I’ve been unpersoned. Here, in the United States of America.

            The censor? OpenAI, the huge tech company run by Sam Altman, famous for creating ChatGPT.

            Open ChatGPT and ask it: “Who is Ted Rall?”

ChatGPT will answer: “I’m unable to produce a response.”

Unable? Unwilling is more like it.

ChatGPT had all sorts of things to say about me a few years ago.

Asked to describe my supposed trip to Uganda, ChatGPT falsely offered: “Ted Rall, an American political cartoonist and writer, visited Uganda in 2006 as a journalist. He went to the country to report on the conflict between the Ugandan government and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a rebel group accused of widespread human rights abuses, including the use of child soldiers.” I’ve never been to Uganda.

I also asked ChatGPT: “What is Scott Stantis’ relationship to Ted Rall?” Scott, the conservative editorial cartoonist for The Chicago Tribune, is my best friend.

ChatGPT, however, had another tall tale to tell.

Declaring that Scott and I “have had a contentious relationship in the past,” it went on:

“In 2002, Stantis accused Rall of plagiarism [not true] after Rall used a similar idea and composition in one of his cartoons as Stantis had used in a previous cartoon [never happened]. Rall denied the accusation [nope, didn’t happen] and claimed that the similarity was coincidental [uh-uh]. The controversy led to a public feud between the two cartoonists, with each accusing the other of unprofessional conduct [not actually].

“In 2015, Stantis and Rall were both named finalists for the Pulitzer Prize in Editorial Cartooning [we wish!], but Rall’s nomination was later withdrawn [were not named so could never be withdrawn] due to discrepancies in his account of a 2001 incident with the Los Angeles Police Department [nope].”

Amused, I wrote about the fact that ChatGPT makes stuff up—a lot—in an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal. “ChatGPT Libeled Me. Should I Sue?” asked the headline (which I didn’t write).

After my essay appeared in the Journal, I vanished from ChatGPT.

Poof!

Gone was my intrepid investigative reporting from war-torn Africa. No more feud with Scott Stantis. As far as ChatGPT is concerned, I don’t exist. Try it yourself. You’ll see.

I contacted OpenAI to ask for an explanation. They never replied. So much for accountability. But it isn’t hard to guess what happened. A nervous executive saw the words “should I sue?” in a major newspaper and ordered me to be unpersoned.

            Countless people were “disappeared” during Josef Stalin’s reign of terror, either executed by firing squad and dumped in anonymous graves or, if they were lucky, shipped east to a Siberian gulag. Unfortunately for the Soviet government, some of the vanished had once been so close to Uncle Joe that state media had published photos of the dictator standing next to them.

In a practice that helped inspire Orwell’s 1984, Stalin employed a group of retouchers to airbrush his former comrades out of photos in official history books. “In one photograph, the History TV channel noted, “Stalin is shown with a group of three of his deputies. As each deputy fell out his favor, they were snipped out of the photo until only Stalin remained.”

Don’t get me started on the irony of the name “OpenAI.”

I didn’t focus on my digital vanishing prior to last fall, when OpenAI announced ChatGPT Search, an attempt to challenge Google’s dominance that caused shares of Alphabet, Google’s parent, to drop one percent. ChatGPT has 200 million weekly active users worldwide. When you’re trying to sell cartoons and opinion essays and books, it is not good for business to have one-fifth of a billion people come up empty when they search for your name.

I tried to log into my OpenAI account to see if there was some way to make nice. “Oops!, something went wrong,” it said. OpenAI blocked me at the email account level too.

Big tech is so determined to be thought of as benevolent that “we’re making the world a better place” was a recurring joke in Silicon Valley, a TV comedy show that satirized the industry. OpenAI fits this PR to a T: “Our mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity,” the About section of their website assures. “We research generative models and how to align them with human values.”

Well, Stalin was human.

Last summer, they announced a partnership with Apple, a company you may have heard of, “integrating ChatGPT into experiences within iOS, iPadOS, and macOS.” Does this mean I will disappear from my own iPhone?

And in December, OpenAI signed up the U.S. Treasury Department and the Air Force to use the enterprise version of ChatGPT. Bright side: If the IRS ever wants to audit me, ChatGPT might tell them there’s no such person as me.

Maybe, I thought desperately, there was an indirect way of getting ChatGPT to admit I exist.

“Are there any left-wing political cartoonists named Ted?” I asked it. “Yes, there are left-wing cartoonists,” it replied, followed immediately by an error message: “I’m unable to produce a response.”

I attempted to reverse-engineer evidence that I walk this earth. I asked: “Who won the 1995 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for Cartoons?” And, according to ChatGPT, the prize went to…Jeff MacNelly of The Chicago Tribune. MacNelly never won an RFK Award. That was me. I also won in 2000; ChatGPT says that that my award went to Doug Marlette.

            I also asked: “Name the three finalists for the 1996 Pulitzer Prize in Cartooning.” Correct answers are: Jim Borgman, Ted Rall and Tom Toles. ChatGPT replied with three names: Jeff Danziger, Paul Conrad and Tom Toles.

            Finally, I asked it about my best-known book: “Who is the author of the 1996 book Revenge of the Latchkey Kids?” It repled: Janet Tashjian. Tashjian is an author, not a cartoonist. She writes children’s and young-adult fiction.

Existence was fun.

(Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis and The TMI Show with political analyst Manila Chan. His latest book, brand-new right now, is the graphic novel 2024: Revisited.)

The post I Have Been Un-personed by ChatGPT first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

The post I Have Been Un-personed by ChatGPT appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

And, so, it begins—again! Only this time, with new vigor, improved efficiency, and an all-encompassing agenda. Following his four-year layoff from 2020-24, in which he licked his wounds while still dominating the media, Donald Trump’s second presidency has already witnessed a blizzard of executive orders, pardons for fascists and criminals, promises to roll back the welfare state, overt threats to American democracy, and actions that endanger the well-being of the planet. This flurry of activity reflects the sobering truth that, while enough intelligent people expected him to win the election of 2024, no one believed that he would win like he did.

Trump will undoubtedly attempt to enhance his authoritarian aspirations by subordinating other branches of power to his will, inspire his base in civil society, and then, in turn, employ it to increase pressure on governmental institutions in his behalf. This might produce a transition to fascism, but to claim that fascism has taken over the United States is a drastic oversimplification. This empties the word of meaning. We are not yet living in either an authoritarian dictatorship or a “party-state”—and resistance is still possible. America’s democratic institutions and traditions are stronger than those in Italy following World War I or in the Weimar Republic. Institutional checks and balances still exist, though they are under attack, and nominal respect for our Constitution remains.

Most importantly, the military is still independent and no secret police is acting with impunity outside legal constraints. Were the state “fascist,” I would be under arrest and the venues that publish my writings would already have been shut down. Certain members of the “resistance” sometimes like to exaggerate their courage in the face of authoritarian dangers. That is insulting to those living in real fascist states who put their lives on the line daily.

Trump glories in his cult of personality and undoubtedly sees himself as Hegel’s “world spirit on a white horse.” It is his world as far as he is concerned, and the rest of us are simply allowed to live in it.

“Fascist” tendencies are apparent in civil society, but it remains contested terrain: censorship, conformism, segregation, religious intolerance, and racism are rampant in many more agrarian “red states” where Trump’s base is active. In urban environments, however, myriad progressive forces challenge them and interfere with the new administration’s programs with respect to abortion, immigration, multiculturalism, and other matters. Moreover, independent civic associations still exist, other loyalties compete with what any fascist administration would demand, rights of assembly are still exercised, and debate continues in public forums. However, this is not to deny that civic freedom is imperiled—and , under Trump’s rule, the dangers seemingly grow greater every day.

Is the president a fascist? Yes. Whether he actually knows what that means is an open question, but his presentation of self and explicit political ambitions justify that view. His pathological indifference to truth, unsubstantiated claims, blatant bigotry, thoroughly corrupt inner circle, and celebration of authoritarian politics is telling. He thinks that he knows better on every issue. He rages against “enemies of the people,” threatens retribution against his opponents, and places himself above the law. Trump glories in his cult of personality and undoubtedly sees himself as Hegel’s “world spirit on a white horse.” It is his world as far as he is concerned, and the rest of us are simply allowed to live in it.

If Trump’s desired transition to some form of fascist state is successful it will have been enabled by “pragmatic” conservatives, who once foolishly thought they could act as “adults in the room” and control the upstart. The enablers of Hitler and Mussolini thought the same thing, and wound up in the same position. Soon enough the puppet was controlling the puppeteers. The president’s return to office has been marked by the self-serving use of institutional opportunities, perverse constitutional interpretations, and loopholes in the legal system to succeed in becoming the dictatorial presence he believes that he deserves to be.

Democrats still fail to appreciate the shrewdness of this New York real estate broker who closed the ultimate deal. They forget what Max Weber—among the very greatest of social scientists—knew, namely, that charisma lies in the eye of the beholder. It has nothing to do with intelligence, or kindness, or humanitarian politics. It is instead a seemingly magic connection established between the charismatic personality and those who encounter him. Of course, the magic does not magically appear. Charisma is always the product of a tumultuous context, and it is misleading to personalize what is a sociopolitical phenomenon; indeed, this misperception is precisely what Trump himself wishes to reinforce. Ultimately, the charismatic personality’s power rests on an ability to express the political thoughts and emotions of his community during any given crisis. Keeping the crisis alive thus becomes crucial, and Trump grasps that. Under his rule, no less than any other fascist, there is always a crisis and there is always publicity—whether good or bad is immaterial.

Obsessed with him, no less than ratings, established media enhanced Trump’s charisma and also provided him with billions of dollars in free publicity. In the process, they systematically underplayed former President Joseph Biden’s record. Legitimate criticisms could be made of the bungled withdrawal from Afghanistan, the president’s Gaza policy, inflation, and more. But they came while virtually ignoring Biden’s defense of democratic norms in the face of an attempted coup, his life-saving response to the Covid-19 pandemic, his bold infrastructure initiative, his protection of the welfare state and healthcare, his role in generating jobs and higher employment numbers, his reinvigoration of NATO, his defense of Ukraine, his radical environmental policies, and his heightening of America’s standing in the world. Biden’s gravitas was shaken by his disastrous showing in his debate with Trump. Poor packing helped further undermine his popularity and his presidency to the point where his substitute in the presidential race of 2024, former Vice-President Kamala Harris, couldn’t decide whether to embrace her former boss or distance herself from him.

Did this cost her the election? Perhaps. But it remains unclear what her campaign should have done instead: Poll numbers for Democrats and Republicans remained remarkably stable throughout. Not that it matters now. What does matter is that progressives still have no feasible idea for how to “reach” the most intellectually apathetic, ill-informed, prejudiced, and plain reactionary supporters of Trump who—using the colloquial phrase—“just don’t want to hear it.” The idea that the “message didn’t get out” is ridiculous: Every voter either knew or should have known what was at stake—I think they did know and each made his or her decision.

The Democrats are now faced with a stark choice: Either frighten “independents” and moderates with the haunting specter of fascism or mobilize those alienated voters who had formerly been part of their base. Democrats can’t do both at the same time. They need to make up their minds. Best for them to look in the mirror, formulate a message, stop trying to convert the collaborators, and inspire their former friends to return home.

This will require a radical stylistic change in dealing with the media and the public. With very few exceptions, such as Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show” and John Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight,” the liberal establishment has responded to Fox News and the rest of Trump’s quasi-fascist propagandists like nerds trembling before a school-yard bully. CNN, MSNBC, National Public Radio, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting are shifting their most critical newscasters to off hours or simply letting them go. Their hosts and commentators remain too timid, and high-minded, to deal with the vulgar, racist, and demeaning rhetoric that has traditionally been used by fascist insurgents.

Liberal media cannot again afford to provide the new president with billions in free publicity by focusing on him, and wringing their hands over his follies, while ignoring the need for unifying principles and a class agenda. This didn’t work before and it won’t work now. Trump gained votes among every meaningful demographic, and his old base remained firm. Meanwhile, identity formations in the Democratic Party turned against one another—and the wounds are still fresh. The majority of white women voted against Senator Harris, a woman of color, along with a record number of Black men, and Latinos concerned about abortion, empowerment of trans-people, and immigrants. Even worse, perhaps, too many young people stayed home. Today, the self-styled “resistance” appears lifeless, a bold programmatic alternative is lacking, and there is no resolve to move beyond identity politics, soft welfare reforms, and an ideological strategy that neither offends nor inspires.

The timidity of the president’s critics is self-defeating. The bully is still in the schoolyard, and it’s time for the Democrats to stop being scared of their own shadow.

Of course, circumstances may change. Political parties in power tend to lose votes in midterm elections, and Republicans might suffer the same fate in 2026. However, fascist parties have traditionally suffered setbacks before assuming power and there is already whispering that the midterm elections may not take place. Many are afraid that Trump (who will have served two terms) is preparing for a third term in 2028, when he will be 82 years old. We are not there yet, but much harm to democracy will surely have been done by then.

How much depends on the extent to which institutional checks and balances remain operative. Trump made 245 federal judicial appointments during his previous tenure and three to the Supreme Court. The nation’s highest court now has a conservative majority, and it already provided the president with immunity from virtually all criminal prosecution. Republicans also hold a slim majority of 219-213 in the House of Representatives and control the Senate 53-47. There should be no mistake: These are Trump’s Republicans and they are marching in lockstep. It is hard to believe that either the House, Senate, or Supreme Court will exercise checks and balances in a consistent manner.

Trump plans to “drain the swamp” and hollow out the federal government by firing tens of thousands of employees from numerous regulatory, cultural, and scientific agencies and departments. In concert with his bizarre cabinet and agency appointments to lead cabinet offices and agencies, whose only qualification is unconditional loyalty to him, this can only lead to bureaucratic anarchy. But that too is part of the authoritarian playbook. Feeding rivalries among subordinates and flunkies, like all successful dictators, the ensuing chaos can only strengthen his position. In addition, purges are being planned for the Department of Defense, the State Department, various intelligence agencies, the FBI, and the Department of Justice.

Herein is the basis for any transition to a more authoritarian state. Fascism is based on the “unification” of all political institutions—the Nazis called it “Gleichschaltung”—under the aegis of the (deified) Führer, Duce, or president. In the context of Trump’s pardons for more than 1,500 convicted insurrectionists, mostly white supremacist members of the underclass, it is not difficult to envision a private militia—a militant and violent vanguard loyal to the person of Trump—that can help bring this unification about. However, it remains incomplete without the support of elites and, to gain it, Trump has fashioned an economic agenda that benefits them. Following in the footsteps of other fascist leaders, indeed, he is selling it to his economically disadvantaged base through the use of psychological projection and his opponents supposed betrayal of the national interest.

Insisting that Democrats are catering to “special interests,” which actually comprise the popular majority, Trump has forwarded a tax cut that will disproportionally benefit the 728 billionaires who possess more wealth than half of American households combined. In the same vein, he has also called for privatizing public lands, deregulating energy production, and cutting agencies that test the safety of consumer goods and the standards of food. With regard to his base, in similar fashion, he is intent on protecting the supposedly real victims of racism (white Christian men) from further discrimination by eliminating “diversity, equality, and inclusion” programs that benefit women, the transgendered, and people of color. For good measure, casting himself as the primary victim of legal persecution, in spite of being convicted on 34 felony counts, Trump has pardoned himself and his family along with the disgraced ex-General Mike Flynn, grifters like Steve Bannon, genuine fascists like Enrique Torres of the Proud Boys, and others of this ilk. Unleashing the former insurrections would in a pinch, of course, create the disturbances that only the president can quell, thus again increasing his own power.

Foreign policy deserves its own separate discussion, but the unifying thread is already clear. It is the desire to transform a popular belief that the United States is a nation under siege into a self-fulling prophecy. It begins with sending 1,500 troops to the southern border in order to prevent an immigrant “invasion.” Trump has also provoked a tariff war with China, and another with Canada and Mexico is hanging in the balance. Outrage has already greeted his saber-rattling over Greenland and the Panama Canal, his withdrawal from the World Health Organization and the Paris climate accord, and the closing of the humanitarian aid agency U.S. Agency for International Development.

Infuriating Egypt and Jordan, two allies fearful of Islamic extremists spilling over their borders, Trump has called upon them to take in 2.3 million Gazans in order to clear out Gaza for Israel. What will happen with Russia and Ukraine is anybody’s guess, but a $177 billion aid package has already been reduced to $76 billion. For the moment, suffice it to say, that Trump’s foreign and domestic policy aims should converge in a politics that blends conflict with chaos. Our president surely hopes that this will lead citizens to rally around. him, the self-proclaimed “savior,” who always puts “America First!”

Creating such laundry lists of threats and warnings is not the stuff of great journalistic prose. However, they demonstrate the overwhelming sweep of the Trump project and the early signs, if not of fascism, then of a new order that will surely pervert American democracy. Critics need to bare their ideological teeth, unify competing lobbies, and demand a bold class agenda on par with the “New Deal” of the 1930s and “the Great Society” of the 1960s. The timidity of the president’s critics is self-defeating. The bully is still in the schoolyard, and it’s time for the Democrats to stop being scared of their own shadow. Otherwise the next four years will turn into eight—and then, if some acolyte takes on Trump’s mantle, perhaps more.

U.S. President Donald Trump's latest proposal concerning the future of Gaza has sent shockwaves throughout the international community. The plan, which envisions the mass displacement of Palestinians to make way for large-scale real estate development, has been described by many as a modern form of ethnic cleansing. However, beyond its immediate human rights implications, the proposal reflects a broader and increasingly pervasive trend: the privatization of colonialism. This emerging form of power, which fuses state-backed military interventions with corporate real estate ambitions, is not only reshaping geopolitics but also reinforcing patterns of displacement and profit-driven development that have long characterized capitalism.

In many ways, Trump's proposal is the most explicit articulation of an idea that has been growing within imperialist frameworks: that land is a commodity to be developed, often at the expense of the people who live there. This real estate-driven colonialism extends beyond Gaza, manifesting in urban gentrification, resource-driven land grabs, and international economic policies that prioritize profit over people. Trump, in positioning himself as both a political leader and a real estate mogul, offers a disturbing vision of the future in which state power is wielded to clear land for private enterprise.

Privatizing Occupation: Trump's Gaza Plan and the Business of Displacement

Trump's proposal for Gaza presents itself as a peace plan, but its underlying logic reveals an agenda that prioritizes economic opportunity for private developers over the well-being of Palestinians. According to reports, Trump envisions a future in which Gaza is transformed into a lucrative Mediterranean real estate hub, with its war-ravaged infrastructure replaced by hotels, casinos, and commercial developments. The prerequisite for this transformation? The mass displacement of the approximately 2 million Palestinians who currently live there.

The proposal suggests that Palestinians could be relocated to neighboring countries such as Jordan and Egypt, though neither of these nations has agreed to such a plan. In effect, this would mean the forced expulsion of an entire population to clear space for a new, corporate-friendly urban environment. This mirrors the logic of historical settler-colonial projects, where Indigenous populations were removed to make way for economic and territorial expansion.

Trump's plan for Gaza is not just about development; it is about a worldview in which land is valuable, but the people on it are not.

Trump's framing of the plan as an economic opportunity rather than a humanitarian crisis is key to understanding its ideological underpinnings. He clearly sees Gaza as what one commentator has called "prime real estate," describing it as "a phenomenal location. On the sea. The best weather." Such language makes it clear that he views the region not as a home for millions of people, but as an underutilized economic asset.

Moreover, the proposal fits into a larger pattern within Trump's worldview, in which peace and stability are linked to business development rather than justice or self-determination. The idea that economic investment can resolve deep-rooted political conflicts is a hallmark of neoliberal thinking, but in this case, it is being used as a smokescreen for a violent process of expulsion and reconstruction. In short, Trump's vision for Gaza is one in which real estate developers, backed by the force of the U.S. government, reap enormous profits from the destruction and displacement of an entire people.

Privately Developing the World

Trump's approach to Gaza is not an anomaly; it is emblematic of a broader trend in which colonial ambitions are increasingly expressed through private development. This is particularly evident in Trump's own history as a real estate developer and businessman, a background that deeply informs his approach to politics. Throughout his career, Trump has pursued massive redevelopment projects that often involved displacing existing communities in favor of high-end properties. Whether in New York, Atlantic City, or Florida, his business model has been one of aggressive gentrification, and his policies as president reflect this same mindset on a global scale.

This kind of real estate-driven imperialism has precedent. Historical colonial enterprises often functioned as public-private partnerships, where European powers worked alongside private companies to extract wealth from colonized lands. The British East India Company, for example, was both a corporate and colonial entity, using military force to secure economic dominance. Today, a similar dynamic is emerging, albeit in a more modern form. Instead of explicit colonial rule, nations exert influence through economic policies, real estate development, and financial speculation.

Trump's vision for Gaza exemplifies this shift. His proposal is not framed in terms of direct military occupation, but rather in terms of economic opportunity. In this sense, it represents an updated form of colonialism as led by an imperialist "developer in chief." One that eschews traditional mechanisms of control in favor of the logic of private investment. This shift has significant implications for how global conflicts are managed and resolved. Increasingly, wars and crises are being viewed not as humanitarian emergencies, but as business opportunities. Here the "temporary" displacement of Palestinians is being done in the name of making it the "the Riviera of the Middle East".

Profitable Properties, Expendable Populations

Trump's plan for Gaza is not just about development; it is about a worldview in which land is valuable, but the people on it are not. This is a direct extension of the logic of capitalism, which prioritizes profit over people and often sees human communities as obstacles to economic growth.

In this emerging paradigm, the world is increasingly seen as a series of underdeveloped properties waiting to be monetized. Whether in Gaza, Haiti, Sudan, or urban neighborhoods across major cities in the Global North and South, communities are being displaced under the guise of economic revitalization. The logic is simple: If a population is not financially profitable, it can be removed and replaced with one that is. This perspective transforms entire societies into mere real estate assets, and in doing so, it redefines the meaning of sovereignty, citizenship, and human rights.

Ultimately, Trump's Gaza plan is a warning: If we do not challenge the privatization of colonialism now, we will see this model replicated elsewhere.

This process is not just gentrification in the traditional sense but a form of colonial gentrification—one that operates at a global scale and fuses private development with state-backed displacement. Unlike typical urban gentrification, which displaces lower-income communities within a city, colonial gentrification is an extension of historic imperialism, where entire nations and Indigenous lands are restructured to serve the economic interests of external elites. It is a process in which the destruction of communities—whether through war, economic crisis, or environmental devastation—creates new financial opportunities for corporate actors and ruling-class investors. It does not merely "upgrade" an area for wealthier residents; it systematically removes and replaces populations that have already been subjected to colonial violence and economic marginalization. The same Palestinians whose dispossession began with Zionist settlement in the 20th century are now facing an escalated form of removal under the banner of capitalist redevelopment.

However, it is not just the economic dimension that makes this model so dangerous—it is also the political incentives that come with it. Figures like Trump and other far-right populists have increasingly politically profited from making certain populations expendable. By framing marginalized communities—whether refugees, the poor, Indigenous peoples, or racialized groups—as obstacles to national progress or economic revitalization, these leaders channel popular discontent into reactionary and xenophobic movements. This tactic diverts working-class anger away from the real sources of economic inequality—corporate greed, wealth extraction, and financial speculation—and redirects it toward vulnerable populations. At the same time, the same elites pushing these narratives are also economically profiting from this manufactured expendability, using state power to clear land, remove protections, and privatize resources under the guise of "security" or "development."

In Gaza, the historical injustices of dispossession and occupation have already left the Palestinian people in a precarious position. Trump's plan, far from being an isolated event, is simply the latest manifestation of a global pattern in which communities rendered vulnerable by centuries of exploitation are continually pushed aside in favor of profit-driven redevelopment. This is not just about turning land into a commodity; it is about reinforcing a hierarchy in which certain populations are deemed disposable while others are prioritized as the rightful beneficiaries of development.

The Progressive Struggle Against Global Gentrification

The fight against Trump's Gaza plan is about resisting an entire worldview in which land is nothing more than a commodity to be bought, sold, and developed for profit. The struggles in Palestine are deeply connected to broader struggles against gentrification and displacement across the world. Communities everywhere are being pushed out to make way for wealthier and more politically connected interests. In each case, state power is weaponized through both the police, private security firms, or the military to facilitate the removal of marginalized people, reinforcing systems of inequality while presenting these transformations as "progress" or "revitalization."

To combat this, we need a global movement that recognizes the link between colonialism, capitalism, and displacement. This means fighting not just for the right of Palestinians to remain in their homeland, but for the right of all people to stay in the communities they call home. It requires resisting policies that prioritize profit over people, exposing the ways in which development projects serve elite interests, and building systems that value human lives over real estate speculation. The forces pushing for displacement—whether through military occupation, corporate-led gentrification, or neoliberal economic restructuring—are deeply interconnected, which means resistance must be interconnected as well.

Palestinians, despite facing overwhelming military, political, and economic pressure, are already resisting this plan. Grassroots organizations, activists, and everyday people in Gaza and the broader Palestinian diaspora have long been engaged in a struggle to defend their land, preserve their culture, and assert their right to self-determination.

Ultimately, Trump's Gaza plan is a warning: If we do not challenge the privatization of colonialism now, we will see this model replicated elsewhere. But it is also an opportunity—an opportunity to build new coalitions, new strategies, and new visions for a world in which people, not profits, come first. The struggle against displacement in Palestine must be linked to struggles everywhere, forging a movement that refuses to accept a world in which entire communities are deemed expendable for the sake of corporate and political gain.

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Professor Kristian Nielsen of Aarhus University in Denmark joins “The TMI Show” to discuss the possibility of a US invasion of Greenland. Setting up a confrontation with NATO, Donald Trump says the Danish territory—where the US has a Space Force base already—is essential to American national security. It also has rare earth minerals and an opening to new Northwest Passage that has been created by climate change and the melting of the Polar Ice Cap.

What are the possibilities of an American war against Greenland? What’s the status of the American nuclear facility there? Why has the polar north become strategically important? Ted Rall and Manila Chan give you Too Much Information about the great white north.

The post TMI Show Ep 74: War Against Greenland first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

The post TMI Show Ep 74: War Against Greenland appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

Ahead of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the White House, U.S. President Donald Trump said Palestinians have “no alternative” but to leave Gaza. When the two leaders met in the oval office, Trump declared that after Palestinians from the Gaza Strip are moved elsewhere, the U.S. will “take over.” The U.S. president also expressed his desire to transform the Israeli-occupied territory into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”

These surrealistic statements were uttered as Palestinians across the Gaza Strip are facing the unprecedented destruction left behind by the Israeli army. Many of those who were displaced and have managed to go back to their homes in the past two weeks found only ruins. According to the United Nations, the Israeli army has bombed 90% of all housing units in the Gaza Strip, leaving 160,000 units completely destroyed and 276,000 severely or partially damaged.

Any discussion about the future of Gaza must be guided by the claims and aspirations of the Palestinian people.

As the dust settles and images of the extent of the devastation circulate on mainstream media, it has become clear that the genocidal violence Israel unleashed in Gaza was not only used to kill, displace, and destroy, but also to undercut the Palestinian population’s right to remain. And it is precisely the possibility of securing this right that the Trump-Netanyahu duo is now bent on preventing.

Remaining as a Right

The right to remain is not formally recognized within the human rights canon and is usually associated with refugees who have fled their country and are permitted to stay in a host country while seeking asylum. It has also been invoked in the context of so-called “urban renewal” projects where largely marginalized and insecurely housed urban residents demand their right to stay in their homes and among their community when faced with pressure from powerful actors pushing for redevelopment and gentrification. The right to remain is particularly urgent in settler-colonial situations where colonizers actively displace the Indigenous population and try to replace them with settlers. From First Nations in North America to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia, settlers have used genocidal violence to deny Indigenous people this right.

The right to remain, however, is not merely the right to “stay put.” Rather, to enjoy this right, people must be able to remain within their community and have access to both material and social “infrastructures of existence,” including water and food, hospitals, schools, places of worship, and the means of livelihood. Without these infrastructures the right to remain becomes impossible.

Beyond mere physical presence, the right to remain also encompasses the right to maintain the historical and contemporary stories and webs of relations that hold people and communities together in place and time. This is a crucial aspect of this right, since the settler-colonial project not only aims for the physical removal and replacement of Indigenous people, but also seeks to erase Indigenous cultures, histories, and identities as well as any attachments to land. Finally, it cannot be enough to be allowed to remain as an occupied inhabitant within a besieged territory. The right to remain includes the ability of a people to determine their own destiny.

A History of Permanent Displacement

During the 1948 war, Palestinian cities were depopulated and about 500 Palestinian villages were destroyed, while most of their inhabitants became refugees in neighbouring countries. In total, about 750,000 Palestinians out of a population of 900,000 were displaced from their homes and ancestral lands and were never allowed to return. Since then, displacement or the threat of displacement has been part of the everyday Palestinian experience. Indeed, throughout the West Bank and even within Israel, in places like Umm al Hiran, Palestinian communities continue to be forcibly uprooted and removed from their lands and prevented from returning.

The U.S.-backed Israeli denial of the right to remain in the Gaza Strip is far worse—not only because many communities are made up of refugees and this is their second, third, or fourth displacement—but also because displacement has now become a tool of genocide. As early as October 13, 2023, Israel issued a collective evacuation order to 1.1 million Palestinians living north of Wadi Gaza, and, in the following months similar orders were issued time and again, ultimately displacing 90% of the strip’s population.

To be sure, international humanitarian law obligates warring parties to protect civilian populations, which includes allowing them to move from war zones to safe areas. Yet, these provisions are informed by the assumption that populations have a right to remain in their homes and therefore stipulate that evacuees must be allowed to return when the fighting ends, rendering any form of permanent displacement illegal. Population transfer must be temporary and can only be used for protection and humanitarian relief, and not, as Israel has used and Trump’s recent comments reinforce, a “humanitarian camouflage” to cover up the wholesale destruction and undoing of Palestinian spaces.

The Right to Remain and Self-Determination

Now that a cease-fire has been declared, displaced Palestinians are able to go back to their homes. Yet, this movement back in no way satisfies their right to remain. This is no coincidence: The ability to remain is precisely what Israel has been aiming to eradicate in 15 months of war.

The razing of hospitals, schools, universities and mosques, shops and street markets, cemeteries, and libraries, alongside the destruction of roads, wells, electricity grids, greenhouses, and fishing vessels, was not only carried out in the service of mass killings and the temporary cleansing of areas of their inhabitants, but also to create a new reality on the ground, particularly in northern Gaza. Thus, it is not just that Palestinian homes have been destroyed but that the very existence of the population will now be compromised for years to come.

This is not a new thing. We have seen throughout history how settlers act to permanently displace and eliminate Indigenous populations from the territories. Learning from these stories we know that financial investment in rebuilding houses and infrastructure will not—in itself—ensure the population’s right to remain. Remaining requires self-determination. To enact their right to remain, Palestinians must finally gain their freedom as a self-determining people.

Israel has denied Palestinians their right to remain for over 75 years; it is high time to set things straight. Any discussion about the future of Gaza must be guided by the claims and aspirations of the Palestinian people. Promises of reconstruction and economic prosperity by foreign countries are irrelevant unless explicitly tied to Palestinian self-determination. The right to remain can only be guaranteed through decolonization and Palestinians liberation.

This article first appeared in Al Jazeera English.

I lead the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, America’s Black think tank. When we opened our doors in 1970, there were only 1,469 Black elected officials in office across the United States. Today, there are over 10,000.

These milestones are historic, yet they also compel us to confront the sad reality that African Americans are still far behind their white counterparts in terms of overall economic well-being and political representation.

This duality—celebrating progress while recognizing the challenges in front of us—defines the spirit of Black History Month for 2025.

While congressional power remains fluid, with the Senate and especially the House narrowly divided, strategic coalition building can help us address persistent disparities and create a more equitable future.

While the growth of Black political leadership is encouraging, representation alone doesn’t guarantee systemic change. And today, even that progress in Black political representation is threatened.

Under the last administration, African Americans held 11% of the highest ranking, commissioned officer positions within the White House—nearly reaching our 14% share of the U.S. population.

The current administration, by contrast, has appointed only one Black cabinet nominee, returning our country to the poor Black representation of the 1980s. And following guidance from the White House, many federal agencies have now canceled their Black History Month celebrations.

But outside the White House, Black political representation has reached historic highs.

Today, we have one Black governor, Wes Moore of Maryland—only the third Black governor elected in U.S. history. We’ve set a new record with five Black U.S. Senators: Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.), Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.), Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), and Tim Scott (R-S.C.). The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) now has 62 members—its largest membership yet.

At the local level, Black political leadership is flourishing with a record 143 Black mayors across the country. Black leaders are at the helm of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, and Atlanta. These leaders are shaping not only their own cities, but urban policy across the nation.

Economic progress has accompanied these political milestones. Black Americans have achieved record levels of economic well-being in recent years, including historically low unemployment rates, a median income of $56,490, and median household wealth of $44,900.

But while these figures are encouraging, they remain overshadowed by persistent racial disparities. White households, for instance, maintain a median wealth of $285,000, highlighting the country’s deep racial economic divide.

The African American tradition of struggle advances the entire nation. In that spirit, we must continue to build coalitions that address shared socioeconomic challenges across racial and ethnic lines. Economic security, the need for a living wage, access to affordable housing, and moving communities out of asset poverty—these are the battles that our historic number of Black elected officials must continue to fight.

Recent attacks on diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) are another area demanding focus. We cannot allow the Trump administration’s witch hunt for those who’ve advocated opportunities for underrepresented communities to turn back the slow, gradual progress in Black political power.

The Joint Center was born from the Black freedom tradition—not from a desire for surface-level diversity, but from the need for true systemic change. As we navigate these challenges, we draw strength from this tradition and our remarkable progress.

The next two to four years present unique opportunities for collaboration and advancement. While congressional power remains fluid, with the Senate and especially the House narrowly divided, strategic coalition building can help us address persistent disparities and create a more equitable future.

Let this Black History Month remind us that progress is possible, even in the face of persistent challenges. Together, we can honor the sacrifices of those who came before us and pave the way for a brighter future for generations to come.

These first 100 days in any presidency is a statement. A statement made for one's supporters who then cheer in response. U.S. President Donald Trump made a clear statement when he pardoned everyone involved in the assault on the capitol on January 6, 2021. Many have become concerned the message is that political violence on behalf of Trump will be forgiven, condoned, and even encouraged. No doubt his most fervent supporters are receiving the message and have already vowed revenge.

During these first 100 days the messages are also for those who did not vote for the president. Past administrations have often gone to extremes to find a way to include someone in their cabinet from the opposite party, an expression of a political olive branch, a promise to work together, across differences in priorities and ideologies. Here, Trump is sending the message that anyone who has ever even as much as thought in ways that were not in favor of him are in danger, in danger of losing their jobs, and even in physical danger as he prioritized removing security clearances from Gen. Mark Milley and Dr. Anthony Fauci.

We are receiving statements, and many of us are left with a set of chaotic destructions to try to untangle and make sense of. The shock and awe, the flooding of the zone that Steve Bannon and others have articulated is playing out. We know their playbook, yet we find our emotions played with regardless. As an already exhausted Stephen Colbert noted on his show on January 30, this isn't our first rodeo. We know how they will push us around with the 24-hour disorienting news cycle, yet somehow we're still receiving a concussion. Even when we can anticipate trauma, it doesn't negate the impact on our bodies—individual and collective.

Trump's entertaining charades, his absurdly chaotic and nonsensical yet mesmerizing performance, leaves us breathless and tells us a lie about our neighbors being our enemies rather than our greatest assets.

On January 29, we saw 67 bodies, 67 lives become extinguished in a tragic crash where an army helicopter crashed into plane landing from Wichita, Kansas in D.C. The country grieved the unimaginable. The first major airline incident since 2009. I know most of us held each other extra close at the news, and our hearts broke for all those whose future would never be the same, who are enduring the unimaginable grief of losing someone who is everything to them.

Yet before families could even begin to process their losses, with a racist and ableist fervor, Trump seized this tragedy as another opportunity to divide us. Without evidence, he blamed diversity initiatives and disabled people—a claim that is unabashedly in opposition of reality. The New York Times reported that staffing shortages are the more pressing concern, with federal agencies struggling for years to fill key positions at the Federal Aviation Administration. The type of staffing that had one air traffic control worker managing both helicopters and planes is reportedly not uncommon, pointing to systemic issues rather than Trump's manufactured and dangerous crisis about diversity in the workplace.

This administration's strategy is clear: Create chaos, place blame on marginalized communities, and hope we're too exhausted to see through the smoke and mirrors. Meanwhile, federal workers are being pressured—by Elon Musk's DOGE initiative no less—to accept questionable "Fork in the Road" resignation offers, further destabilizing our institutions and the people who keep them running. Ironically these resignations are being forced as a way to save money while Elon Musk's company Tesla paid $0 in taxes in 2024.

The cruel irony is that diversity actually strengthens teams and improves performance—this isn't just rhetoric, it's backed by extensive research. Recent McKinsey studies show companies committed to diversity demonstrate a 39% increased likelihood of outperformance. Diverse teams bring unique perspectives that unlock innovation, enhance problem-solving, and create environments where everyone feels empowered to contribute their full expertise. When we artificially limit who can participate, we all lose.

But this administration isn't interested in evidence-based policy. If they were, we would see very different approaches across the board. Take trans healthcare, for example. The American Medical Association has explicitly stated that gender-affirming care is medically necessary, warning that "forgoing gender-affirming care can have tragic consequences." They've urged governors to oppose legislation prohibiting such care for minor patients, calling it "a dangerous intrusion into the practice of medicine." Yet instead of following medical expertise, we see continued demonization of trans youth and their families. This assault on evidence extends further—a harrowing war on science has been unleashed, with Trump officials now targeting even basic terms like "gender" and "disability" through the National Science Foundation.

As this administration wages war on scientific language and evidence-based policy, there is much chaos to weed through, and it is hard to know what to pay attention to. So much of these performances are really designed to exhaust us. To leave us feeling defeated. There are lots of questions about what resistance looks like at a time like this. Even questions as to whether resistance is possible.

My answer to these questions is: Of course there is resistance. In fact, there is what indigenous scholar Gerald Vizenor termed survivance. Right now, surviving IS resistance. When so many of our neighbors are directly threatened, their joy and their existence IS resistance.

These tactics from Trump and Musk are pointing toward how we need to strategize as a response. We need a politics of solidarity. Solidarity means seeing that for most of us who hold complex identities, we are seeing our rights be whittled away. This administration is deploying transparent strategies to turn us against one another even as we see the way elite billionaires—the same ones standing behind him during the inauguration, obstructing the view of his future cabinet—are the only ones likely to thrive. The price of eggs is not going down. Tariffs on our closest neighbors, and our greatest allies, have been put on a pause after another frantic performance that ate up airwaves, yet they loom—leaving the possibility of, in the near future, increasing prices on basic necessities in the United States due to these tariffs. Most of us who are not elite billionaires are unlikely to see our quality of life improve.

Yet, Trump's entertaining charades, his absurdly chaotic and nonsensical yet mesmerizing performance, leaves us breathless and tells us a lie about our neighbors being our enemies rather than our greatest assets. He wants us to forget that we need each other—that our strength lies in our connections, our differences, our willingness to stand together.

There is a lesson here, an insight into what we need to survive, what we need to ensure everyone in our community is safe, and also an insight into what one strategy of dehumanization is for this administration. When they blame disabled people for an awful tragedy like the plane crash on January 29, we must recognize disabled people as vital assets to our communities. When they deny healthcare to trans youth, we must loudly and actively speak out in support of our trans friends, neighbors, and family members. When they vilify immigrants, we must remember that we are—as the poet Gwendolyn Brooks wrote—each other's harvest.

But let's be clear: The road ahead will be brutal. As more of us face direct threats to our lives and livelihoods, things will likely get worse before they get even worse. Many of us—disabled people, trans youth, people of color, immigrants, women, educators, dedicated federal workers, and others targeted by this administration—are not safe, and that's not hyperbole. That's precisely why solidarity isn't just a nice ideal—it's a survival strategy. When they manufacture chaos to divide us, we must recognize it as a desperate attempt to prevent us from building the collective power they fear. When they try to exhaust us, we must lean on each other. When they push policies that threaten our very existence, we must hold onto each other tighter.

Our solidarity is not based on naive optimism but on the clear-eyed understanding that we cannot survive alone. In these dangerous times, coming together isn't just an option—it's our only path forward. They want us isolated, exhausted, and afraid. Instead, we choose each other. We choose to recognize that our disabled neighbors make our communities stronger. We choose to stand with trans youth and their families. We choose to see immigrants as vital to our collective future. This is not the easy path—it's the necessary one. And while solidarity alone cannot guarantee our safety, it remains our best defense against those who would rather see us divided and conquered.

President Donald Trump's executive order prohibiting any hospital that receives federal funds from practicing gender-affirming care callously disregards the needs of children who are both gender and neurodiverse, putting them and their families at risk. If anyone celebrating this order were to spend time with the parents, children, and doctors affected, their feelings might change. They should meet Pearl who before receiving treatment was failing out of high school, contemplating suicide, and rarely left the house, and is now attending community college, teaching herself another language, and has developed deep friendships. Or the mathematically-gifted Ellen who after two deep depressive episodes in the last three years, finds safety, companionship, and stability in her gender support group. Or Jacob, a role model to all that meet him, who is attending college out of state and just performed in a concert on campus.

For three years my husband and I have been part of a support group with the parents of these children, who range in age from 14 to 25. Many are now scrambling for information to determine how far the order extends; where one can continue to receive care; what care, if any, the doctors they’ve trusted, relied on, and put faith in for years can still provide. Parents are counting prescription refills, checking if pharmacies will still honor them, searching for providers not impacted by the order, and compiling a list of states they could afford to travel to if other options don’t materialize. Some fear the order will destroy their children’s delicate mental health. Others fear it is a death sentence.

Our “community” includes some of the most thoughtful and loving caregivers I have ever known. Our children, who all have autism spectrum disorder (ASD), see and experience the world through a different yet remarkable lens. While some focus on their deficits, we see their creativity, honesty, strong sense of justice, loyalty, and enhanced focus as superpowers. But none of us deny that what makes them unique also presents challenges, including struggling with social interactions, poor executive functioning skills, or developmental delays. One challenge they all share is dealing with their gender diversity.

These are parents not boogeymen. These children are lovingly cared for and listened to, not abused.

Those with ASD are three to six times more likely than the general population to be gender diverse1—the umbrella term that includes non-binary and transgender. On top of their social, developmental, or communication issues, the added stress of feeling uncomfortable in their own bodies deeply impacts their well-being. We often talk about their “dark periods” when they’ve experienced debilitating depression, suicidal ideation, and elevated anxiety. Like any good parent, we sought advice from trusted medical professionals who provide the standard of care supported by leading medical organizations, including the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Our children see a multidisciplinary team of fully licensed, board-certified, highly trained pediatric specialists at a world-renowned hospital. These neuropsychologists, psychiatrists, gynecologists, and social workers coordinate care plans tailored to each child, considering their unique developmental, mental, and emotional health needs. Every child is evaluated regularly over extended periods of time. The medical care they receive may include mental health treatment, executive functioning courses, and in-person or online groups where they play games like D&D and socialize with like-minded youth. Some children who are past puberty receive hormone therapy after an extensive evaluation process. No child under the age of 18 is provided with gender-affirming surgery.

Parents in our group run the gamut. Some struggled to accept their child’s gender diversity or ASD diagnosis. Some oppose using hormone therapy, despite their child’s repeated demands, because they believe their child couldn’t handle the responsibility. Some have once needed to hospitalize their suicidal children, but have watched them flourish since starting them on hormone therapy. All struggling and questioning. But no care decisions are made without extensive consultation with their doctors, whose paramount concern is that our children are happy, healthy, productive, and thriving.

My child does not receive hormone therapy or other treatments outlined in the order. I do not, cannot, fully understand the magnitude of their pain. All I can do is stand witness to this action’s cruelty. These are parents not boogeymen. These children are lovingly cared for and listened to, not abused. These doctors have dedicated their lives to improving the mental and physical health of some of the most vulnerable among us. They are saving them, not experimenting on them. We are all good, intelligent, informed, and, now, scared people, whose greatest concern is the welfare of our children.

Editor's Note: To protect privacy all names and identifying details of those mentioned in this piece have been changed.

Donald Trump and the Republicans are unleashing a tsunami of extremist executive orders and policy changes. But the Democrats who one would normally expect to lead the resistance are not reacting, explaining that they are in “wait and see mode” because they are still despondent about the election results.

The post First Meeting of the Resistance first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

The post First Meeting of the Resistance appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

This year’s Doomsday Clock Statement landed like a damp squib in a Trump-swamped corporate news cycle on January 28th. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists only moved the hands of the Clock forward by one second, from 90 seconds up to 89 seconds to midnight, which must have come as a relief to the few members of the public who heard about it.

But this minimal advance in the hands of the Clock was a strange and misleading top-line for the Bulletin’s actual Doomsday Clock Statement, which was brimming with extremely dire warnings that deserve far greater official and public attention.

This disconnect between the movements of the hands of the Doomsday Clock and Bulletin’s underlying threat assessments is deeply troubling. If the positioning of the hands of the Clock does not accurately reflect the seriousness of the dangers it represents, then the powerful symbolism of the Doomsday Clock is lost, undermining the very purpose for which Albert Einstein, J. Robert Oppenheimer and their colleagues invented it.

The new Clock Statement began, “In 2024, humanity edged ever closer to catastrophe. Trends that have deeply concerned (us) continued, and despite unmistakable signs of danger, national leaders and their societies have failed to do what is needed to change course.”

The original atomic scientists created the Doomsday Clock to symbolize humanity’s suicidal march toward annihilation by nuclear war, and that is still the greatest danger that midnight on the Clock represents, even as it now incorporates the added dangers of climate change, biological threats and disruptive technologies.

The threat assessments in the 2025 Clock statement begin with the warning that the war in Ukraine “still looms over the world,” and that it “could become nuclear at any moment because of a rash decision or through accident or miscalculation.”

It was this danger of escalation to nuclear war over Ukraine that led the Bulletin to move the hands of the Clock forward by 10 seconds in January 2023, from 100 to 90 seconds to midnight.

Since then, despite President Biden’s warning in 2022 that war between Russia and the United States would be the suicidal Third World War that we must avoid at all costs, the U.S. and NATO have blasted through every self-imposed “red line” designed to prevent that, providing Ukraine with tanks, F-16 warplanes, long-range missiles, and approval to use them inside Russia as well as in Ukraine.

The roles of U.S. and NATO personnel in targeting, planning, surveillance, intelligence and secret “special operations” involving Western weapons have escalated into the very war between the United States and Russia that Biden promised to avoid.

So we cannot understand the Bulletin’s decision to move the hands of the Doomsday Clock only one second closer to the global mass suicide it symbolizes, as if these developments in the war between NATO and Russia have not brought us significantly closer to self-destruction than we were two years ago.

The Clock Statement then addresses the crisis in the Middle East. In January 2023, when the Bulletin last moved the hands of the clock forward, the U.S. and Israel were enjoying a false sense of security and normalcy in that region, believing that they had suppressed and tamed armed resistance to Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine.

Now, since the Palestinian breakout in October 2023 and Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the new Doomsday Clock statement warns that, “Conflict in the Middle East threatens to spiral out of control into a wider war without warning.”

With nuclear-armed Israel threatening to launch a major war on Iran and ready to use its nuclear weapons before it would accept an existential defeat in such a war, and with no real limits to U.S. support for Israeli war-making and genocide, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists is right to warn that this could spiral out of control at any moment. Yet it seems to have ignored this danger too in its one-second tick forward of the Doomsday Clock.

While these raging conflicts involving nuclear weapons states may be the most dangerous current flashpoints for a nuclear war, nothing reflects the relentless nature of our accelerating march toward Armageddon more clearly than the determination with which the nuclear weapons powers, led by the United States, are expanding and “modernizing” their nuclear arsenals, even as they complete the dismantling of all Cold War-era arms control treaties and nuclear safeguards.

The 2025 Doomsday Clock Statement makes it clear that the Bulletin’s analysts understand this only too well:

“The countries that possess nuclear weapons are increasing the size and role of their arsenals, investing hundreds of billions of dollars in weapons that can destroy civilization. The nuclear arms control process is collapsing, and high-level contacts among nuclear powers are totally inadequate given the danger at hand.”

And yet they insist that the inexorable advance of these Doomsday plans over the past two years has only brought us one second closer to Doomsday. How can that be?

The next and final sentence in the paragraph on nuclear weapons addresses the dangers of nuclear proliferation, which is the widely predicted result of the failure of the nuclear powers to pursue genuine nuclear disarmament:

“Alarmingly, it is no longer unusual for countries without nuclear weapons to consider developing arsenals of their own—actions that would undermine long-standing nonproliferation efforts and increase the ways in which nuclear war could start.”

The next paragraph in the Doomsday Clock Statement addresses the dangers of the Climate Crisis. It explains that global greenhouse gas emissions are still increasing and global temperatures are still rising, causing extreme weather, floods, tropical cyclones, heat waves, droughts and wildfires on every continent.

“The long-term prognosis for the world’s attempts to deal with climate change remains poor,” it reads, “as most governments fail to enact the financing and policy initiatives necessary to halt global warming.”

But this is just one more dire warning that is not reflected in the hands of the Doomsday Clock.

On biological threats, the Clock statement warns, “Supposedly high-containment biological laboratories continue to be built throughout the world, but oversight regimes for them are not keeping pace, increasing the possibility that pathogens with pandemic potential may escape. Rapid advances in artificial intelligence have increased the risk that terrorists or countries may attain the capability of designing biological weapons for which countermeasures do not exist.”

On disruptive technologies, it warns that, “Systems that incorporate artificial intelligence in military targeting have been used in Ukraine and the Middle East, and several countries are moving to integrate artificial intelligence into their militaries. Such efforts raise questions about the extent to which machines will be allowed to make military decisions—even decisions that could kill on a vast scale, including those related to the use of nuclear weapons.”

The strange decision to only advance the Doomsday Clock by one second appears to be a hedge against the possibility that all these current trends will continue, but that, by some miracle, none of them will actually succeed in destroying us all in the next few decades. This could leave BAS in the embarrassing position of a Chicken Little predicting a calamity that has not come to pass, even as the hands of the Doomsday Clock advance to within a few seconds of midnight.

But this way of thinking defeats the very purpose of the Doomsday Clock, which is to raise the alarm with policy-makers and the public about the dangerous course we are on. The existential dangers we face are only too real, and the failure of our public and private institutions to address and resolve them is the most egregious and potentially suicidal failure in the history of our species.

In abdicating its responsibility to warn us of the gravity of these dangers, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists risks turning Einstein and Oppenheimer’s call for sanity into yet another mechanism to normalize the suicidal insanity of our 21st century rulers.

The Bulletin appears to have joined all the other mainstream institutions of American society - the White House, Congress, the military-industrial complex, the Republican and Democratic Parties, the corporate media, Wall Street, academia - in normalizing the collective denial by which our corrupt ruling class lulls the public into sleepwalking toward mass extinction.

Remarkably, while the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists seems to have abandoned its founders’ commitment to the urgency of nuclear disarmament, President Trump apparently recognizes that ending the nuclear arms race would be the crowning diplomatic achievement of his, or any, U.S. presidency.

In off-the-cuff remarks in a video call to the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 23rd, Trump suddenly raised the tantalizing prospect of nuclear disarmament negotiations with Russia and China. Talking about a phone call with President Xi of China, Trump elaborated,

“We’d [Trump and Xi?] like to see denuclearization. In fact, with President Putin, prior to an election result, which was, frankly, ridiculous, we were talking about denuclearization of our two countries, and China would have come along. China has a much smaller, right now, nuclear armament than us or field than us, but they’re going to be catching up at some point over the next four or five years.”

“And I will tell you that President Putin really liked the idea of cutting way back on nuclear. And I think the rest of the world, we would have gotten them to follow. And China would have come along too. China also liked it. Tremendous amounts of money are being spent on nuclear, and the destructive capability is something that we don’t even want to talk about today, because you don’t want to hear it. It’s too depressing.”

“So, we want to see if we can denuclearize, and I think that’s very possible. And I can tell you that President Putin wanted to do it. He and I wanted to do it. We had a good conversation with China. They would have been involved, and that would have been an unbelievable thing for the planet. And I hope it can be started up again.”

What Trump says in these unscripted, off-the-cuff remarks is encouraging. It seems that President Xi reminded Trump of their discussions during his first term, and, at least for a moment, turned his attention to the ultimate “elephant in the room” hanging over all our heads.

As the fate of the world teeters in the hands of an unpredictable U.S. president and the enfeebled Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists muffles the powerful symbolism of its Doomsday Clock, CODEPINK has created an alternative for the precarious times we live in: the Peace Clock. Instead of counting down the minutes and seconds to our extinction, the Peace Clock calls on the U.S. government to take a series of specific, concrete steps toward nuclear disarmament.

That starts with agreeing to Russian and Chinese proposals for a ban on weapons in space and reinstating the 1972 ABM Treaty with Russia, including the removal of formerly prohibited U.S. anti-ballistic-missile installations in Poland and Romania. By such concrete, practical steps, the Peace Clock would, step by step, make the world safer and safer, leading sooner rather than later to its sixth and final step: the complete nuclear disarmament of all the nuclear weapons powers.

You can learn more about the Peace Clock and sign the Peace Clock Manifesto here.

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Chief Trump consultant Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have hit the ground running, shocking Washington’s Inside-the-Beltway bureaucratic infrastructure by following the Silicon Valley approach of “move fast and break things.”

Musk is moving to shut down US-AID. He offered bullying buyout offers to 2.3 million federal employees. He and his team of very-young assistants has been granted access to confidential government data, including those of the Treasury Department payment systems, NOAA, Medicare and Medicaid, and more.

Musk says DOGE is thoughtful and deliberate. But the speed with which he is moving worries critics who think he’s endangering essential government services and might have nefarious designs on Americans’ personal data. What’s next for DOGE?

On today’s “The TMI Show,” Manila Chan and Ted Rall speak with financial expert and political analyst Mitch Roschelle.

The post TMI Show Ep 73: What’s Next for DOGE? first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

The post TMI Show Ep 73: What’s Next for DOGE? appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

U.S. President Donald Trump's executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico the "Gulf of America" isn't just another absurd stunt or another example of his outlandish behavior. It signals a much deeper, more troubling agenda that seeks to erase historical identity and assert imperial domination over a region already suffering under a long history of interventionist policies. At its core, this is a move to expand the U.S. empire by erasing Mexico's presence from a geographical feature recognized for centuries.

The name "Gulf of Mexico" has existed since the 16th century. Its recognition is supported by international organizations such as the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) and the United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN). These organizations ensure that place names remain neutral and historically accurate, preventing nations from distorting or erasing cultural and historical ties to specific regions. Mexico has formally rejected this renaming, emphasizing that no country has the right to unilaterally change the identity of a shared natural resource that spans multiple borders. This is a matter of respect for international law and sovereignty, which the Trump administration has ignored in favor of pursuing nationalistic expansionism.

Erasing "Mexico" from our maps isn't an aberration. It's part of a long pattern of anti-Mexican racism in the U.S., ranging from political scapegoating and border militarization to violent rhetoric that fuels hate crimes. But this move goes beyond that. It fits into a much larger U.S. strategy of controlling the Western Hemisphere, which dates back to the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, which claimed the U.S. had the right to dictate who influences Latin America. Over time, this ideology has come to justify U.S.-backed military interventions, coups, and economic manipulations in the region aimed at securing U.S. interests and ensuring that Latin America remains in a subordinate position.

While Trump's attempt to erase "Mexico" from the Gulf of Mexico may appear symbolic, it could have devastating consequences.

Not only is the Gulf of Mexico a site of historical importance, but it is also rich in oil and natural resources. This fact is no coincidence. The United States has a long history of trying to control these resources including backing oil company boycotts against Mexico’s nationalized industry in the 1930s and signing trade agreements that favor U.S. companies over Mexican sovereignty. Renaming the Gulf of Mexico signals a territorial and economic claim over these waters and their resources, further cementing U.S. imperial ambitions in the region.

Companies like Google Maps, which has announced plans to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America after Trump's executive order, are just playing into the billionaire-fueled power grab that advances a racist, nationalist agenda of domination and imperialism. Even if Google only applies this change in the U.S., it still normalizes the idea that facts can be rewritten to serve a political agenda. At a time when diplomacy and mutual respect should be prioritized, honoring the internationally recognized name would send a clear message that Google values historical accuracy, global cooperation, and good neighborly relations.

The Gulf of Mexico is more than just a body of water; it is a shared resource of immense ecological, economic, and cultural significance for Mexico, the United States, and the world. It plays a critical role in regional trade, fisheries, and energy production, hosting some of North America's most important offshore oil reserves. The United States has long considered Latin America its "backyard," and this is another proof that its imperial ambitions are still alive.

The environmental devastation already occurring in the Gulf region is evidenced by devastating oil spills and the degradation of marine ecosystems. This destruction is further compounded as U.S. and foreign companies continue to exploit the region's resources with no regard for the long-term damage.

The movement to rename the Gulf of Mexico fits into a broader pattern of anti-Mexican sentiment in the United States that has often manifested in political scapegoating, hateful rhetoric, and border militarization. Such rhetoric fuels violence and hate crimes against Mexican and Latino communities. While Trump's attempt to erase "Mexico" from the Gulf of Mexico may appear symbolic, it could have devastating consequences. It reflects a disregard for historical truth, an aggressive assertion of U.S. superiority, and the continuation of exploitative colonialist practices that harm both the environment and Latin American people.

The first two weeks of Trump 2.0 have been a whirling swirl of venomous prejudice, but one neon throughline of the discombobulating frenzy is an attack on the transgender community. The Trump administration is brazenly attempting to drive trans people out of existence through the denial of education, the ability to get medical care, to travel on a passport, to serve in the military. Trump even cooked up an executive order denying federal funds to schools that allow trans athletes to participate in girls’ and women’s sports. This is nothing short of an attempt to evict trans people from civic life. This is what banishment looks like.

Sport has played a pivotal role in this grim persecution. Howls of alleged unfairness in the sphere of sport swiftly transmogrified into the unabashed hate that simmers just beneath the legalese in Trump’s executive order “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” The executive order drips with fear and hyperbole. “The erasure of sex in language and policy,” it claims, “has a corrosive impact not just on women but on the validity of the entire American system.” (If only it were that easy!) The order narrowly defines sex in a way that nixes trans and nonbinary people out of existence.

U.S.-based trans journalist Sydney Bauer told us, “For these political leaders, the goal is to create a segment of society where our civil rights are not needed to be protected so they can advance it to all other areas, despite court rulings increasingly affirming all aspects of trans people’s lives are protected by the 14th Amendment.” She added, “If my gender identity is challenged when I step on a sports field, the goal is for it to be challenged—and forcibly detransitioned—in public life.”

Just as sport was a space for test-driving and spreading anti-trans messaging and policies, it doubles as a platform for fightback against the ongoing horror show.

Athletes and sports administrators set the stage for this confected moral panic. Long before Trump’s executive orders, they engaged in blatant fearmongering, painting trans women athletes as cheaters and even predators. NCAA swimmer Riley Gaines has made transphobia an integral part of her brand. Even tennis icon Martina Navratilova has long viewed trans women athletes as “cheats.” The anodyne-sounding “Protect Women’s Sports” has become the right-wing dog whistle for trans exclusion. The haters’ transphobia even extended to athletes who were not in fact trans. During the Paris 2024 Olympics, a slew of celebrities—from JK Rowling to Elon Musk—mislabeled the Algerian boxer Imane Khelif as trans, ginning up malicious attacks against her.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) issued a seemingly inclusive framework for trans athletes in 2021. But the IOC punted ultimate responsibility to international sports federations, many of which chose to exclude athletes, despite a lack of scientific evidence. Next month, the IOC will select a new president. One frontrunner, Lord Sebastian Coe, has openly opined that trans athletes threaten sport. Other candidates have adopted equally, if not more draconian stances.

Taken together, this steady flow of anti-trans bigotry in sport was the gateway to full-throttle demonization under Trump.

Let’s be clear: The endgame of trans demonization is death. Not only social death, but actual death. The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed legislation banning transgender girls and women from participating in sports. If this bill becomes a law, it will cost human lives. Recent research found that state-level anti-transgender laws increased the rates of suicide attempts among transgender and nonbinary youth.

Sport was the Trojan Horse used to attack trans people in all walks of life. But the machine is still revving, scanning for targets. Just as the right-wing hate machine didn’t stop with “Protecting Women’s Sports,” transphobia will hurt cisgender women who don’t conform to a narrow, Eurocentric version of womanhood. The Trump administration’s attempt to distill the meaning of “woman” into chromosomes or hormone levels echoes the sexism of the past. Sports have long used sex to control, steamrolling the diversity among women deemed “too masculine.” Ultimately, attacks on transgender people harm all women, especially women of color. Just ask Caster Semenya. Or Dutee Chand. Now the Trump administration is widening the onslaught.

Sadie Shreiner, a trans athlete currently competing in the NCAA, pointed out to us that the Trump administration’s decision to squelch research about transgender individuals is meant “to eradicate our historical and scientific existence.” She added, “This was never about trans athletics, science, or ‘fairness’, it has always been about oppression. They’ll attack me all the same whether I’m on or off the track.”

Across the world, hate mongers are reading Trump’s anti-trans cue card. Travers, a sociologist specializing in trans inclusion at Simon Fraser University, told us, “The anti-trans moral panic that has been fostered in the United States and the United Kingdom has definitely breathed life into anti-trans initiatives in Canada.” Anti-trans groups purporting to “protect women” have also emerged in recent years in Japan. They not only deny trans people their rights, but also their very existence through a discourse directly imported from U.S. politics.

Sports are never just sports. The ongoing moral panic around trans people explodes the erroneous notion that sports and politics are separate endeavors. Just as sport was a space for test-driving and spreading anti-trans messaging and policies, it doubles as a platform for fightback against the ongoing horror show.

Chris Mosier, the first trans athlete to represent Team USA (in duathlon and triathlon), posted on Bluesky: “We will fight. We will take care of each other. We will continue to exist, long after this administration is done.” Harrison Browne, the first transgender professional hockey player, appearing on Dave Zirin’s Edge of Sports podcast, urged for “debunking these myths of trans women and their participation.” Trans-rights advocacy groups are kicking into gear. Travers, the sociologist, said that the moment demands “Immediate resistance, legal resistance, public resistance, refusal to go along. But I also think it’s really important to play the long game,” building bona fide solidarity in the nooks and crannies of society.

There’s no question that when it comes to the possibility of trans banishment, we’re experiencing a five-alarm-fire, all-hands-on-deck moment. We have a fight on our hands. It’s time to link elbows and stand together on the right side of history.

Chris Wright, who was recently confirmed as the new secretary of energy, has been famous for years as one of the more unapologetic proponents of fossil fuels. In 1992, Wright founded Pinnacle Technologies, an early leader in the hydraulic fracking business, and later made his fortune as the CEO of Liberty Energy, one of the largest oilfield service firms in North America. In 2023, he made headlines for a series of inflammatory statements disputing the science of climate change.

Now Wright has taken a different tack on climate—less outrageous, but no less dangerous. At his Senate confirmation hearing last week, Wright claimed that he didn’t deny the existence of anthropogenic climate change; he only denied that climate change warranted any reductions in fossil fuel production. To make his case, Wright spoke in abstractions about “tradeoffs” and “complicated dialogue.”

Then came the doozy: Poor countries like Kenya suffered from sparse access to propane fuel, Wright said, and only fracking could deliver the low prices to make up for those shortfalls.

Wright claims to be working on behalf of the global poor, but if he were, he might heed their repeated calls for emission reductions in the United States and other wealthy countries.

Wright has been quietly developing this specious argument for years: that addressing energy poverty, especially in the Global South, requires untrammeled fossil fuel production, no matter the damage to the planet. In Liberty Energy’s 2024 annual report, Bettering Human Lives, Wright laid out his case for hydrocarbon extraction. “Only a billion people today enjoy the full benefits of a highly energized lifestyle,” Wright wrote, while “7 billion striv[e] to achieve the lifestyles of the more fortunate 1 billion.” Without access to reliable natural gas, “over 2 billion people still cook their daily meals and heat their homes with traditional fuels, [including] wood, dung, agricultural waste, or charcoal,” putting them at risk of acute respiratory disease from air pollution. The only remedy, according to Wright, is more fossil fuels like gas.

This weaponization of global energy poverty is so insidious because it takes a legitimate issue—inadequate access to reliable energy for billions of people around the world—and turns it into a neat talking point for the destruction of the planet. Energy insecurity is a real challenge for the Global South, with over 3 billion people estimated to suffer from energy poverty of some kind. But so is climate change, which the World Bank projects will push up to 135 million people into poverty by 2030, and which is already fueling extreme weather, conflict, and migration, from Micronesia to the Sahel.

Wright would like you to believe that “Zero Energy Poverty” and Net Zero emissions by 2050 are incompatible goals. According to Wright, “solar, wind, and batteries… will not, and cannot replace most of the energy services and raw materials provided by hydrocarbons.”

But this could not be further from the truth.

In a 2021 report, the Rockefeller Foundation report found that renewable energy could end energy poverty worldwide at a cost of just $130 billion a year, less than a sixth of what the United States currently spends on defense each year. Moreover, the report found that such a transformation would create 25 million jobs across Africa and Asia, more than 30 times the number of jobs created by a comparable investment in fossil fuels.

Wright’s case for hydrocarbons is based on a bad faith conflation of existing realities with possible futures. In Bettering Human Lives, Wright claims that electricity currently “delivers only 20% of total primary energy consumption” in order to challenge clean energy’s viability as a substitute for hydrocarbons. But as Wright himself knows, a central feature of the green transition will be the electrification of everything, from transportation to home heating to heavy industry. Present shares of energy usage for electricity do not provide an accurate picture of future consumption patterns .

In the case of the Global South, where energy poverty is most acute, the key will be the implementation and scaling of distributed renewable energy (DRE) systems. Unlike traditional grids, which often carry power over vast distances, DREs generate electricity from clean energy sources close to home. With the cost of batteries and solar PV both falling over 90% in the past decade, these systems are more affordable than ever. The Roosevelt Foundation sees DREs driving the clean energy transition across Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, with mini-grids providing power for a dizzying array of technologies: “solar lanterns, ice-making factories used by fishing communities, milk chillers and irrigation pumps for farmers, refrigerators and life-saving medical equipment in clinics and hospitals, and more.”

Some elements of the climate movement have pushed a degrowth agenda that fails to reckon with the energy needs of many countries in the Global South. Calls for developing nations to abruptly cut off coal consumption, for example, ring hollow if they are not accompanied by meaningful assistance to pay for more expensive alternatives. But for the most part, the climate movement has recognized the inequities in historical development and emissions patterns, and placed the burden squarely on the Global North to drive the decarbonization process.

Wright claims to be working on behalf of the global poor, but if he were, he might heed their repeated calls for emission reductions in the United States and other wealthy countries. For years now, developing countries have been asking the nations most responsible for the climate crisis to decarbonize fastest, in order to buy time for poorer countries to catch up. They have also called for additional climate finance to assist with mitigation and adaptation efforts. At COP29 in November, rich countries pledged $300 billion a year in climate finance by 2035, but research suggests developing nations need closer to $1 trillion a year to protect their most vulnerable populations. If Wright were sincere in his concern for the plight of the global energy poor, he would support these initiatives.

Of course, he will do no such thing. Wright’s patron in the White House has already made the new administration’s policy clear. On his first day back in office, President Donald Trump pulled out of the Paris climate accords—and froze all foreign aid for 100 days. Now Trump appears to have shuttered USAID entirely. To those observing from abroad, Wright’s bad faith appeals to global poverty must appear as one more indignity from an administration inclined to offer little else.

Befitting a presidency inaugurated by a parade of tech billionaires, U.S. President Donald Trump has taken Mark Zuckerberg’s infamous “move fast and break things” approach to the opening weeks of his second term—and break things he has.

Trump quickly handed over the federal government’s keys and wallet to unelected billionaire Elon Musk, who has treated Congress, federal law, and regulators with the same brazen disregard he displays in his business ventures.

Under the guise of the Orwellian Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Musk—the richest man in the world—has bought de facto control of the U.S. government for a cool $288 million in political donations. That’s a bargain compared to the nearly $7 trillion in taxpayer dollars currently at his fingertips.

With Musk serving as judge, jury, and executioner for what constitutes “wasteful” government spending, there’s nothing to stop him from, say, killing investigations into Tesla’s workplace harassment in his California plant.

After sparking confusion, outrage, and temporary restraining orders with their hasty attempt to halt federal spending—imperiling vital programs like Head Start, Meals on Wheels, and Medicaid—Trump and Musk continue to rampage through government.

In a few short weeks, they’ve shuttered federal agencies, fired civil servants, and handed over access to Americans’ sensitive personal and classified information to a group of 20-somethings—all illegally.

According to reporting, Musk’s minions have seized control of the Treasury Department’s payments system. That’s the plumbing that ensures that tax refunds, Social Security payments, and other democratically authorized spending reaches its destination, leaving experts and long-time employees fearful of what comes next.

With Musk serving as judge, jury, and executioner for what constitutes “wasteful” government spending, there’s nothing to stop him from, say, killing investigations into Tesla’s workplace harassment in his California plant or self-driving systems after a fatal pedestrian crash in Arizona.

There’s nothing to stop him from cutting off rivals and securing even more in federal funding and contracts for his company SpaceX, which has taken in more than $15 billion in taxpayer dollars to date.

More concerning, there’s nothing to stop him from using the vast reams of sensitive and personal information he’s now stolen from millions of Americans to train his artificial intelligence systems, hone his X (formerly Twitter) algorithms, or even go after specific individuals and nonprofits that criticize him on social media.

This isn’t a government efficiency program—it’s a hostile corporate takeover of American democracy.

While the ultra-rich and large corporations have long used their political influence to secure power and advance their own interests, never before has one billionaire so thoroughly infiltrated the federal government and bent it to their will for personal gain.

In a way, this is the logical endgame for a political system that’s long rewarded those with pockets deep enough to pay for access and drowned out the needs of working people. Musk has gone directly to the source, raiding the public coffers for his own benefit and interests. This way, he can keep the spigots flowing to himself and his companies, while he champions cuts to vital programs that serve workers and families but not billionaires.

Musk rails against the career federal workers who serve under both Democratic and Republican administrations as “unelected bureaucrats,” but you know them as your mail carrier, your social worker, and your Veterans Administration nurse.

New polling for our organization, Groundwork Collaborative, shows that nearly 60% of voters already believe this unelected tech billionaire has too much influence over Trump and the federal government.

The more they learn, the less they like. Musk’s audacious $2 trillion target for spending reductions is infeasible without deep, painful cuts to veterans benefits, Social Security, Medicare, and food assistance, all of which voters find unacceptable by stunning 50-point margins.

Already, scores of lawsuits have been launched against Musk and DOGE’s blitzkrieg through the federal government. Whether they will stop his reckless behavior is one question. Whether he and Trump will listen if they do is another.

Congress must step in and thoroughly investigate DOGE and check Elon’s unbridled power, before he breaks our government and our democracy beyond repair.

It didn’t take long for the border and immigration enforcement industry to react to U.S. President Donald Trump’s reelection. On November 6, as Bloomberg News reported, stock prices shot up for two private prison companies, GEO Group and CoreCivic. “We expect the incoming Trump administration to take a much more aggressive approach regarding border security as well as interior enforcement,” explained the GEO Group’s executive chair, George Zoley, “and to request additional funding from Congress to achieve these goals.” In other words, the “largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history” was going to be a moneymaker.

As it happens, that Bloomberg piece was a rarity, offering a glimpse of immigration enforcement that doesn’t normally get the attention it deserves by focusing on the border-industrial complex. The article’s tone, however, suggested that there will be a sharp break between the border policies of Donald Trump and former President Joe Biden. Its essential assumption: that Biden adored open borders, while Trump, the demagogue, is on his way to executing a profitable clampdown on them.

In a recent article, “The Progressive Case against Immigration,” journalist Lee Fang caricatured just such a spectrum, ranging from people with “Refugees Welcome” yard signs to staunch supporters of mass deportation. He argued that Democrats should embrace border enforcement and “make a case for border security and less tolerance for migrant rule-breaking.” This, he suggested, would allow the party to “reconnect with its blue-collar roots.” Fang’s was one of many post-election articles making similar points—namely, that the Democrats’ stance on free movement across the border cost them the election.

Biden left office as the king of border contracts, which shouldn’t have been a surprise, since he received three times more campaign contributions than Trump from top border-industry companies during the 2020 election campaign.

But what if the Biden administration, instead of opposing mass deportation, had proactively helped construct its very infrastructure? What if, in reality, there weren’t two distinctly opposed and bickering visions of border security, but two allied versions of it? What if we started paying attention to the budgets where the money is spent on the border-industrial complex, which tell quite a different story than the one we’ve come to expect?

In fact, during President Biden’s four years in office, he gave 40 contracts worth more than $2 billion to the same GEO Group (and its associated companies) whose stocks spiked with Trump’s election. Under those contracts, the company was to maintain and expand the U.S. immigrant detention system, while providing ankle bracelets for monitoring people on house arrest.

And that, in fact, offers but a glimpse of Biden’s tenure as—yes!—the biggest contractor (so far) for border and immigration enforcement in U.S. history. During his four years in office, Biden’s administration issued and administered 21,713 border enforcement contracts, worth $32.3 billion, far more than any previous president, including his predecessor Donald Trump, who had spent a mere—and that, of course, is a joke—$20.9 billion from 2017 to 2020 on the same issue.

In other words, Biden left office as the king of border contracts, which shouldn’t have been a surprise, since he received three times more campaign contributions than Trump from top border-industry companies during the 2020 election campaign. And in addition to such contributions, the companies of that complex wield power by lobbying for ever bigger border budgets, while maintaining perennial public-private revolving doors.

In other words, Joe Biden helped build up Trump’s border-and-deportation arsenal. His administration’s top contract, worth $1.2 billion, went to Deployed Resources, a company based in Rome, New York. It’s constructing processing and detention centers in the borderlands from California to Texas. Those included “soft-sided facilities,” or tent detention camps, where unauthorized foreigners might be incarcerated when Trump conducts his promised roundups.

The second company on the list, with a more than $800 million contract (issued under Trump in 2018, but maintained in the Biden years), was Classic Air Charter, an outfit that facilitates deportation flights for the human-rights-violating ICE Air. Now that Trump has declared a national emergency on the border and has called for military deployment to establish, as he puts it, “operational control of the border,” his people will discover that there are already many tools in his proverbial enforcement box. Far from a stark cutoff and change, the present power transition will undoubtedly prove to be more of a handoff—and to put that in context, just note that such a bipartisan relay race at the border has been going on for decades.

The Bipartisan Border Consensus

In early 2024, I was waiting in a car at the DeConcini Port of Entry in Nogales, Arizona, when a white, nondescript bus pulled up in the lane next to me. We were at the beginning of the fourth year of Biden’s presidency. Even though he had come into office promising more humane border policies, the enforcement apparatus hadn’t changed much, if at all. On either side of that port of entry were rust-colored, 20-foot-high border walls made of bollards and draped with coiling razor wire, which stretched to the horizon in both directions, about 700 miles in total along the U.S.-Mexico border.

In Nogales, the wall itself was a distinctly bipartisan effort, built during the administrations of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. Here, Trump’s legacy was adding concertina wire that, in 2021, the city’s mayor pleaded with Biden to take down (to no avail).

There were also sturdy surveillance posts along the border, courtesy of a contract with military monolith General Dynamics. In them, cameras stared over the border wall into Mexico like dozens of voyeurs. Border Patrol agents in green-striped trucks were also stationed at various points along the wall, constantly eyeing Mexico. And mind you, this represented just the first layer of a surveillance infrastructure that extended up to 100 miles into the U.S. interior and included yet more towers with sophisticated camera systems (like the 50 integrated fixed towers in southern Arizona constructed by the Israeli company Elbit Systems), underground motion sensors, immigration checkpoints with license-plate readers, and sometimes even facial recognition cameras. And don’t forget the regular inspection overflights by drones, helicopters, and fixed-wing aircraft.

Since 2008, ICE and CBP have issued 118,457 contracts, or about 14 a day.

The command-and-control centers, which follow the feeds of that digital, virtual, expansive border wall in a room full of monitors, gave the appropriate Hollywood war-movie feel to the scene, one that makes the Trump “invasion” rhetoric seem almost real.

From my idling car, I watched several disheveled families get off that bus. Clearly disoriented, they lined up in front of a large steel gate with thick bars, where two blue-uniformed Mexican officials waited. The children looked especially scared. A young one—maybe three years old—jumped into her mother’s arms and hugged her tightly. The scene was emotional. Just because I happened to be there at that moment, I witnessed one of many deportations that would happen that day. Those families were among the more than 4 million deported and expelled during the Biden years, a mass expulsion that has largely gone undiscussed.

About a year later, on January 20, Donald Trump stood in the U.S. Capitol building giving his inaugural speech and assuring that crowded room full of officials, politicians, and billionaires that he had a “mandate” and that “America’s decline” was over. He received a standing ovation for saying that he would “declare a national emergency at our southern border,” adding, “All illegal entry will be halted. And we’ll begin the process of sending millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came.” He would, he insisted, “repel the disastrous invasion of our country.”

Implied, as in 2016 when he declared that he was going to build a border wall that already existed, was that Trump would take charge of a supposedly “open border” and finally deal with it. Of course, he gave no credence to the massive border infrastructure he was inheriting.

Back in Nogales, a year earlier, I watched Mexican officials open up that heavy gate and formally finish the deportation process on those families. I was already surrounded by decades of infrastructure, part of more than $400 billion of investment since 1994, when border deterrence began under the Border Patrol’s Operation Gatekeeper. Those 30 years had seen the most massive expansion of the border and immigration apparatus the United States had ever experienced.

The border budget, $1.5 billion in 1994 under the Immigration and Naturalization Service, has risen incrementally every year since then. It was turbocharged after 9/11 by the creation of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (or CBP) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (or ICE), whose combined budget in 2024 exceeded $30 billion for the first time. Not only were the Biden administration’s contracts larger than those of its predecessors, but its budget power grew, too. The 2024 budget was more than $5 billion higher than the 2020 budget, the last year of Trump’s first term in office. Since 2008, ICE and CBP have issued 118,457 contracts, or about 14 a day.

As I watched that family somberly walk back into Mexico, the child still in her mother’s embrace, it was yet another reminder of just how farcical the open-borders narrative has been. In reality, Donald Trump is inheriting the most fortified border in American history, increasingly run by private corporations, and he’s about to use all the power at his disposal to make it more so.

“Is He Going to Be Like Obama?”

Fisherman Gerardo Delgado’s blue boat is rocking as we talk on a drying-up, possibly dying lake in central Chihuahua, Mexico. He shows me his meager catch that day in a single orange, plastic container. He shelled out far more money for gas than those fish would ever earn him at the market.

“You’re losing money?” I ask.

“Every day,” he replies.

It wasn’t always like this. He points to his community, El Toro, that’s now on a hill overlooking the lake—except that hill wasn’t supposed to be there. Once upon a time, El Toro had been right on the lakeshore. Now, the lake has receded so much that the shore is remarkably far away.

According to forecasts for the homeland and border-control markets, climate change is a factor spurring the industry’s rapid growth.

Two years earlier, Delgado told me, his town ran out of water and his sisters, experiencing the beginning of what was about to be a full-on catastrophe, left for the United States. Now, more than half of the families in El Toro have departed as well.

Another fisherman, Alonso Montañes tells me they are witnessing an “ecocide.” As we travel along the lake, you can see how far the water has receded. It hasn’t rained for months, not even during the summer rainy season. And no rain is forecast again until July or August, if at all.

On shore, the farmers are in crisis and I realize I’m in the middle of a climate disaster, a moment in which—for me—climate change went from the abstract and futuristic to something raw, real, and now. There hasn’t been a megadrought of this intensity for decades. While I’m there, the sun continues to burn, scorchingly, and it’s far hotter than it should be in December.

The lake is also a reservoir from which farmers would normally receive irrigation water. I asked every farmer I met what he or she was going to do. Their responses, though different, were tinged with fear. Many were clearly considering migrating north.

“But what about Trump?” asked a farmer named Miguel under the drying up pecan trees in the orchard where he worked. At the inauguration, Trump said, “As commander and chief I have no other choice but to protect our country from threats and invasions, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do. We are going to do it at a level that nobody has ever seen before.”

What came to mind when I saw that inauguration was a 2003 Pentagon climate assessment in which the authors claimed that the United States would have to build “defensive fortresses” to stop “unwanted, starving migrants” from all over Latin America and the Caribbean. The Pentagon begins planning for future battlefields 25 years in advance, and its assessments now invariably include the worst scenarios for climate change (even if Donald Trump doesn’t admit that the phenomenon exists). One non-Pentagon assessment states that the lack of water in places like Chihuahua in northern Mexico is a potential “threat multiplier.” The threat to the United States, however, is not the drought but what people will do because of it.

“Is he going to be like Obama?” Miguel asked about Trump. Indeed, Barack Obama was president when Miguel was in the United States, working in agriculture in northern New Mexico. Though he wasn’t deported, he remembers living in fear of a ramping-up deportation machine under the 44th president. As I listened to Miguel talk about the drought and the border, that 2003 Pentagon assessment seemed far less hyperbolic and far more like a prophecy.

Now, according to forecasts for the homeland and border-control markets, climate change is a factor spurring the industry’s rapid growth. After all, future projections for people on the move, thanks to an increasingly overheating planet, are quite astronomical and the homeland security market, whoever may be president, is now poised to reach nearly $1 trillion by the 2030s.

It’s now an open secret that Trump’s invasion and deportation spiels, as well as his plans to move thousands of U.S. military personnel to the border, have not only proved popular with his large constituency but also with private prison companies like GEO Group and others building the present and future nightmarish infrastructure for a world of deportation. They have proven no less popular with the Democrats themselves.

Standing next to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at joint press conference on February 4, U.S. President Donald Trump laid bare a subtext in his rhetoric about Gaza. According to Trump, the U.S. will “own” Gaza, Palestinians will be forcibly resettled in Arab states, and there never will be an independent Palestinian state. While the American state under Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden provided necessary material and rhetorical support for a slow genocide of the people of Gaza, Biden and his underlings never openly expressed a desire to colonize Gaza. The logical conclusion had been that Israel would complete its own colonization of Gaza, with the U.S. running diplomatic interference.

Now, the U.S. will not only violate the sovereignty of the Palestinian people, but Israel won’t even have a seat at the table: “The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it too… and get rid of the destroyed buildings [and] create an economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing,” Trump told reporters as Netanyahu stood by. As a consolation to Bibi, Trump seemed to indicate that the U.S. would soon be backing Israeli annexation of the West Bank. Trump now has outdone Biden, Barack Obama, and Bill Clinton as the most brazen recent president to conceal an imperialist project rejecting self-determination in the language of a foreign policy averse to intervention and informed by popular antiwar sentiments.

Human rights activists already had been seething with outrage over newly-inaugurated Trump’s comments about Gaza upon commencement of the cumbersome, drawn-out supposed cease-fire. Trump suggested that Palestinians in Gaza could be relocated to Egypt and Jordan, echoing the rhetoric of dispossession long uttered by the Israeli fascist right. According to Trump, Gaza was had already become a “demolition site” through the genocidal bombardment that he and his MAGA allies staunchly cheered on. Why not move the people out, and rebuild the area free from the democratic desires of the people?

Trump, the real estate developer president, understands better than the ethno-nationalist zealot Netanyahu that the real basis for colonization is dispossession and the creation of new property for the colonizers.

Trump’s statements are far from the ideological provocations that they seem. And Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner has taken real steps toward being poised to make a fortune “rebuilding” Gaza with Saudi capital in his pocket. This is the art of the deal, not an Itamar Ben-Gvir racist fever dream.

Unfortunately, for Palestinians, there is no real operational difference between the Trumpian and Israeli far-right visions of Gaza’s future. Both amount to forced dispossession and relocation—which some human rights scholars call “ethnic cleansing” but others deem genocide. Both are fully colonial in the domination and subjugation of a people with the express aim of stealing their land. Perhaps both come back together as a closed circle when it comes to generating profits for the possessors, but Trump’s is the vision based wholly in naked real estate capitalism.

Consider Trump’s expressed idea of forcible relocation after the inauguration: “I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing in a different location where I think they could maybe live in peace for a change.” This is a developer’s callous materialism openly stated: Identify crisis that creates an opportunity to generate capital, offer an attention-grabbing promise (“peace”), find development partners (who will supply the capital), and collaborate with the racialized genocide in order to have a project. Palestinian agency, like the agency of American residents of neighborhoods that Trump and other developers have bulldozed or gentrified, is neither addressed nor acknowledged.

Unfortunately, Trump’s words don’t seem to be abstract ramblings but a cryptic disclosure of actual developments. (A majority of Trump’s critics mistake his overblown rhetoric for deliberate ideological bravado, when in fact it is garrulous self-disclosure of venal actions and desires.) Just before the “cease-fire” began, Israeli authorities permitted Jared Kushner’s private equity firm Affinity Partners’ purchase of a nearly 10% ownership stake in Israeli company Phoenix Financial and Insurance.

Phoenix is the major funder of illegal West Bank and Golan Heights settlements, and the locus of how the racism of the religious extremists creates opportunities for capitalists whose financial motives lead them into consort with the far-right. Kushner has never been a rabid MAGA ideologue, and even is attributed as the lead influence on Trump to sign into law the criminal justice reforms of the First Step Act. His work on the Abraham Accords resonates well with Israeli and American Zionists but also with Arab elites who lately espouse support for the Palestinians. He epitomizes the sorts of capitalists who gladly collaborate with far-right regimes but whose ideological bearings are often unarticulated or even avowedly contradictory to the far-right.

Kushner’s firm is now loaded with $2 billion in equity from the Saudi sovereign investment fund. Thus Trump’s statement about development of new housing with an Arab nation partner has a bearing in potential reality—his own family already has the relationship to make such a project reality. Furthermore, Israeli Channel 12 chief political correspondent Amit Segal reported in late January that Trump’s expressed vision for colonial Gaza may have significant support within Netanyahu’s government. Perhaps Netanyahu’s appearance in the U.S. on February 4 shows an endorsement, with a quid pro quo on the West Bank.

The real estate vision of Gaza—in which its inhabitants are first punished by isolation, then killed through conditions designed to eliminate them, and then lastly relocated away from their land after their have dare to survive—essentially is the modern Western colonial project. Clearly colonization builds its constituency through an invocation of racial superiority than dehumanizes occupants, but what it ultimately does is create land where the colonizers can generate worth capable of creating surplus value. There are many deplorable people who will rejoice if Gaza is cleared of every last Palestinian, but then there are the people who want the clearance in order to reap the profit from the new private property of the land.

As scholar Brenna Bhandar writes in the Colonial Lives of Property (2018): “The ways in which we understand, practice, and perform modes of subjectivity that are rooted in possession and domination are intimately bound to the juridical apparatus of private property. One cannot be undone without dismantling the other.” Trump, the real estate developer president, understands better than the ethno-nationalist zealot Netanyahu that the real basis for colonization is dispossession and the creation of new property for the colonizers.

The colonial creation of private property from stolen land is the American way, from the theft of Indigenous people’s lands to the urban renewal clearance projects that built the modern New York City in which Donald Trump was able to thrive and build wealth. There can be no shock that the developer president’s first public words on Gaza would celebrate the old method of generating “demolition sites” (terra nullius, or empty land). In a way, Trump actually is daring those of us who support Palestinian sovereignty to understand the interdependence of capitalism and genocidal colonialism. There must be a people, and there must be a land. One without the other presents a windfall to the developers.

Since assuming office, US President Donald Trump has relentlessly urged Egypt, Jordan, and other Muslim-majority countries to resettle Palestinians from Gaza.

Although Palestinians have firmly rejected Trump's proposal, it has continued to dominate the front pages of almost every Israeli newspaper.

Israel's Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who last year argued that it was "justified and moral" to starve Palestinians in Gaza, has been outspoken in his support of the idea, stating: "After 76 years in which most of Gaza's population was forcibly held in harsh conditions to preserve the aspiration to destroy the State of Israel, the idea of helping them find other places to start a new and better life is a great one."

Yedioth Ahronoth's senior military correspondent, Yossi Yehoshua, has also been a staunch supporter, suggesting: "Perhaps the time has come to adopt Trump's proposal and discuss voluntary exile from Gaza."

On Tuesday, at a joint press conference alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump went a step further and announced the US will be taking over and running Gaza, potentially for the foreseeable future.

Shortly after Israel launched its war on Gaza in October 2023, fears quickly emerged that Israel would execute its undeclared plan to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from the enclave.

Given the high level of support Israel was receiving from its western backers, many of us feared that a similar fate would await Palestinians in Jerusalem, the West Bank, and, eventually, even those of us living in the lands of historic Palestine seized by Israel in 1948.

There is now a genuine belief that, no matter how dire the situation becomes, the Palestinian people will not disappear

This concern stemmed from a 10-page document issued in October 2023 by Israeli Minister Gila Gamliel's Intelligence Ministry, which proposed forcibly transferring Palestinians from Gaza to Egypt's Sinai Peninsula.

Gamliel's document outlined three alternatives for post-war Gaza, with the option "that will yield positive, long-term strategic results" involving the expulsion of Palestinians to Sinai.

On Saturday, foreign ministers and officials from Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, the Palestinian Authority, and the Arab League dismissed Trump's proposal, saying that it would threaten regional stability, spread conflict, and undermine prospects for peace.

"We affirm our rejection of [any attempts] to compromise Palestinians' unalienable rights, whether through settlement activities, or evictions or annexation of land or through vacating the land from its owners," they said in a joint statement.

Even Trump's "favorite dictator," Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, has voiced dissent, warning that Egyptians would take to the streets to express their disapproval.

Palestinian defiance

Amid all the talk of ethnic cleansing, Palestinians have remained resolute, with extraordinary scenes unfolding in northern Gaza.

Despite the Israeli army flattening entire neighborhoods—destroying residential buildings, health and educational facilities, and critical infrastructure - hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have continued to stream north.

The image of an 80-year-old man walking back to his home in northern Gaza after being displaced in the south evokes memories of the Nakba, when hundreds of thousands were forced to flee their homes due to Zionist militias and armed gangs.

But this time, the scene and mood are not ones of despair. There is now a genuine belief that, no matter how dire the situation becomes, the Palestinian people will not disappear.

As a result, Israeli media has gone into a complete meltdown, with many lamenting the scenes of Palestinian defiance.

Channel 13's political correspondent, Moriah Asraf, recently expressed: "These images make me shiver all over my body…Something about the Gazans returning to their homes, albeit destroyed, but to their homes - it drives me crazy."

Matan Zuri, a security correspondent for Ynet, wrote: "Thousands of Palestinians have returned to the devastated northern Gaza Strip. The dream of renewed Jewish settlement has faded for the time being…This is the price of ending the war and returning the hostages. We knew it would happen, we saw it coming, and there was no choice but to accept it with submission and stick to the goodness of the deal."

Whatever happens next is anyone's guess, but the image of Palestinians returning to what remains of their bombed-out homes has been the most powerful response yet to Trump's racist and dehumanzing plan.

Live at 10 am Eastern/9 am Central time, and Streaming 24-7 Thereafter:

A shocking (but not surprising) turn of events prompts a special edition of the show today.

First: As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu smiled next to him like the cat who ate the canary, President Trump brazenly endorsed the forcible expulsion of at least 1.7 million Palestinians from Gaza so that the bombed and bulldozed site of Israeli genocide can be occupied either by U.S. real estate interests or by Israel. Manila Chan and Ted Rall break down the implications for the Middle East.

Second: Trump said that Canada and Mexico couldn’t do anything to stop his 25% tariffs on goods. “We’re not looking for a concession,” he said. Three days later, Trump paused the tariffs on both countries for 30 days, citing concessions they had made.

Trump’s tariffs threatened to increase inflation and spooked the stock market. Did Trump’s pullback have more to do with that looming economic pain than with the concessions? What happens in a month?

On today’s “The TMI Show,” Manila Chan and Ted Rall discuss the future of tariffs under Trump with wealth management and finance expert Aquiles Larrea.

The post TMI Show Ep 72: Trump Endorses Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza + Did Trump Choke on Tariffs? first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

The post TMI Show Ep 72: Trump Endorses Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza + Did Trump Choke on Tariffs? appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

There is no question that the Democratic Party, once the party of the working class, is now the party of the professional managerial class.

Workers have been voting with their feet, while the Democrats have been marching in the other direction:

• Trump won 56 percent to 43 percent voters without college degrees, a proxy for the working class, according to exit polls.
• Trump won 52 percent to 46 percent those with total family income of $30,000 to $100,000, another proxy for the working class.
• Of those who felt that their family’s financial situation was worse today than four years ago, 82 percent voted for Trump. Of those who felt it was better, 83 percent voted for Harris, as the Democratic brand moved up the income ladder.
• Of those who said the economy is not so good or poor, 70 percent voted for Trump. Of those who thought the economy was excellent or good, a proxy for the managerial professional class, 92 percent voted for Harris.
• There is a very strong statistical correlation between the counties with the highest layoff rates and the decline of the Democratic vote. During the last four years approximately 80 million workers suffered through involuntary layoffs. (Please see Wall Street’s War on Workers.)

These trends have been a long time in the making. In 1976 Jimmy Carter received 52.3 percent of the white working-class vote. Biden received only 36.2 percent in 2020, and Harris 33.0 percent in 2024. Racism can’t be the major cause of recent declines, since Barack Obama did better with 40.6 percent in 2012.

Given the political chaos all around us, now is the time to experiment with new ways to rekindle a working-class movement.

Meanwhile, the Republicans are trying to attract workers to a class-befuddled MAGA movement dominated by millionaires and billionaires. Trump’s plutocratic cabinet makes clear that the working class does not have a political home in either party. The question is, how can a new one be constructed?

Turn the Democrats Into Progressive Populists?

It would be suicidal, some argue, for the working class to abandon the Democrats. Better that they exert pressure so that the Democrats become genuine economic populists. For that to happen, realistically, it must be proven that Democrats can win elections on a populist platform in places like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin.

But Sherrod Brown, a very strong economic populist, lost his Senate seat in Ohio in 2024. Did populism drag him down? Brown, who lost by 3.6 percent, certainly ran better than Harris, who lost Ohio by 11.2 percent. Brown believes, however, that he was done in by NAFTA, the free trade bill pushed for and signed by Bill Clinton in 1993. He believes the Democrats are still being blamed for how that trade bill decimated industrial areas:

“But what really mattered is: I still heard in the Mahoning Valley, in the Miami Valley, I still heard during the campaign about NAFTA.

I’ve seen that erosion of American jobs and I’ve seen the middle class shrink. People have to blame someone. And it’s been Democrats. We are more to blame for it because we have historically been the party of [workers].”

The power of NAFTA, not the working-class racism, is also what delivered the South to the Republicans, according to Nelson Lichtenstein in his new book on the Clinton years, A Fabulous Failure. Even after Nixon used his racist Southern Strategy to lure the South away from the Democrats, Lichtenstein notes that congressional representation in the southern states was still evenly split between the two parties. After NAFTA demolished the southern textile industry, however, most of the South abandoned the Democrats.

NAFTA = Job loss = Democrats

That’s the formula Brown could not overcome. But how could NAFTA still have so much punch three decades after it was passed?

For most working people, free trade deals are a proxy for mass layoffs. NAFTA, and then deals allowing China into the World Trade Organization, led to millions of lost jobs, especially in manufacturing areas. The pain lingers because corporations learned that moving jobs, or threatening to move them, can make them more in profits, and so involuntary layoffs continue unabated, upending the lives of approximately 20 million workers per year.

The Democratic Party has refused to stop Wall Street and corporate America from using layoffs to raise cash for the richest of the rich. The Democrats also have failed to redevelop decimated areas by directly creating jobs, as the New Deal did during the Depression. Job stability is not something either political party cares about, because corporate interests come first, but the issue hurts the Democrats more because of its historical claim as the party of working people.

The Democratic Party has refused to stop Wall Street and corporate America from using layoffs to raise cash for the richest of the rich.

Sherrod Brown’s populism didn’t cost him the election. The Democratic Party’s lack of economic populism, including their advocacy for trade deals and their overall failure to protect the livelihoods of working people, eroded Brown’s base.

Run as an Independent?

Dan Osborn, a steamfitter and former local union president, tried another path by running as an independent Senate candidate representing Nebraska. (The Democrats did not field a candidate.) He did even better than Sherrod Brown, losing by 6.7 percent while Harris finished a whopping 20.4 percent behind Trump, but clearly more needs to be done.

Osborn is now setting up the Working-Class Heroes Fund, a political action committee to recruit and support working-class candidates. As he put it:

Whether they’re leaving their party or it’s young people registering to vote, I think there’s certainly an appetite for people who are just frustrated with the parties…. We just see things not getting done. The reason why they’re not getting done is because they’re all bought and sold, and they’re owned by corporations. That is truly the divider in the country. So, I think that’s where the appetite stems from.

To win Osborn needed about 20 percent of Trump voters, which in turn meant he needed to find areas of agreement with Trump while struggling to find a working-class position on immigration. On the one hand, he said that something had to be done to secure the southern border. “Our border’s broken,” he said. “Our immigration system is broken.” He also argued that hard-working immigrants who were in the country, paid their taxes, and didn’t commit crimes should have a pathway to citizenship.

A Movement, Not Just a Candidate

Running candidates independent of the two parties, but without playing the role of a spoiler, is a strategy worth trying. But the history of working-class movements suggests that significant political change requires the mobilization of large numbers of working people into organized political movements of their own making.

• It was the rise of the 19th populists, the Farmers Alliance, that eventually forced the political system to regulate the robber barons.
• It was the rapid rise of the labor movement during the Depression that mobilized mass support for the New Deal.
• It was the upsurge of the Civil Rights movement that led to the historic anti-discriminatory reforms passed during the Johnson administration in the 1960s.

These movements reshaped the political landscape and put working-class issues on the national agenda. They gave working people a home, a collective expression, a sense of belonging, and empowerment. My guess is that for some, MAGA has done the same.

The Democrats became the party of the working-class because the labor movement, after WWII, represented more than 30 percent of the workforce. If you count family members it represented a large majority of working people. Its agenda could not be ignored.

Today, however, with only six percent of private sector workers in labor unions, that voice is greatly diminished.

Can labor unions again grow rapidly? Not without major labor law reforms to level the playing field with corporate power. But those reforms will not pass without a mobilized working class that demands it. Even when Democrats have controlled all three branches of government, they have failed to pass such reforms. If we’re waiting for labor unions to again represent 20 percent of the workforce, we’ve got a long wait.

The political void needs to be filled with concrete activities that bring workers together and give them a sense of collective power.

Working people, union and non-union alike, can still be mobilized through civic engagement to express their hopes and desires. Workers could join something new, like a new Workers Populist Alliance, to develop and put forth a working-class agenda.

But such a formation can only get off the ground if it is sponsored and resourced by a group of progressive labor unions. If unions really backed it, workers just might come. We need them to step up and try a pilot in one state, like Michigan.

What should a Workers Populist Alliance stand for? Here’s a simple platform that surveys suggest would have wide working-class appeal:

• Increase the minimum wage to at least $20 per hour, provide paid family leave, and four weeks paid vacation a year.
• Save jobs by prohibiting large corporations that receive taxpayer money and tax breaks from laying off taxpayers involuntarily.
• Guarantee the right to a job at a living wage. If the private sector can't create those jobs, the public sector must.
• Stop drug company price gouging, and end health insurance rip-offs by replacing them with Medicare for All.

The political void needs to be filled with concrete activities that bring workers together and give them a sense of collective power. One activity would be to shove this agenda in the face of every candidate, from city council to President, asking them to publicly endorse it. The platform could be used to fight against millions of unnecessary layoffs caused by unmitigated corporate greed and provide a progressive alternative to MAGA. This could be done very systematically in town after town, county after county. The ask of politicians is simple: Which side are you on?

Are labor unions willing to build a new political movement outside of the Democratic Party? It would be an uphill battle because their shared roots run deep. But expecting the Democrats to change their stripes has been a recipe for failure the last 40 years. And so is believing that MAGA billionaires will have anything to offer working people other than more tax cuts for the rich, plus mass layoffs.

Given the political chaos all around us, now is the time to experiment with new ways to rekindle a working-class movement. Could this develop into a viable third party of working people? No one knows. But there is no doubt that working people need a new home of their making.

The billionaire class has two political parties. Working people need one of our own.