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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Ralph Nader February 6, 2026 I am republishing my November 14, 2025, column titled “Trump and the Contented Classes” to invite readers to inform me whether they are part of the contented classes and whether this column motivated them to step up and join with many other Americans in the drive to rescue our…

I’ve been talking into microphones since I did the morning news on WITL in Lansing Michigan in the late 1960s, and I’ve seen a lot of ugly moments in American politics. But every so often something happens that still takes your breath away, not because it’s surprising, but because it’s so painfully revealing.

This latest racist stunt by Donald Trump — reposting a meme on his Nazi-infested social media site in which the Obamas’ faces are superimposed onto the bodies of primates in the jungle set to the 1961 song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” by The Tokens — is one of those moments.

That a popular pro-Trump account on X created this video and it has lived on that platform without consequence is disgusting in and of itself. But Trump — as our president, speaking in our voice — made it infinitely worse last night by promoting it to millions around the world.

Promoting a video that depicts Barack and Michelle Obama as non-human primates isn’t a joke. It isn’t satire or an accident. It’s the oldest racist smear in the book, dressed up in a cheap meme and now blasted out by a man who once swore an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Normally I wouldn’t post such a disgusting, racist image that originated on Elon’s social media sewer, but it’s important for the historical record for Americans to see what the President of the United States reposted last night on his own site — as your and my representative — for the entire world to see. (Screengrab / Truth Social)

When the president of the United States does something like this, it doesn’t just insult two people. It tells a story about who, according to the most powerful man in the world, belongs in America and who doesn’t.

For centuries, racism in this country has relied on the lie that some people are less than human. That lie has been used to justify slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings, and mass incarceration.

It’s the lie that made it easier for people to look away while their neighbors were brutalized. It’s the lie that justifies ICE’s brutal, racist behavior. When Trump shares imagery that taps directly into that history, he’s not being edgy: he’s reopening wounds that never fully healed.

Pretending this doesn’t matter is how we normalize it and weaken our shared sense of humanity. And the end point of that is always disaster.

When the President of the United States signals that this kind of racism is acceptable, it gives permission to others. It tells the kid being harassed at school, the family being targeted by a hate group, and the voter being pushed out of the polling line that the cruelty they’re experiencing is justified. That it’s their own fault.

It tells the bullies and thugs of ICE as they do their “Kavanaugh Stops” — targeting people based on their race — that they’re on the right side of power.

This isn’t just about harm to minorities, although that harm is real and immediate. It’s about what happens to democracy itself when the presidency becomes a megaphone for dehumanization.

Democracy depends on the idea that we’re all political equals. Once you start suggesting that some Americans are animals, that idea collapses. It becomes easier to justify taking away voting rights, ignore court rulings, or shrug when violence follows hateful rhetoric.

I remember a time, during the era of Eisenhower and Kennedy, when the presidency stood as a kind of moral North Star. Even when presidents like Nixon and Clinton failed to live up to it, there was at least a shared understanding that the office itself mattered. That it should pull us together, not rip us apart.

Trump has spent years doing the opposite, from the 1970s when he was busted along with his father for refusing to rent to Black people to his recent use of words like “vermin” and “shitholes” to describe Hispanic and Black people and majority-Black countries. Last night’s post is another brutally clear example of Trump’s deep, lifelong racism.

What’s even more chilling is the silence from Republican leaders and elected officials. If you can’t bring yourself to condemn something this overtly racist, where exactly is your line?

Silence in moments like this isn’t neutrality: it’s complicity. It tells people of color in America, already dealing with the burden of centuries of institutional racism, that their pain is irrelevant and their dignity a plaything in the hands of white people.

I know some people will say we should ignore it, that reacting “just feeds the outrage machine.” Trump’s propaganda princess, Karoline Leavitt, tried to downplay it by telling reporters this morning:

“This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King. Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.”

But pretending this doesn’t matter is how we normalize it and weaken our shared sense of humanity. And the end point of that is always disaster.

As California Governor Gavin Newsome just posted:

“Disgusting behavior by the President. Every single Republican must denounce this. Now.”

“Denounce” is a bare minimum. This country can do better. We’ve done better before, often after terrible struggle and sacrifice.

But we won’t get there by minimizing moments like this or waving them off as “just another Trump post.” We get there by calling it what it is, by standing up for one another as equals in our humanity, and by insisting that the presidency must reflect our highest ideals, not our ugliest instincts.

If this doesn’t provoke the 13 white billionaires in Trump’s cabinet — who would all instantly fire anybody in any of their companies who posted such an image on their company’s servers — to start 25th Amendment proceedings or endorse impeachment, it’ll tell us everything about who they are, too.

America is stronger when we recognize each other as fully human. The moment we let that slip, we all lose something precious.

In the chaotic aftermath of Snowmaggedon 2026, I snuck into the Offshore Critical Minerals Exploration and Development Forum at the famed Willard Hotel, known for hosting exclusive insider events and serving as a primary gathering spot for Washington DC’s “movers and shakers.” This event fit that mold—but with the growing secrecy of the deep-sea mining crowd added for extra flavor.

Hosted by the American Council for Capital Formation (ACCF), the goal of this invitation-only event seemed to be to foster a shared belief among government officials and mining industry executives that deep-sea mining has a future. I’m not sure it worked.

The Elephant Was Still in the Room

ACCF’s Michael Zehr set the tone early, making sure everyone understood that “we’re not here to discuss the ISA [International Seabed Authority] and UNCLOS [United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea].”

OK, look, I get it. I’m sure they had to promise that the agenda would steer clear of prickly issues of international law to get the Trump officials to show up. But it’s a bit delusional to assume that the US will just carry on with President Donald Trump’s plan to bypass the International Seabed Authority after Trump is gone, so avoiding this issue completely undermined the whole purpose of the gathering.

“This Is an Industry That Does Not Exist”

Not only does deep-sea mining not yet exist, as Ocean Minerals CEO Hans Smit pointed out, it is an industry that should not exist. Humanity does not have a very good track record when it comes to launching new extractive industries, as even the predictable consequences are often dwarfed by the impacts we didn’t fully see coming. But this was not the group of people who were going to pause for that kind of self-reflection.

Instead, the mining CEOs did their best to convince everyone that deep-sea mining is easy and definitely going to happen while simultaneously making excuses for why it might take a long time. The investors tried to politely raise some of their huge glaring concerns in a way that wouldn’t alarm the government officials. And the Trump administration officials waved away questions about whether future leaders are going to just pull the plug on Trump’s reckless approach. Throughout the day, speakers probably spent more time worrying about environmentalists than the environment, which I suppose was no surprise coming from this bunch.

“It Has Been Hard”

The speakers responsible for raising the capital to make DSM possible acknowledged that investors are not exactly jumping on this rusty bandwagon. Mining is right up there with tobacco, alcohol, pornography, and gambling for many investors, who categorically exclude financing industries that fail the vice clause screen. Even those who might be willing to overlook the environmental impacts or reputational risks have held back, apparently for two main reasons.

As someone who has worked closely with staff at NOAA, State, and other federal agencies for over 20 years, it was galling to see how completely captured these agencies have become by corporate interests.

First, deep-sea mining is fantastically expensive to get going, and so far no one is close to being ready to operate at commercial scale. No one wants to throw hundreds of millions of dollars into a venture that may well be headed for bankruptcy (again). Which is connected to the second big problem, which came up throughout the day: durability. This administration will be out of office well before commercial mining will be operational, and probably even before it can be permitted. Even Tim Petty, the assistant secretary of commerce, refused to speculate on whether the Trump administration could move fast enough to actually grant permits, looking visibly uncomfortable and just saying, “We’ll see.”

Sometimes, when they avoid the question, it is all the answer you need. Petty also ducked a question about the approach the administration will take to consultation with Pacific stakeholders, responding with a completely unrelated tangent. Then, when he was asked about a comment Rep. Ed Case (D-Hawaii) had just made at a congressional hearing, that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is in bed with The Metals Company, Petty preferred to recount that in his meeting with staffers, “None of the questions about the environment came up”—as if that was some sort of validation.

Open for Business

As someone who has worked closely with staff at NOAA, State, and other federal agencies for over 20 years, it was galling to see how completely captured these agencies have become by corporate interests. Don’t get me wrong, corporations have always had far too much influence over public policy, but hearing NOAA’s Deputy Assistant Secretary Erik Noble say repeatedly that “NOAA is open for business” does not exactly provide much assurance that the agency responsible for stewardship of our oceans is up to the task right now. The general message from NOAA and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) officials to mining execs was clear: We are on your side. Regulations and laws are flexible, money will flow, incentives are coming. Tell us what you need and we will make it happen. To drive the point home even harder, Megan Carr used the gathering as an opportunity to announce that BOEM was launching a new process to start paving the way for deep-sea mining on Alaska’s outer continental shelf.

The Echo Chamber

It was painful to sit through a day of delusional boosterism, especially from agencies that are responsible for protecting our oceans and America’s standing in the world. By the second half of the day, though, it was clear that there were hardly any “investors” in the room, and that the audience was mostly just made up of a rotating group of speakers talking to each other. Two-thirds of the seats were empty, and so, ultimately, was the promise of any real discussion when fundamental issues were off the table, speakers were unwilling to answer questions (from moderators only—no questions were ever taken from the audience), and people with other perspectives were not invited.

What constitutes national security and how is it best achieved? Does massive military spending really make a country more secure, and what perils to democracy and liberty are posed by vast military establishments? Questions like those are rarely addressed in honest ways these days in America. Instead, the Trump administration favors preparations for war and more war, fueled by potentially enormous increases in military spending that are dishonestly framed as “recapitalizations” of America’s security and safety.

Such framing makes Pete Hegseth, America’s self-styled “secretary of war,” seem almost refreshing in his embrace of a warrior ethos. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is another “warrior” who cheers for conflict, whether with Venezuela, Iran, or even—yes!—Russia. Such macho men revel in what they believe is this country’s divine mission to dominate the world. Tragically, at the moment, unapologetic warmongers like Hegseth and Graham are winning the political and cultural battle here in America.

Of course, US warmongering is anything but new, as is a belief in global dominance through high military spending. Way back in 1983, as a college student, I worked on a project that critiqued President Ronald Reagan’s “defense” buildup and his embrace of pie-in-the-sky concepts like the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), better known as “Star Wars.” Never did I imagine that, more than 40 years later, another Republican president would again come to embrace SDI (freshly rebranded as “Golden Dome”) and ever-more massive military spending, especially since the Soviet Union, America’s superpower rival in Reagan’s time, ceased to exist 35 years ago. Amazingly, President Donald Trump even wants to bring back naval battleships, as Reagan briefly did (though he didn’t have the temerity to call for a new class of ships to be named after himself). It’ll be a “golden fleet,” says Trump. What gives?

For much of my life, I’ve tried to answer that very question. Soon after retiring from the US Air Force, I started writing for TomDispatch, penning my first article there in 2007, asking Americans to save the military from itself and especially from its “surge” illusions in the Iraq War. Tom Engelhardt and I, as well as Andrew Bacevich, Michael Klare, and Bill Hartung, among others, have spilled much ink (symbolically speaking in this online era) at TomDispatch urging that America’s military-industrial complex be reined in and reformed. Trump’s recent advocacy of a “dream military” with a proposed budget of $1.5 trillion in 2027 (half a trillion dollars larger than the present Pentagon budget) was backed by places like the editorial board of the Washington Post, which just shows how frustratingly ineffectual our efforts have been. How discouraging, and again, what gives?

In America, nothing—and I mean nothing!—seems capable of reversing massive military spending and incessant warfare.

Sometimes (probably too often), I seek sanctuary from the hell we’re living through in glib phrases that mask my despair. So, I’ll write something like: America isn’t a shining city on a hill, it’s a bristling fortress in a valley of death; or, At the Pentagon, nothing succeeds like failure, a reference to eight failed audits in a row (part of a 30-year pattern of financial finagling) that accompanied disastrous wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. Such phrases, no matter how clever I thought they were, made absolutely no impression when it came to slowing the growth of militarism in America. In essence, I’ve been bringing the online equivalent of a fountain pen to a gun fight, which has proved to be anything but a recipe for success.

In America, nothing—and I mean nothing!—seems capable of reversing massive military spending and incessant warfare. President Ronald Reagan, readers of a certain (advanced) age may recall, was nicknamed the “Teflon president” because scandals just didn’t seem to stick to him (at least until the Iran-Contra affair proved tough to shed). Yet history’s best candidate for Teflon “no-stick” status was never Reagan or any other president. It was and remains the US warfare state, headquartered on the Potomac River in Washington, DC. And give the sclerotic bureaucracy of that warfare state full credit. Even as the Pentagon has moved from failure to failure in warfighting, its war budgets have continued to soar and then soar some more.

Forgive the repetition, but what gives? When is our long, national nightmare of embracing war and (wildly overpriced) weaponry going to end? Obviously, not anytime soon. Even the Democrats, supposedly the “resistance” to President Trump, boast openly of their support for what passes for military lethality (or at least overpriced weaponry), while Democratic members of Congress line up for their share of war-driven pork. To cite a cri de coeur from the 1950s, have they no sense of decency?

The Shameless Embrace of Forever War and Its Spoils

I’m just an aging, retired Air Force lieutenant colonel. Who cares what I think? But America should still care about the words of Dwight D. Eisenhower, also known as Ike, the victorious five-star general of D-Day in 1944 and beyond, and this country’s president from 1953 to 1961. Ike was famously the first significant figure to warn Americans about the then-developing military-industrial complex (MIC) in his farewell address to the nation. Yet, even then, his words were largely ignored. Recently, I reread Ike’s warning, perhaps for the 100th time and was struck yet again by the way he highlighted the spiritual dimension of the challenge that is, all too sadly, still facing us.

In case you’ve forgotten them (or never read them), here are Ike’s words from that televised address in January 1961, when he put the phrase “the military-industrial complex” in our language:

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence—economic, political, even spiritual—is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Those were the prescient words of the most senior military man of his era, a true citizen-soldier and president, and more than six decades later, we should and must act on them if we have any hope left of preserving “our liberties and democratic processes.”

Again, wise words, yet our leaders have seldom heeded them. Since 1961, the “disastrous rise of misplaced power” when it comes to the MIC has infected our culture, our economy, even—to steal a term from the era of the disastrous American war in Vietnam—our hearts and minds. Indeed, despite the way the MIC failed so spectacularly to win the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese, the Afghans, the Iraqis, and other embattled peoples across the globe in various misbegotten and mendacious wars, it did succeed spectacularly over the years in winning the hearts and minds of those who make the final decisions in the US government.

In an astonishing paradox, a spendthrift military establishment that almost never wins anything, while consistently evading accountability for its losses, has by now captured almost untrammeled authority within our land. It defies logic, but logic never was this country’s strong suit. In fact, only recently, we reached a point of almost ultimate illogic when America’s bully-boy commander-in-chief insisted that a Pentagon budget already bloated with cash needs an extra $500 billion. That, of course, would bring it to about $1.5 trillion annually. Apologies to my Navy friends, but even drunken sailors would be challenged to spend that mountain of money.

In short, no matter what it does, the Pentagon, America’s prodigal son, never gets punished. It simply gets more.

More, More, More!

Not only is such colossal military spending bad for this country, but it’s also bad for the military itself, which, after all, didn’t ask for Trump’s proposed $500 billion raise. America’s prodigal son was relatively content with a trillion dollars in yearly spending. In fact, the president’s suggested increase in the Pentagon budget isn’t just reckless; it may well wreck not just what’s left of our democracy, but the military, too.

Like any massive institution, the Pentagon always wants more: more troops, more weapons, more power, invariably justified by inflating (or simply creating) threats to this country. Yet, clarity of thought, not to speak of creativity, rarely derives from excess. Lean times make for better thinking, fat times make for little thought at all.

Increasingly, we live in a “might makes right” country, even as military might has so regularly made for wrong since 1945.

Not long ago, Trump occasionally talked sense by railing on the campaign trail against the military-industrial complex and its endless wars. Certainly, more than a few Americans voted for him in 2024 because they believed he truly did want to focus on domestic health and strength rather than pursue yet more conflicts globally (and the weapons systems that went with them). Tragically, Trump has morphed into a warlord, greedily siphoning oil from Venezuela, posturing for the annexation of Greenland and all its resources, while not hesitating to bomb Iran, Nigeria, or most any other country. Meanwhile, China and Russia lurk in the wings as scary “near-peer” rivals and threats.

Although Trump’s supporters may indeed have been conned into imagining him as a prince of peace, this country’s militarism and imperialism clearly transcend him. Generally speaking, warfare and military boosterism have been distinctly bipartisan pursuits in America, making reform of any sort that much more difficult. Replacing Trump in 2028 won’t magically erase deep-rooted militarism, megalomaniacal imperial designs, or even the possibility of a $1.5 trillion military budget. Clearly, more, more, more is the bipartisan war song being sung inside the Pentagon, Congress, and the White House these days.

Taking on the MICIMATTSHG, or Blob

Ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern coined a useful acronym from the classic military-industrial complex, or MIC. He came up with MICIMATT (the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank complex) to highlight its blob-like growth. And it’s true that Congress and the rest are all deeply implicated in the blob. To which I’d add an “S” for the sporting world, an “H” for Hollywood, and a “G” for the gaming sector, all of which are implicated in, influenced by (as well as influencing), and often subservient to Ike’s old MIC. So, what we now have is the MICIMATTSHG. Recall that Ike warned us about the “disastrous rise of misplaced power” if we failed to challenge it back in 1961. Recall that he also warned us that the MIC could change the very structure of our society, making America far less democratic and also far less free. And most subtly, he warned us that it might also weaken America spiritually.

What did he mean by that? To reference a speech Ike made in 1953, he warned then that we could end up hanging ourselves from a cross of iron. He warned that we could become captives of militarism and war, avid believers in spending the sweat of our laborers, the genius of our scientists, and the blood of our youth, pursuing military dominance globally, while losing our democratic beliefs and liberties at home in the process. And that, it seems to me, is exactly what did indeed happen. We the people were seduced, silenced, or sidelined via slogans like “support our troops” or with over-the-top patriotic displays like military parades, no matter that they represented something distinctly less than triumphant in their moment.

And it never ends, does it? Americans in various polls today indicate that they don’t want a war against either Venezuela or Iran, but our opinions simply aren’t heeded. Increasingly, we live in a “might makes right” country, even as military might has so regularly made for wrong since 1945.

And what in the world is to be done? Many things, but most fundamentally it’s time as a society to perform an “about-face,” followed by a march in double time away from permanent war and toward peace. And that, in turn, must lead to major reductions in Pentagon spending. The best and only way to tackle the inexorable growth of the blob is to stop feeding it money—and stop worshipping it as well. Instead of a $500 billion increase, Congress should insist on a $500 billion decrease in Pentagon spending. Our task should be to force the military-industrial complex to think, improvise, become leaner, and focus on how most effectively to protect and defend America and our ideals, rather than fostering the imperial dreams of the wannabe warlords among us.

Trump’s current approach of further engorging the imperial blob is the stuff of national nightmares, not faintly a recipe for American greatness. It is, in fact, a sure guarantee of further decline and eventual collapse, not only economically and politically but spiritually as well, exactly as Ike warned in 1961. More wars and weapons simply will not make America great (again). How could they when, as Civil War General William T. Sherman so famously observed, war is “all hell”?

Americans, we must act to cut the war budget, shrink the empire, embrace diplomacy, and work for peace. Sadly, however, the blob has seemingly become our master, a well-nigh unstoppable force. Aren’t you tired yet of being its slave?

On the 250th anniversary of America’s founding, which was predicated on resistance to empire and military rule, it should be considered deeply tragic that this country has met the enemy—and he is indeed us. Here the words of Ike provide another teachable moment. Only Americans can truly hurt America, he once said. To which I’d add this corollary: Only Americans can truly save America.

As we celebrate our nation’s birthday this July 4, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could save this deeply disturbed country by putting war and empire firmly in the rearview mirror? A tall task for sure, but so, too, was declaring independence from the mighty British Empire in 1776.

LIVE 9:00 am Eastern time, Streaming Anytime:

Political cartoonist Ted Rall and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM EST.

Today we discuss:

•  ICE is fully funded but Democrats are holding up other Homeland Security funding over demands that paramilitary forces occupying Democratic cities be demasked. A DHS shutdown looms, impacting air travel, but negotiations haven’t even begun. Meanwhile, Trump wants to rename Dulles Airport and Penn Station after himself in exchange for unfreezing $16 billion in funds for the Gateway Development Project.

• Healthcare: TrumpRx website offers discounted meds for uninsured Americans. Texas surgeon Stevenson Bynon Jr., 66,  is charged with manipulating his patients’ medical records to make them ineligible for organ donations between February 2023 and March 2024. Of five patients, three died. The other two received liver transplants at different hospitals.

• NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani endorses center-right Democratic New York governor Kathy Hochul. Has the sellout begun?

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Following the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, people are glued to their phones, televisions, and computer screens with both curiosity and dread. There is a pervasive feeling of unrelenting anxiety and fear. It creeps into otherwise ordinary moments, leaving people unmoored and unable to rest.

As therapists, we traditionally spend our time helping clients unpack what they are experiencing internally. But now, we are facing a moment when we don’t have to invest much in discovering what is causing that pervasive feeling of unease. It’s a collective experience causing individual pain.

There is a longstanding belief that therapy and politics should be kept separate, and that the treatment room ought to be sealed off from the chaos of the outside world. In quieter times, that is a reasonable expectation. But when fear, instability, and disinformation saturate the social atmosphere, pretending those forces stop at the therapy door becomes unrealistic and, at a certain point, irresponsible.

We are living through a period of sustained psychological assault. Constant chaos, relentless distortion, and the normalization of cruelty erode people’s internal sense of reality. When power is exercised without restraint or accountability, confusion and anxiety do not remain abstract. They show up as panic attacks, depressive collapse, insomnia, somatic symptoms, relational breakdowns, and despair.

It would be a mistake to minimize the pain people are experiencing right now or to underestimate how deeply it is shaping mental health.

This is not a partisan claim; it is a psychological one. When psychologically underdeveloped men become intoxicated by power, the effects are predictable and terrifying. Fear increases. Trust erodes. Nervous systems remain on high alert. People begin to doubt their own perceptions. Over time, this destabilization becomes chronic, not only for individuals but for the collective psyche.

Therapists are seeing this every day. Clients who once came to therapy for familiar struggles now arrive carrying an added layer of dread. People of color describe the fear of living in communities that feel increasingly targeted and unsafe. Protesters speak about the psychic toll of being criminalized for dissent. Immigrants and their families live with the constant anxiety of disappearance or deportation to foreign jails known as torture camps. Others describe something harder to name but no less corrosive—the sense that reality itself is no longer reliable.

Those outside the United States are not insulated from this either. When imperial powers posture and threaten, entire populations live in constant fear of destabilization or invasion.

History tells us that these cycles recur, and that eventually, they are resisted and reversed. However, that knowledge offers limited comfort to people living inside the rupture itself. It would be a mistake to minimize the pain people are experiencing right now or to underestimate how deeply it is shaping mental health.

What we call democracy in this country is valuable, but also deeply flawed. Systemic racism and a war on the poorest among us always have been standard fare.

But today, we seem to be entering a new phase where democratic norms are undermined openly and where cruelty is reframed as strength. When the truth is being treated as optional, the psychological cost is profound. A society cannot remain mentally healthy when its members are repeatedly told not to trust what they see, feel, or know.

This is where the fantasy that therapy exists in a political vacuum collapses. Policy decisions shape bodies, relationships, and futures. When people’s lives are destabilized by political forces, the reverberations show up in the quiet despair of the patient on the couch: What is happening? Why do I feel this way? What should I do?

Therapy is an act of reality restoration. It helps people reclaim their perceptions, reconnect with their values, and rebuild trust in themselves and others. Care, in this moment, is not passive. It requires naming harm, recognizing where terror is being manufactured and distributed, and understanding that the psychological health of a society depends on more than individual coping strategies. It depends on truth, accountability, and the protection of human dignity.

Therapists will continue to do what we have always done: Show up, listen carefully, and hold space for transformation. But we should not be asked to pretend that the storm outside has nothing to do with the distress inside. America’s crisis is not only political; it is psychological too.

February 5, 2026, was the date on which the New START Treaty expired without the US and Russia renewing it. The People's Republic of China also did not participate in renegotiations.

Nothing now stands in the way of unrestrained further nuclear armament. This makes the world even more unsafe. How crazy do you have to be to take this risk?

What Did the New START Treaty Contain?

START stands for “New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty” and is a successor treaty to START I. It entered into force on February 5, 2011. Ten years later, it was extended until February 5, 2026. On that date, it expired without renegotiation.

The New START Treaty stipulates that Russia and the US:

• May have a maximum of 1,550 operational strategic nuclear warheads
• As well as 800 launchers (mobile launchers, submarines, strategic bombers)
• And 700 operational delivery systems (e.g., ballistic missiles).
• In addition, the treaty provides for extensive transparency, control mechanisms, and verification measures, such as the regular exchange of data and the conduct of inspections.

This was intended to limit the risk of nuclear conflict and create stability in bilateral relations between the US and Russia.

The New START was a key treaty which, alongside other disarmament and control treaties that have also expired, was intended to reduce the risk of a third world war.

Why Was It Not Renegotiated in Time?

In 2023, Russia suspended the New START treaty in the wake of its attack on Ukraine and criticized the US for violating the treaty. The US government also had doubts as to whether Russia was still complying with the treaty's limitations. A few months later, the US also stopped implementing the provisions of the New START treaty, no longer allowing inspections and no longer providing transparency.

Russia signaled its continued compliance with the treaty's numerical limits, but did not allow transparency and inspections. US President Donald Trump has been inconsistent and has so far taken no initiative to renegotiate the treaty (“If it expires, it expires”). According to Daryl G. Kimball (2026) on the Arms Control Association website:

Since taking office last January, his administration has neither outlined a strategy for negotiating a new nuclear arms control agreement with Russia nor outlined how it would bring China into nuclear risk reduction or arms control talks.What Dangers Does the Failure to Renew the START Treaty Pose to the World?

For the first time since 1972, there are now no effective restrictions on the nuclear programs of the two superpowers.

Within a few weeks, the operational nuclear arsenals of the US and Russia could be significantly expanded. According to US peace researcher Jennifer Knox (2026), a doubling would be possible in a relatively short time:

Without mutual constraints, the two countries could field hundreds more nuclear weapons in a matter of weeks, and within a few years, their deployed nuclear forces could double. The resulting arms buildup, the lack of insight into each other's plans and arsenals, and the ending of formal bilateral consultations engendered by the treaty's verification regime would further destabilize relations between the United States and Russia, increase the risk of nuclear conflict through miscalculation or misunderstanding, and waste resources that neither country has to spare. Renewed nuclear competition between the United States and Russia could also drive China and other nuclear powers to expand their arsenals, leading to deteriorating security conditions around the world.

This significantly increases the risk of an accidental nuclear war due to false reports or technical failure.

Demands on the Major Powers: Comply With the Treaty and Renegotiate!

Russia and the US could voluntarily continue to adhere to the New START treaty until a new treaty has been negotiated between them, preferably with the involvement of China. Furthermore, the renegotiation of a joint treaty should require compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the signing and ratification of the nuclear ban treaty that has already been adopted by the United Nations. The non-participation of the US, Russia, China, and, incidentally, other nuclear states in nuclear disarmament measures violates Article VI of the current Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

In a statement, the German group of scientists from the VDW (2026) calls for more comprehensive negotiations between the major powers:

Joint limitation measures would create a more positive environment for talks on further strategic reductions, new restrictions on medium-range missiles and tactical nuclear weapons, limitations on strategic missile defense systems, and other measures to reduce nuclear risks. These include, above all, joint steps to mitigate the risks of integrating artificial intelligence into the nuclear command and control structure. Conclusion

How deranged must the politicians in Russia, the US, and China be that they are unwilling to sit down at the table and reduce the danger of nuclear war through new START negotiations! The civilian population and their political representatives must finally wake up and take joint action to persuade those responsible in the ruling political establishment to change course in the interests of humanity. Nuclear weapons must be banned. Negotiations and diplomacy make the world much safer than unrestrained nuclear armament.

This is why the United Nations must also take action—even though it is currently being deliberately weakened and blocked by the US and Russia.

International Phycisians for the Prevention of Nuclear War activist and peace researcher Rolf Bader (2026) summarizes the demands in light of the expected modernization and expansion of nuclear arsenals as follows:

In this situation (of) escalating tensions, the United Nations would be called upon to act. Crisis prevention would be necessary to stop the looming arms race. With the support of influential member states in the Global South, attempts could be made to initiate negotiations to minimize risk.

The goal must be to negotiate at least a reduction in the highest alert level and a renunciation of the first use of nuclear weapons. Even if the chances are slim at present, everything should be tried to prevent the looming nuclear arms race.

While the sheer pomposity, Trumpian megalomania, and painfully paradoxical context surrounding the so-called “Board of Peace” might tempt some to dismiss it as mere spectacle or farce, its criminal, inhumane, and hegemonic nature makes it far too dangerous to ignore.

Last month, President Donald Trump and his new, thuggish boys’ club of heads of state publicly celebrated the launch of the Board of Peace (BoP) at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Its hypocrisy was inadvertently underscored by Elon Musk—Trump’s on-again, off-again ally—when he quipped onstage that one might call it the Board of “p-i-e-c-e,” a venture devoted to claiming “a little piece of Greenland, a little piece of Venezuela,” to which his interviewer, Larry Fink, billionaire CEO of BlackRock, responded with cheer, “We got one.” Only a room filled with the world’s tech and business elite could find this funny.

In the weeks since, people of conscience around the world have been left to reckon with what may come of this brazen proclamation of a Trumpified world order. In particular, the board’s presentation of plans for “New Gaza” offered stark clarity about the greed-driven intentions Trump, his inner circle, and their Israeli billionaire partners seek to pursue, while raising a fundamental question as to how such a project of colonization and land theft could claim any legal basis at all, let alone a moral one.

As it stands, the BoP charter elevates Trump to a position akin to a global dictator for life, unchecked—on paper— by any external mechanisms of accountability or transparency. Acting as permanent chairman, chief executive, and controlling shareholder of the organization, Trump has declared that he holds absolute veto power, while retaining complete discretion over the potential multibillion-dollar slush fund generated through permanent member fees. In keeping with his long record of felonies and fraud, all budgets, financial accounts, or disbursements the BoP deems “necessary” to carry out its sweeping mission are subject only to the so-called “institutions of controls or oversight mechanisms” designed by the very same Executive Board.

Thus far, Greenland remains the only red line EU states have managed to articulate.

A few invited world leaders, mostly from the European Union, have done little more than politely decline their invitations. While they have not yet bent the knee to Trump in this mobster’s reality-show version of US imperial power in action, this has not stopped those same governments from endorsing the other “peaceful actions” Trump is poised to pursue under the guise of BoP authority. These include the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and the seizure of Venezuelan oil; the execution of dozens of extrajudicial boat strikes that have killed more than 100 people in the Caribbean; threats of war and the promotion of dangerous regime-change fantasies in Iran and Cuba; and support for his complete takeover of occupied Palestine through United Nations Security Council Resolution 2803. That resolution effectively granted Trump authority in Gaza by endorsing his 20-point Gaza peace plan and welcoming the BoP as a transitional governing body. Thus far, Greenland remains the only red line EU states have managed to articulate.

Despite some rejections, other governments have gone ahead and accepted their invitations for a free three-year membership. The participation of Israel’s wanted genocidaire-in-chief, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, should serve as the clearest red flag that this organization has no interest in even pretending to care about the lives of the Palestinian people or any standard of international law. Netanyahu could not even fly to Davos to attend the BoP’s self-appointed pomp and circumstance for fear of being arrested as a wanted war criminal.

Other beacons of democracy and world peace, eager to lend legitimacy to the BoP, include Trump’s own “favorite dictator,” Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi; Argentina’s scandal-prone, right-wing President Javier Milei; “Europe’s last dictator,” Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko; Netanyahu’s idea of a “moral conscience,” Albanian President Edi Rama; and Hungary’s model in authoritarianism, Viktor Orbán. Leaders from Arab states—including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Jordan, and Qatar—have also joined, and will presumably stand alongside Trump and the Executive Board to help oversee, and quietly endorse, “New Gaza.”

Their participation set the stage for Davos, where none other than Jared Kushner delivered the first public presentation of an investment plan contingent upon the ethnic cleansing and erasure of a national Palestinian identity. Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and a member of the BoP “Executive Board,” has long served as the self-styled “master planner” of transforming Gaza into a prime real estate opportunity. He has a track record of articulating his absolute disregard for Palestinian life, describing the besieged Gaza Strip in February 2024 as “very valuable… waterfront property.”

Kushner began his chilling slideshow by urging skeptical investors to “just calm down for 30 days,” declaring, “The war is over. Let’s work together.” Eager to move on to their real business of “peace,” Kushner appeared wholly willing to ignore the ongoing forced starvation, imprisonment, systemic torture, murder, and displacement of Palestinians across the occupied territories. Since the supposed “ceasefire” in October 2025, the Israeli military has killed at least 477 Palestinians in Gaza.

Trump has also failed to address Israel’s continued ban on dozens of international humanitarian and non-governmental organizations, a policy that has deliberately denied lifesaving aid and medical care to the region while newborn babies continue to die of hypothermia. Instead, Kushner outright lied about the current scale of Israel’s designed humanitarian catastrophe, claiming that “100% of the food needs are met” and that “the cost of needs has gone down,” before unironically describing the administration’s role as “the largest humanitarian effort into a war zone that anyone’s been able to tell us about.” Meanwhile, as the conference unfolded, Israeli forces bulldozed the UN Refugee headquarters in East Jerusalem, and the Israeli Knesset voted by an overwhelming majority to annex the entirety of the West Bank.

Amid the distortions and denials of reality, Kushner did allow the logic of the project to surface when he identified the architect behind the purported $25 billion master plan for Gaza: Yakir Gabay, whom he described as “one of the most successful real estate developers and brilliant people I know.” Gabay is an Israeli billionaire and international real estate tycoon with close familial ties to the Israeli government. Reports also indicate that he has participated in efforts to pressure Columbia University administrators to suppress student protests.

Much like Kushner, a recent article by the editor-in-chief of Jerusalem Post described Gabay as having been eager to craft a plan for “New Gaza” from the very first weeks of Israel’s prolonged assault on the densely populated region:

October 7, [Gabay] tends to say, woke him to action. [Gabay] thought: This time, my capabilities can change the face of reality…Other businesspeople heard about his work a year and a half ago. The White House had asked him to develop something even during Joe Biden’s term. He has good relationships with Tony Blair and Kushner, and when Trump won the elections, it became easier to push the issue.

On the whole, Kushner’s “New Gaza” presentation made no attempt to acknowledge a Palestinian state, recognize Palestinian self-determination, nor address Israeli occupation or the implications of Gaza’s "reconstruction" for the other occupied Palestinian territories. Instead, the eerily bizarre AI-generated slideshow of skyscrapers, oil rigs, and industrial complexes offered only a glimpse into the twisted billionaire fantasy that Kushner’s inner circle—including figures like Gabay—has sought to merge with Zionist imaginaries.

The only part of Kushner’s presentation that even acknowledged Palestinians was a single slide on “Palestinian-led demilitarization.” Beyond this ominous token reference, the narrative repeatedly circled back to framing Gaza as “an amazing investment opportunity” to the room full of multimillionaires and billionaires.

Recent reporting from Drop Site News has confirmed and expanded upon this language, revealing “Resolution No. 2026/1,” an unsigned State Department document from December 2025 that declares the Board of Peace aims to transform Gaza into a “deradicalized and demilitarized terror-free zone.”

Here, “deradicalization” functions as a catch-all term to delegitimize resistance and criminalize opposition to Israeli occupation—a legal right under international law. Palestinians who maintain their political consciousness, national identity, or will for self-determination, and who refuse to normalize occupation, are almost certain to be labeled “terrorists” or deemed insufficiently “deradicalized.” Those who take up arms to defend their people against some of the world’s most heavily armed and nuclear powers risk being denied existence in their own lands—murdered or turned away by the very architects of genocide who now claim to bring “peace.” Access to basic rights is made contingent on surrendering political and economic agency, including abandoning a historically rooted cultural identity of resistance under occupation, forsaking traditional livelihoods, and subordinating the desire to shape the future of the land to whatever "economic opportunities" BoP members deem investible.

The document further states that only those who “support and act consistently” to establish a “deradicalized, terror-free Gaza that poses no threat to its neighbors” may participate in governance, reconstruction, economic development, or humanitarian assistance. It also bars any individuals or organizations the board deems to have “supported or demonstrated a history of collaboration, infiltration, or influence with or by Hamas or other terror groups”—a sweeping allegation Israel has long weaponized without evidence.

In practice, such standards mean that anyone who stands in firm solidarity with Palestinians, including international NGOs that seek to hold Israel to even minimal standards of accountability, will likely be barred from operating in Gaza. This has already become an entrenched and worsening reality since October 2023. What the BoP presents as a security framework is, in essence, a blueprint for controlling Palestinian movement, erasing any viable possibility of a Palestinian state, and ultimately, advancing ethnic cleansing, while preventing humanitarian organizations from participating in any meaningful process of reconstruction or the delivery of aid. A framework that insists “no one will be forced to leave Gaza”—as if forced removal were ever legitimate—while simultaneously conditioning access to aid, resources, and even limited political participation on compliance with what Trump and his confidants dictate, is not a framework in which any meaningful shred of freedom or dignity can exist.

In essence, Trump now supposedly wields full legislative, executive, and judicial control over the future of Gaza. He alone, along with his board of resort profiteers—who would hastily clear away the rubble burying the bodies of erased bloodlines and the remnants of mosques, churches, hospitals, and schools—will have complete authority over how surviving Palestinians live, how they are governed, and who may participate in decision-making. Only at the very bottom of the BoP’s tyrannical hierarchy sits a so-called “technocratic committee,” nominally including members of the Palestinian Authority. Its role appears purely advisory, permitted to exist only insofar as it appeases Trump and aligns with his agenda. There is little indication that it will serve, or even slightly represent, the people it claims to speak for.

The development is ultimately so jarring, so rooted in supremacist ideologies, and so flagrantly opposed to basic principles of sovereignty and human rights that it has few historical parallels. The closest comparison seems to be the gruesome reign of Belgian King Leopold II.

The very consideration of such an inhumane, corrupt, and cruel project is a threat to humanity.

Those who participate in this process, including figures such as World Bank President Ajay Banga, lend legitimacy to a project that advances a perverse vision and a chapter of history that is not inevitable. Collaboration in the name of “reconstruction and development of Gaza” for a project so morally and legally corrupt is not a pragmatic compromise—it is active participation in a plan that has no place in the world. The human cost of this complicity is impossible to ignore.

The BoP plan also offers no conception of justice, reparations, or accountability for Israeli terror. Its version of “peace” is imposed through state violence to silence, control, and force Palestinians into submission. It is a project that raises skyscrapers for Western elites atop mass graves, without including, or even acknowledging, the Palestinians its architects have killed and displaced. It relies too on the pathetic inaction of the overwhelming majority of UN member states.

Much remains unknown about what is immediately required to take a single step toward “peace” in the region: if and when Palestinians may finally find reprieve from Israeli bombardment; whether the Rafah crossing will actually open; what will become of finding and returning the bodies of loved ones buried under the rubble; whether human rights organizations or journalists will even be permitted to document the reality–and work safely–on the ground; if displaced Palestinians will ever be allowed to return to Gaza; and crucially, whether other states will intervene. What is clear, however, is the sheer evil of this project.

Following Kushner’s presentation, many have rightfully said that if this BoP monstrosity were fictional, it would be so dark it would border on being unbelievable. And yet it is profoundly real: a greed-soaked plan dependent on mass murder and land theft, driven by men so wealthy and entitled that they believe they can escape accountability while reaping billions in profit in the process.

World leaders have long entrenched impunity and rewarded the most atrocious US-Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity, especially over the past two and a half years. Yet the board’s ambitions—laid out in a charter that mirrors the UN and spans what Trump calls “the whole region of the world”—reveal a danger that stretches far beyond Palestine. The very consideration of such an inhumane, corrupt, and cruel project is a threat to humanity. And still—precisely because of the chaos, confusion, and sheer audacity of their plans—this dystopian vision for “New Gaza” is not inevitable. Those with political and economic power must firmly reject and actively work to rein in this Orwellian BoP. If any entity requires immediate disarmament and deradicalization, it is Trump and his so-called Executive Board.

Right-wingers and other defenders of ICE decry the “dehumanization” of the immigration goon squads. Perhaps it really is true that, under all that Kevlar and cruelty, there are human beings just like us. Then again, perhaps not.

The post Don’t Dehumanize ICE appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

As people testified before Congress this week about the brutality and violence they’d suffered at the hands of ICE, that massive paramilitary organization was shopping for giant warehouse-style facilities they can retrofit into what they euphemistically call “detention centers.”

Cable news people call them “prison camps” or “Trump prison camps,” but look in any dictionary: prisons are where people convicted of crimes are held. As Merriam-Webster notes, a prison is:

“[A]n institution for confinement of persons convicted of serious crimes.”

Jails are where people accused of crimes but still waiting for their day in court are held, as Merriam-Webster notes:

“[S]uch a place under the jurisdiction of a local government for the confinement of persons awaiting trial or those convicted of minor crimes.”

But what do you call a place where people who’ve committed no criminal offense (immigration violations are civil, not criminal, infractions)? The fine dictionary people at Merriam-Webster note the proper term is “concentration camp”:

“[A] place where large numbers of people (such as prisoners of war, political prisoners, refugees, or the members of an ethnic or religious minority) are detained or confined under armed guard.”

The British originated the term “concentration camp” to describe facilities where “rebel” or “undesirable” civilians were held in South Africa during the Second Anglo‑Boer War (1899–1902) to control and punish a rebellious population.

They were facilities where the “bad elements of society” were “concentrated” into one location so they could be easily controlled and would lose access to society and thus could not spread their messages of resistance against the British Empire.

Future generations of Americans—our children and grandchildren—won’t ask us whether ICE followed civil detention statutes: they’ll want to know why we allowed concentration camps to exist in America at all.

The Germans adopted the term in 1933 when Hitler took power and created his first camp for communists, socialists, union leaders, and, by the end of the year, Hitler’s political opponents. They Germanized the phrase into “Konzentrationslager” and referred to the process of their incarceration as “protective custody.”

The first camp was built at Dachau just weeks after Hitler became Chancellor in 1933, and by the end of the year there were around 70 of them operating across the country.

When Louise and I lived in Germany in 1986/87, we visited Dachau with our three children. The crematoriums shocked our kids, but even more so because this was simply a “detention facility” and not one of Hitler’s death camps (which were all located outside Germany to ensure deniability).

The ovens at Dachau were for those who had been worked to death or killed by cholera or other disease, much like the 35+ people who’ve recently died in ICE’s concentration camps.

When American friends would visit us and we’d take them to Dachau (we lived just an hour up the road) they’d invariably be surprised when I told them that by the time of the war there were over 500 substantial camps and an additional few hundred very small ones all over the country.

“How could the people not know what was going on?” they’d ask.

The answer was simple: the people did know. These were where the “undesirables,” the “criminal troublemakers,” and the “aliens” were held, and were broadly supported by the German people. (It wasn’t until 1938, following Kristallnacht, that the Nazis began systematically arresting and imprisoning non-political Jews, first at Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen.)

By the end of his first year, Hitler had around 50,000 people held in his roughly 70 concentration camps, facilities that were often improvised in factories, prisons, castles, and other buildings.

By comparison, today ICE is holding over 70,000 people in 225 concentration camps across America, and Trump, Homan, Miller, and Noem hope to more than double both numbers in the coming months.

In Tennessee, The Guardian reports that Miller has been coordinating with Republican leaders to create legislation that would turn every local cop, teacher, social worker, and helper in the state into an official agent of ICE and criminalize efforts by cities to refuse cooperation. It also makes it a felony crime to identify any of ICE’s masked agents or disclose conditions within the concentration camps to the public.

Germans didn’t have the benefit of warnings from a fascist history they could look back on; much of what Hitler did took them by surprise, as I’ve noted in previous articles.

In 2026 America, however, operating with the benefit of historical hindsight, entire communities are rebelling at Trump’s effort to beat Germany’s 1933-1934 prisoner numbers.

In city after city, Americans are organizing to deprive ICE of their coveted spaces, putting pressure on companies not to sell and on cities and counties not to permit any more concentration camps.

Because immigration violations are labeled “civil,” people in ICE concentration camps are stripped of many of the normal constitutional protections that apply to people in criminal incarceration. This has created a legal black hole that ICE and the Trump regime exploit, where indefinite imprisonment, abuse, and medical neglect flourish with little to no oversight or accountability.

Human rights organizations like the ACLU describe pervasive patterns of abuse in ICE detention: hazardous living conditions, chronic medical neglect, sexual assault, retaliation for grievances, and extensive use of solitary confinement.

Detainees who have committed no crime other than being in the United States without documentation report being shackled for long periods, packed into freezing, overcrowded cells under constant fluorescent light, and denied hygiene and timely care. Meanwhile, GOP-aligned private prison companies are making billions off the program.

Inspections and oversight are inconsistent: one recent investigation found that as detentions and deaths surged in 2025, formal inspections of facilities actually dropped by over a third. ICE regularly refuses to allow attorneys, family members, and even members of Congress to access their concentration camps; the issue is now being litigated through federal courts.

History shows us that once a nation builds a mass detention apparatus, it never remains limited to its original targets. Future generations of Americans—our children and grandchildren—won’t ask us whether ICE followed civil detention statutes: they’ll want to know why we allowed concentration camps to exist in America at all.

Germany’s concentration camps didn’t start as instruments of mass murder, and neither have ours; both started as facilities for people the government’s leader said were a problem. And that’s exactly what ICE is building now.

History isn’t whispering its warning: it’s shouting.

California Governor Gavin Newsom has made headlines this winter by vowing to defeat a proposal for a one-time 5 percent tax on billionaires in the state. Many national polls now rank him as the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028, but aligning with the ultra-wealthy is not auspicious for wooing the party’s voters. Last year, Reuters/Ipsos pollsters reported that a whopping 86 percent of Democrats said “changing the federal tax code so wealthy Americans and large corporations pay more in taxes should be a priority.”

Newsom has drawn widespread praise for waging an aggressive war of words against President Trump. But few people outside of California know much about the governor’s actual record. Many Democratic voters will be turned off to learn that his fervent opposition to a billionaire tax is part of an overall political approach that has trended more and more corporate-friendly.

A year ago, Newsom sent about 100 leaders of California-based companies a prepaid cell phone “programmed with Newsom’s digits and accompanied by notes from the governor himself,” Politico reported. One note to the CEO of a big tech corporation said, “If you ever need anything, I’m a phone call away.” While pandering to business elites, Newsom has slashed budgets to assist the poor and near-poor with healthcare, housing and food—in a state where 7 million live under the official poverty line and child poverty rates are the highest in the nation.

The latest Newsom budget, released last month, continues his trajectory away from social compassion. “The governor’s 2026-27 spending plan balances the budget by dodging the harsh realities of the Republican megabill, H.R. 1, and maintains state cuts to vital public supports, like Medi-Cal, enacted as part of the current-year budget,” the California Budget & Policy Center pointed out. “Governor Newsom’s reluctance to propose meaningful revenue solutions to help blunt the harm of federal cuts undermines his posture to counter the Trump administration.” The statement said that the proposed budget “will leave many Californians without food assistance and healthcare coverage.”

So far, key facts about Newsom’s policy priorities have scarcely gone beyond California’s borders. “National media have focused on Newsom as a personality and potential White House candidate and have almost completely ignored what he has and has not done as a governor,” said columnist Dan Walters, whose five decades covering California politics included 33 years at The Sacramento Bee. “It's a perpetual failing of national political media to be more interested in image and gamesmanship rather than actual actions, the sizzle rather than the steak, and Newsom is very adept at exploiting that tendency.”

Walters told me that Newsom “has generally avoided direct conflicts with his fellow millionaires, such as discouraging tax increases, and has danced between corporations and labor unions on bread-and-butter issues such as minimum wages. He's also quietly moved away from environmental issues, most notably shifting from condemnation of the oil industry for price gouging and pollution to encouraging the industry to increase production and keep refineries operating.”

Newsom angered climate activists last fall by signing his bill to open up thousands of new oil wells. Noting that “Newsom just championed a plan to dramatically expand oil drilling in California,” the Oil and Gas Action Network said that he “can’t claim climate leadership while giving Big Oil what it wants.” Third Act, founded by Bill McKibben, responded by denouncing “Newsom’s Big Oil backslide” and accused the governor of “backtracking on key climate and community health commitments.”

Great efforts to curb the ubiquitous toxic impacts of PFAS “forever chemicals” hit a wall in October when Newsom vetoed legislation to ban them in such consumer items as cookware, dental floss, and cleaning products. “This bill had huge support from both within the state and beyond, and yet, apparently, the governor was interested only in the one sector opposing it—the cookware industry,” said Clean Water Action policy director Andria Ventura. The organization put the veto in context, observing that “the governor seems determined to move away from his pro-environment past.”

As with the environment, so with workers’ rights. In 2023, Newsom vetoed a bill to provide unemployment compensation to workers on strike. In 2024, he vetoed a bill to help protect farmworkers from violations of heat safety regulations, while temperatures in California’s agricultural fields spike above 110 degrees.

The latest Gallup polling of the party’s rank-and-file indicates a wide ideological gap between Newsom and the party’s base. Fifty-nine percent of Democrats described themselves as “liberal” or “very liberal,” while 32 percent said “moderate,” and 8 percent “conservative” or “very conservative.” And the trendline is striking: Democrats’ self-identification as liberal or very liberal has doubled in the last two decades.

It might be tempting to believe that Newsom’s services to corporatism and the rich are less important than the possibility that he would be an adept Democratic nominee to defeat the GOP ticket in 2028. But pursuit of such “moderate” politics was harmful to Democratic turnout in 2016 and 2024. Newsom’s current political attitude is similar to the timeworn approach that undermined the candidacies of Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris.

Newsom says he’s eager to pitch a big tent for the Democratic Party, declaring that he welcomes the likes of former US senator Joe Manchin as well as New York’s socialist mayor Zohran Mamdani in the fold. “I want it to be the Manchin to Mamdani party,” Newsom said in November. “I want it to be inclusive.” He did not mention that during the Biden presidency, while in the Senate, Manchin wrecked prospects for transformational Build Back Better legislation and other measures that would have benefited tens of millions of Americans.

It’s telling that Newsom and former president Bill Clinton, a longtime backer, have voiced profuse mutual admiration. Interviewed after he came off the stage with the former president in a joint appearance at a Clinton Global Initiative event a few months ago, Newsom praised “the ability to reach across the aisle.” That formula is a throwback to what propelled Clinton into the presidency with a pledge to find common ground, only to toss the working class overboard from the Oval Office. The disastrous results—made possible by Clinton’s reaching “across the aisle”—included passage of the NAFTA trade pact, the “welfare reform” law that harshly undermined poor women with children, the mass-incarceration-boosting crime bill and the media monopoly-enabling Telecommunications Act.

Launching his podcast “This Is Gavin Newsom” a year ago, the host began warmly showcasing extremist bigots by featuring Charlie Kirk as his first guest. When Kirk was assassinated in September, Newsom lavished praise on him, tweeting: “The best way to honor Charlie’s memory is to continue his work: engage with each other, across ideology, through spirited discourse.” From the governor’s office, Newsom issued a statement that explained: “I knew Charlie, and I admired his passion and commitment to debate.”

The praise raises the question: how far right would someone need to be before no longer meriting Newsom’s admiration for “passion”? Clearly, Kirk wasn’t far right enough to be disqualified. He only said things like asserting that “Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America,” proclaiming “we made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s” and castigating Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee and others as affirmative-action hires: “You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.”

Newsom’s show has continued to give a friendly platform to such extreme right-wingers as Steve Bannon and Ben Shapiro. In effect, Newsom is engaged in a podcast form of triangulation—by turns validating and disputing his guests’ attacks on progressivism.

On no issue is Newsom more out of step with the Democratic electorate than US support for Israel. Last summer, a Quinnipiac survey found that 77 percent of Democrats believed Israel was guilty of genocide in Gaza—but last month Newsom said the opposite, declaring “I don’t agree with that notion.” Like most Democratic officeholders who combine their denial of genocide with support for the nonstop weapons flow to Israel, Newsom lays blame narrowly on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying that he is “crystal clear about my love for Israel and condemnation of Bibi.” The same Quinnipiac poll found that fully three-quarters of Democrats were opposed to sending further military aid to Israel, a position that Newsom refuses to take at the same time that he dodges questions about the right-leaning Israel lobby group AIPAC.

Newsom can expect a direct challenge from another California Democrat likely to be on debate stages when the party’s presidential campaigns get underway next year. Congressman Ro Khanna said of Newsom in January: “He doesn’t want to offend the AIPAC donors. He doesn’t want to offend the donor class. And that explains his position on going to give Netanyahu a blank check right after October 7, on not being willing to ever call out the funding we were giving, and not willing to call out that clearly it was a genocide, and then not willing to challenge the billionaire class on tax policy.”

For anyone who wants a truly progressive Democratic Party, Gavin Newsom is bad news.

The US federal government has announced that it will “immediately” equip all its Homeland Security officers in Minneapolis with body-worn cameras, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, with plans to outfit all federal officers nationwide.

The announcement follows criticisms in response to ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers who killed two protesters last month in Minneapolis. The initiative to require federal law enforcement officers to wear body cameras has bipartisan support and is popular among the public.

But will body cameras effect change?

Research on the efficacy of body cameras is inconsistent. In 2018, a Bureau of Justice Statistics report outlined the primary reasons cited for law enforcement use of body cameras. These included increasing the quality of evidence, decreasing civilian complaints, reducing agency liability, and enhancing officer safety. However, according to a January 2022 National Institute of Justice report, the “research does not necessarily support the effectiveness of body-worn cameras in achieving those desired outcomes. A comprehensive review of 70 studies of body-worn cameras showed no consistent or no statistically significant effects.” Nevertheless, in May 2022 then-President Joe Biden signed an executive order expanding body cameras to federal law enforcement officers.

Will federal body camera footage be manipulated by AI for release? We can no longer be certain.

Why would President Biden sign an order to expand an otherwise inconsistent technology to law enforcement when acknowledged as such by his own government agency? The answer is because the promise of body cameras is based mostly on popular beliefs and assumptions even when the evidence does not support that the devices would deliver the results the public desired.

In our new book Police Body-Worn Cameras: Media and the New Discourse of Police Reform, we trace the broader shift in the rationale for body camera adoption to concerns over transparency and accountability. Indeed, “transparency” was cited as the primary reason in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announcement to equip its officers with body cameras.

Transparency is characterized by visibility. However, the release of body camera footage or agreement over what footage necessarily shows can never be assumed.

In October 2025, a judge in Chicago ordered all ICE agents in the city to wear body cameras after reviewing clips of submitted footage from officers who had already been equipped with the devices. In December, in response to a records request of immigration operations in Chicago, ICE reported that it had no body camera footage despite that it had earlier submitted footage. It remains uncertain if the footage will ever be released.

DHS has indicated it has body camera footage of CBP shooting and killing Alex Pretti last month in Minneapolis. There are widespread calls to release the footage including by politicians like the mayor of Kansas City who said, “Video is only great if we can see it.”

If seeing were only that simple.

Video footage, whether from body cameras or another source, is never some sort of objective arbiter of truth as it is routinely asserted. Instead, narratives are presented that explain footage to viewers, whether it be to the public or in a courtroom to a jury. Research has shown that narratives presented as textual descriptions have had an influence in how audiences judge what is depicted in video recordings, including body camera footage.

The 1991 bystander recording of police beating Black motorist Rodney King in Los Angeles is a standout example of narrative influence. At the time, the recording was considered the most extraordinary recording of police brutality to be shown on television. The footage, which many people believed very clearly showed police beating an unarmed man on the ground, was used as key evidence at the trial that resulted in the acquittal of four officers because of the ability of the defense to offer a counternarrative of the police beating.

The recent use of artificial intelligence has only further complicated such matters.

Last month, the White House released a digitally manipulated image of an ICE arrest. The image was different from other released AI materials in its presumably intended realism, which casts doubt on visual evidence released from the government moving forward. Will federal body camera footage be manipulated by AI for release? We can no longer be certain.

As if all of this wasn’t already enough, research examining online user assessments of video as possible evidence of a crime has found that people mostly interpret what they see as it best corresponds to their worldview. And alternative views are unlikely to sway them. The use of AI has only exacerbated this process, as online users across the political spectrum have manipulated images of bystander recordings of Alex Pretti’s killing to correspond to contradictory politically inspired narratives about his death. How then might body camera footage of Pretti’s killing fit into the discordant political discourse, assuming the video is released?

What this all suggests is that the public should lower their expectations of body cameras, including assumptions that equipping federal officers with the devices will somehow effect change. Moving forward clear policies governing the use of body cameras, like when cameras should be activated and a timeline for release, are important next steps. Policies prohibiting the official manipulation of any evidence including body camera footage should also be enacted.

Since the Cuban Revolution overthrew a US-backed dictatorship and asserted national independence, Cuba has remained in the United States' crosshairs. The country has endured nearly 600 assassination attempts against its leadership, along with countless covert and overt operations aimed at destabilizing its government. For more than six decades, the US has also imposed an economic embargo explicitly designed to bring about regime change.

By any honest measure, this policy has failed. What it has succeeded in doing is fostering deep resentment toward the United States, not only in Cuba, but across much of the world, while inflicting immense suffering on ordinary Cubans.

Basic necessities such as food, paint, printing paper, baby formula, syringes, and other lifesaving supplies, including vaccines and cancer treatment drugs, are either restricted by the embargo or priced far beyond most people’s reach. A simple walk through Havana tells the story: crumbling infrastructure, uncollected trash, and growing numbers of people gathering near tourist areas, hands outstretched in desperation.

Fuel shortages are widespread, inflation is at historic highs, and a sharp decline in tourism, Cuba’s primary economic lifeline, has made daily life nearly unbearable for many.

It is time for the United States to respect Cuba’s sovereignty and lift the embargo and accompanying sanctions.

In response, the Cuban government has expanded the private sector, legalized small- and medium-sized enterprises, decentralized food production, and opened its markets to limited foreign investment, all while attempting to maintain the core socialist principles of the revolution. It has also reduced reliance on fossil fuels, slowly shifting to solar energy. In 2025, renewable energy accounted for more than 10% of Cuba’s energy consumption, an increase from 3% the year before.

Yet these measures alone cannot offset the outsize impact of US policy and the blockade, which has been dramatically tightened in recent months. The latest effort to cut off of nearly all oil shipments to the island has led to daily blackouts and deepened human suffering.

It is time for the United States to respect Cuba’s sovereignty and lift the embargo and accompanying sanctions. They are a cruel and inhumane form of collective punishment that disproportionately harms the most vulnerable. These sanctions, without legitimate justification, have restricted travel for Americans, made remittances far more difficult, and unjustly placed Cuba on the State Sponsor of Terrorism list. That designation effectively cuts the country off from the global banking system, making even basic international transactions nearly impossible. The absurdity is stark: Cuban biotechnology produced five globally used Covid-19 vaccines, while the US embargo restricted Cuba’s ability to purchase syringes to administer them.

Cuba should not be treated as a political chess piece to demonstrate US economic and military might. It is a proud nation of nearly 11 million people who want nothing more than to be good neighbors. It is time for the United States to end its asphyxiation of Cuba and allow the Cuban people to determine their own future, a future free from US interference, coercion, and perpetual threat.

In January 2026, I published an article warning that the world was approaching the final hours of the New START Treaty. On February 5, 2026, that warning has become reality. For the first time since the early 1970s, no legally binding limits exist on US-Russian strategic nuclear forces. This moment is not only a failure of arms control; it is a profound threat to human security, humanitarian disarmament, and the credibility of multilateral commitments across all fields.

New START was the last surviving pillar of bilateral nuclear restraint. Its expiration removes the ceilings on deployed strategic warheads and delivery systems, eliminates inspections and data exchanges, and forces both sides to operate in an environment of opacity and worst‑case assumptions. In my earlier article, I argued that this collapse would deepen the crisis of credibility facing the Nuclear Non‑Proliferation Treaty (NPT), especially the long‑neglected obligations under Article VI. That analysis stands even more firmly today. A world without New START is a world where the NPT’s disarmament pillar is no longer eroding slowly—it is cracking openly.

But the consequences extend far beyond the nuclear domain. The end of New START is a blow to humanitarian disarmament as a whole. Treaties such as the Mine Ban Treaty (MBT) and the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CMC) were built on the belief that international law can restrain the most harmful weapons and protect civilians. When major powers abandon restraint in the nuclear field, they send a dangerous message: that international commitments are optional, norms are negotiable, and humanitarian principles can be sidelined when politically inconvenient.

This erosion of respect for international commitments is not isolated. It is part of a wider pattern visible in multiple conflicts, where the use of explosive weapons in populated areas, attacks on medical facilities, and disregard for civilian protection have become disturbingly normalized. The collapse of New START reinforces this trend by weakening the broader culture of compliance that humanitarian disarmament depends on.

Strengthening humanitarian disarmament—from nuclear weapons to landmines, cluster munitions, and all weapons that devastate civilian life—is now an urgent moral responsibility.

The humanitarian and medical consequences of this moment cannot be overstated. Nuclear weapons are not abstract strategic tools; they are instruments of mass suffering. Their use—even once—would overwhelm health systems, destroy infrastructure, contaminate environments, and inflict irreversible harm on generations. The expiration of New START increases the likelihood of miscalculation, escalation, and arms racing at a time when global humanitarian systems are already stretched beyond capacity.

This is why the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) has gained renewed relevance. Its humanitarian logic—grounded in the lived experiences of survivors and the realities of medical response—offers a principled alternative to the paralysis of traditional arms control. As nuclear‑armed states retreat from their obligations, the TPNW stands as a reminder that disarmament is not only a legal duty but a moral imperative.

Today’s moment demands more than observation. It requires action.

Governments must restore restraint and rebuild trust in multilateral commitments.

Civil society must raise its voice with renewed urgency.

Humanitarian and medical organizations must continue to highlight the human cost of nuclear policies.

And the media must stop treating nuclear risks as distant or technical; they are immediate threats to human life and dignity.

The expiration of New START is not the end of arms control—but it is a warning. A warning that the international system is drifting toward a world where the most destructive weapons are unconstrained, humanitarian norms are weakened, and global commitments lose their meaning.

Strengthening humanitarian disarmament—from nuclear weapons to landmines, cluster munitions, and all weapons that devastate civilian life—is now an urgent moral responsibility, more than ever.

Live at 9 AM Eastern & Streaming 24-7 Thereafter:

Political cartoonist Ted Rall and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM EST.

Today we discuss:

• New Quinnipiac poll: 61% think Trump lied about the shooting of Alex Pretti and 25% believe the Trump administration. Democrats (93%) and independents (65%) say Trump lied, while Republicans (60%) say he was honest. 80% think there should be an independent investigation. 78% have seen the video. Meanwhile, 65% say ICE has “gone too far,” according to the NPR/PBS News/Marist poll.

• In October 2024, a Rikers Island social worker came forward with a bombshell accusation: officers were routinely isolating severely mentally ill men in their cells for weeks and even months, a process known as “deadlocking.” The Department of Investigation (DOI), announced an inquiry. More than 450 days have since passed, and nothing has happened.

• Jeff Bezos axes a total of 2000 out of 2500 jobs in 2.5 years. Is The Washington Post entering a death spiral? Can it be replaced?

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On Wednesday, the Washington Post laid off roughly a third of its staff. For one of the most powerful and historically significant newspapers in the United States to make this decision is a warning to the entire journalism industry. At a moment of political instability, rising authoritarianism, and widespread distrust in institutions, corporate media is choosing contraction over responsibility.

Under the ownership of Jeff Bezos and his puppet publisher Will Lewis, the Post has joined a growing list of outlets responding to financial pressure by hollowing out their newsrooms. These layoffs arrive amid record-breaking, industry-wide cuts that have devastated local and national media alike. Across the country, journalists are losing jobs not because their work lacks value, but because truth telling has become inconvenient for corporate owners.

This erosion of journalism is not inevitable. It is the result of deliberate choices. Bezos, whose net worth hovers around $250 billion, has the resources to preserve jobs and protect institutional integrity. The decision not to do so makes clear that political influence matters more than the labor that sustains public accountability.

In 2019, Palestinian poet Marwan Makhoul wrote, “In order for me to write poetry that isn’t political, I must listen to the birds, and in order to hear the birds, the warplanes must be silent.” Journalism, like poetry, cannot be separated from the conditions under which it is produced. Reporters cannot meaningfully tell stories of joy, culture, or community while working under constant threat of layoffs, censorship, and corporate interference. The warplanes are not silent.

The future of journalism depends on resisting this erosion. It requires sustained investment in independent and nonprofit outlets, stronger labor protections for journalists, and a collective refusal to accept mass layoffs as the cost of doing business.

As newsrooms shrink, reporters are expected to do the impossible: Cover every breaking story, every election, every conflict, every scandal. What disappears in the process are the beats deemed expendable. Coverage of racial justice, gender equity, LGBTQIA+ communities, labor organizing, and social movements is often the first to be cut. These stories are not eliminated because they lack importance, but because they challenge power and unsettle funders.

The result is a media landscape increasingly shaped by what is safest for advertisers and political elites. More coverage of markets and institutions, fewer stories about Black culture. More horse-race politics, less reporting on trans survival or grassroots organizing. Corporate media follows the wind while ignoring the warplanes overhead.

This narrowing of journalism’s mission weakens democracy itself. A press that cannot afford to tell uncomfortable truths cannot fulfill its role as a public good. When newsrooms prioritize access over accountability and profitability over people, the public loses both information and trust.

Still, journalism is not finished. Independent and nonprofit newsrooms continue to do the work that corporate outlets are abandoning, producing community-rooted reporting that centers justice, accountability, and lived experience. But these outlets operate under immense financial strain, even as corporate media continues to set the terms of what is considered legitimate or newsworthy.

The future of journalism depends on resisting this erosion. It requires sustained investment in independent and nonprofit outlets, stronger labor protections for journalists, and a collective refusal to accept mass layoffs as the cost of doing business. It also requires reporters—especially students, freelancers, and those pushed out of traditional newsrooms—to keep telling the stories that power would prefer remain untold.

The Washington Post layoffs are not just about one newspaper. They are about whether journalism will continue to serve the public, or retreat further into a corporate shell. The industry can cover tragedy while preserving joy. It can hold power accountable while documenting resistance, survival, and hope. We should not accept anything less.

We will not mince words. The 'policy' of the Trump administration is a total siege: a modern mechanism for collective punishment designed to strangle life itself by cutting off fuel for hospitals, schools, water, transport, and food distribution.

Cuba already faces severe fuel shortages, with blackouts stretching daily and essential services collapsing under the weight of sanctions and depleted imports. Cuba’s remaining oil stocks could run out in mere weeks, threatening the lives of millions who have done nothing to justify this escalation.

This is the culmination of a long-standing strategy articulated in US law — from the expansive embargo codified by the Helms–Burton Act in the 1990s to the Cuban Assets Control Regulations first enforced in the 1960s — that openly sought to apply “maximum pressure” to force political transformation in Havana and defeat a vanguard in the struggle against the US's hemispheric domination.

Now, with this new Executive Order, the logic of siege has reached its apotheosis: sanction not only Cuba but every nation that dares show solidarity, effectively demanding that sovereign states choose between the interests of their own people and the dictates of an empire.

Cuba stood with oppressed peoples globally — from defeating apartheid in South Africa to sending doctors to the frontlines of epidemics — and now it is our time to act with audacity, moral courage, and collective force.

Already Mexico — Cuba’s last significant oil lifeline — has been pressed into uncertainty, warned that continued support could trigger tariffs on its economy. In doing so, Trump has revealed so-called 'secondary sanctions' as the empire's principal weapon against international solidarity.

Trump has been clear: this siege is but a springboard toward regime change. It is the same strategic blueprint that saw Venezuela’s sovereignty undermined, its oil lifelines severed, its people plunged into crisis while the world stood by in lethargy.

We cannot repeat that failure. The international community was too slow to prevent the bombardment of Caracas; we must not be passive while the groundwork is laid for similar violence against the people of Cuba.

If Cuba is to survive as an independent nation it will be because of the continued resilience and vitality of its revolutionary project — and the solidarity of movements and nations around the world defying empire and rising to challenge this injustice.

We must organize community support networks, coordinate diplomatic resistance, demand that governments refuse to enforce secondary tariffs, and amplify Cuban voices against this assault on international law, human dignity, and basic human rights.

Those efforts, both from within and beyond the Progressive International, must accelerate — today. History will judge those who saw this moment and turned away. Cuba stood with oppressed peoples globally — from defeating apartheid in South Africa to sending doctors to the frontlines of epidemics — and now it is our time to act with audacity, moral courage, and collective force.

Stand with the Cuban people now; stand against this siege, this economic assault, this unfolding humanitarian disaster; join together in the provision of key supplies to the island, from medicine to food to fuel for its people; and stand for the right of all nations to self-determination and human dignity, or be complicit in its destruction.