When we think of solutions to longstanding conflicts in the Middle East, clean water and solar power may not be the first things that come to mind.

But in my region, where our shared environmental challenges intensify daily, environmental initiatives may be the tools to bridge this conflict.

Nature knows no borders. Today, Israelis, Palestinians, Jordanians, and people across the region are facing a more unpredictable climate that threatens natural resources. The region’s unique geological and ecological status makes it especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Higher temperatures alone will also pose serious health risks, including increased mortality rates, and lead to infrastructure challenges across the region.

Environmental cooperation is not some vague political gesture. People who live and work in the region recognize that it is a practical necessity for the Middle East.

Moreover, the Middle East and North Africa have been experiencing almost continuous drought since 1998, which is the most severe dry spell in nine centuries. As climate-induced water scarcity grows across the region, environmental degradation will likely fuel further unrest, threatening livelihoods, intensifying the competition for resources, and contributing to an increase in climate refugees, which may impact regional stability.

So, environmental cooperation is not some vague political gesture. People who live and work in the region recognize that it is a practical necessity for the Middle East.

While the political challenges in the region are difficult to navigate, I know that cooperation is possible because I’ve seen it firsthand. The educational and research institute I lead, the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, is located in the Arava Valley in the Negev Desert. Since 1996, we have brought together more than 1,900 Palestinian, Israeli, Jordanian, American, and other international students to learn from and alongside one another.

This work and cooperation allows us to address practical challenges, like developing off-grid systems that use solar power for irrigation and water purification. We’ve also been developing programs to protect native plants, including a date palm tree cultivated from a 2,000-year-old date seed.

But this work isn’t just about the environment—it’s also an opportunity to facilitate mutual understanding, shared trust, and civil discourse among communities that have been locked in conflict for years.

Of course, conflict has interrupted our work over the years. At the Arava Institute, we were only five weeks into our academic session before the outbreak of the war between Israel and Hamas.

Rather than returning to their homes, Israelis and Palestinians chose to remain together on campus through the fall 2023 semester. As Israeli and Palestinian students left and returned over the semester, they checked in with each other about the well-being of their families. They conducted fundraising campaigns to help families in Gaza and families of Israeli hostages.

They even wrote songs about peace.

This display of empathy and understanding was only possible because our students had the opportunity to see the humanity in one another before conflict broke out. Part of our curriculum requires our students to engage in weekly dialogue sessions where they discuss topics important to their identities, cultures, and history. That includes emotional, challenging topics like the Nakba and the Holocaust.

Those dialogue sessions kept communication lines open across cultural divides in the wake of October 7—and ultimately, they enabled our students, faculty, and partners to turn back to building a more sustainable future for the region.

Since the war began, we’ve launched the Jumpstarting Hope in Gaza initiative, which aims to establish secure, self-sustaining shelters for 20,000 people across Gaza. These shelters integrate advanced off-grid WASH (Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene) and energy solutions, ensuring long-term sustainability and independence for displaced communities.

Through this initiative, the Arava Institute and our partners aim to deploy desalination systems to ensure reliable access to clean water, along with solar power for sustainable energy, off-grid wastewater treatment, and biodigesters to convert waste into energy. We’ve already deployed four pilot shelters in Al-Mawasi Hamad and Dir Albalah, providing refuge and essential services to over 5,000 people.

Rebuilding the infrastructure in Gaza will take years, but these solutions can offer an immediate public health response, while also facilitating cooperation between people of all backgrounds in the region.

In a region where political solutions are often slow to materialize, efforts that begin with basic human needs—like access to clean water and sustainable energy—can pave the way for genuine, people-centered diplomacy and political solutions.

The work being done here in the Negev Desert is a potent reminder: In places where politics remain stagnant, perhaps the solutions can start with something as universal as clean water.

On December 8, President-elect Donald Trump sat down for an interview on “Meet the Press” with Kristen Welker. The interview covered a wide range of topics, but one that drew a lot of attention was his response to a question (more of a statement) that Welker posed. She reminded him, “You promised to end birthright citizenship on day one,” to which he responded, “Correct.”

When Welker asked him about how he would “get around the 14th amendment,” Trump gave a rambling, incoherent answer about using an executive order, mixed with an easily disprovable lie that the U.S. is the only country to offer birthright citizenship, when in fact many countries do. It is important to emphasize that all U.S. presidents take an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, and when Trump says he will issue an executive order abrogating the 14th amendment, this is a clear violation of his oath and an impeachable offense.

It is easy to see how a mass detention of people who should be citizens could be used in bad faith by the Trump administration to institute fascism in America.

I previously wrote about why we need to defend birthright citizenship against right-wing attacks. That article goes into depth about the 14th amendment, the fringe and absurd conservative theory saying it doesn’t apply to children of undocumented parents, the horrible dystopia that would be created by a Trump administration that attempted to deny citizenship to people, and the positive benefits of birthright citizenship.

Here, I am going to attempt to flesh out what Donald Trump’s effort to dismantle the 14th amendment’s guarantee of citizenship for people born in the U.S. might look like and what it would mean for all of us. It is important to remember that Trump rarely speaks in terms of policy specifics. Instead, he carelessly tosses out grandiose, vague ideas and leaves it up to his underlings like Stephen Miller and Tom Homan to make actual policy out of them. Although Trump bluffs and lies frequently, he was very active on immigration in his last term, and there is no reason to think this second term will be any different.

Denial of U.S. Passports and Immigrant Petitions to Draw a Legal Challenge

I believe the most likely way that President-elect Trump would start his war on the 14th amendment would be to direct the U.S. Department of State to require that anyone applying for a U.S. passport provide proof that their parents had legal status when they were born. Inevitably, some people will not be able to meet this requirement, and their passport applications will be denied. This will draw legal challenges that will eventually make their way to the Supreme Court.

Another potential attack that Trump could make would be to direct U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to demand proof of parental status for any U.S. citizen who tries to petition for permanent resident status for their relative. If you are a U.S. citizen, you can petition for your spouse, child, or parent to obtain permanent resident status (a green card) by filing form I-130 with USCIS. Currently, the citizen petitioner only needs to show they were born in the U.S. to prove citizenship. Trump could add a requirement that they prove their parents were in lawful status when they were born. If they are unable to, then they will not be able to petition for their relatives to stay with them in the U.S.

The Supreme Court is stacked with right-wing, activist justices who have shown time and time again that they are perfectly willing to ignore the plain text of the law (in this case, the 14th amendment) if it suits their policy goals. There is a non-insignificant chance that they will ignore the text of the 14th amendment and upend over 100 years of settled law to rule by fiat that children born in the U.S. to undocumented parents are not granted citizenship at birth.

Of course, this is the goal of Miller, Homan, and the other anti-immigrant MAGA acolytes. They know that they are never going to get enough popular support for a constitutional amendment that would strip citizenship from children of undocumented parents. Their best hope is to draw a legal challenge and take their case to a MAGA-friendly Supreme Court in the hope that they will invalidate birthright citizenship through a court decision.

The Nightmare Scenario: Weaponizing ICE to Detain U.S. Citizens

The nightmare, dystopian scenario, which I touched on in my previous piece, would be for Donald Trump to direct U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to begin detaining people who were born in the U.S., but who cannot prove that their parents had lawful status when they were born. Think about how onerous of a requirement it would be to have to prove that your parents had lawful status when you were born. Most people from previous generations didn’t have any affirmative proof of citizenship, unless they naturalized. If your parents were born in the U.S., how can they prove their parents were in lawful status? What about their parents? Would you have to prove a chain of unbroken status dating back to the inception of the 14th amendment? It creates a potentially impossible standard in order to prove U.S. citizenship for anyone born in the U.S., let alone children with undocumented parents.

Let’s imagine the implications of a bad-faith Republican President like Trump aggressively challenging the citizenship of people born in the U.S. If someone is retroactively deemed to be a noncitizen, then they have likely been unlawfully present in the U.S. their entire life. Whenever they worked or voted in any U.S. election, they were doing so unlawfully. This would give ICE a way to detain virtually anyone that Donald Trump wanted to go after. Since this would apply to so many people, it could easily be used selectively against Trump’s enemies. It is worth highlighting that people in immigration detention suffer horrible conditions. People in immigration proceedings have no right to an attorney, and the government has substantial power to hold people in immigration detention without bond.

It is easy to see how a mass detention of people who should be citizens could be used in bad faith by the Trump administration to institute fascism in America. Any citizen who commits any kind of minor crime, or even requests a government benefit like food stamps, could suddenly face deportation if they can’t prove their parents had lawful status when they were born. There really is no bottom to how awful things could be if we lose the protection of birthright citizenship.

Although we cannot predict exactly how the new administration will go after the 14th amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship, it is important that we stand against it at every turn, because if we lose birthright citizenship, the country we are left with won’t be one that we recognize.

As the Biden era yields to the second rise of Trumpism, the transition to What Happens Next is continuing with a sense of purpose as well as foreboding. Editorial cartoonists Ted Rall (from the Left) and Scott Stantis (from the Right) analyze the mood of the country, handicap Kamala Harris’ next moves and try to figure out where the Democrats go from here. Joe Biden, perhaps not strangely, has vanished from the political scene entirely. Meanwhile, victorious Republicans appear to have little standing in their way to impose their radical MAGA agenda on just about every major policy question you can think of. 

 

The post DMZ America Podcast Ep 185: Political Potpourri first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

The post DMZ America Podcast Ep 185: Political Potpourri appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

Israel is getting ready to annex the occupied Palestinian West Bank. The annexation will be a major step backward on the road to Palestinian freedom and will likely serve as a catalyst for a new Palestinian uprising.

Though annexation has been on the Israeli agenda for years, this time around a "great opportunity"—in the words of extremist Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich—has presented itself and, from an Israeli point of view, cannot be missed.

"I hope we'll have a great opportunity with the new U.S. administration to create full normalization (of the Israeli occupation)," the minister was quoted as saying by Israeli media.

Israel feels that its ability to sustain a genocidal war on Gaza without any international intervention to bring the extermination to an end, would make the annexation of the West Bank a far less consequential matter on the international agenda.

This is not the first time that Smotrich, among other Israeli extremists, has made the connection between President-elect Donald Trump's advent to the White House and the illegal expansion of Israel's borders.

Two reasons make Israel's far-right optimistic about Trump's arrival: One, the Israeli experience during Trump's first term in office, when the U.S. president allowed Israel to claim sovereignty over illegal settlements, the Syrian Golan Heights, and occupied East Jerusalem; and, two, Trump's more recent statement in the run-up to the elections.

Israel is "so tiny" on the map, Trump said while addressing the pro-Israeli group Stop Antisemitism at an event last August, wondering: "Is there any way of getting more?" The statement, absurd by any definition, caused joy among Israeli politicians, who understood it to be a green light for further annexations.

Israel's aims for colonial expansion also received a boost in recent days. Following the fall of Bashar al-Assad's rule in Syria, Israel immediately began invading large swathes of the country, reaching as far as the Quneitra governorate.

What is taking place in Syria serves as a model of what to expect in the West Bank in coming months.

Israel had occupied nearly 70% of the Syrian Golan Heights in 1967. It cemented its illegal occupation of the Arab region by formally annexing it in 1981 through the so-called Golan Heights Law.

That illegal move came shortly after another illegal annexation, that of occupied Palestinian East Jerusalem the previous year.

Although the West Bank was not formally annexed, the boundaries of East Jerusalem expanded well beyond its historic borders, thus swallowing large parts of the West Bank.

The West Bank, like East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, are all recognized as illegally occupied territories under international law. Israel has no legal basis to maintain its occupation, let alone annexation of any Palestinian or Arab region. It is allowed to do so, however, due to U.S.-Western support and international silence.

But why is Israel keen on annexing the West Bank now?

Aside from the "great opportunity" linked to Trump's return to power, Israel feels that its ability to sustain a genocidal war on Gaza without any international intervention to bring the extermination to an end, would make the annexation of the West Bank a far less consequential matter on the international agenda.

Even though the International Court of Justice (ICJ) had issued a decisive ruling on the illegality of the Israeli occupation on July 19, followed by the issuing of arrest warrants of top Israeli leaders by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on November 21, no action was taken to hold Israel accountable. The annexation of the West Bank is unlikely to change that, especially as Israel conducts its wars and illegal actions through direct U.S. support.

Indeed, the Democratic administration of U.S. President Joe Biden has financed and supported all Israeli wars, including the current genocide. Trump is expected to be equally generous, or at least, not at all critical.

All of this in mind, the annexation of the West Bank in the coming weeks or months is a real possibility.

In fact, Smotrich had already informed "workers of the Defense Ministry body in charge of Israeli and Palestinian civil affairs in the West Bank" about his plans to "shut down the department as part of an envisioned Israeli annexation of the area," The Times of Israel reported on December 6.

While such annexation will not change the legal status of the West Bank, it will have dire consequences for the millions of Palestinians living there, as annexation is likely to be followed by a violent campaign of ethnic cleansing, if not from the whole of the West Bank, certainly from large parts of it.

Annexation will also render the Palestinian Authority legally irrelevant—as it was created following the Oslo Accords to administer parts of the West Bank in anticipation of a future sovereignty, which never actualized. Will the PA agree to remain functional as part of the Israeli military administration of a newly annexed West Bank?

Palestinians will certainly resist, as they always do. The nature of the resistance will prove critical in the success or failure of the Israeli scheme. A popular Intifada, for example, will overstretch the Israeli military, which will likely use an unprecedented degree of violence to suppress Palestinians but will be unlikely to succeed.

Annexing the West Bank at a time that Palestine—in fact, the whole region—is in turmoil is a recipe for perpetual war, which, from the viewpoint of Smotrich and his ilk, is the actual "great opportunity," as it will secure their political survival for years to come.

Ten years ago, the U.S. and Cuba announced the start of normalization between our two countries. Americans and Cubans alike could see a bit of light through a crack in the wall of U.S. restrictions that, for six decades, have blocked normal interaction between close neighbors.

The brief opening was largely ceremonial—then-President Donald Trump rolled much of it back in his first term. And only Congress can truly end the world’s longest running embargo.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), President-elect Trump’s pick for Secretary of State, embraces the same old Cold War playbook on the issue: punish Cuba, stoke chaos and civil unrest, and hope the government collapses. As far back as JFK, U.S. officials have been trapped in this irrational family feud that empowers hardliners in both governments while holding citizens here and there hostage to a bureaucratic status quo.

Ending the embargo would also open doors for Cuban reformers, dissidents, human rights activists, and religious leaders alike by removing the Cuban government’s excuse for its failures.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. Two years of limited opening had a positive impact and was supported by a majority of Cuban Americans. Buoyed by Cuban government reforms and cash from families in the U.S., the island’s private sector boomed. Internet access increased, and social media exploded with honest voices. American tourists flocked to the country.

Then Trump emphatically rolled this progress back—he even added Cuba to the list of “state sponsors of terrorism,” despite a complete lack of evidence.

Today, after a brief glimmer of hope, Cubans are suffering. Hardliners have stopped the economic reform process. Confusion plagues new leaders transitioning from the Castros’ dominance. The pandemic gutted tourism, while storms and flooding ravaged crops.

The results have been predictable: An exodus from Cuba has surpassed all migration since the imposition of the embargo in 1962. At least half a million have migrated since the end of Trump’s first term—and more are on the way. The island has lost around 10% of its population in recent years, a staggering total.

We need to break our addiction to this big government policy that displaces people and blocks the rest of us from engaging with our neighbors. Ending the embargo would also open doors for Cuban reformers, dissidents, human rights activists, and religious leaders alike by removing the Cuban government’s excuse for its failures.

A bipartisan majority in Congress could potentially back a full lifting of the embargo. Gulf Coast states who took the big hit in the 60s when they lost a top trading partner in Cuba could be especially delighted to renew those relations.

”In a scenario of unrestricted trade, the aggregate of food and medical exports alone could amount to $1.6 billion with 20,000 associated U.S. jobs,” former International Trade Commission Chair Paula Stern, PhD found in a 2000 study presented to Congress. Those numbers could be much higher today.

There would be other benefits as well.

Companies like Roswell Park in Buffalo, who had to jump through hoops to bring a groundbreaking Cuban-developed lung cancer vaccine to people in the United States, and other health care companies would finally be able to economically partner with world-class Cuban scientists on new medical advances.

For Trump, the next steps should be obvious: Avoid bloodshed. Ease the pain. Light the way to a new era in U.S.-Cuba relations.

Defenders of the health insurance industry reacted to the murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York by saying that murder and violence are never the answer because there’s always the option of working within the political system to reform a business based on profiting off pain, misery and death of sick Americans. In reality, however, the system does not allow any challenge to the status quo.

The post Work Inside Our System first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

The post Work Inside Our System appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

As Donald Trump prepares to return to the White House in one month, some economic signals are blinking yellow. Investors unsettled by the Fed’s forecast for fewer cuts in 2025 pushed the Dow Jones Industrial Average down 1,123 points, or 2.6%, while the Nasdaq composite dropped 3.6%. The Dow has lost 2,900 points since December 4th. It’s a tale of two economies: consumer sentiment among Republican voters is at its highest since late 2020, whereas Democrats feel the same as they did in the summer of 2022 when inflation was raging.

What are the prospects for a Trump economy during the next few years? Is DOGE real and, if so, will austerity prime the pump or tank the economy?

The TMI Show’s Ted Rall and Manila Chan discuss the economic picture with market maker Todd “Bubba” Horwitz.

The post TMI Show Ep 42: “Pre-Trump Economic Jitters” first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

The post TMI Show Ep 42: “Pre-Trump Economic Jitters” appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

When Northern Gaza was placed under a complete siege, the Biden Administration issued a warning that if conditions didn’t improve within 30 days, he would stop weapons shipments to Israel. At the time of the announcement, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians faced imminent starvation because the Israeli military was blocking trucks of humanitarian aid from entering Northern Gaza. As children and their parents either starved to death or suffocated under the rubble of their homes that were deliberately bombed – Biden told them to wait thirty days. When the thirty days were up, Israel correctly called Biden’s bluff. They knew he wasn’t going to stop sending weapons, and they were right.

I began this hunger strike to demand that my government end the siege on Gaza. It’s clear to the entire world that Israel acts with full backing from the United States and both governments are responsible for the death and human suffering happening in Palestine.

The people of Gaza were starving before Biden’s 30 day warning. They faced famine even before October 7th. People who defend this genocide will often note that there was peace on October 6th, 2023. But on October 6th, there was an Israeli imposed blockade that only allowed in the minimal calorie intake per Palestinian every single day – with no intention of making sure it reached each of the two million people that resided in Gaza. On top of that deprivation, Israel waged sporadic wars on the people of Gaza every few years. Nearly a month has gone by since Israel called Biden’s bluff – the arms are still flowing into Tel Aviv with American flags stamped into the bomb casings and the people of Gaza are still starving to death. When the very few aid trucks do arrive to feed the starving population, Israel kills them while they stand in line for food.

It’s clear to the entire world that Israel acts with full backing from the United States and both governments are responsible for the death and human suffering happening in Palestine.

I want to tell you what 30 days with no food does to a person, and my experience is made easier by the fact that I have a roof over my head, access to clean water, and a certainty that I won’t have to flee my home at any moment depending on the whim of the IOF evacuation orders. The women my age in Gaza are not given the same luxuries. I’m an Elder, a mother and a long time Peace and Social Justice activist. I’ve lived in California for over forty years, mostly in Sonoma County, but also in San Francisco and presently in Marin County.

In the first days of my hunger strike, I felt really tired and the hunger pangs were intense. Now they occur only several times a day. My body aches and as of today I’ve lost seventeen pounds. I’m constantly cold and my resistance and immunity are low. I learned yesterday from a dear friend and sister Palestinian Activist — something I didn’t know about hunger strikes— that after days of starvation, beginning to eat food again could kill you. Your body isn’t used to processing even a little bit of food. My friend Hazami, who ended her hunger strike this week, ended up in the hospital. So, I wonder what would happen to a person who hasn’t had enough food for months and months? What happens to them when they have no hospital to go to? What happens when the remaining hospital they do find gets bombed? Or when their doctors get executed? I know I will be able to eat again, but what if I was a child and I had no idea when food might be coming? How scared would I be? Hunger isn’t just hunger in Gaza, it's grief and suffering compounded a hundred times. It’s a form of torture.

I feel I’ve been living in a traumatized state for over a year. I cry everyday, multiple times a day, my heart is beyond broken, it’s shattered. I wake up each morning worrying about the genocide that is happening in Gaza, knowing that if it wasn’t for my government’s partnership with the Israeli government this couldn’t continue. Our government is sending billions upon billions of our tax dollars to slaughter innocent children, mothers and fathers, entire families with bombs and artillery funded by our country.

I understand that “my trauma” is nothing compared to what the people of Gaza must be suffering. I can’t even imagine the horrors they’re being forced to live through or die from.

I’d gone to Washington DC on Oct 3rd wanting to work for diplomacy in the war in Ukraine. When Oct 7th happened, I decided to stay until we had a ceasefire in Gaza. I was there for seven long months, going to Capitol Hill, the White House and the State Department everyday trying and failing to get a Ceasefire. I came home broken. Last summer I joined the Handala in Lisbon, part of the Freedom Flotilla that is trying to break the Siege of Gaza. There are ships with 5,500 tons of humanitarian aid stuck in Istanbul, because the Turkish government has succumbed to Israeli and US pressure not to allow the ships to sail! The US government is not allowing much needed humanitarian aid to reach Gaza, but then spends millions on building a port that was never going to work. Our government’s hypocrisy is soul crushing.

I was desperate for this genocide and ethnic cleaning of Palestine to end, so I took a stand and put my body on the line. Today, Thursday Dec. 19th, is the beginning of the 31st day of my hunger strike/fast for Gaza. Even now my Representative in Congress, Jared Huffman, refuses to sign onto Representative Casar’s letter for an arms embargo against Israel. I asked for a meeting with him on the 25th day of my hunger strike/fast and was told he was unavailable to meet with me. Since it’s clear Rep. Huffman doesn’t care about Palestinians or his constituent’s lives and he seems to be indifferent to our collective suffering, I’m ending my hunger strike/fast for Gaza with my dear friends and colleagues at the press conference at a press conference today and saving my energy to sue these criminals.

If the government shuts down Saturday, Elon Musk will be largely to blame.

Musk went on a daylong rampage yesterday against the continuing resolution drafted by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and his leadership team to keep the government going.

Musk posted nearly nonstop on his social media platform X about how lawmakers must kill it. “Any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in 2 years!” Musk wrote in one post.

We’re getting a preview of what the next four years will look like—dysfunction in D.C. that will make your life worse, driven by a petulant billionaire with an unquenchable thirst for wealth and power.

Musk—the richest person in the world—was joined in his posting spree by another billionaire, Vivek Ramaswamy, whom President-elect Donald Trump asked to partner with Musk in an effort to slash government spending and reduce the federal budget deficit.

Republicans gauging support for the legislation said they were bleeding votes as a result of Musk’s barrage.

Then, after Musk spent the day telling Republicans not to support the bill, Trump weighed in against it, too. That put the bill on life support.

If this isn’t oligarchy, I don’t know what is.

You may not get access to services you depend on just before the holidays because an unelected billionaire shadow president wanted it that way.

Funding for essentials will be jeopardized—disaster relief, clean water protections, food safety inspections, cancer research, and nutrition programs for children.

Federal workers like air traffic controllers will be required to work without pay just as air travel is about to pick up.

The same goes for members of our military.

Musk effectively blocked a government spending bill by mobilizing his 205 million followers on X and then using his influence on Trump—influence he bought by spending more than $270 million getting Trump elected.

Yet Musk’s concern about the federal deficit seems to disappear whenever Trump and MAGA Republicans talk about passing tax cuts that will disproportionately benefit billionaires like Musk. Tax cuts, I might add, that will balloon the deficit by nearly $5 trillion.

We’re getting a preview of what the next four years will look like—dysfunction in D.C. that will make your life worse, driven by a petulant billionaire with an unquenchable thirst for wealth and power.

A billionaire wielding his influence over the rest of us proves we are in a Second Gilded Age.

But there may be a silver lining to this Gilded Age cloud. The lesson of the First Gilded Age is that when concentrated wealth, corruption, and ensuing hardship for average working Americans become so blatant that they offend the values of the majority of us, we rise up and demand real, systemic change.

It’s only a matter of time. A government shutdown that hurts average working people, engineered by the richest person in the world, might just hasten it.

This fall, shortly after the election, the U.S. House passed a dangerous piece of legislation that many are calling the “nonprofit killer” bill.

The bill has an incongruous title: the “Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act.”

Among other things, it would give the Treasury Department the authority to unilaterally accuse nonprofit organizations of supporting “terrorism”—and revoke their nonprofit status. Critics like the ACLU say it’s a blank check for presidents to shut down organizations that criticize them.

Today, not only do corporations have greater means to speak more freely than the rest of us do, they are increasingly grabbing political power to cement their stranglehold.

When the bill was introduced in the spring, it was largely viewed as an effort to silence pro-Palestinian activism. At the time, dozens of House Democrats supported it alongside most Republicans. But after Donald Trump’s White House win, amid fears that the incoming president would use it as a tool to bludgeon his perceived enemies, it passed with significantly less Democratic support.

But really, it should never have been introduced or passed to begin with, no matter the political winds. The bill is considered unlikely to pass the Senate this year, but could be reintroduced next year and signed by President Trump.

This would have a dangerous chilling effect on speech.

Consider the Florida woman Briana Boston, who recently said “Delay, deny, depose. You people are next,” during a phone call with a health insurance representative after her coverage was denied. It was a reference to what the killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson wrote on bullet casings in a now-infamous targeted assassination.

Boston has no history of violence, nor does she own firearms. But she wasn’t only arrested—she was charged with threatening to commit an act of terrorism.

What she was really guilty of was expressing vitriol against corporate CEOs for an inhumane business model. It’s not hard to imagine such a scenario applied to nonprofits in the coming years either.

Nonprofits are effectively the voice of civil society in the United States. And even without HR 9495, they already have severe limits on their speech. In order to keep their nonprofit status, groups have to follow strict guidelines published by the Internal Revenue Service when speaking about elections.

As a journalist who works in the nonprofit world, I’ve seen the resulting self-censorship first hand. Many journalists and nonprofit leaders feared compromising their institutions if they warned about Donald Trump’s fascism, or even criticized Joe Biden over Gaza, ahead of the 2024 election.

Meanwhile, for-profit industries have enjoyed continuous and ever-growing impunity to advocate for whatever they want, no matter how destructive.

For example, the health insurance and fossil fuel industries play with people’s lives by denying coverage and spewing carbon, respectively, but have been given the right to spend enormous amounts of their ill-gotten gains in campaign contributions, putting an outsize thumb on the democratic scale.

Thanks to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, they have greater means to make anonymous donations to Political Action Committees to lobby government and help elect politicians.

The Supreme Court has long considered corporations to be, in a legal sense, people. In contrast to such abstract entities, we humans can be jailed, silenced, or even killed by corporate-controlled systems—and the nonprofits representing our interests can be officially sanctioned for “political speech.”

Today, not only do corporations have greater means to speak more freely than the rest of us do, they are increasingly grabbing political power to cement their stranglehold.

Trump’s incoming cabinet will likely be filled with billionaires. And his proposed Treasury Secretary pick—who would ostensibly oversee the department making determinations under HR 9495—is a longtime hedge fund investment manager named Scott Bessent. Trump has also openly promised to bend regulations for billionaire investors.

Seen within this context, HR 9495 is not only a danger to civil society’s right to speech—it is a serious escalation in favor of corporations.

Many things propelled Donald Trump’s election victory. Inflation. A worldwide anti-incumbent backlash. Anger at institutions. A swing to the right among working-class voters of all racial backgrounds. And more. Analysts are still chewing on all the data (and Democrats are chewing on each other).

As we sift through the results and look forward, Republican control of the House of Representatives will matter greatly. That control is very, very narrow. And it turns out to rest on a shaky foundation of gerrymandering and manipulated maps, all encouraged by the Supreme Court.

The last time a new president took office without a “trifecta” of House and Senate control was 35 years ago. But this will be the slimmest House majority on record. With yesterday’s announcement by Indiana Rep. Victoria Spartz that she will not participate in the Republican caucus, control may effectively come down to one vote.

Voters are mad as hell about a government they feel does not deliver for them. Rigged rules are a big part of why Washington too frequently does not work.

And according to my colleague Michael Li in a new analysis, Republicans won a net 16-seat advantage due to manipulated maps drawn for party advantage. (Democrats garnered an edge in 7 seats through gerrymandering, but the GOP gained a total of 23 seats that way—hence, 16 seats.)

How did this skew happen? Simply, Republican legislators control the drawing of many more districts than Democrats do. In some states, nonpartisan commissions or state courts have actually produced fairer maps. But in most places, politicians are free to press for partisan advantage.

North Carolina is split relatively evenly between Republican and Democratic voters. This year, Trump won the state even as Democrat Josh Stein swept into the governor’s mansion. However, the heavily gerrymandered legislature drew congressional maps that produced 10 seats for Republicans and only 4 for Democrats. The state high court had blocked the gerrymander, a move upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in Moore v. Harper. But then a judicial election shifted partisan control of the North Carolina court, which abruptly blessed the gerrymander it had previously banned. That judicial reversal alone gave the GOP an extra 3 seats in Washington—enough to control the House.

Today Republicans are strutting, but that swagger may not last long. Speaker Mike Johnson will have to manage a fractious majority that could be defeated by one or two defections. Individual members will be empowered to extort policy concessions, no matter how extreme.

In fact, what may matter even more than the gerrymandered seats is the collapse of electoral competition. Only 27 districts nationwide saw margins of less than 5%. Lawmakers will look more nervously at the prospect of primary challenges than at the risk of alienating the broad mass of persuadable voters.

It did not have to be this way. In 2013, the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, which had prevented the most egregious gerrymanders along racial lines. Then in 2019, John Roberts led the justices to rule that federal courts could not police partisan gerrymandering at all.

Congress has the power to act, and in 2022 it tried—coming within two Senate votes of passing the Freedom to Vote Act and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which together would have barred gerrymandering for congressional seats nationwide. Both parties would have been forced to compete on a level field. (This legislation would also have undone other damage wrought by rulings such as Citizens United, which legalized the campaign system that saw Elon Musk spend a quarter of a billion dollars to help elect Trump.)

All this is a reminder that the rules of American politics, often arcane, often hidden, bear tremendous weight. It should caution us from drawing too many conclusions about any recent victor’s supposed “mandate.”

Voters are mad as hell about a government they feel does not deliver for them. Rigged rules are a big part of why Washington too frequently does not work. Partisans must do more than battle for inches of advantage. To truly reconnect the seats of power to a sullen electorate, real reform and real competition must be part of the answer.

So, why did Donald Trump win? Or to put it another way, why did the American people decide to elect as their president one of the most despicable and dangerous human beings ever to dance (or perhaps trample would be a better word) through the pages of American political history? It isn’t as though we didn’t know what we were getting with Donald Trump. During his previous four years in the White House, he engaged in self-dealing, advocated violence, and embraced extremist groups including neo-Nazis, a group who, in his view, includes some “very fine people.”

When faced with a deadly pandemic, he deliberately understated the danger for political advantage, suppressed scientific data, delayed testing, discouraged mask wearing, and advocated fake cures and other nonscientific nonsense. According to studies in peer-reviewed journals, thousands of Americans may have died unnecessarily because of these actions.

Trump has also never been shy about sharing his plans to use federal law enforcement officers, taxing agencies, and prosecutors to act as his personal avengers. These are public servants he intends to morph into an army of thugs paid for by the taxpayers and available at his whim. He has also been remarkably forthcoming in describing his lust for dictatorial powers.

The vast majority of Trump voters almost certainly understood clearly what he stood for. How could they have missed it?

And knowing all these things, a plurality of American voters voted him back into office, effectively saying, “He supports neo-Nazis, political violence, use of federal law enforcement and the military to crush opponents, overthrowing democratic principles, and regularly acting with gratuitous cruelty... WOW, THAT’S THE GUY FOR ME!”

Meanwhile Democrats are busy doing what Democrats do—casting blame on each other. Progressives and moderates exchange punches. Some people insist that Trump won because Vice President Kamala Harris ran a poor campaign. Others argue it’s President Joe Biden’s fault for waiting too long to drop out of the race.

In other words, Democrats are engaged in their usual post-defeat squabbles.

But squabble as they will, these intramural fights ignore an important truth. Donald Trump almost certainly didn’t win because the Democrats ran a bad campaign. And he almost certainly didn’t win because Harris didn’t have enough time to campaign. In many ways, Harris ran a strong if brief campaign. And as for needing more time, thanks to extraordinarily successful fundraising Harris had money to burn. She saturated the swing states with ads and visited them repeatedly. And while she was at it, she kicked Trump’s butt in the debate.

No, Trump didn’t win because he ran a better or longer campaign.

Trump won because a plurality of the people who voted in this election bought what he was selling. He campaigned on hate and darkness. And that clearly is what most of his voters wanted or at least were happy to accept. And why would we be surprised? Although the exact numbers vary, polls have consistently shown a large minority of Americans are favorably inclined to authoritarian government.

It may make us feel better to play make-believe—to pretend that most Trump voters were unaware of the darkness that surrounds him. Or perhaps they thought he didn’t really mean what he was saying. But to say that would be lying to ourselves. The vast majority of Trump voters almost certainly understood clearly what he stood for. How could they have missed it?

You can’t sit for hours outside in a hurricane and then credibly claim not to know whether there was wind. Donald Trump’s threats against democracy and the rule of law were a political hurricane in the weeks leading up to the election.

Even the most disinterested of observers will pick up some information as they walk through life. Trump’s dark nature and authoritarian tendencies were among the most talked about topics for months. It was all over the media and not just in news sources. Anyone who paid the slightest attention to the world around them had to know at least in general the darkness Trump stands for. There are some people, of course, who tune out all political matters. Some of Trump’s voters no doubt fell into that category. In fact, these “low information” voters, as they are called, tended to be Trump voters. They may well have gone to the polls with only a casual understanding of Donald Trump’s viciousness and authoritarian instincts.

But they knew enough to know who and what they were voting for. They had to.

You can’t cure a cancer by pretending it’s the common cold. And we won’t defeat Trumpism by pretending his 2024 victory was caused by ordinary campaign mistakes that can be fixed by a nip here and a tuck there. We have a bigger problem. There is a pathogen in the body politic of the United States that constitutes a mortal threat to our democracy. As noted, a large minority of Americans have told us that they are willing to accept an authoritarian leader. And it is that, not poor campaign strategies, we have to confront.

Accepting the ugly truth underlying Donald Trump’s electoral success is painful, but it can also be empowering. It can help us see what needs to be done to overcome the darkness.

Authoritarian movements have been on the march in America at other times in our history. In all such cases, however, the troubled waters eventually calmed. But things are different this time. For the first time in American history, the leader of an organized authoritarian movement has been elected president. Yes, Trump was elected president once before, and, yes, he had authoritarian qualities then. What he didn’t have then, however, was an organized and prepared movement with authoritarian goals behind him. He has one today. To say that we are in uncharted waters is the understatement of the century.

Can the darkness be overcome? The answer, of course, is we can’t know. But we sure as hell have to try.

Texas’ electrical grid made national headlines in the winter of 2021 when the state experienced statewide power outages. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT—the state’s power grid operator—was caught completely off-guard when a winter storm exposed the organization’s lack of severe weather preparedness. Embarrassed, ERCOT developed a roadmap to increase the reliability of its energy delivery system.

But guaranteeing a reliable flow of energy from the state’s generating plants to the homes and businesses of Texan residents has proven more difficult than expected. ERCOT recently announced that if a comparable storm were to hit the Lone Star State this winter, there is an 80% chance that they would again experience blackouts during peak hours.

Failure to resolve Texas’ power grid bottlenecks is perhaps not entirely ERCOT’s fault. Demand for energy in the state has ballooned in recent years thanks, in part, to the explosion and hype around artificial intelligence.

Texas is a microcosm of the threat artificial intelligence poses to the world—lack of energy security for households, an accelerating climate crisis, and the consolidation of corporate power.

A significant expansion in the supply of data centers is needed to meet artificial intelligence demand because the systems rely on vast computational power. AI systems are energy hungry—for example, a query using ChatGPT takes 10 times the energy of a traditional Google search.

There are approximately 342 data centers currently operating in Texas. Running these systems non-stop, daily, for 24 hours, requires a gargantuan amount of electricity. As a result, ERCOT has identified data centers as presenting a potential energy emergency alert risk at night and during early morning hours this winter. Data centers are currently consuming close to 9% of the energy produced in Texas, and it is putting a significant strain on its power grid.

Texas is a microcosm of the threat artificial intelligence poses to the world—lack of energy security for households, an accelerating climate crisis, and the consolidation of corporate power.

It is estimated that new AI servers that will be sold in 2027 will consume between 85 and 134 terawatt-hours annually. This is comparable to the electricity consumption of 18 million people living in the Netherlands.

Data centers can be the size of multiple football fields, and they are dependent on energy-intensive cooling systems that prevent computer servers from overheating and crashing. Water is an important component for cooling towers, and lots of it is needed to bring down the temperature of server equipment.

An analysis conducted by The Washington Post and the University of California, Riverside found that generating a 100-word email with ChatGPT-4 requires the use of at least one water bottle. Multiply this by millions of queries that are inputted each day, and you can get an idea of the scale of the tech sector’s water consumption.

In regions where water is already scarce, the unquenchable thirst of Big Tech hits especially hard. In 2021, a Google-owned data center in The Dalles, Oregon consumed nearly one-third of the town’s water supply even as the community grappled with a prolonged drought. As one frustrated resident aptly put it, “Google has become a water vampire, basically.”

This surge in AI energy demand use has led utilities to build new gas plants and delay the retiring of current fossil fuel infrastructure, thereby forestalling progress on our much needed green energy transition.

Both Google and Microsoft released reports this year effectively razing to the ground the climate goals they set for themselves by the end of the decade. Targets to reduce CO2 emissions are off track and both companies have blamed their investment in data centers for their increased carbon footprint.

This wave of resistance reflects a growing awareness that unchecked AI expansion comes at a cost to both consumers and the climate.

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently suggested at an AI summit in Washington D.C. that while the negative effects artificial intelligence will have on the environment are inevitable, we should continue to invest in AI development because “we are never going to meet our climate goals anyway.” The true AI doom scenario is not a sentient robot uprising but the oncoming environmental catastrophe caused by the expansion of AI infrastructure.

What’s worse is that tech companies are wrecking the planet to push a technology that most consumers do not even want. Aggressive investment in AI has resulted in their needless integration into existing consumer products, like an AI toothbrush or a Coca-Cola AI beverage, often without assessing the actual value added.

A recent study found that consumers were less likely to purchase a good if it contained the descriptor artificial intelligence. It demonstrates that the tech industry has created a frenzy that is less about solving real problems and more about staking a claim in an industry fueled by its own hype.

The demand for AI is largely manufactured by Big Tech itself, not the everyday consumers who bear the brunt of its consequences. Tech companies are not pouring billions of dollars into the industry with the hope of solving the climate crisis or initiating a post-work society, but with the aim of surveilling labor and, of course, increasing their rate of profit. They are plundering finite resources in their pursuit of endless growth.

Energy consumption for the sake of AI is pulling energy resources away from other very important endeavors like the green transition.

“There are ways to improve AI to use less power,” Dan Stanzione, executive director of the Texas Advanced Computing Center, told The Daily Texan. But “decarbonizing the power grid is really the most important thing.”

But this will never occur if we continue to privilege the insatiable energy appetite of Big Tech over the collective need for environmental sustainability.

Yet, there are reasons to be optimistic. Communities are beginning to organize, and they are pushing back against the unchecked expansion of data centers and the drain they incur on local resources.

In Loudoun County, Virginia, officials rejected a data center application due to the strains it will put on the local electric grid. Atlanta’s city council shelved a similar proposal, citing an additional concern over local water supply depletion. In Peculiar, Missouri, public outcry led the city to reverse its decision to allow for the construction of data centers in their community, with one resident capturing the broader sentiment: “Big Tech is preying on small communities all over this country.”

This wave of resistance reflects a growing awareness that unchecked AI expansion comes at a cost to both consumers and the climate. By standing up to Big Tech, these communities are laying the groundwork to resist climate change and corporate greed. They are struggling for a future where people and the planet—not profits—take priority.

Officials in the Biden administration are taking credit for creating conditions in Syria that enabled opposition forces to overthrow the Syrian government.

Now that opposition forces have ousted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, administration officials are insisting that longstanding U.S. policies, including actions taken by the Biden administration against Assad’s supporters, made the overthrow of the Syrian government possible. Administration officials deny that they aided Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the U.S.-designated terrorist organization that led the drive to overthrow Assad, but they insist that they facilitated the opposition’s victory, citing years of U.S. efforts to empower the opposition and weaken the Syrian government.

Just as U.S. officials have claimed, the United States played a central role in creating the conditions that led to Assad’s ouster.

U.S. policy “has led to the situation we’re in today,” State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a December 9 press briefing, the day after Assad fled the country. It “was developed during the latter stages of the Obama administration” and “has largely carried through to this day.”

White House Spokesperson John Kirby agreed, giving credit to the president. “We believe that developments in Syria very much prove the case of President Biden’s assertive foreign policy,” Kirby said in remarks to the press on December 10.

U.S. Policy

For over a decade, the United States has sought regime change in Syria. Officials in Washington have openly called for an end to the rule of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the repressive and authoritarian leader who first began ruling Syria in 2000, following decades of rule by his father, Hafez al-Assad.

U.S. efforts to oust Assad date back to 2011, when Syria descended into a civil war. As Assad responded to popular uprisings with violent crackdowns, the United States began supporting multiple armed groups, several of which were seeking the overthrow of the Syrian government.

The Obama administration designed the initial U.S. strategy to oust Assad. Hoping to avoid “catastrophic success,” or a situation in which extremists ousted Assad and seized power, the administration decided on a stalemate strategy. The United States provided opposition forces with enough support to keep pressure on Assad but not enough to overthrow him.

The administration’s goal was “a political settlement, a scenario that relies on an eventual stalemate among the warring factions rather than a clear victor,” U.S. officials explained at the time, as reported by The Washington Post.

The Obama administration came close to achieving its objectives in 2015, when opposition forces began moving into areas around Damascus. With Assad under growing pressure, it appeared that he might lose his grip on power and be forced to negotiate or surrender.

As opposition forces gained momentum, however, Assad received a lifeline from Russia, which intervened to save him. By coming to Assad’s assistance with airstrikes and military support, Russia enabled Assad to turn the tide against the rebels and remain in power.

Following Russia’s intervention, the civil war largely settled into stalemate, which left Syria divided into different areas of control. Assad consolidated his control of Damascus and the surrounding areas with support from Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah. Many opposition forces regrouped in northwestern Syria, where they received support from Turkey. Kurdish-led forces, which were separate from the opposition, carved out an autonomous region in northeastern Syria, keeping another part of the country outside of Assad’s control.

Keeping Pressure on Assad

As the civil war cooled, U.S. officials maintained its strategy of stalemate. Although they believed that Assad had secured his position in Damascus, they remained convinced that they could still pressure him into resigning, primarily by keeping him weakened and denying him a victory.

U.S. policies to keep Assad weakened spanned the administrations of Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden. These policies included the diplomatic isolation of Assad, severe economic sanctions on Syria, ongoing military strikes inside Syria, and additional support to opposition groups.

With Syria becoming a “cadaver state,” as an official in the Trump administration described it, U.S. policies also kept the country dismembered. By preventing Assad from regaining control of areas that he had lost in the war, U.S. officials hoped to pressure him into accepting a political transition.

Since the Obama administration first devised the strategy of stalemate, which helped transform Syria into a dismembered cadaver state, Assad ruled over a devastated country, one that may never recover.

U.S. officials focused much of their efforts on the Kurdish-led forces in the northeast, an area that includes strategically important wheat fields and oil reserves. Although the Kurds did not seek to overthrow Assad, wanting instead official recognition for their autonomous region inside Syria, U.S. officials knew they could undermine Assad by keeping northeastern Syria outside his control.

At the same time, U.S. officials worked to ensure that opposition forces remained in control of northwestern Syria. Even with the region controlled by HTS, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, U.S. officials abetted the group’s operations, viewing HTS as “an asset” and believing it was critical to keeping Syria dismembered.

“I just did everything I could to be able to monitor what they were doing and ensuring that those people who spoke to them knew what our policy was, which was to leave HTS alone,” former U.S. diplomat James Jeffrey acknowledged in a 2021 interview with the PBS program Frontline.

Questions about the Biden Administration’s Approach

Since the Biden administration entered office in 2021, however, it has been largely quiet about its intentions for Syria. Although the administration appeared to continue the strategy of stalemate, mainly by keeping Assad weakened and Syria dismembered, administration officials rarely expressed a great deal of interest in the country.

As administration officials grew quiet, some lawmakers grew suspicious, wondering whether the Biden administration was abandoning the project of ousting Assad. During a 2022 congressional hearing, congressional leaders criticized the administration for creating an impression that it had accepted Assad’s rule.

“I remain concerned this administration has accepted Assad’s rule as a foregone conclusion,” U.S. Senator James Risch (R-Idaho) remarked.

From 2022 to 2023, a number of U.S. allies in the Middle East began moving to restore relations with Assad. In May 2023, Arab leaders welcomed Syria back into the Arab League, ending its suspension from the organization. Officials in the Biden administration criticized the moves, but they did not express any interest in returning to the more volatile dynamics of the civil war.

In fact, recent news reports indicate that the Biden administration was working to forge a deal in which Assad cut ties to Iran in exchange for reductions in pressure on his government. This major diplomatic push, which involved the United States and its Gulf allies, preceded the recent armed uprising that ousted Assad, leading to speculation that the Biden administration had been anticipating a future in which the Syrian leader remained in power.

Revivals and Surprises

After HTS began its offensive in late November 2024, the Biden administration revived a familiar playbook. Resorting to the ideas and tactics of its predecessors, the administration presented HTS’s maneuvers in a manner that fit with a policy of stalemate.

In a December 1 interview with CNN, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan pointed to the stalemate framework by making two basic points. The first was that the Biden administration had concerns about HTS, which Sullivan placed “at the vanguard” of the uprising. “We have real concerns about the designs and objectives of that organization,” he said, acknowledging it is a U.S.-designated terrorist organization.

His second point was that the Biden administration did not see the actions taken by HTS as particularly worrisome, as they could potentially weaken the Syrian government. “We don’t cry over the fact that the Assad government, backed by Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, [is] facing certain kinds of pressure,” Sullivan said.

The Biden administration’s resurgent American empire has also had major consequences for Syria.

Even as administration officials saw advantages to be gained from the stalemate strategy, however, it remained unclear just how much pressure the Biden administration wanted HTS to put on Assad. Once HTS began making rapid gains, officials appeared to grow concerned.

“These are not good folks,” White House Spokesperson John Kirby said on December 2, referring to HTS.

Still, some observers indicated that there was a strategic logic to HTS’s moves. Former U.S. official Andrew Tabler, who worked on U.S. policy toward Syria in the Trump administration, suggested at a policy forum hosted by The Washington Institute that the uprising could test Assad’s capabilities.

“They just decided to sort of poke the front lines, so to speak, in a very dramatic way,” Tabler said.

Tabler acknowledged that HTS’s uprising revealed significant weaknesses in Assad’s capabilities, but he anticipated that it would take several years to pressure Assad into leaving office. Like many officials in Washington, he saw the offensive as a way to increase pressure on the Syrian government rather than the beginning of the end to Assad’s rule.

“This is a challenge to the regime, but it’s not going to lead to its immediate collapse,” Tabler said.

In fact, many U.S. officials did not anticipate that the offensive would lead to a sudden collapse of the Syrian government. Given that Assad had previously survived a comparable challenge in 2015, there were strong beliefs both inside and outside of Washington that Assad and his supporters would continue to repel opposition forces.

“I think the entire international community was surprised to see that the opposition forces moved as quickly as they did,” Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin later noted. “Everybody expected to see a much more stiff resistance from Assad’s forces.”

It was only once opposition forces began to take control of Aleppo in early December, about a week before Assad fled the country, that the Biden administration began planning for the possibility of Assad’s downfall, according to U.S. officials.

When “we saw the fall of Aleppo, we started to prepare for all possible contingencies,” a senior official in the Biden administration explained.

Indeed, the speed of the opposition’s movement caught many of the highest-level officials in the Biden administration by surprise, as they had been working on the assumption that Assad would remain in power for the immediate future.

“We didn’t directly see the fall of Assad,” State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller acknowledged.

Shifting Balance of Power

Regardless of the ebb and flow of the Biden administration’s Syria policy, years of U.S. actions have clearly taken a toll on Syria. Just as U.S. officials have claimed, the United States played a central role in creating the conditions that led to Assad’s ouster.

Since the Obama administration first devised the strategy of stalemate, which helped transform Syria into a dismembered cadaver state, Assad ruled over a devastated country, one that may never recover.

The Biden administration’s resurgent American empire has also had major consequences for Syria. By spending the past two years supporting Ukraine against Russia and the past year backing Israel’s military offensives across the Middle East, the Biden administration has implemented policies that have imposed major costs on Assad’s supporters, especially Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah. Without external support, the longtime Syrian leader could no longer withstand violent challenges to his rule.

Shortly after the fall of Assad, President Biden recognized the implications of his administration’s actions, claiming in a major address that U.S. policies set the stage for Assad’s downfall. Even while acknowledging that “some of the rebel groups that took down Assad have their own grim record of terrorism and human right abuses,” he proudly insisted that his administration’s actions had made regime change possible.

Indeed, President Biden has been quick to take credit for the overthrow of another government in the Middle East. Rather than being open about the implications of “catastrophic success,” Biden has taken pride in how he and his predecessors have implemented policies that enabled a U.S.-designated terrorist organization to force Assad from the country.

“Our approach has shifted the balance of power in the Middle East,” Biden said. Through a “combination of support for our partners, sanctions, and diplomacy and targeted military force when necessary, we now see new opportunities opening up for the people of Syria and for the entire region.”

The coming year promises to be a dangerous time for progressive groups. Last month the House passed resolution 9495, which would grant the executive branch extraordinary powers to designate nonprofit organizations as terrorist supporting and thereby to revoke these organizations’ 501(c)3 status unilaterally and without due process.

The significance of this development is chillingly clear now that we have evidence of a right-wing plan to use the pretext of fighting terrorism to shut down more than 100 progressive organizations, including Jewish Voice for Peace, Black Lives Matter, Students for Justice in Palestine, and the Democratic Socialists of America.

As reported on the progressive news site Truthout, in November a right-wing think tank with ties to the Heritage Foundation published a glossy report that purports to show how these and other progressive organizations are “pro-terrorism.” The report outlines a series of steps that the think tank, the Capital Research Center, believes should be taken to shut these 159 groups down, ranging from the revocation of their 501(c)3 or 501(c)4 statuses to the prosecution and deportation of their leaders. Such moves, if made by the Trump administration, could effectively shutter progressive civil society.

History tells us that right-wing authoritarian movements and governments begin by attacking leftist and progressive parties and organizations, and then proceed to target other opposition parties and civil society organizations.

The “evidence” provided for progressive groups’ supposed support for terrorism is highly suspect. In many cases, the Capital Research Center simply highlights statements made by these groups that are taken to be insufficiently condemnatory of Hamas. Groups’ use of language like “armed resistance” to describe Hamas’ actions is taken, in and of itself, to constitute active support for this Palestinian militia. We are in the realm here of “thought crimes.”

As a historian of modern Europe, I am alarmed by this call to shut down progressive organizations and parties en masse: The current push to do so resonates with the history of 20th-century fascism.

In April 1919, just weeks after the official formation of the Italian fascist movement, Benito Mussolini’s supporters violently attacked the offices of Avanti, a socialist newspaper. The Italian Blackshirts then carried out a campaign of violence against trade unionists and socialists.

More than a decade later, when Adolf Hitler was granted dictatorial powers through the March 1933 Enabling Act, among his government’s first actions was the outlawing of opposition parties, including the Social Democratic Party. Leaders of the Social Democratic Party were targeted for arrest, faced torture, and were detained in prisons. As had already happened to the Communist Party and would subsequently happen to other opposition parties, the German Social Democratic Party in May and June of 1933 was rendered inoperative. The Party was shut down by the new regime.

Today in the United States, the Capital Research Center is promoting a plan to shut down progressive opposition parties like the Democratic Socialists of America and to bring down a wide range of progressive organizations including the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Council on Islamic American Relations, the Movement for Black Lives, the National Lawyers Guild, Black Lives Matter, Students for Justice in Palestine, and Jewish Voice for Peace. These and other progressive organizations, while not nearly as powerful as the left in early 1930s Germany, nevertheless have the capacity to lead mass movements and to effectively resist regressive political transformations. This is why they are being targeted.

In the closing weeks of the 2024 presidential campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris indicated that she believes that now President-elect Donald Trump is a fascist and that he wants to rule as a dictator. To say that Trump is a fascist is to put forward a hypothesis, informed by historical comparison, about how he intends to govern. But would-be strongmen can only carry out their plans with the acquiescence of wider layers of the state and of civil society.

Donald Trump may want to forcibly repress progressive dissent—he has effectively said as much—but how much support will his efforts receive? Will the incoming Republican-led Senate follow the House in granting the executive branch extraordinary powers both to designate nonprofit organizations as “terrorist-supporting” and to revoke their 501(c)3 statuses without due process?

Will conservative commentators who have kept their distance from the MAGA movement nevertheless amplify and endorse the Capital Research Center’s report calling for the aggressive dismantling of Black Lives Matter, Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, and the Democratic Socialists of America, among more than 100 other organizations?

Will centrist politicians, media outlets, and commentators stay silent about attacks on the left, or will they speak out in defense of the right of progressive parties and organizations to exist?

When considering possible executive branch moves to shut down progressive organizations, those from different parts of the political spectrum might feel conflicted. Perhaps there have been statements made or actions taken over the last year by progressive organizations—including organizations that have protested in favor of a cease-fire in Israel and Palestine—that you have found objectionable. Perhaps you believe that the progressive movement has in some way taken the wrong tack.

Nevertheless, now is the time to think carefully about political principles concerning assembly, expression, and protest. Now is the time to consider the precedent that widespread attacks on progressive organizations would establish, and about the powers that should or should not be invested in a would-be authoritarian president.

History tells us that right-wing authoritarian movements and governments begin by attacking leftist and progressive parties and organizations, and then proceed to target other opposition parties and civil society organizations.

Defending progressive organizations in this moment will help ensure the protection of civil liberties and democratic institutions over the coming months and years. We are living through a historically dangerous moment. It is also a moment for clarity and courage.

Defeated presidential candidate Kamala Harris says it’s time for Democrats to roll up their sleeves and start the resistance to Donald Trump. But the party appears to be in disarray, totally dispirited and unable to find a way forward. How should Democrats prepare for the 2026 midterm elections and an open race for 2028? More than 10 million progressive voters stayed home, which allowed Trump to win; can the party do something to bring them back? Is there a way to reconcile symbolic political correctness and identity politics on the left with the party’s pro-censorship and militarily aggressive foreign policy, which appears to be more on the right?

The TMI Show’s Ted Rall discusses the future of the Democratic Party with Manila Chan.

The post TMI Show Ep 41: “Where Do the Democrats Go From Here?” first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

The post TMI Show Ep 41: “Where Do the Democrats Go From Here?” appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

“Any person or company investing ONE BILLION DOLLARS, OR MORE, in the United States of America, will receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals.” —Donald Trump Dec. 10, 2024

The 1986 American Heritage Dictionary defines fascism as:

“fascism (făsh'ĩz'am) n. A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism.”

We’re about to be there.

The power of government to both reward and punish is awesome. No other entity can legally take money away from citizens at gunpoint and hand it to others it favors. No other entity has the power to deprive people of their freedom and even their lives. No other entity can use both of those powers to regulate how business must be conducted.

Any company so willing to engage with such tainted government leadership should alarm us all

When Disney, a $248 billion dollar company, decided to give a $15 million donation to Donald Trump’s presidential library slush fund, they didn’t do so because they were worried about losing a defamation lawsuit.

To the contrary, they would have easily won the case. The judge in Trump’s New York trial came right out and said, in front of God and the whole world:

“The finding Ms. Carroll failed to prove she was ‘raped’ within the meaning of the N.Y. Penal Law does not mean she failed to prove Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape’. Indeed, as the evidence at trial… makes clear, the jury found Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.”

It’s also extraordinarily difficult for a public figure to sue for defamation, per the Supreme Court’s 1964 Times v Sullivan case, which requires proof of “actual malice,” a very, very high legal standard.

An article in The New York Times this past weekend added this gem of a paragraph, although ABC insists the meeting wasn’t arranged to discuss the defamation claim:

“Debra OConnell, the Disney executive who directly oversees ABC News, dined with Mr. Trump’s incoming chief of staff, Susie Wiles, in Palm Beach last Monday, according to two people briefed on their interaction. The dinner was part of a visit by several ABC News executives to Florida to meet with Mr. Trump’s transition team.”

Whether OConnell and Wiles discussed the defamation case or not is almost beside the point; the reasonable assumption is that Disney didn’t decide to pay off Trump because they were concerned about the lawsuit but, instead, because they wanted to be on the inside, rather than the outside, of the group of corporations that will make up the “friends of Trump” as he takes over the reins of government. Disney has already gotten their nose bloody by trying to stand up to Trump’s Mini-Me, Ron DeSantis; they’ve learned their lesson well.

This is, classically, how fascists work. In fascist states, corporations and wealthy individuals fall all over themselves to gain the favor of the fascist strongman leader or they lose out big.

When Putin took over Russia, he essentially said to the richest of the Russian oligarchs, “You can be with me or against me, but there is no middle ground.” Ditto for Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán (who met with Trump in Florida last week), Turkey’s dictator Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (who Trump praised this week), and history’s fascist strongmen from Tojo, Franco, Hitler, and Mussolini to more recent versions like Pinochet, el-Sisi, and Ceaușescu.

And now America. Soon to be the newest fascist state in the world.

This goes way beyond ignoring fascism’s chronicler Timothy Snyder’s warning not to “obey in advance”: The companies whose CEOs are making the pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago right now are actively trying to get on the inside with Trump by nakedly supporting him.

They both fear his punishments (he’d called for ABC to lose its broadcast licenses, for example) and hope for his largess when he instructs his federal agencies to start cutting regulations and going easy on corporate mergers and tax evasion.

For over 240 years, America was administered by presidents who adhered to the idea that they should govern, as then-New York Times publisher Adolph S. Ochs wrote in 1896, “without fear or favor.”

Not only did they not direct the government to help or harm any specific companies or industries, those elected to the White House over the past century or so even put their own personal wealth into blind trusts to avoid even the appearance of using government to enrich themselves.

All of that came to a screeching halt when the most corrupt (and richest) president in American history came into office in 2017. Now, empowered by having gotten away with encouraging outright sedition (among other crimes), Trump is doubling down as he accepts million-dollar “donations” from corporate CEOs.

While it’s unlikely oligarchs who refuse to go along with Trump will begin to fall out of 14th floor windows like in Russia, Trump has already made it clear he’ll use regulatory agencies and the courts to punish them like Orbán does.

This is not the American way. It is, instead, how fascist nations that inevitably morph into dictatorships work. It’s a huge warning signal to us and the world.

It also sets a terrible example for other republics around the world that aspire to our (former) ideals of democracy and fair play in business and government. And it sets our country up to become a sleazy tinpot dictatorship, descending to the ethics and credibility standards of Third World caricatures.

History is taking careful note of those CEOs who are energetically brown-nosing Trump, just as it did with Thyssen and Krupp, who were prosecuted for war crimes in the 1940s.

And to compound this evil, these businesses are adding to the power that Trump is rapidly accumulating as, one after another, they, politicians of both parties, and people across the media bow their heads and bend their knees.

Any company so willing to engage with such tainted government leadership should alarm us all: Going forward, the honesty, reliability, and safety of their products may well be corrupted by their praetorian relationship with Trump’s regulators, rather than responding to the competitive forces of the actual marketplace.

Which is also why, going forward, we’d all do best to avoid their programs, products, and services.

Gaza, Haiti, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Russia, Syria, Ukraine, and Venezuela: President-elect Donald Trump will face no shortage of foreign-policy challenges when he assumes office in January. None, however, comes close to China in scope, scale, or complexity. No other country has the capacity to resist his predictable antagonism with the same degree of strength and tenacity, and none arouses more hostility and outrage among MAGA Republicans.

In short, China is guaranteed to put President Trump in a difficult bind the second time around: He can either choose to cut deals with Beijing and risk being branded an appeaser by the China hawks in his party, or he can punish and further encircle Beijing, risking a potentially violent clash and possibly even nuclear escalation. How he chooses to resolve this quandary will surely prove the most important foreign test of his second term in office.

Make no mistake: China truly is considered The Big One by those in Trump’s entourage responsible for devising foreign policy. While they imagine many international challenges to their “America First” strategy, only China, they believe, poses a true threat to the continued global dominance of this country.

Trump will enter office in January with a toolkit of punitive measures for fighting China ready to roll along with strong support among his appointees for making them the law of the land.

“I feel strongly that the Chinese Communist Party has entered into a Cold War with the United States and is explicit in its aim to replace the liberal, Western-led world order that has been in place since World War II,” Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.), Trump’s choice as national security adviser, declared at a 2023 event hosted by the Atlantic Council. “We’re in a global arms race with an adversary that, unlike any in American history, has the economic and the military capability to truly supplant and replace us.”

As Waltz and others around Trump see it, China poses a multi-dimensional threat to this country’s global supremacy. In the military domain, by building up its air force and navy, installing military bases on reclaimed islands in the South China Sea, and challenging Taiwan through increasingly aggressive air and naval maneuvers, it is challenging continued American dominance of the Western Pacific. Diplomatically, it’s now bolstering or repairing ties with key U.S. allies, including India, Indonesia, Japan, and the members of NATO. Meanwhile, it’s already close to replicating this country’s most advanced technologies, especially its ability to produce advanced microchips. And despite Washington’s efforts to diminish a U.S. reliance on vital Chinese goods, including critical minerals and pharmaceuticals, it remains a primary supplier of just such products to this country.

Fight or Strike Bargains?

For many in the Trumpian inner circle, the only correct, patriotic response to the China challenge is to fight back hard. Both Rep. Waltz, Trump’s pick as national security adviser, and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), his choice as secretary of state, have sponsored or supported legislation to curb what they view as “malign” Chinese endeavors in the United States and abroad.

Waltz, for example, introduced the American Critical Mineral Exploration and Innovation Act of 2020, which was intended, as he explained, “to reduce America’s dependence on foreign sources of critical minerals and bring the U.S. supply chain from China back to America.” Sen. Rubio has been equally combative in the legislative arena. In 2021, he authored the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which banned goods produced in forced labor encampments in Xinjiang Province from entering the United States. He also sponsored several pieces of legislation aimed at curbing Chinese access to U.S. technology. Although these, as well as similar measures introduced by Waltz, haven’t always obtained the necessary congressional approval, they have sometimes been successfully bundled into other legislation.

In short, Trump will enter office in January with a toolkit of punitive measures for fighting China ready to roll along with strong support among his appointees for making them the law of the land. But of course, we’re talking about Donald Trump, so nothing is a given. Some analysts believe that his penchant for dealmaking and his professed admiration for Chinese strongman President Xi Jinping may lead him to pursue a far more transactional approach, increasing economic and military pressure on Beijing to produce concessions on, for example, curbing the export of fentanyl precursors to Mexico, but when he gets what he wants letting them lapse. Howard Lutnick, the billionaire investor from Cantor Fitzgerald whom he chose as Commerce secretary, claims that Trump actually “wants to make a deal with China,” and will use the imposition of tariffs selectively as a bargaining tool to do so.

What such a deal might look like is anyone’s guess, but it’s hard to see how Trump could win significant concessions from Beijing without abandoning some of the punitive measures advocated by the China hawks in his entourage. Count on one thing: This complicated and confusing dynamic will play out in each of the major problem areas in U.S.-China relations, forcing Trump to make critical choices between his transactional instincts and the harsh ideological bent of his advisers.

Trump, China, and Taiwan

Of all the China-related issues in his second term in office, none is likely to prove more challenging or consequential than the future status of the island of Taiwan. At issue are Taiwan’s gradual moves toward full independence and the risk that China will invade the island to prevent such an outcome, possibly triggering U.S. military intervention as well. Of all the potential crises facing Trump, this is the one that could most easily lead to a great-power conflict with nuclear undertones.

When Washington granted diplomatic recognition to China in 1979, it “acknowledged” that Taiwan and the mainland were both part of “one China” and that the two parts could eventually choose to reunite. The U.S. also agreed to cease diplomatic relations with Taiwan and terminate its military presence there. However, under the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, Washington was also empowered to cooperate with a quasi-governmental Taiwanese diplomatic agency, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States, and provide Taiwan with the weapons needed for its defense. Moreover, in what came to be known as “strategic ambiguity,” U.S. officials insisted that any effort by China to alter Taiwan’s status by force would constitute “a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area” and would be viewed as a matter “of grave concern to the United States,” although not necessarily one requiring a military response.

If, however, he chooses to act “crazy” by embracing “strategic clarity” and stepping up military pressure on China, he would likely receive accolades from many of his supporters, while provoking a (potentially nuclear) war with China.

For decades, one president after another reaffirmed the “one China” policy while also providing Taiwan with increasingly powerful weaponry. For their part, Chinese officials repeatedly declared that Taiwan was a renegade province that should be reunited with the mainland, preferably by peaceful means. The Taiwanese, however, have never expressed a desire for reunification and instead have moved steadily toward a declaration of independence, which Beijing has insisted would justify armed intervention.

As such threats became more frequent and menacing, leaders in Washington continued to debate the validity of “strategic ambiguity,” with some insisting it should be replaced by a policy of “strategic clarity” involving an ironclad commitment to assist Taiwan should it be invaded by China. President Joe Biden seemed to embrace this view, repeatedly affirming that the U.S. was obligated to defend Taiwan under such circumstances. However, each time he said so, his aides walked back his words, insisting the U.S. was under no legal obligation to do so.

The Biden administration also boosted its military support for the island while increasing American air and naval patrols in the area, which only heightened the possibility of a future U.S. intervention should China invade. Some of these moves, including expedited arms transfers to Taiwan, were adopted in response to prodding from China hawks in Congress. All, however, fit with an overarching administration strategy of encircling China with a constellation of American military installations and U.S.-armed allies and partners.

From Beijing’s perspective, then, Washington is already putting extreme military and geopolitical pressure on China. The question is: Will the Trump administration increase or decrease those pressures, especially when it comes to Taiwan?

That Trump will approve increased arms sales to and military cooperation with Taiwan essentially goes without saying (as much, at least, as anything involving him does). The Chinese have experienced upticks in U.S. aid to Taiwan before and can probably live through another round of the same. But that leaves far more volatile issues up for grabs: Will he embrace “strategic clarity,” guaranteeing Washington’s automatic intervention should China invade Taiwan, and will he approve a substantial expansion of the American military presence in the region? Both moves have been advocated by some of the China hawks in Trump’s entourage, and both are certain to provoke fierce, hard-to-predict responses from Beijing.

Many of Trump’s closest advisers have, in fact, insisted on “strategic clarity” and increased military cooperation with Taiwan. Michael Waltz, for example, has asserted that the U.S. must “be clear we’ll defend Taiwan as a deterrent measure.” He has also called for an increased military presence in the Western Pacific. Similarly, last June, Robert C. O’Brien, Trump’s national security adviser from 2019 to 2021, wrote that the U.S. “should make clear” its “commitment” to “help defend” Taiwan, while expanding military cooperation with the island.

Trump himself has made no such commitments, suggesting instead a more ambivalent stance. In his typical fashion, in fact, he’s called on Taiwan to spend more on its own defense and expressed anger at the concentration of advanced chip-making on the island, claiming that the Taiwanese “did take about 100% of our chip business.” But he’s also warned of harsh economic measures were China to impose a blockade of the island, telling the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal, “I would say [to President Xi]: if you go into Taiwan, I’m sorry to do this, I’m going to tax you at 150% to 200%.” He wouldn’t need to threaten the use of force to prevent a blockade, he added, because President Xi “respects me and he knows I’m [expletive] crazy.”

Such comments reveal the bind Trump will inevitably find himself in when it comes to Taiwan this time around. He could, of course, try to persuade Beijing to throttle back its military pressure on the island in return for a reduction in U.S. tariffs—a move that would reduce the risk of war in the Pacific but leave China in a stronger economic position and disappoint many of his top advisers. If, however, he chooses to act “crazy” by embracing “strategic clarity” and stepping up military pressure on China, he would likely receive accolades from many of his supporters, while provoking a (potentially nuclear) war with China.

Trade War or Economic Coexistence?

The question of tariffs represents another way in which Trump will face a crucial choice between punitive action and transactional options in his second term—or, to be more precise, in deciding how severe to make those tariffs and other economic hardships he will try to impose on China.

In January 2018, the first Trump administration imposed tariffs of 30% on imported solar panels and 20%-50% on imported washing machines, many sourced from China. Two months later, the administration added tariffs on imported steel (25%) and aluminum (10%), again aimed above all at China. And despite his many criticisms of Trump’s foreign and economic policies, President Biden chose to retain those tariffs, even adding new ones, notably on electric cars and other high-tech products. The Biden administration has also banned the export of advanced computer chips and chip-making technology to China in a bid to slow that country’s technological progress.

Accordingly, when Trump reassumes office on January 20, China will already be under stringent economic pressures from Washington. But he and his associates insist that those won’t be faintly enough to constrain China’s rise. The president-elect has said that, on day one of his new term, he will impose a 10% tariff on all Chinese imports and follow that with other harsh measures. Among such moves, the Trump team has announced plans to raise tariffs on Chinese imports to 60%, revoke China’s Permanent Normal Trade Relations (also known as “most favored nation”) status, and ban the transshipment of Chinese imports through third countries.

Most of Trump’s advisers have espoused such measures strongly. “Trump Is Right: We Should Raise Tariffs on China,” Marco Rubio wrote last May. “China’s anticompetitive tactics,” he argued, “give Chinese companies an unfair cost advantage over American companies… Tariffs that respond to these tactics prevent or reverse offshoring, preserving America’s economic might and promoting domestic investment.”

But Trump will also face possible pushback from other advisers who are warning of severe economic perturbations if such measures were to be enacted. China, they suggest, has tools of its own to use in any trade war with the U.S., including tariffs on American imports and restrictions on American firms doing business in China, including Elon Musk’s Tesla, which produces half of its cars there. For these and other reasons, the U.S.-China Business Council has warned that additional tariffs and other trade restrictions could prove disastrous, inviting “retaliatory measures from China, causing additional U.S. jobs and output losses.”

As in the case of Taiwan, Trump will face some genuinely daunting decisions when it comes to economic relations with China. If, in fact, he follows the advice of the ideologues in his circle and pursues a strategy of maximum pressure on Beijing, specifically designed to hobble China’s growth and curb its geopolitical ambitions, he could precipitate nothing short of a global economic meltdown that would negatively affect the lives of so many of his supporters, while significantly diminishing America’s own geopolitical clout. He might therefore follow the inclinations of certain of his key economic advisers like transition leader Howard Lutnick, who favor a more pragmatic, businesslike relationship with China. How Trump chooses to address this issue will likely determine whether the future involves increasing economic tumult and uncertainty or relative stability. And it’s always important to remember that a decision to play hardball with China on the economic front could also increase the risk of a military confrontation leading to full-scale war, even to World War III.

And while Taiwan and trade are undoubtedly the most obvious and challenging issues Trump will face in managing (mismanaging?) U.S.-China relations in the years ahead, they are by no means the only ones. He will also have to decide how to deal with increasing Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea; continued Chinese economic and military-technological support for Russia in its war against Ukraine; and growing Chinese investments in Africa, Latin America, and elsewhere.

In these, and other aspects of the U.S.-China rivalry, Trump will be pulled toward both increased militancy and combativeness and a more pragmatic, transactional approach. During the campaign, he backed each approach, sometimes in the very same verbal outburst. Once in power, however, he will have to choose between them—and his decisions will have a profound impact on this country, China, and everyone living on this planet.

For all that U.S. President-elect Donald Trump trashed renewable energy on the stump, much of his ranting may very well become a murmur when he returns to the Oval Office.

Obscured by his “green new scam” rhetoric is a mad scramble by his supporters in Congress to reap the economic benefits of green industry for their states and districts. The increasing investments, precisely in the places that voted for him, make President-elect Trump’s pledge to “terminate” many green programs political wolf talk. That is because the renewable energy industry is growing jobs more than twice as fast as the overall economy.

This acknowledgement from conservative lawmakers that clean energy and electric vehicles are good business makes it reasonable to bet that the investments they’ve secured for their districts will survive the president-elect’s rhetoric of a “green new scam.”

A lasting irony of the outgoing Biden administration will be how no Republican in Congress voted for the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Yet 85% of the announced clean energy projects and 68% of the jobs triggered by the IRA, such as those related to electric vehicles, wind power, solar power, and battery storage, have gone to Republican-held congressional districts, according to E2, a nonpartisan group that monitors the clean energy industry.

The representatives of those districts see no apparent contradiction in touting the attractiveness of their areas for clean energy investments, while publicly supporting the president-elect’s rhetoric and proposals to end clean energy programs.

Love-Hate Relationships Abound

For instance, Texas Congressmember Jodey Arrington, who represents a House district that includes Lubbock and Abilene, called the IRA a “failed liberal spending spree that crippled our economy and left working American families worse off.” The Washington Post reported in October that Arrington’s district is the nation’s fifth-highest recipient of investments for clean energy and manufacturing, receiving nearly $5 billion.

Then there is Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn: a climate skeptic who says infrastructure projects that fight climate change are a “gateway to socialism.” She told the Republican National Convention this summer that the “green new scam” was “destroying small businesses.”

Huh? Relative to the size of the state’s economy (as measured by gross domestic product), Tennessee ranks first in the nation in clean technology manufacturing investment from the IRA, according to the Clean Investment Monitor, maintained by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research and the Rhodium Group.

Senator Blackburn seems well aware of it. Even before the IRA, when vehicle maker Ford cut the ribbon on a $5.6 billion electric battery plant in her state in 2021, she boasted how Tennessee is “leading the way for innovation” with a “historic project” that would directly create 5,800 jobs and create “countless opportunities in supporting industries.”

The champion of hypocrisy is Representative Richard Hudson, congressman for North Carolina’s Ninth District, nestled in the center of the state. In voting against the IRA, he blasted clean energy programs as “woke climate and social programs that won’t work.”

Hudson was wide awake for the money coming to his district to expand a massive Toyota battery plant for electric vehicles and hybrids. According to E2, Hudson’s district is top in the nation both for clean energy investment and for clean energy job growth triggered by the IRA. The Toyota plant alone promises more than 5,000 jobs. Estimates of investment in his district range from nearly $10 billion to nearly $13 billion.

Selective Cuts Desired

If the next Trump administration is serious about pulling the plug on clean energy, that will add up to a lot of jobs and investments to undo in states and districts where the president-elect handily won the election. North Carolina Representative Hudson hinted he agrees. When CNN asked him in June if he would vote to repeal the IRA if the Republicans won control of the federal government in the election—which they did—he responded, “Rather than try to repeal one big bill with another big bill, we ought to look at the individual policies.”

Another sign that Republicans ultimately won’t scrap all the benefits of the Inflation Reduction Act came in an August letter by 18 Republicans to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.). The lawmakers asked Johnson to preserve clean energy tax credits in any effort to repeal or reform the IRA. The letter acknowledged that energy tax credits “have spurred innovation, incentivized investment, and created good jobs in many parts of the country—including many districts represented by members of our conference.”

The letter warned that repealing energy tax credits, especially those for projects that have already broken ground “would undermine private investments and stop development that is already ongoing.”

This acknowledgement from conservative lawmakers that clean energy and electric vehicles are good business makes it reasonable to bet that the investments they’ve secured for their districts will survive the president-elect’s rhetoric of a “green new scam.”

Risks to Offshore Wind Loom

Much less clear is the near-term future for offshore wind.

While campaigning, President-elect Trump promised to sign an executive order on the first day of his return to bring a halt to the offshore wind industry. Never mind that onshore wind is booming in red states in the windy, rural middle of the United States, providing 130,000 jobs. The fastest growing occupation in the nation is wind turbine service technician, paying an average of nearly $62,000 a year according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

According to the Energy Information Agency, the top four states for electricity generation from wind in 2023 were the red states of Texas, Iowa, Oklahoma, and Kansas.

In even more serious doubt is a just transition, where communities that suffer the most from fossil fuel production and pollution can get jobs, lower energy costs, and cleaner air from a move to renewables.

The offshore wind industry, a staple of energy generation in northern Europe, is still in its infancy in the United States. It remains highly vulnerable to price shocks, supply-chain issues, local opposition to siting, and being a political dartboard. The industry is currently centered in more liberal Northeastern states thanks to ideal water depths off the Atlantic coastline and forward-looking governors from Massachusetts to Virginia who have been competing the last two decades for ports and projects.

The U.S. has the technical capacity to harness three times more electricity from offshore wind than it currently uses today, with the Atlantic Ocean off the Northeast coast possessing some of the strongest wind speeds in the country.

Surprisingly, despite its “Drill, Baby, Drill” mantra for oil, the first Trump administration promoted offshore wind when it found out how much money the leases could put into federal coffers. It conducted a then-record auction for waters off Massachusetts to site off-shore wind projects. Ports and manufacturing facilities as far south as Louisiana, home state of House Speaker Mike Johnson, helped launch the nation’s first offshore wind farm in Rhode Island.

But that has not stopped oil and gas companies from continuing to conduct disinformation campaigns to stir up opposition to offshore wind. It is clear they have a lot to lose from a full-blown offshore wind industry in the Northeast. For example, gas accounts for at least half of the electricity generation in New England and New Jersey. New York City generates between 85% and 90% of its electricity from fossil fuels. The Northeast Gas Association boasts that about half the entire region gets its electricity from gas.

On the campaign trail, President-elect Trump elected to play off that disinformation. He attacked offshore wind with gale force lies about its impact on whales and the environment, claims which have zero science behind them as NOAA and others explain.

The unending verbal assault makes it reasonable to worry that under this second administration President-elect Trump may truly try to score political points by directing the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to slow permitting of new projects and telling the Justice Department to side with opponents of incomplete projects. Many experts say that just the slowing of the permitting process risks making construction more expensive and may scare off investors.

Then There’s the Issue of Equity

In even more serious doubt is a just transition, where communities that suffer the most from fossil fuel production and pollution can get jobs, lower energy costs, and cleaner air from a move to renewables.

Almost by definition, the growth of clean energy industries in more sparsely populated, majority white, Republican-held districts may exacerbate the existing structural racism in the energy sector’s workforce, which has been a driver of the Biden administration’s goal of directing 40% of federal climate and clean energy investments to disadvantaged communities.

For instance, Black people are 13% of the nation’s workforce and account for only 8% of the solar and wind workforce, according to the Department of Energy. The Interstate Renewable Energy Council (IREC) says the percentage of Black solar workers has not budged since 2022. Yet, the second-fastest growing job in the nation, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, are solar panel installers, making on average $48,000 a year.

The percentage of people of color in leadership positions in the renewable energy supply chain is currently infinitesimally small. A 2022 report by the American Council on Renewable Energy found that of 658 manufacturers involved in utility-scale wind, solar, and battery storage, 1.8% were owned by people of color or women. And while there is one bright spot in diversity, with 33% of new clean energy jobs last year being filled by Latinos, 88% of solar industry executives are white and 80% are male, according to the IREC.

Only a quarter of solar firms in the IREC’s annual National Solar Jobs Census reported that they had strategies to hire more people of color or women.

With the return of President-elect Trump, accompanied now by Vice President-elect JD Vance, it will take maverick clean energy companies to improve diversity. Just this past June, Vance co-introduced (along with Senator Blackburn) a bill in the Senate to eliminate all federal diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs and funding for any entities that receive federal funding. Representatives Arrington and Hudson co-sponsored the measure in the House. Cynically twisting the purpose of DEI to ensure fair opportunities for people from historically excluded groups, Vice President-elect Vance claims DEI “breeds hatred and racial division.”

President-elect Trump himself has already begun to nominate members of his cabinet with direct ties to Project 2025, the de facto Republican Party platform that also calls for the elimination of DEI throughout government. Project 2025 explicitly calls for the end of DEI in the Energy Department and eliminating the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights in the Environmental Protection Agency.

The pall placed over the nation is already being felt even before Inauguration Day, as Walmart recently announced it was rolling back DEI policies or dismantling DEI teams, joining companies like Ford, Boeing, Toyota, Lowe’s, Harley Davidson, Molson Coors, John Deere, and Tractor Supply. That follows the scores of universities that are eliminating DEI in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2023 striking down of affirmative action. It was a ruling virtually assured by President Trump’s packing of the court in his first term.

In a blog last year on this flood of renewable money flowing into Republican districts from a Democratic-inspired law, I wrote that the nation would be so much stronger in the fight against climate change and the effort to clean up communities and boost the economy if conservatives would “drop the two-faced charade of climate denial while diving unabashedly into the pot of federal renewable incentives and tax breaks.” Now that the forces of climate denial have regained the White House and control of both chambers of Congress, they don’t even need two faces. They can just be bald-faced aggrandizers.

The renewable energy industry will indeed have a strong expansion in the U.S. It’s just that it will be heavily driven by a real green scam—an expansion being led by politicians who harness and hoard solar power, wind power, and electric vehicles for their own constituents, but deny it for everyone else.

This month, the FTC opened an investigation into tech giant Microsoft, which some have called Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan’s “last swing” at Big Tech before her term concludes. But if you think Khan is slowing down, think again. Pencils-down orders be damned, Khan is sprinting through the tape, continuing her fearless crusade to rein in Silicon Valley’s excesses.

But who says her term is over? There are no laws requiring an agency Chair to resign from her post—it’s tradition. While her term expired this fall, she can remain on the Commission until her replacement is confirmed. After President-elect Trump’s norm-shattering run for president, followed by an array of questionable cabinet appointments, why are Democrats so obsessed with tradition? During this transition, it feels like we’re playing checkers when we should be playing chess. Here’s where we start.

We need a warrior like her to continue this fight, and we hope she does.

Given the uncertainty about what’s ahead, we strongly encourage FTC Chair Lina Khan to remain on the Commission. By staying, she could prevent Republicans from gaining a majority for months and help ensure she remains a bulwark against any rollbacks to the FTC’s tough-on Big Tech approach. And if you listen to the rhetoric from Republicans and the president-elect himself, they would be lucky to have her.

Most consider it wildly out of the realm of possibility. They’ll say that the president-elect has already named FTC Commissioner Andrew Ferguson as Chair and nominated Mark Meador to fill Khan’s seat. Both have expressed concerns about market power, but will they be as aggressive?

They’ll point to Trump confidant and billionaire Elon Musk’s tweet that Khan “will be fired soon.” But that’s the beauty of an independent agency. Khan can’t be fired or forced to resign without cause. Does that matter to the incoming president-elect? Probably not, but the courts could be an important backstop. In the meantime, she can continue to serve until Mr. Meador is confirmed.

My question to the American public is this: why change the driver in the middle of the proverbial antitrust highway? During Khan’s tenure, the FTC has faced down tech giants like Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft, banned almost all noncompetes, sued to prevent grocery heavyweight Kroger from acquiring Albertsons, and stopped Nvidia from attempting a bloated merger. Under her leadership, the FTC has investigated and sued more than three dozen merger proposals and racked up a long list of accomplishments.

This isn’t to suggest that Khan’s achievements are only popular on one side of the aisle.

Vice President-elect JD Vance has not been shy about his approval of Khan’s leadership, previously saying, “I look at Lina Khan as one of the few people in the Biden administration that I think is doing a pretty good job.” While pro-business conservatives have accused her of “overstepping,” those Republicans are out of touch with the voters who put the president-elect back in power. Even some liberals have called her a “dope.” But as the saying goes, you know you’re making an impact when you’re challenging the status quo and ruffling feathers on both sides of the aisle.

There’s a real threat that the new administration’s anti-Big Tech rhetoric from the campaign trail will fizzle out, and CEOs will work quickly to rebuild bridges with the president-elect. It’s rare for a new administration to alter the course of ongoing antitrust cases significantly. However, what could change significantly are the remedies the government seeks for companies found guilty. If you agree that the only remedy for companies like Apple and Google is to be broken up, we need Lina Khan to stay.

She deserves to finish the job she started. Her work has benefited consumers, competition, and the country at large. We need a warrior like her to continue this fight, and we hope she does.

Chair Khan, your move.