity conflict. War is chaotic. Military assets may be located near civilian areas. Information can be incomplete, and even precision weapons cannot eliminate human error or unintended harm. Those points are real, and international humanitarian law itself recognizes that civilian casualties can occur even in attacks directed at lawful military objectives.

But acknowledging the realities of war is not the same as accepting the erosion of its limits. The law matters most precisely when military pressure is intense and operational decisions are difficult. If the protections owed to civilians become flexible whenever the strategic stakes are high, then their universality becomes conditional on power, geography, and political convenience. A rule that constrains only weak states, while powerful ones receive the benefit of endless exceptions, is not a universal rule for long.

The consequences would reach far beyond Iran. The laws of war function only if states expect them to apply across conflicts and regions. A standard weakened in the Middle East will not remain neatly contained there. Future belligerents in Europe, Africa, or East Asia can point to conduct tolerated elsewhere and demand the same latitude for themselves. Selective enforcement does more than produce unequal justice; over time, it changes what governments believe they can do.

A rule that constrains only weak states, while powerful ones receive the benefit of endless exceptions, is not a universal rule for long.

The appropriate response, therefore, is not to prejudge every disputed strike or to assume that every civilian death proves a war crime. It is to insist on independent, transparent, and verifiable investigations; publication of meaningful findings; and accountability wherever violations are established. The United States should be held to the same standards it expects other states to observe. The same standard must apply to Iran, Israel, and every other party to an armed conflict. Universality is the point.

The question raised by Kuhestak is ultimately larger than one wedding, just as Minab was larger than one school. It is whether the international community still believes that even in war there are people, spaces, and rules that military necessity cannot simply sweep aside. If civilian protection becomes a principle honored only when convenient, the damage will not stop with one town or one conflict. What will have been weakened is the boundary that keeps war from becoming limitless—and once that boundary disappears, no nation can assume that its own civilians will remain safely on the other side of it.

My mom worked harder than anyone I know. She wanted a good life for us. It was a hard life—I remember the Christmas she had to pawn our gifts to pay the light bill—but she made it special for us.

Now I have two kids of my own, and I want them to have every opportunity that other children have.

The landscape is tough out there. Like many Americans, I can’t afford childcare, and finding work that accommodates my need to care for my young children is hard. With inflation, the little income I have doesn’t go nearly as far as it used to.

I’m grateful to have assistance with food, housing, and healthcare through our social safety net programs.

Food programs like SNAP (also known as “food stamps”) and WIC (that’s the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children) have literally saved our lives when we’ve been hungry. I wouldn’t be able to feed my children without them. And thanks to Medicaid, we have healthcare.

But I’m sick with worry about the cuts to SNAP and Medicaid that are barreling my way. The so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” slashed these programs last year so lawmakers could slash taxes for corporations and the wealthy, and some of the worst cuts will take place after this year’s midterms.

The uncertainty is causing so much stress. The first change I noticed is they cut off my eyeglasses subsidy. What’s next? Meanwhile, the cost of living keeps going up and up, outpacing wage gains for me and countless others. Our SNAP benefits cover much less than they did a year ago, and that’s before potential cuts take effect.

I feel like I’m waiting for a bomb to drop on me and my kids, and I’m not the only one.

“The average minimum-wage worker must work nearly 116 hours per week, nearly three full-time jobs, to afford a two-bedroom rental home,” the National Low Income Housing Coalition reports. That’s the truth—my own sister works three jobs and still has to live with roommates.

Lawmakers are telling us we can’t have healthcare now unless we work, even in areas with low wages. Yet those making the laws enjoy free government-socialized healthcare and high wages.

They say SNAP benefits can’t be used for a cake or soda for my child’s birthday. Yet no one would stop the wealthy from using their $1 trillion in tax cuts under the “Big Beautiful Bill” to buy their kid a yacht.

Poor and low-income people deserve to be happy too. We deserve healthcare, food, housing, and even a child’s small birthday party. It feels like we’re being punished for working regular jobs—and like lawmakers want to keep us down so we don’t fight back against this inequality.

But we are fighting back.

I’ve started attending our local town hall meetings and hearing the stories of injustice and poverty. I started volunteering with a non-profit organization in my community. I help get goods to people in need, even as I am also in need, because that’s what we do. Poor and low-income people help each other out, because we understand what it’s like to see our kids go without while we work our fingers to the bone.

But we can’t do it alone. We need to demand from lawmakers that instead of cutting our healthcare, food, and housing benefits, we need to expand them to meet the great need in this country. We need a livable wage so we can afford market rent and rising food prices.

And we need to hold lawmakers who make working people suffer to enrich the already wealthy accountable.

A familiar spectre is haunting the nation—that of communism. Or so one might conclude from the Republican Party’s increasingly frantic rhetoric.

Following a string of wins by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) in congressional primaries from New York to Colorado to Michigan, even reaching as far as Florida, the GOP is dusting off an old refrain.

“Communism is on the ballot this November,” warned House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) at a press conference. President Donald Trump has gone further still, calling communism “the biggest threat to our nation there is, maybe since our founding.”

At first glance, this reads like little more than election-year theatrics. The candidates provoking such alarm are, on the whole, hardly the revolutionaries their critics imagine.

But, try as they might, no amount of fearmongering, surveillance, or censorship will dampen the working person’s dream for a more dignified life, one where their labor is compensated fairly, their dollar stretches further, and their children inherit a secure future.

Many of the policies promoted by today’s democratic socialists fall comfortably within the lineage of the New Deal: strengthening labor protections, expanding access to healthcare, greater investment in public infrastructure, and so on.

That House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) would liken their ascendance to “a nightmare… a trail to certain death,” ought to strike any person of sound mind as patently absurd.

Yet dismissing such a frenzied reaction as mere campaign-season hyperbole risks overlooking what it actually reveals: staggering insecurity.

If the political establishment had any real confidence in their track record, they wouldn’t need to manufacture so much anxiety around their opposition.

It is precisely because they can feel their grip on the public’s trust slipping that they have resorted to reviving the McCarthyist witch hunts of yesteryear—an effort that extends well beyond incendiary speeches.

Last year, President Trump issued National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), directing federal agencies to expand policing of social movements linked to “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity,” among other ideological strains, ostensibly to “identify and prevent potential violent activity.”

NSPM-7 has, in turn, become the legal backbone for an aggressive crackdown on dissent, seen in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issuing “warning notices” to those who have criticized the actions of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), whether that be through social media posts or email correspondence.

Recent reporting even uncovered a sweeping probe, dubbed “Operation Puppet Master” by DHS, into a number of left-wing groups in Minnesota after the killings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti by ICE and Border Patrol agents, respectively, earlier this year.

The probe included, among other things, the subpoenaing of financial records from various labor unions and nonprofits, as well as “spying operations conducted by undercover agents who posed as activists and surveilled community activities.”

It is little wonder that such egregious actions have since been compared to COINTELPRO, J Edgar Hoover’s illegal pet project designed to infiltrate, surveil, and discredit civil rights and anti-war activists who caught the ire of the federal government.

This, paired with the White House creating its own blacklist of journalists and influencers on its official “Media Offenders” page, many of whom are cited for such severe transgressions as “Left-Wing Lunacy,” suggests that the hysterical talking points GOP leadership have taken to heart are the vehicle for a broader crusade of political repression.

Such heavy-handed surveillance is undoubtedly born out of a deep-seated panic among those in power. This latest Red Scare is, at its core, a reaction to the working-class rightfully demanding its fair share of the economic pie.

The rise of the DSA, and of the left-wing ideas it propagates, owes much to the fact that its members speak plainly about the financial woes of the everyday person.

Take, for instance, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has striven to take an honest accounting of the financial hardship faced by New Yorkers, and in turn offer tangible remedies like free childcare and a rent freeze.

In contrast, Trump administration officials are desperate to pull the wool over the eyes of the people, with Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, recently claiming that the economy “looks amazing,” despite nearly 80% of voters feeling otherwise.

In fact, public confidence in capitalism broadly has fallen to 54%, according to Gallup polling released last year, the lowest level since the organization began tracking the question. At the same time, socialism commands comparatively steady support, especially among Democratic voters, roughly two-thirds of whom view it favorably.

The generational divide is even more striking. A survey conducted by YouGov and the Cato Institute found that 62% of Americans under 30 hold a favorable view of socialism, while 34% say the same of communism. Of course, each of these labels mean different things to different respondents, but the overarching trend is difficult to ignore.

For many Americans, especially those on the younger side, capitalism is synonymous with constraint, and it’s not hard to see why.

While billionaires’ assets have surged to preposterous heights, the cascading inflationary shocks of war have steadily eroded workers’ purchasing power.

Cornerstones of the American Dream have been priced out of reach for working families, with 62% of Americans now viewing homeownership as unrealistic.

Meanwhile, more than 40% of American households have persistently struggled to cover the cost of basic necessities on their current income.

Yet, rather than confronting the economic frustrations driving millions of Americans to question the status quo, the Trump administration has chosen to paint a target on the backs of those who offer the public a meaningful alternative.

But, try as they might, no amount of fearmongering, surveillance, or censorship will dampen the working person’s dream for a more dignified life, one where their labor is compensated fairly, their dollar stretches further, and their children inherit a secure future.

And it is for this reason that yet another Red Scare is an altogether futile, albeit dangerous, distraction meant to blind us to the real struggle of our time: the fight against a rigged economy.

If those in power must conjure ghosts to terrify the people, it is surely because their earthly defenses are failing.

This Labor Day, workers across the country are sending a clear message: They want a greater voice on the job. A near-record 71% of Americans approve of unions, and surveys show over 50 million nonunion workers would join a union if they could.

At a time when many are struggling to afford basic necessities, it’s easy to understand why. Through unions and collective bargaining, workers have more power to win higher wages, better benefits, safer working conditions, and a fairer share of the wealth they create. Unions help build a strong middle class, reduce inequality, narrow racial economic disparities, and boost participation in our democracy.

Yet only 1 in 10 US workers are in a union today—a sharp decline from the more than 1 in 3 workers who belonged to a union in the 1950s. That drop did not happen because workers stopped wanting or needing unions. It happened due to relentless attacks on unions and collective bargaining, and lawmakers’ failure to fix the broken labor laws that have allowed those attacks to succeed.

The consequences have been enormous. As union power has declined, workers have seen less of the gains from the economic growth they have helped create. Since 1979, productivity (how much average value workers produce in an hour of work) has grown 2.8 times as much as pay for typical workers.

This Labor Day, let’s recommit to putting more power in the hands of working people.

New Economic Policy Institute research makes clear just how much working people stand to gain by rebuilding union power to 1950s’ levels.

Tripling union membership would raise the pay of the median worker by more than $7,700 a year, or nearly $270,000 over a 35-year career. That’s enough to more than cover the cost of sending two children to a four-year public university, for example. Crucially, both union and nonunion workers would see these gains because stronger unions raise standards across the labor market.

Scaled across the workforce, tripling union membership would shift an estimated $1.2 trillion to the pockets of working people every year. This is enough to reverse roughly one-third of the increase in inequality since 1979.

Stronger unions are also good for businesses and the broader economy. When workers earn more, they have more money to spend in their communities, strengthening consumer demand. Businesses would benefit from lower worker turnover, higher productivity, and workers who have a greater stake in the success of their workplaces.

Tripling union membership won’t be easy, but it’s far from a nostalgic pipe dream. It will take continued nationwide organizing and decisive policy action that makes it easier for workers to unionize. Federal lawmakers can start by passing legislation that expands collective bargaining rights, closes loopholes in existing law that allows employers to suppress worker organizing, and holds employers accountable when they violate workers’ labor rights. Further, state lawmakers should provide all public-sector workers with collective bargaining rights and repeal so-called right-to-work laws that weaken workers’ ability to organize and bargain collectively.

This Labor Day, let’s recommit to putting more power in the hands of working people. That means giving more workers the freedom to organize. And it means setting an ambitious goal worthy of the moment: tripling union membership and building an economy that works for working people.

Last March, I wrote an essay providing evidence of the inherent exploitation and undemocratic constructs in our economic model burdening working people.

This essay compliments that work and will show a fundamental reason why our economic model is structurally limited by attempts to reform it.

History

Our economic model is plagued with a history of periodic recessions and depressions.

That history is recorded by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). Recessions and depressions are clinically presented as normal components of the “business cycle.” The NBER does not report the chronic instability and destruction of communities and working people’s lives by the “business cycle.”

Political democracy demands economic democracy. We have statutes, laws, regulations, and rules to protect the common good. Why not apply the same principles to the relations of production?

Many economists, psychologists, and journalists have attempted to rationalize the chronic crisis in our economic model. These fanciful assertions are thoroughly inadequate. As Leo Huberman chronicled in Man’s Worldly Goods, some experts actually attributed the chronic crises to radiation from the sun or the path of the planet Venus.

Despite rapid advances in technology and financial instruments, chronic crises remain inherent in our economic model.

Competition is a significant component that contributes to these crises despite the stifling dominance by a few giant corporations in most industries. That structure contains one essential component which plagues all businesses.

It is the tendency of the profit rate to fall.

Profit Rate Basis

The tendency of the profit rate to fall is the basis of why our economic model cannot be meaningfully reformed.

The owner of a business must convert the expenditures that initiate and maintain the business into a profit. Profits are what remains after a business pays all of its costs.

Simply, the profit rate shows how many cents of profits are retained from every dollar earned. It is more important than aggregate profits because it measures efficiency of a company in comparison with other businesses.

A decline in the profit rate forces businesses to close doors and decimate the lives of their employees across states and communities.

Business Basics

The following is a simplified explanation of why profit rates tend to fall:

The process begins by establishing a business. The owner must allocate resources for primary expenditures (CapEx) to acquire space, a plant, machinery, tools, hardware, software, technological advances, and raw materials. This includes legal registrations, licenses, permits, and financial services.

The business owner must then add another cost which are secondary expenditures.

Secondary expenditures (OpEx) consist of wages or salaries paid to the employees who do the mental or physical work with their labor power. This creates profits for the owner including extra profits. Extra profits are what remains for the owner once wages or salaries are paid to the employees.

It is imperative that the owner continually spend more resources in primary expenditures for the business. This is due to competition with other business owners.

Primary Expenditures Increase

For the owner, the cost of primary expenditures usually increases as costs for goods and services increase. These increases can be the result of monetary policy, growth of the economy (GDP), corporate price gouging, misplaced tariffs, or a scarcity of certain goods.

Some products may even see a temporary drop in prices due to technological advances.

However, the supply of goods and services that comprise primary expenditures invariably rises to the dismay of business owners.

Cost of living calculations also present data that strongly supports the assertion that primary expenditures for owners will never decrease in our economic model.

Primary expenditures are required to increase the amount of the product or service created by the employees.

The owner might consider borrowing funds from a financial institution to pay for primary expenditures. This can be problematic because financial institutions may decline to lend the money or advance at a glacial pace to finalize a loan.

The reason why the owner must continually increase spending on primary expenditures is directly related to the profit rate.

Profit Rate

The profit rate is obtained by dividing the total primary and secondary expenditures by the extra profit. (Multiplying by 100 converts a decimal into a percentage).

Example: Suppose the employees created $100 worth of total profit and are paid $40 in wages. That means the extra profit is $60.

Add the primary expenditures to the secondary expenditures and divide by the extra profit. In this example, the profit rate is 60%.

Now to show the tendency of the profit rate to fall, increase the primary expenditure to $60. Suppose there was a sale on tools at Home Depot and the owner purchased $10 worth of tools by transferring funds from the secondary expenditures to the primary expenditures.

The profit rate is now 55%. This is a significant drop despite the profit amount remaining the same. The owner increased the primary expenditures by transferring funds from the secondary expenditures.

The owner’s increased spending on primary expenditures in the form of new tools or machines may maintain the extra profits. They may even increase the production of each employee. The product or service may then be sold as less expensive. This is wonderful for the owner, but the crisis remains driven by competition.

Temporary Remedy

Other business owners are captured in this business model. Competition from other businesses drives the accumulation of primary expenditures and a decrease of secondary expenditures. This decrease results in cuts to employees’ wages, salaries, or job losses. A falling rate of profit means outside investment is less likely to occur signaling a crisis for the owner.

The owner must either increase primary expenditures to increase profit rates to compete with other businesses or increase secondary expenditures to allow employees to maintain themselves and their families.

The owner cannot do both. It is an inherent contradiction.

The remedy for the owner is to freeze or offer insufficient wages or salaries in order to maintain extra profits for the business. Without a militant union to fight with the employees, owners will deny employees’ requests for fair compensation and benefits.

The tendency of a profit rate to fall leads to the eventual closing of the business or the business moving to a location without employee rights, union rights, or environmental regulations.

Real Remedy

Thus, our business model results in chronic exploitation, deprivation, and immiseration that cannot be eliminated by reform. Working people's lives and their families are severely damaged, often forever.

The organization, production, and distribution of goods and services must be transformed into a democratic model.

One version of this model can be seen in the Mondragon Corporation in Spain. It is a highly successful conglomerate created in 1956 by a Roman Catholic priest. It is based on democratic principles that are agreed on by the employees.

Economist Richard Wolff wrote that the important questions of what and how we produce are fundamental to the economy of any country. “Where” to produce as also a question within the organization of an economy. The employees who create the profits must have a voice in the production process. A democratic construct can vary according to the model selected but must begin at the ground level.

Transition to a Democratic Economic Model

There are several methods that might serve as a guide to how such a transition may be realized in our economic model:

New companies may be based on the principles of worker cooperatives. Also, when a company fails, it must first offer the employees an option to purchase it. Lastly, owners who are retiring must offer the employees the first opportunity to purchase the business.

A transition to a democratic economic model must begin by political parties actually representing working peoples’ interests. Many progressives assert that democratic socialists must win elections as the way to dominate governments at local, state, and federal levels. They assert that democratic socialism may be realized by means of evolution, not necessarily revolution.

If progressive critics are able to dominate the government, it could pave the way for a transition to a democratic socialist model with American characteristics. Since our history is replete with democratic goals and objectives; a transition would be less problematic.

Political democracy demands economic democracy. We have statutes, laws, regulations, and rules to protect the common good. Why not apply the same principles to the relations of production?

Implementing a democratic model will be met with an avalanche of ruthless, corporate lies to deceive and frighten working people.

Progressives have historical lessons to learn from the failures of countries that attempted a form of socialism to replace the miserable economic conditions inherent and inevitable in our economic model.

There are many forms of socialism that can be realized.

The former USSR is a petri dish of such failures. Government must work to organize economic production democratically from the ground up, not from the top down that doomed the Soviet model to largely failure.

The government under democratic socialist control will transition to a new economic model that will facilitate the positive development of various components of our culture. The voice of working people will make the economic decisions rather than a handful of spiritually vapid, wealthy oligarchs. These oligarchs ignore Christian, Jewish, Islamic and Buddhist literature that advocates for various forms of democratic socialism.

Polls from The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Gallup, and Fox News demonstrate that Americans are increasingly discontented with our economic model.

Working people can and must do better for themselves and their families. Recognizing the limits of economic reform is a beginning.

It’s a good thing that labor journalist and author Matt Witt was not running for governor of Wisconsin this year like Democratic Socialists of America candidate Francesca Hong.

Democratic primary rivals and Republican opposition researchers would have badly distorted the message of Witt’s new book Make Holidays Your Own (Common Ground Press). It encourages creative rethinking of family gatherings and community practices on major holidays.

In their effort to discredit Hong, her foes in both parties created what The New York Times called a “social media kerfuffle” over old posts dissing Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, and Halloween.

The outspoken state legislator and former restaurant owner from Madison lost her August 11 primary despite polling very strongly beforehand. Given the annual sense of foreboding that overtakes millions of Americans when tense family reunions draw near in late November, Hong’s past call for Thanksgiving to be “canceled”—because of its connection to “colonialism”—probably had its local fans.

Sometimes the development of alternative celebrations—such as the reclaiming of May Day by the modern day, more immigrant-influenced US labor movement--can lead to two opportunities to picnic, protest, and march, rather than just one!

Under fire on the campaign trail, Hong did concede that bringing people together around a table can be “a good thing.” But, according to the Times, she also courted controversy by “questioning the value of Valentine’s Day and Christmas trees.” So not only Wisconsin turkey farmers, but gift card sellers and Christmas tree growers—if sufficiently miffed—might have voted instead for the moderate Democrat from Milwaukee, David Crowley, who won the primary.

And even if Hong had prevailed, according to the Times, she faced the challenge of winning over voters like John Wilson, a 61-year old pharmacist from Platteville, Wisconsin, who usually “leans Democratic.” However, when asked whether he favored Hong or US Rep. Tom Tiffany, the Republican running for governor, Wilson chose the latter because “you have to take people at their word” about serious matters like Thanksgiving.

Tiffany has strong views on holidays too; in 2021, he was one of 14 House members who voted against making Juneteenth Day a federal holiday, which won’t be popular with African-American voters statewide.

Just A Few Days Off

In the future, left-leaning candidates can avoid even momentarily distracting flaps like this by reading Matt Witt’s book—hopefully, before pulling the trigger on Twitter, in a moment of pique. The few paid days off that most Americans get to enjoy should not be cancel culture targets, when, as the author argues, they can be celebrated in ways “more historically accurate, meaningful, inclusive, and fun,”

In Make Holidays Your Own, Witt offers much creative advice about dealing with Turkey Day, Mother’s Day, Memorial Day, Veterans Day, the Fourth of July, and eight others; his focus is on countering their crass commercialization, historical baggage, stultifying traditionalism, or exploitation by the right.

See, for example, the garish 250th birthday party staged on July 4 of this year in Washington, DC by the White House and its corporate funders. While no doubt critical of that, Abdul El-Sayed, the successful Democratic Senate primary winner in Michigan is definitely tip-toeing around the issue of fireworks on the Fourth.

As the Times notes, “He has deleted a number of videos and posts where he floated the idea of abandoning fireworks on Independence Day.” El-Sayed’s press spokesperson is now reminding voters that he “is the former captain of his high school football team, loves Michigan football on Saturdays, and celebrates the Fourth of July with fireworks like the next Michigander.”

In other words, he’s an all-American guy! As Witt explains: “In every culture, holidays matter. They come with a message and symbols—with a story that reinforces a certain way of looking at society and passes on certain values to the next generation.” According to the author, what’s good about remaking holidays, in ways that send a different message, “is that you don’t have to convince everyone in your community who doesn’t agree. They can celebrate however they want and so can you.”

A Labor Day History Lesson

And sometimes the development of alternative celebrations—such as the reclaiming of May Day by the modern day, more immigrant-influenced US labor movement--can lead to two opportunities to picnic, protest, and march, rather than just one!

As a former communications director for the United Mine Workers, Teamsters, and Service Employees International Union, the author delves, most informatively, into the political agenda behind the creation of Labor Day, as a counter to nascent working-class internationalism in the late 19th century.

Readers will learn that it was a corporate Democrat president—rather than any anti-union Republican—who first tried to erase the memory of May 1, as an international workers holiday born in the USA, and replace it with an end of summer day off out of step with the rest of the world.

To add insult to injury, May 1 then got officially rebranded, during the McCarthy era, as Law Day—although nobody, even corporate lawyers, get time off for that. Yet, thanks to multiple MAGA threats to the “rule of law” since President Donald Trump got reelected, more than 1,000 California bar members used their lunch hour to stage a first-time ever May Day-style protest in downtown San Francisco.)

As Witt recounts, massive demonstrations seeking shorter working hours occurred in Chicago and other US cities on May 1, 1886; when repeated on May Day four years later, workers in “dozens of countries in Europe and Latin America also held rallies and marches to support the eight-hour day demand.”

Thereafter, much to the alarm of “robber barons” here and abroad, May 1 protests became “an annual event for workers all around the world” and an expression of cross-border solidarity between labor radicals of varying stripes.

Forget May Day?

By 1896, however, a business-backed resident of the White House named Grover Cleveland needed a “sop to unions.” He had, after all, just called out federal troops to crush the Pullman strike organized by the American Railway Union, a pioneering alternative to craft unionism led by future Socialist Party presidential candidate Eugene Victor Debs (who was jailed for his role in the strike).

At Cleveland’s request, Congress declared that workers should be given a day off, every year, on the first Monday in September so, as Witt notes, “Actions taken by US unions would not be coordinated with their counterparts in the rest of the world.”

“Today, Labor Day is a paid holiday for about 3 in 4 workers in the US. Ironically, the lowest paid workers are the least likely to have the day off with pay. That includes non-union workers in food service, retail, hotels, agriculture, delivery, and janitorial services, as well as part-time workers, or those whose companies claim are ‘independent contractors’ rather than employees.”

On the holiday counterprogramming front, the good news is that May Day (as noted above) has made a major comeback over the last two decades. There is also “the shining example of the transformation of Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day as now observed in many cities and states.”

Thanks to the efforts of progressive veterans’ groups like Veterans for Peace and Common Defense, at least some commemorative events on Memorial Day and Veterans Day now focus on peace and justice issues, rather than uncritical celebration of past wars.

In his chapter on Martin Luther King Day, the author suggests a range of activities that “can be about the movement and not just the man.” (This is advice that venerators of Cesar Chavez are taking, but only belatedly, after recent revelations about his history of sexual abuse while president of the United Farm Workers.)

Witt reports that all proceeds from his book are going to Rethinking Schools, a “national nonprofit organization that supports social, economic, and environmental justice teaching at a time when the very idea of public education is under attack. Rethinking Schools’ materials have been used by tens of thousands of educators and have reached millions of students.”

Let’s hope that Make Holidays Your Own also gets into the hands of many educators who have to come up with fresh ideas for in-school celebrations of holidays, that cannot be cancelled even in blue states. But, of course, don’t want their personal creativity in the classroom (or pet peeves) unleashing a conservative backlash of the sort that did not help Hong.

What does it say about this country when you can work for more than 40 years and still can’t afford to stop?

I am 66 years old and have spent over 30 years caring for children across the South. When 2024 drew to a close, I tried to retire. I thought I had put in enough time to set myself free from the labor of surviving this economy.

But, as I worried, I couldn't afford it. The price of everything was increasing, including bread, and I realized I had no choice but to return to work within six months of my retirement.

You can tell workers like me that we should have saved more, planned better, chosen a better path toward our retirement. But here’s the problem many domestic and care workers encounter: You cannot save money you never had. When wages barely cover housing, groceries, medicine, and everything else life throws at you, retirement is less like a plan and more like a luxury. In 2025 (the year I was supposed to be retired), early educators had a median wage of $34,980. Other domestic workers, like house cleaners make an estimated median wage of $34,650, and home care workers in 2025 had a median annual income of $22,429. These wages reflect the reality that domestic workers overall are three times as likely to live in poverty as other workers.

With seven children and 18 grandchildren, I do not want another generation of women in my family to inherit a country’s economy where caring for others means giving up their own security.

I come from a legacy of domestic workers. My grandmother, Big Momma, was a Certified Nursing Assistant. My mother was a housekeeper. I became a childcare worker. Three generations of Black women in my family have cared for other people.

We are part of a much longer history, and that is why this work has never paid what it should.

In 1881, 20 Black laundresses organized a movement that grew to nearly 3,000 members and won better wages after striking. Nearly a century later, Dorothy Bolden organized domestic workers across this same city and founded the National Domestic Workers Union of America. Bolden understood that better working conditions and civic power went hand in hand and even made voter registration part of the strategy to organize domestic workers.

When this country finally wrote basic protections into law, such as the right to organize, a minimum wage, and a path to retirement, domestic workers and farmworkers were left out of these protections. That was intentional. Much of that work was done by Black women in the South; leaving it unprotected was no accident. A multigenerational legacy later, we are still living with the consequences these gaps created.

It’s why a person can care for children for over 32 years and still not be able to afford to retire. We didn’t fail to plan; our work was just kept out of sight and out of the protections other workers won.

For most of my career as a childcare worker, children knew me as Miss Cathy. If one of them came to me crying because they were being bullied or something was wrong, I would tell them, "Miss Cathy is going to get to the bottom of it." And trust that Miss Cathy always did.

I adore my work and the children I care for. But loving your work should not require sacrificing your own security.

Or your health.

I have Graves’ disease—a disease that is twice as likely to impact Black women—and often, we face delayed diagnoses and advanced symptoms because of healthcare disparities. For years, I managed it by going to quick clinics when I could afford them and, most of the time, went without care when I couldn't. It was ironic: I was spending my days making sure other people's children were cared for while struggling to afford consistent care for myself. It was not until I turned 65 and qualified for Medicare that I finally had access to health coverage. And even that coverage is at risk.

But this essay is not meant to share all of the challenges I face in care work. No, I am writing this to emphasize that I am no longer the exception. We, as working-class people, have become the rule.

Across the United States, retirement is slipping out of reach for working people of every kind. Wages have not kept up with the cost of the roof over our heads, a simple doctor's visit, a full grocery cart, or care of any kind. More and more people are working into their late 60s, 70s, even 80s, not because they want to, but because stopping simply is not an option. For me, I work until God tells me to stop. The insecurity I’ve referenced has always shadowed domestic workers, and now it’s reaching the rest of the working class. My story reflects the lives of so many working people.

But domestic workers are building a constituency around care: domestic workers, family caregivers, parents, and everyone who understands that care is not some niche issue. It is part of whether a family can afford to live and whether the people who provide that care can afford to grow old, in my case, preferably with a crisp beverage on a beautiful beach.

The economy and affordability are on people's minds. It’s the only thing that’s on my mind. My bank account tells me that things are expensive.

For Black women like me, the right to be heard was never simple. Our grandmothers cleaned other people's homes and were told their voice did not matter in their own country. My father, who raised my siblings and me in 1960s Memphis, taught us that sitting out of the civic process was not optional; he refused to be invisible, and engaging with elected officials was a way to ensure that.

And it is not only domestic workers who have a stake in this. Every family with childcare needs, every person with an aging parent or disabled loved one at home, all of us who will need care someday—we all deeply depend on this work. When we make that care visible, when we insist that it be counted and prioritized, we are looking out for one another.

I want the people in elected office to hear that childcare lets parents go to work, that home care lets people live with dignity, and that we, the people who do that work, should be able to retire from it one day.

Domestic workers are more than our labor. We are neighbors, parents, and grandparents.

With seven children and 18 grandchildren, I do not want another generation of women in my family to inherit a country’s economy where caring for others means giving up their own security.

My grandmother cared for people. My mother cared for people. I spent 32 years caring for children. We have done our part.

This Labor Day, I want the people who represent us—and the country we have spent our lives caring for—to show us they will do theirs.

And if they don't, Miss Cathy is going to get to the bottom of it.

In every war, there is supposed to come a moment when the guns fall silent and families carry their dead to the cemetery.

In Gaza, that moment has still not fully arrived.

Nearly three years into the war, thousands of Palestinian families are still waiting—not to learn whether their loved ones survived, but for the chance to recover what remains of them from beneath collapsed homes and buried streets.

Many families know almost exactly where their relatives are: beneath a particular building, under a collapsed staircase, behind layers of concrete too heavy to move by hand. Across Gaza, rubble is no longer only evidence of destruction. In many places, it is also a grave.

There should be no disagreement over one principle: The dead have a right to be recovered and buried with dignity, and families have a right to know where their loved ones lie.

The urgent humanitarian question is therefore not only how many people were killed. It is how many are still waiting to be recovered, identified, and buried.

On August 4, 2026, Gaza held a mass funeral for 112 members of the al-Hassayna and Abu Sharia extended family. Their remains had been recovered from homes destroyed in Gaza City’s Sabra neighborhood in November 2023. For nearly three years, their families had waited to bury them.

That funeral was a warning about what time does to the dead—and to those left behind.

The longer remains stay beneath collapsed buildings, the harder identification becomes. Decomposition advances. Bones separate. Personal belongings are displaced. Forensic evidence deteriorates. Gaza’s forensic capacity also remains severely limited.

For families, identification is not a technical detail. It is the difference between a missing person and a known grave. It is the ability to perform a funeral, visit a burial place, and begin mourning with certainty rather than suspicion.

For relatives, the waiting is its own form of suffering. Some families return again and again to the same ruins, pointing to the place where a bedroom, kitchen, or stairwell once stood. They are not asking for certainty about survival; they are asking for the basic certainty of a grave. Until recovery happens, mourning is suspended between memory and rubble.

There are legal consequences as well. Without formal recovery and identification, families can face prolonged uncertainty over death registration, inheritance, guardianship, and other civil matters. A person may be gone in every human sense and still remain unresolved on paper.

The physical challenge is enormous. A 2026 damage and needs assessment by the United Nations, the European Union, and the World Bank estimated that the war had generated more than 68 million metric tons of rubble in Gaza. Some debris are contaminated by unexploded ordnance, asbestos, and other hazardous materials.

Recovering the dead is therefore not a matter of sending people into ruins with shovels. It requires excavators, cranes, fuel, protective equipment, forensic teams, DNA identification capacity, safe humanitarian access, and protection for civil-defense and rescue workers.

Heavy machinery is not a luxury. It is the difference between a body remaining beneath concrete and a family finally being able to bury its dead.

In July 2026, the United Nations Development Programme and the European Union launched a €15 million initiative to support emergency debris removal and strengthen Gaza’s capacity for the dignified recovery and identification of human remains. It is important, but the need is far greater than any single project.

That is why debris removal must treat the recovery of human remains as a central humanitarian priority, not as an afterthought to reconstruction. Sites where people are believed to be buried should be mapped and handled carefully, with procedures for documenting remains, preserving evidence, and notifying families. Rebuilding Gaza cannot mean building over the missing.

What is required now is neither complicated nor impossible.

Humanitarian teams need safe and unhindered access to recovery sites. Excavators, cranes, fuel, spare parts, and specialized equipment must be allowed in without delay. Forensic capacity must be expanded, including DNA identification and proper preservation of remains. Civil-defense, rescue, forensic, and humanitarian teams must be protected.

These are not maximalist political demands. They are the minimum requirements of human dignity.

People will continue to disagree about politics and the future of this conflict. But there should be no disagreement over one principle: The dead have a right to be recovered and buried with dignity, and families have a right to know where their loved ones lie.

A bulldozer should not become a diplomatic bargaining chip. A crane should not require a political breakthrough. Reaching the body of a child should not become another battle.

Civilization is measured not only by what it builds for the living, but by the dignity it preserves for the dead.

Open the crossings and humanitarian routes. Allow the heavy machinery and forensic equipment in. Protect the teams recovering the dead. Give families the chance to bury their loved ones.

Because even after war has taken a life, it should not be allowed to take away a name, a grave, and a final goodbye.

Human dignity does not end with death.

Let Gaza bury its dead.

Let me not quote him once in this piece. We’ve already heard all too much from him, don’t you think? And president of the United States though he may be, he doesn’t deserve to be quoted, not given what he has to say.

It’s true that, in my lifetime, we’ve had all sorts of strange, sometimes deeply disturbing presidents. Believe me, Richard Nixon was no fun. And neither was Ronald Reagan or even, in our very own relatively recent moment, the aging Joe Biden. But nothing like him was ever even conceivable... not until, of course, he happened.

I hardly need to say it, but he—and unfortunately on this planet of ours right now, I really can’t help mentioning him again and again and again, can I?—should be considered the summary of what decline has long meant for great powers, personified in a fashion that may be historically unique for a nation that, not so very long ago, was arguably unique in its global reach and power. Phew, that sentence exhausted me!

Indeed, historically speaking, it’s certainly been rare beyond words (though I swear that won’t stop me from writing this!) to experience such an imperial decline—especially of the greatest power on Earth, possibly ever—both summoned up by and summed up in a lone individual, a single leader, a uniquely mad (and, mind you, not simply as in angry) man.

Consider it beyond remarkable that, in 2024, almost 50% of the American voting public (49.8% of them to be exact) opted to put YKEW back in the White House to do his—and it couldn’t be a more appropriate word, given our world—damnedest to turn this planet into a hothouse of the first order.

If a single poll sums him up in this singular moment of ours, perhaps it’s the latest AP-NORC one. It indicates that about 72% of Americans think this country is indeed heading in “the wrong direction,” while only 26% (and what in the—yes!—world can possibly be going through their brains at this moment?) think it’s heading in the right direction (wherever on this ever stranger planet of ours—or do I mean theirs?—that might be).

And talking about the wrong direction in which the president of the country that, not so long ago, was certainly the greatest power ever is sending us, hook, line, and sinker—whoops, I meant not to mention him again and yet there I went! It seems that I just can’t help myself, nor can I evidently finish this sentence—and honestly, can you blame me on this planet of ours?

Okay, I give up. How can I help myself (or anyone else) when it comes to HIM?

After all, what world can any of us imagine living in anymore, other than his? And given that world, maybe what I actually meant should have been a little more emphatically stated than what I wrote above. After all, to put it mildly (or do I mean wildly?), he’s taking us in the wrong direction, hook, line, and—no, not sinker but stinker (though he is indeed sinking us and this planet, too, in a big-time fashion). And yes, the president who told the world at the United Nations last year that climate change was nothing short of a “con job” and a “scam” seems to be distinctly in the process of preparing to burn down this very world of ours (or do I mean his?).

It’s Getting Hot, Hotter, Hottest

Oh, and only recently, to change the subject for a moment from You Know Exactly Who (or YKEW), a French tourist died after his vehicle became stuck in the mud in the all too aptly named Death Valley National Park in southern California, where the temperature was—and catch a breath before you read this!—116°F! (And mind you, that valley has been setting its own heat records in recent years.)

Now, given the location, you might think that was a one-of-a-kind situation in a deeply desertified stretch of this planet, but if so, think again. As it happens (to flip lands for a moment), on that tourist’s home continent, Europe, according to The Guardian, there have already been an estimated at least 35,000 “excess deaths” attributed to four stunning heatwaves that started in May this summer. Worse yet, when the records for the whole season are in, that number—god save us!—could still rise significantly as parts of that continent continue to go up in flames in a radical fashion. And don’t for a moment think that the idea of this planet being increasingly on fire is just a metaphoric image. As The Guardian also reported, “Wildfires are projected to burn 39% more of Europe by the end of the century even in the best-case scenario for stopping the planet from heating, a study has found, unless action is taken to manage them better.”

And mind you, in some strange fashion, we’re undoubtedly just at the beginning of all this. Oh, and keep in mind as well that we’re not just talking about temperatures on land. I’m sure you’ll be amazed to know that, as The Guardian again reported, ocean temperatures have similarly been soaring of late. In fact, believe it or not, ocean waters set a new temperature record in August (even though the highest ocean temperatures are usually in March or April).

Nonetheless, you shouldn’t find that particularly shocking, since more than 90% of the heat trapped by carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel burning enters those very oceans. As environmentalist Bill McKibben reminded us recently, “Since our planet is 70% ocean, it’s a pretty good gauge of how hot the planet is getting. And what it shows is that in all the decades we’ve been measuring, it’s never been hotter.” And mind you, “42% of the world’s ocean area is now experiencing a ‘marine heatwave.’”

Phew!... I’m already sweating!

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

In some sense, given what we human beings are doing to this planet and given that the president of the greatest power on Earth, YKEW himself, has been going out of his way in these years to increase the use of fossil fuels while, among other things, trying to shut down new sources of wind power and solar energy, who wouldn’t be sweating?

When it comes to the literal destruction of this planet, however, it seems clear that YKEW simply loves it. He couldn’t, for instance, be more enthusiastic about the scores of new AI data centers being set up (or soon to be set up) across this country (not to speak of the world) that will be powering themselves with immense quantities of—oh, yes!—fossil fuels and so pouring ever more carbon into the atmosphere nationwide (and undoubtedly globally, too). As The New York Times reported, for instance, when a new data center in El Paso, Texas, is completed, “It could emit as much planet-warming carbon dioxide in a year as 360,000 gasoline-powered passenger vehicles, each driven for the average distance logged by American drivers in a year.”

Under the circumstances, what could possibly go wrong?

So, among other things, expect to feel ever hotter on this distinctly broiling planet of ours and consider it beyond remarkable that, in 2024, almost 50% of the American voting public (49.8% of them to be exact) opted to put YKEW back in the White House to do his—and it couldn’t be a more appropriate word, given our world—damnedest to turn this planet into a hothouse of the first order.

And although we’re still months away from December 25 (though don’t count on snow), consider all of that his Christmas present to our children and grandchildren. I’m thinking, of course, about a planet whose major power, led by You Know Exactly Who (YKEW himself!), is giving the phenomenon of imperial decline historically new meaning by working all too efficiently to take the planet down with him.

These days, it seems as though there are new data centers being proposed and built everywhere.

Tech companies have long relied on these gigantic server warehouses to process massive amounts of digital data. But a race to develop AI, championed by President Donald Trump, has fed a sharp surge in construction.

The problem is, no one really wants to live near one. Three-quarters of Americans surveyed in August say they oppose data centers. That’s up from 42% a year earlier.

Data centers use up lots of land—largely in rural America. They use inordinate amounts of water for cooling, eat up power and pollute our air, and generate heat in an already-warming climate. So anyone concerned with their most basic needs—land, water, air, electricity, and the climate—is justifiably concerned about data centers.

The good news, Meyer says, is “there has been tremendous grassroots pushback and opposition to data centers in all parts of the country.”

Data centers are also physical symbols of the way in which AI companies are gambling away our economic stability.

“They are pushing to move as quickly as possible, to throw as much money at this as possible, basically offering open bribes to governments at all levels—local, state, and federal—to get these things approved and built,” Thomas Meyer, deputy political director at Food & Water Watch, told me.

Even mainstream economists are warning about a massive “AI bubble,” which could take the entire system down with it when it bursts. (South Korea, where that bubble may already be bursting, offers a real warning to the United States.)

The good news, Meyer says, is “there has been tremendous grassroots pushback and opposition to data centers in all parts of the country.” Meyer’s organization is one of hundreds that have joined the newly formed Stop Data Centers Coalition, which unites local fights against data centers in urban and rural areas across the country. Many of these struggles have enjoyed varying degrees of success.

What’s really needed is a national moratorium on data centers, as outlined in a letter to Congress signed by the coalition’s partners.

Partisan gridlock in Congress, and President Trump’s full-throated support of AI companies, stands in the way of a national ban for now. But this spring, environmental organizations defeated a bill called the “Protect American AI Act” that would have carved out environmental loopholes for data centers.

Meanwhile, activists are pushing ahead at the state and local levels.

Residents in Maine pushed legislators to pass what would have been the first state-wide moratorium on data centers earlier this year (although Governor Janet Mills vetoed the bill).

The fight against data centers fared better in New York, where state lawmakers passed a similar moratorium. Gov. Kathy Hochul, who has championed AI technology, has yet to sign the bill. But in the meantime, she signed an executive order issuing a one-year pause to allow time to develop regulations. “We are still pushing her to sign that bill because it’s a bit stronger than the executive order,” said Meyer.

Meyer pointed out that more than a dozen states are considering similar moratoria, and bans have already taken effect in many local communities. “Several hundred places have enacted moratoriums of different kinds of shapes and sizes,” said Meyer—including Sarasota County in Florida, and the cities of Minneapolis and Spokane. Monterey Park, California, stands out for being the first in the nation to enact a permanent ban passed by voters.

Trump unashamedly centers industry talking points in his executive order, casting data center construction and AI technology as a “race” to be won. But the real race appears to be for tech companies to build data centers in as many communities as possible before residents can stop them.

And that’s exactly why we need a moratorium.

On September 1, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told reporters that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents could be deployed to polling sites across the country. He remarked, “The only reason why we would be at polling places is if there is a threat to that polling place or we’re serving a warrant on someone that we have been actively tracking down.” Later that day, DHS doubled down on this point. In a statement, the department said that, while ICE is not “planning operations targeting polling locations,” the agency conducts “intelligence-driven targeted enforcement, and if an active public safety threat endangered a polling location, they may be arrested as a result of that targeted enforcement action.”

Missing from those statements, however, is that this “intelligence-driven” enforcement would be based on DHS’ explicit and baseless efforts to amplify President Donald Trump’s election fraud lies. In July, Mullin said, “We will scrub all election records, looking for illegal aliens and those who are ineligible to vote, including those that somehow voted, yet they were deceased.” At the time, he also threatened to withhold federal election-related aid to states that failed to comply with the Trump administration’s probe.

That same month, DHS issued a statement alleging that over 250,000 noncitizens are illegally registered to vote in California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Nevada. According to DHS employees and officials familiar with the situation, those numbers were wildly inflated. For instance, while DHS claimed that there were close to 16,000 noncitizens on Nevada’s voter list, it only managed to provide state officials with information on 185 voters. DHS failed to disclose what data they used to match those voters to noncitizens.

This is unsurprising. As the Brennan Center for Justice reports, empirical studies, state investigations, and work by journalists have consistently found that cases of noncitizens voting are exceptionally rare. Moreover, claims made by Republicans and their media allies to the contrary have been repeatedly shown to be false.

These extreme measures also point to just how afraid Trump is ahead of the midterms.

The reality is that Mullin’s DHS is actively trying to fabricate a pretext for ICE to be present at polling sites, regardless of how illegal it would be. 18 U.S.C § 592 directly prohibits any deployment of military personnel or “armed” federal agents “at any place where a general or special election is held.”

To that end, Mullin is exploiting every resource available to him. On September 1, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) reportedly launched “a coordinated criminal voter fraud surge initiative to pursue investigative leads, conduct field interviews, and support timely prosecutorial review,” according to a federal guidance reviewed by CNN. HSI offices in Washington, Wisconsin, Missouri, Georgia, California, Pennsylvania, Nevada, New York, and Connecticut are expected to take investigative action from early September through mid October. While HSI ordinarily focuses on crimes like human trafficking, drug smuggling, and child exploitation, it has been repeatedly tasked with investigating voter fraud in Trump’s second term. In February, the White House directed the agency to determine if any naturalized citizens voted or registered to vote prior to becoming citizens. HSI has also been directed to coordinate with US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to issue removal proceedings for noncitizens suspected of or linked to voter fraud.

ICE is also currently seeking vendors to handle “and secure delivery of publicly available voter registration files and voter history files to support Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) fraud detection and data segmentation activities.” To be clear, as J.B. Branch, the director of Federal AI Governance and Technology Policy for Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division, notes, “Publicly available does not mean ‘fair game’ for unlimited government surveillance.” He continues, “There is an enormous difference between a voter record sitting in a state database and the federal government aggregating millions of those records, cross-referencing them against other government and commercial databases, and using algorithms to generate investigative leads about individual Americans.”

That contract would be worth between $2-5 million according to an acquisition forecast document published by DHS on August 31.

This latest data grab is one of several coordinated efforts by ICE and the Trump administration to undermine voter eligibility. A procurement record from July indicated that ICE planned to pay Thomson Reuters, a major data broker firm, $125 million for access to its CLEAR database, which includes “peoples’ names, addresses, Social Security numbers, ethnicity, social media posts, and geolocation information,” to help the agency investigate voter fraud.

On September 3, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), along with individual voters, filed a motion asking a federal judge to block the Trump administration’s plan to compile state-by-state lists of people it deemed eligible to vote—“State Citizenship Lists”—and publish them online. The basis for this project is an executive order Trump signed on March 31. While a lower court blocked several key provisions from going into effect in 33 states and Washington, DC, the Supreme Court stayed the injunction in August, thus paving the way for the plan to be implemented nationwide. This, despite the fact that the Constitution clearly dictates that only states and Congress—not the president—have the power to control US elections.

All of these escalating efforts so close to the midterms point to one undeniable truth: DHS is readying itself, on behalf of the Trump administration, to engage in nationwide voter suppression and intimidation this November.

These extreme measures also point to just how afraid Trump is ahead of the midterms. On August 21, he told supporters that if Republicans lose, he will be impeached. Several Republicans, including House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA), have recently echoed this "warning."

And they are right to be afraid. Democrats are favored to take back control of the House and possibly win control of the Senate. If this happens, Congress should immediately impeach Trump and put him, as well as everyone who enabled his corrupt administration, on trial for their many crimes.

The Trump administration is desperate. They will do anything—regardless of how illegal or unconstitutional—to subvert the will of people and remain in power. Yet, with the stakes so high, we cannot allow ourselves to be intimidated. This country cannot afford two more years of unchecked Trumpism. While there is still time, we must continue to advocate for progressive candidates as well as calling out and challenging every effort by Republicans to steal our elections.

There’s a question that has become almost unavoidable in movement spaces over the last several years: “What is giving you hope right now?

Usually, the question is asked with good intentions—a way to remind people of their why in the middle of authoritarianism rising, civil rights rolling back, endless surveillance, and the noise of it all.

I often asked myself, “What is giving me hope?” because people I deeply respect pushed many of us to think seriously about hope, radical imagination, and our responsibility to believe that another world is possible. And I still deeply believe in the importance of those things.

My father once told me that the thing that kept him focused while incarcerated for 24 years was the hope and vision that one day he would be reconnected to me. I’ve watched my mother make miracles happen and find ways to provide because of the hope and vision she had for me to have a better life than she did.

I’ve realized that long-term discipline requires a certain level of alignment through rest, quiet, and reassessing our personal intersections of passion, curiosity, capacity, skill, and impact.

But I’ve also found myself becoming a little irritated by the question, even wondering whether the way many of us talk about hope in the first world can become disconnected from the actual conditions so much of humanity has endured throughout history. The more I learn, the more I realize that so many people continue struggling under conditions far worse than what many of us can imagine, and yet they still endure and fight.

Just this week, I was reading I’ve Got the Light of Freedom, which focuses on the organizing traditions of the Mississippi Freedom Struggle. In one section, a young organizer from the 1960s explains that every single time he got up to organize Black people in the South, he had to seriously consider the possibility that he could be stabbed, beaten by white mobs, or lynched.

And yet, they organized anyway.

I think about Palestinians enduring genocide and starvation and still fighting. I think about political prisoners who have effectively been abandoned by much of the public and are still fighting.

At some point, I started realizing that hope alone isn’t what’s carrying people through history. Or at least not entirely. Sometimes people continue struggling because they believe they can win. Sometimes they continue because they feel a responsibility to the people around them. Sometimes they fight simply because their independence and ability to live self-determined lives are worth dying for. I still struggle with these things, and my thinking is constantly adapting. Still, I now spend a lot of my time thinking about discipline, focus, and endurance, especially in this political moment.

I have dealt with actual motion sickness since childhood. But I think many of us are dealing with social and political motion sickness right now. We are trying to simultaneously process global crises, local crises, personal crises, historical crises—you name it. Eventually, your nervous system starts collapsing under the weight of it all

What keeps me grounded is not trying to respond to everything, but instead trying my best to stay focused. Paying attention to what is actually within my control. Committing deeply to a set of responsibilities instead of scattering my energy across a thousand directions and not doing anything well.

And for me, that focus has required that I ask difficult questions about where I actually have the capacity to contribute in meaningful ways, and also if my contribution is actually building toward something constructive. I’ve realized that long-term discipline requires a certain level of alignment through rest, quiet, and reassessing our personal intersections of passion, curiosity, capacity, skill, and impact. Otherwise, over time, it becomes much harder to remain grounded, focused, and useful to the people around you.

Without moments of stillness, it becomes difficult to hear yourself clearly enough to know what you actually think, feel, or believe beneath all the noise. Enough space to actually feel what is happening in your body. And creating a little space to process those questions you have been avoiding.

I’m finding that those moments of quiet are helping me see the world, and myself, more clearly.

Part of what prompted me to write this is that I often get asked some version of the same question: “How do you hold all of this?” The work. The reading. The organizing. Being an executive director, being present for family and my daughter, and trying to stay informed about everything happening in the world. And honestly, I’ve been trying to struggle through that question myself. The truth is, there is no perfect answer, and I get it wrong all the damn time.

Building the capacity to endure is a process, like anything else. Part of the reason I’m able to hold the level of responsibility that I currently do is because of conditioning. That foundation was built years ago as a collegiate athlete, structured around 5:00 am workouts, study sessions, classes, two-a-day practices, late nights, and early mornings. It was an environment that forced me to learn how to push through discomfort, organize my time, and function while exhausted.

Today, that same discipline and structure have simply been redirected toward movement work, political education, writing, relationships, and community. But the capacity itself wasn’t built in a year; it required nearly two decades of routine, failure, and adjustment.

I don’t have all the answers, but I do think I’m slowly learning that surviving these times requires more than just consuming information or reacting to every crisis. It requires building the discipline to focus, the patience to grow over time, and the willingness to create enough silence in your life so you can hear yourself think again.

What must Tyrant Trump be thinking about his opponents’ feeble, weak, cowardly responses to his daily torrent of serious, impeachable offenses? Even his egomaniacal narcissism cannot fully explain his amazing good luck.

Start with the House’s two impeachments of Donald Trump, while Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was Speaker, in 2019 and 2021. The first was over Trump’s trying to bribe or extort Ukraine into going after Hunter Biden—an investor and Board member of a Ukrainian business. Pelosi knew there was no chance of getting the required two-thirds vote required for Senate conviction, but went for the House vote anyway. At the same time, Pelosi declined to pursue numerous other "slam dunk" kitchen table impeachable offenses we and others presented to her. (See Congressional Record, December 18, 2019).

In 2021, after the January 6 Trump-incited violent insurrection involving attack on the Capitol and Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election, Pelosi did the same thing: impeached Trump in the House. Unfortunately, the Senate fell short of the two-thirds vote required to convict and remove him from office because most Senate Republicans cowardly failed to hold Trump accountable for these treacherous actions.

Come the Second Trump term, after criminal indictments, a felony conviction, and civil litigation brought by women accusing him of sexual misconduct, on Day One, January 20, 2025, Trump began issuing illegal executive orders. Many of them were impeachable offenses as he boastfully implemented them, with the aid of Elon Musk’s criminal enterprise—DOGE.

Trump continues to commit “high crimes and misdemeanors,” brazenly, taunting the so-called leaders of the Democrats by saying, “This is just the beginning."

Trump probably anticipated a much more vigorous impeachment drive by the Democrats, even though they were in the minority in the House. His luck continued. The Democratic Party’s so-called leadership decided against this excellent galvanizing get-out-the-vote initiative for their voters, 90% of whom wanted Impeachment yesterday. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries’ (D-Calif.) staffers told inquirers that they didn’t know how it would play out.

Jeffries himself told a reporter that “he didn’t want to get ahead of that discussion.” What? Ahead of 90% of his party’s voters!!?

Trump, who called for the execution of six Congressional Democrats for reminding soldiers of their obligation not to obey an illegal order that is contrary to the Constitution or the laws of the United States (as in described in the Army Manual for Courts-Martial [MCM] along with international law) must be privately dumbfounded. The more violently extreme and erratic he gets, the less interested the Democratic Party is in an Impeachment Drive. (See “Statement from Medical Professionals” in the April 30, 2026 Congressional Record.)

Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) introduced H. Res. 537 on June 24, 2025. It was treated as a privileged impeachment resolution and Rep. Al Green took to the floor for debate and a prompt vote to educate the public about the necessity of ordering Trump, “You’re Fired.” Jeffries and his cohorts opposed it! Trump must have been stunned.

After all, people and their children are feeling, seeing, and hurting in the tens of millions from Trump’s wrecking, endangering, and weakening America. (See my column last week, “Open Letter to Representative Hakeem Jeffries.”)

Under the Jeffries and Schumer anti-impeachment bans, thus agreeing with Trump, the news media has little activity to cover in Washington, DC. Also, it’s not keeping up with the civic activity around the country demanding Impeachment. (See nader.org/impeachment.)

More puzzling is the refusal of editorial writers to urge impeachment. They regularly make the Impeachment case against Trump but decline to tell their readers the obvious conclusion: that the House should begin an impeachment inquiry and approve articles of impeachment. Congress also has an important role under Section 4 of the 25th Amendment. Congress, by statute, may appoint itself—in lieu of the principal officers of the Executive Branch—to determine whether the president is disabled and should be temporarily removed until the disability lapses.

Despite the many detailed editorials in The New York Times, such as one showing how Trump is harming the health of the American people and another “Autocracy Index” titled “Trump’s Election Meddling Erodes Our Democracy,” the editorial writers limped off their pages without answering the alarmed readers’ question, “What do you want done about this?”

The Times Sunday columnist Jamelle Bouie relentlessly documents Trump’s impeachable crimes, but not once has he moved to recommend this Republic-saving mechanism given to us by our Founding Fathers. Same for other Times columnists, Michelle Goldberg and EJ Dionne.

The Times’ reluctance to employ the “I” word is typical of the mass media. What about the independent progressive media? The Nation, In These Times, Progressive Magazine, and The Washington Monthly have all mentioned impeachment, but few have made a sustained, prominent editorial demand for an impeachment drive. Also, they do not report on the rising citizen activities behind Impeachment around the country.

Meanwhile, Trump continues to commit “high crimes and misdemeanors,” brazenly, taunting the so-called leaders of the Democrats by saying, “This is just the beginning.” He provides the Democrats with daily evidence that should prompt SHADOW CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS organized by Democratic members of Congress and designed to build a public factual record. Such hearings could attract substantial media attention, particularly if they focused on specific alleged abuses and featured affected witnesses, legal experts, and former public officials. Nonetheless, Jeffries and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) block any shadow hearings by dissenting House members.

What explains this historic cowardice? Is it fear of Trump retaliating? Is it smugness over Trump’s low polls, and a belief they can win in November by lying low, raising AIPAC and corporate campaign money, mumbling about affordability, and avoiding heavily poll-favored Pledges or Contracts for the American people showing specifically what they stand for? (See, Compact for American Workers and Robert Reich’s 10-Point Plan To Make America Affordable.) Or is it just trying to avoid Trump accusing the Democrats of having done similar things when they controlled the White House, such as starting or backing unconstitutional wars?

Whatever explains their inhibitions, the result is to signal to Trump that he has two-plus unchallenged years to ravage the lives and livelihoods of millions of people here and abroad, oppose preparedness for climate and pandemic catastrophes, to suppress renewable energy and favor omnicidal fossil-fuel combustion, invade our cities with his stormtroopers, and treat children with unsurpassed cruelty. It also leaves unanswered serious questions about his personal financial enrichment while in office—estimated to be $1.1 million per working hour. All this invites the demand that they resign. The people need fresh, stand-up leaders to take over the Democratic leadership and its party committees. (See RootsAction: “Tell Democrats in Congress to Insist That Schumer and Jeffries Step Aside”.)

The Democrats and electorally frightened Republicans pushed Richard Nixon out in 1974 for far, far lesser transgressions than those committed by Trump in a week.

Daniel Snyder, advocate of strategic nonviolence and author of Praying in the Dark: Spirituality, Non-Violence, and the Emerging World collaborated on this commentary.

Countless commentaries have shed light on the current administration’s aggressive, demonic, and systematic campaign to undercut commitments that have held us together for 250 years.

The assault we are experiencing threatens our health and well-being, bashes hopes we have for our children and grandchildren, and detracts from essential responsibilities that go along with being a good citizen. Adherence to the rule of law, assuring protections afforded in the Bill of Rights, and maintaining equitable and humane treatment of all persons are three of the nation’s most critical commitments.

An assumption throughout has been that millions of people in this country treasure these commitments and want to see them reaffirmed. If you are reading this, you are likely a person who shares these feelings. The telling question then is: What to do? What actions would be most effective in fulfilling our common aims? It would not be an understatement to say that this single question has dogged many of us since this administration came to power.

Nonviolent direct action seeks to move the center of gravity of public opinion toward the 3.5% participation that researchers have identified as the “tipping point” of social movements.

Yet the question often leaves resistors uncertain and overwhelmed. We tend to rush to action without fully understanding political dynamics and appreciating the value of strategic thinking. A critical first step is study, not only of the issues, but of approaches that have proven to work.

Desperate for brighter prospects, we are counting heavily on the upcoming midterm elections to turn the political tide in favor of preserving our treasured commitments. Perhaps we are also hoping that the judiciary will step up as a forceful counterweight to the ceaseless assaults. Yet, important as they are, Congress and the courts are "top-down" forms of political power. "Bottom-up" power is an essential complement, keeping "top-down" forms accountable to the people they were created to serve.

Rather than relying solely on one form of political power, one that is often fragile and slow-moving, we suggest a more practiced and time-tested approach: Nonviolent Direct Action.

What it is: Nonviolent direct action seeks to move the center of gravity of public opinion toward the 3.5% participation that researchers have identified as the “tipping point” of social movements. Such a groundswell of public opinion requires a careful assessment of proposed actions’ tendency to expand the “bottom-up” power base. Strategy-based action is a kind of “street theater” designed to create a broad base of people power, and a collective sense that “we” are in this together.

No Kings Protests had some of the earmarks of nonviolent direct action, but they lacked a constructive purpose. Most important, they lacked a strategy for attaining and sustaining that critical 3.5% threshold.

How it works: Imagine an inverted pyramid balanced on its point—extremely unstable, right? It will topple with the slightest breath. To maintain stability, undemocratic regimes must be propped up with "pillars of support." What are those pillars for the Trump administration? This is the essential strategic question for anyone planning an action. Weakening or removing even one pillar creates a crisis for the regime. Demonstratively successful nonviolent actions work on this principle. Economic boycotts, central to the civil rights movement, forced business owners to integrate lunch counters. Divestment actions pressured South Africa to dismantle apartheid.

What is essential for it to work well: Study the literature, especially the writings of Gene Sharp. Sign up for online training or subscribe to one or more of the online news services that report on current nonviolent actions and offer informative articles on strategy.

Within every action group there must be at least one or two people dedicated to doing the research and training necessary to offer wise and informed strategic counsel.

Build coalitions with others. No need to reinvent the wheel or act alone. Find out who else is already taking action on behalf of the commitments listed above and collaborate in learning and coordinating action.

Big picture, we need to improve our game, be more effective than activist groups, which tend to be issue-focused and action-oriented, but weak on strategy. News outlets like Waging Nonviolence and Nonviolence News provide plentiful stories of current actions. These are good places to start for us who are anxious to do something that will definitively turn the tide toward democratic governance.

Bread for the World recently held its annual Advocacy Summit in Washington, DC. As a board member, I was honored to be part of conversations on how public policies affect people experiencing hunger and poverty. People from all walks of life and all backgrounds united with the common goal of developing institutions that advance food security.

This moment was especially full of policy discussions as midterm season is in full swing across the country. Leaders are itching to advance on the campaign trail. They are more likely to be on the ground listening to what we have to say, so the opportunity is ripe to share what we care about. We can ask them what they will do to reduce hunger and improve food security for those in poverty. We can push for accountability.

But first, we must understand the current policies and context today that create and maintain food apartheid.

As of the 2017 Census, Black farmers were reported to own just 0.32% of US farmland, a number which has been continuously decreasing over the past century. They are denied grants disproportionately to their white counterparts and earn approximately one-seventh of the income that their white counterparts bring in. Land ownership is steadily being stripped from us.

Hunger is not inevitable. It is possible to make change.

In the last year and a half, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) has been on the chopping block many times. Since July of 2025, well over 3.5 million people have been pushed out of the program as a result of cuts in the federal budget. Newly enacted work requirements unjustly require people to qualify themselves to eat.

SNAP’s program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) is facing even further underfunding. Recent cuts will take away over $141 million in funds to feed over 5 million new mothers and young children—particularly funds designated for fresh fruits and vegetables. They are literally taking food out of the mouths of children.

This says nothing of the centuries of racism, blocked resources, and stolen land that brought us here today. It barely scratches the surface of all the factors influencing security today. We are facing hateful rhetoric; regressive social policies; global instability; and widespread threats to Black, brown, and immigrant communities. All this uncertainty makes us feel vulnerable. It makes food security and, indeed, any economic stability more tenuous.

There is no question that we need change; now is the moment to demand it from our leaders. Just as there are policies that harm access to nutritious food, there are certainly policies that can expand access.

We can remove work requirements for SNAP that pick and choose who gets to eat without regard for what they are going through. We can expand funding and access so that no one is left without nutritious food to sustain them. We can enact reparations to return land and opportunities to Black communities, and we can support the Black farmers and organizations working to feed people.

But, as we raise our voices for policy change, we must not overlook actions in our own neighborhoods.

I will always fight for a more representative government which supports the needs of our people. However, the government is still imperfect to say the least; we cannot wait for them while hunger runs rampant. We can take matters into our own hands.

Community organizing and self-reliance offers security especially when our government fails us; this is what we work for at The Black Church Food Security Network. We meet people where they are. We grow the food ourselves and distribute it throughout the community. We work together to build autonomy within our own communities.

Such an immense issue as food insecurity cannot be wholly solved by one channel or one institution alone. It takes policy advocacy, community organizing, and self-reliance moving hand-in-hand. Progress is possible when we approach it as a united front.

As Bread for the World reminded us through the advocacy summit, hunger is not inevitable. It is possible to make change. If we come together to uplift our communities and advance essential policies, we can create an environment where people are not only fed, but they are in a better position to feed themselves.

After pushing through one of the more regressive tax cuts in history back in 2017, President Donald Trump promised, on taking office in January 2025, that his new regime of onerous tariffs would be different. Foreigners would pay them, American consumers would be held harmless, and American manufacturing would bloom anew.

In the real world, of course, companies routinely pass tariffs on to American consumers in the form of higher retail prices, and it’s generally agreed that this is what happened when Trump’s tariff regime took effect. But after the Supreme Court found most of Trump’s tariffs to be illegal and ordered that they be refunded to importing companies, those refunds have not generally been passed onto consumers, as a series of candid corporate earnings calls in recent months have demonstrated.

In other words, working Americans, who make up most of the nation’s consumers, paid for checks that are now being written to corporations and that will enrich their (mostly wealthy) shareholders. Trump’s tariffs have played out as a straightforward redistribution of income from ordinary Americans to corporations, much like the two other major tax cuts he’s pushed through as president.

Of course, this is not how Trump marketed his trade policies.

Because he chose instead to levy these tariffs using authority the law simply doesn’t give him, the Trump tariff experiment now amounts to a multibillion-dollar transfer of cash from working families to shareholders.

The administration promised, at various points, that the new tariff revenue would be enough to replace the entire federal income tax, boost military spending by 50%, pay a $2,000 dividend to every American, and somehow simultaneously reduce the national debt.

The court’s February decision ruled that the tariffs—imposed by Trump under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA)—were illegal and must be refunded to the companies that had initially paid them. This was no surprise—the IEEPA was enacted in 1977 to restrict presidential power, not expand it. The decision meant that fully $166 billion, well over half of the additional tariffs collected to date by the Trump administration, must be refunded.

For the millions of Americans who saw the prices of almost everything they buy increased by tariffs, the obvious question was how—if at all—these companies would pass through their tariff refunds to consumers. But as a series of corporate earnings calls have made clear over the past several weeks, in general these corporations are treating the tariff refunds—which often come with interest paid on top—not as something they should duly pass on to consumers, but a way of padding their bottom line. And this is true even of companies that acknowledged raising prices last year to offset the tariffs.

For example, in an earnings call back in summer 2025, a Nike executive estimated the company would see a tariff impact of around $1 billion, and announced that it “intend[s] to fully mitigate the impact” of the tariffs with a series of steps including “surgical price increase in the United States.” The $5 to $10 price increases introduced by the company that summer were transparently Nike’s “surgical” way of passing the buck to consumers.

Yet when Nike announced earlier this summer that it would see close to a $1 billion tariff refund, company officials simply noted that this “unplanned benefit” would boost the company’s earnings for the quarter. As a result, consumers have filed a class-action suit against Nike for extracting a double benefit from the Trump tariffs—first boosting shoe prices to offset the cost of the tariffs and then pocketing the tariff refunds.

Some companies claim that part of their refunds will lower prices for consumers going forward, but this is meaningless spin that is divorced from how prices are set. Receiving unexpected cash from the government does not create an incentive for a company to charge customers less for its products than the market will bear. But several corporations are making this claim to distract the public from their windfall.

For example, Dollar Tree recently reported it will receive $383 million in tariff refunds and said that $22 million of that $383 million in refunds will go toward “higher markdowns… related to our tariff reinvestment initiative.” While some of the remaining refund will go toward “customer messaging and marketing, and incremental improvements in store conditions and operations,” Dollar Tree has not said how much more it will devote to price markdowns. But the company’s leaders were far less squishy about announcing a $605 million stock buyback for the quarter—more than 27 times the $22 million it recorded for tariff-related markdowns.

Other big companies have vaguely promised that consumers will benefit from the giant refund checks without saying how much. Walmart says it is using refunds to support “price leadership.” Target says it will “invest in price.” Lowe’s initially promised “customer-facing actions” that will “reinforce our value proposition,” although the company subsequently pivoted toward saying its leaders “feel strongly that we want to deliver strong profitability for our shareholders.” But none have said what share of their tariff refund will actually make its way back to consumers. Levi Strauss, having previously admitted it would be taking “thoughtful, targeted pricing actions” in response to the tariffs, tops them all by saying of its $80 million tariff refund windfall only that “we haven’t figured out what to do with it.” (Levi Strauss now also faces a proposed class-action suit for not returning tariffs to consumers.)

Some companies aren’t even bothering to pretend they’re interested in offering relief to their customers. Shoe maker Steve Madden, which previously acknowledged “adjusting pricing” in response to the tariffs and subsequently noted it was “pleased overall with consumer acceptance of the price increases,” now says it will use its $92 million in tariff refunds to “pay down debt.”

This unmistakable shift of cash away from consumers and into the pockets of corporations and their shareholders is, on one level, not the companies’ fault. Once companies incorporated their tariffs into price increases across all the items they sell, there was no practical way to identify exactly which consumers bore which portion of those tariffs, or to reverse those price increases dollar for dollar: That egg can’t be unscrambled.

The ultimate responsibility for this regressive tax shift falls on the Trump administration, which chose to impose these tariffs unilaterally, without seeking the congressional authorization the law required. If Trump had gotten the approval he needed from Congress to levy these tariffs, this whole episode would merely have been an economically catastrophic, regressive tax hike on consumers.

But because he chose instead to levy these tariffs using authority the law simply doesn’t give him, the Trump tariff experiment now amounts to a multibillion-dollar transfer of cash from working families to shareholders. In that sense, Trump’s illegal tariffs are beginning to look a lot like his much-ballyhooed tax cuts of 2017 and 2025: Working families were promised big tax cuts, but corporations and their shareholders ultimately made out best.

Have you ever had to fight off a rattlesnake in the dark while on shift? Or struggled to breathe through heart palpitations, in a remote field dozens of miles away from the nearest hospital?

Farmworkers are increasingly having these experiences as extreme heat in certain states has forced people to pick onions, grapes, and berries at night when it is cooler and the work more tolerable.

Compounding the struggle, there’s the accompanying impaired visibility and occupational safety risks for workers planting seeds and picking crops before sunrise. For those partially or primarily laboring during the day, heatwaves continue to become longer year after year, more intense, and therefore, more deadly. Making matters worse are conditions for those who work at the pace of piece rate work, which pushes farmworkers to do more and faster for potential pay fueling more intense physical labor from the workers at all given times.

In an ideal world, farmworkers would have rights and protections guaranteed by the federal government so that they could labor during the day, and if needed, at night, without risking their basic bodily integrity to bring food to our tables. In fact, in 2024 the Biden administration took steps in this direction with a proposed heat standard that would require employers to establish heat safety plans, provide water and shade, and institute paid 15-minute breaks every two hours when the heat index reaches 80°F. While a final version of the rule was proposed, it has not been finalized, which means that it remains in regulatory limbo. Moreover, with a federal government brazenly hostile to federal regulations, as evident in several environmental policy rollbacks, it is unlikely that nationwide protections for workers will come into force in the immediate future.

As of last year, most states have no legislation providing protections to workers in relation to extreme heat while working outside, inside plant nurseries, or in nighttime darkness.

Still, not all hope is lost. While federal action to the benefit of farmworkers leaves much to be desired, there has actually been significant motion at the state level. In fact, some states are actively configuring and approving heat protection standards, while others are improving upon regulations already in place.

Some states, like Arizona, mandate that employers need to provide water to workers and provide shade should temperatures rise above 100°F. The Georgia House Legislature has proposed a bill with similar specifications, but has not advanced it to be signed into law by the governor, similar to New Mexico’s proposed heat stress rule. More recently, the state of Virginia approved legislation in April 2026 directing its health and labor agencies to implement heat safety standards. Despite these positive trends, California continues to be the only state to regulate nighttime work in agriculture. California also has a much lower extreme heat stress limit for daytime work—80°F—than other states for when shaded areas must be provided.

Surprisingly, these states are outliers. As of last year, most states have no legislation providing protections to workers in relation to extreme heat while working outside, inside plant nurseries, or in nighttime darkness.

For the states that have regulations, the next step to support farmworkers is to build from this regulatory patchwork and make enforcement real. Improvement, however, is a continuous uphill climb.

Currently California is considered to be the state with the best farmworker protections, yet their agency responsible for the state’s occupational safety, Cal-OSHA, reported last year how the institution suffers from a severe lack of resources and staff. The dearth of resources is so bad that case backlogs are months long, as officials cannot spend time reviewing those that don't result in fatalities, leaving workers with limited recourse.

For other states, establishment of basic protections are still needed.

Texas, for instance, has no heat stress protections for workers. This, as the Lone Star state ranks among others like California for having the highest number of farmworkers. In 2023, the state of Texas actually took a step in the opposite direction by approving legislation restricting local governments from enacting rules that go beyond the state law, striking down some city ordinances that had previously guaranteed 10-minute water and shade breaks for some outdoor workers, such as construction workers. Accordingly, workers in this state deserve at minimum the right to access cool potable water, and time in the shade should temperatures reach a certain level.

Typically, by now the high temperature season would be wrapping up but many regions are still experiencing heatwaves. While the federal government continues to lean into deregulation, Congress recently advanced the Heat Workforce Standards Act of 2025 (HR 6213), to the House floor on July 21. If passed, this bill would prohibit the Occupational Safety and Health Administration from finalizing, implementing, or enforcing its proposed federal heat injury and illness prevention standard.

Farmworkers need local and state governments to come to their aid in implementing policies recognizing the urgency of lethal heat while learning from one another as they pass laws where there are none, and improving standards where they exist. The status quo—rattlesnakes and all—is not just absurd, but inhumane. Farmworkers deserve better.