Starting Tuesday, public school teachers in one of the country’s largest school districts began voting on whether to keep their current union—a longstanding local affiliate of a national teachers union—or join a newly formed employee organization that has the financial backing of a notorious anti-union advocacy group.

The vote is a test case for a novel experiment: whether a group dedicated to dismantling public sector unions can successfully seed a competing union. If it works, some worry that existing unions may be forced to ward off expensive and time-consuming copycat efforts elsewhere.

The Freedom Foundation, a right-wing group based in Washington state, is financing and promoting the new employee organization in Florida. Called the Miami-Dade Education Coalition (MDEC), it was founded to compete with the longstanding teachers’ labor union, United Teachers of Dade (UTD), an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT).

The Freedom Foundation’s latest effort in Florida is tied to the right’s goal of busting unions throughout the country as a way of defunding progressive political campaigns, starting with those representing public sector employees.

The story began in spring 2023 with SB 256, a bill passed by the Florida legislature that raised the membership threshold for certain public sector unions to 60%. Under the new law, if less than 60% of eligible members have signed up for the union, it is vulnerable to automatic decertification.

Notably, the unions that were exempted from this new, higher membership threshold—representing corrections officers, police, and firefighters—all support Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who fought for the anti-union legislation.

“Tallahassee didn’t have a problem with unions playing politics as long as the politics were in favor of the governor and Republicans,” said Jim DeFede of CBS News Miami in an interview with an MDEC representative. “The unions that endorsed DeSantis got exempted from this bill.”

In the year since the law passed, more than 50,000 public employees have already lost union representation. Just this summer, all eight adjunct faculty unions at Florida’s public universities have been decertified.

The Miami-Dade teachers’ union avoided outright decertification by demonstrating a threshold of at least 30% interest from eligible members. However, their failure to reach the 60% threshold triggered the current election asking members to vote on which organization they want to represent them.

That’s where the Freedom Foundation comes in. After lobbying for the bill, the organization has been working for the past year and a half to get teachers in Miami-Dade County to choose its own pet organization, MDEC, over the UTD.

Ballots started to be mailed out Tuesday, according to the Public Employees Relations Commission (PERC). Teachers have until September 24 to cast their votes.

“Unlike UTD, MDEC’s founding principles protect our independence from outside affiliations,” the organization contends. “MDEC is its own legal entity, and no outside organization has control over our local union.”

According to an FAQ on its website, MDEC insists that it is accepting “outside resources” from the Freedom Foundation “solely for the duration of the campaign.”

Last month, the Freedom Foundation brought together public school teachers from across the country to teach them how to decertify their unions and keep “the socialist dogma of their leadership [out of] our children’s classrooms.”

MDEC filed for registration with the state labor board last October, and received approval in February; one of the signatories on behalf of MDEC was Allison Beattie, the Freedom Foundation’s director of labor relations.

Another signatory was Matthew Hargraves, who previously served as an attorney for an unaffiliated teachers union in Florida—Santa Rosa Professional Educators, which broke away from the Florida Education Association.

In January, MDEC held a press conference to reiterate that it’s a legitimate union.

The president and co-founder is Brent Urbanik. In an interview with CBS News Miami, he agreed that the Freedom Foundation is “bankrolling” MDEC but did not disclose how much money the foundation has spent on the effort. Instead, he confirmed that it is paying for all of the mailings, canvassers, and legal expenses involved in getting the alternative “local union” off the ground.

Urbanik insisted that “Freedom Foundation is not necessarily anti-union.”

The other co-founder is Shawn Beightol, who ran for UTD president twice. Media reports have claimed that the Freedom Foundation proposed the idea of an alternative union, which has been corroborated by CBS News Miami.

“The think tank proposed replacing these entrenched, agenda-driven unions with local-only ones that focused on local issues [and] Miami-Dade educators were ‘elated’ with the idea,” according to The Lion.

The Freedom Foundation’s latest effort in Florida is tied to the right’s goal of busting unions throughout the country as a way of defunding progressive political campaigns, starting with those representing public sector employees. These coordinated attacks—bankrolled by billionaires—largely culminated in the 2018 Janus Supreme Court decision, which ruled that public employees are not required to pay for the costs of union representation.

Since the Janus decision, the Freedom Foundation has pushed state-level legislation that makes it harder for teachers to pay union dues, used what some union leaders have called “federal mail fraud” to trick members into leaving their unions, and aggressively pursued access to personal information in order to contact union members directly with anti-union campaign materials.

On this episode of The Final Countdown hosts Ted Rall and Steve Gill discuss various topics including the latest inflation and unemployment numbers in the U.S. economy.    The show begins with Bronx-based political activist and congressional candidate Jose Vega discussing Ilhan Omar’s re-election amid the Congressional primaries.    Then, former senior security policy analyst Michael Maloof weighs in on the FBI’s probe into the alleged hack of the Trump campaign.    The second hour starts with CEO of Larrea Wealth Management Aquiles Larrea sharing his expertise on the latest economic outlook.    The show closes with international relations and security analyst Mark Sleboda talking about Germany’s request to Poland to arrest a Nord Stream suspect. He also shares the latest developments out of Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk.     The post The Final Countdown – 8/14/24 – Federal Reserve Gives Positive Economic Outlook Despite Little Change for Americans  first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

On August 9, 2014, I was at the United Nations, attending the Convention on Eliminating Racial Discrimination, or UN CERD, as part of a delegation of Black organizers and activists who were testifying to the conditions of Black people in the United States organized by the U.S. Human Rights Network. I cried for the greater part of that day, sitting with the weight of the injustices and murders of Black people.

There was a chill in the air and not a dry eye in the room at the UN CERD as Trayvon Martin’s mom, Sybrina Fulton, testified about the murder of her son. I remember the testimony of Jordan Davis’ father, Ron Davis, about the murder of his son and the silence that fell as he broke into tears. Both of their sons were murdered by state-sanctioned violence—by the state emboldening police, or even neighborhood watch volunteers, to take Black lives with impunity. I can still hear the testimonies of Black feminist organizations like Black Women’s Blueprint and activists from Chicago who spoke about police violence and murders of Black women and men. I spoke and testified about housing insecurities and violence against LGBTQI+ people. For us, all of those stories were connected and shared—they were all about Black lives not being valued and Black folks needing to build people power in order to stop it.

While at U.N. CERD, an African diplomat asked, “What is happening in Ferguson?” This was the first time I had heard of Ferguson, Missouri. I quickly researched all I could about Ferguson and what was happening. As a parent, I immediately felt another profound loss of another child, Mike. The murder of Mike Brown Jr. felt as intimate, as close, and as violating as that of Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis, Aiyanna Jones, and the many others taken by state-sanctioned violence before August 9.

Our work continues as we navigate the rapidly growing rise and threat of fascism, a complex electoral landscape, an ever-worsening climate crisis, and the continued murder of Black people by the police, such as the killing of Sonya Massey

It was all overwhelming. It was clear that, as a people, we had lost too much. In our time of deepest need, the state responded by further declaring war against its people with tanks, tear gas, and militarized occupation. We were outraged. We knew that we had to take action; we didn’t know what to do, but we knew we needed to be there with those brave freedom fighters in Ferguson. A few comrades and I left the U.N. CERD meeting and headed straight to Ferguson.

Upon arriving in Ferguson, we learned about Mike through the memories his people shared of him. He was beloved by the community, and more than that, he represented so many of us, and we all shared so many similarities with him—Mike’s life was not abstract; it was real, tangible, and familiar. Mike Brown Jr. looked like many in our families and neighborhoods. Mike Brown Jr. looked like my nephew and other young men in my own life. It is a psychological terror when faces and bodies so much like your own are hunted down and killed. We still grieve and mourn Mike, and his memory continues to fuel our fight for power and liberation.

As revolutionaries, our role is not only to grieve and mourn but to honor our people—present, past, and those who will come after us—by acting to create the society we deserve. For months, Mike Brown Jr. was honored through the sustained action and rebellion in the streets of Ferguson and actions around the globe. Uttering his name invited millions to say the names of Black people killed by police, and that reverberation ignited a new conversation about racialized violence. Each day, each hour, there was resistance against police murders and state-sanctioned violence and an assertion that Black people deserve to live without the fear and threat of police terror. The days were consumed with marches, rallies, escalations, and time in community, and the nights were long and filled with strategy meetings, event prep, and far less rest than our bodies needed. But even when those protests ended, the work did not. Mike Brown Jr. and the Ferguson Uprisings woke something up in us, inspiring a new era of the Black liberation movement that has sustained for a decade and counting. Our lives, my life, changed forever.

At the Movement 4 Black Lives (M4BL), we are fighting for a fundamentally different world, one where he and all of us would be safe, protected, and given the best conditions to thrive and determine our own outcomes.

Since the Ferguson Rebellion, M4BL has remained committed to advancing abolition, anti-capitalism, and Black Queer Feminism. We organize and advance our vision in local communities and nationally. Our strategies range from advancing policy and electoral shifts to building our own institutions and alternatives to oppressive systems. We are proud of the organizing of our member organizations in Ferguson and St. Louis, who have been vital in the resistance and power building, such as Action St. Louis and the Organization for Black Struggle.

In our 10 years of building social movement power within Black communities, we are proud of our interventions to create policy and legislative change through the Vision 4 Black Lives, Breathe Act, and People’s Response Act that all emphasize divesting from the carceral state and instead investing in alternatives that support and nourish Black lives and communities. We are excited to report about the dozens of campaigns that have won and advanced local wins, ranging from removing police officers from schools to creating housing, changing educational policies, creating safety pods and alternatives to policing, advancing reproductive justice, and engaging communities in environmental and climate change preparedness.

Our work continues as we navigate the rapidly growing rise and threat of fascism, a complex electoral landscape, an ever-worsening climate crisis, and the continued murder of Black people by the police, such as the killing of Sonya Massey. We are clear about our need to build more power to position ourselves to create the world we need and deserve. Now and forever, we honor Mike Brown Jr. in our organizing work and all those who have been taken from us. Today, as the nation reflects on how Ferguson changed the world, I’m asking that you think about what we have to do in the next 10 years to ensure that we’re moving closer to a world where uprisings like the one that rattled the foundation of our nation aren’t necessary. We are still feeling the impact of what happened 10 years ago across all aspects of society: culturally, politically, socially, and economically. And we are less than 80 days away from a presidential election where the freedom to engage in our democracy is literally on the ballot.

We know that much of what is being promised in Project 2025 is a direct response to the transformational change that came out of the Ferguson Uprising. So, I’m asking that you keep that front of mind as you consider the change you want to see in the next four years. I’m asking that you don’t overlook the communities in Ferguson who never asked for their city to be thrust into the spotlight but acted quickly to demand change and accountability from their local police and from the system of policing at large. Please remember Mike’s family, loved ones, and the organizers on the ground who carry on liberatory work in ways that can only be described as revolutionary and rooted in a deep love for their people. Today, consider your personal responsibility in changing our world over the next 10 years.

We began seeding M4BL during the Uprising because we knew there were necessary things we could do together that we could not do apart. And we still believe that. Join us in building people's power to make liberation more than a freedom dream; let’s make it a reality.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom appears to be taking climate change seriously, at least when he’s in front of a microphone and flashing cameras. His talk then is direct and tough. He repeatedly points out that the planet is in danger and appears ready to act. He’s been called a “climate-change crusader” and a leader of America’s clean energy revolution.

“[California is] meeting the moment head-on as the hots get hotter, the dries get drier, the wets get wetter, simultaneous droughts and rain bombs,” Newsom typically asserted in April 2024 during an event at Central Valley Farm, which is powered by solar panels and batteries. “We have to address these issues with a ferocity that is required of us.”

These are exactly the types of remarks many of us wish we had heard from so many other elected officials addressing the climate disaster this planet’s becoming, the culprits behind it, and how we might begin to fix it. True, Big Oil long covered up internal research about how devastating climate change would be while lying through its teeth as its officials and lobbyists worked fiercely against any kind of global-warming-directed fossil fuel legislation. It’s also correct that the issue must be addressed immediately and forcefully. Yet, whatever Gov. Newsom might say, he’s also played a role in launching a war on rooftop solar power and so kneecapping California just when it was making remarkable strides in that very area of development.

Despite what Gov. Newsom and the California Public Utilities Commission have claimed, electric rates have increased not because of solar power’s massive success but because of old-school capitalist greed.

Consider California’s residential solar program (its “net-metering“), which the governor has all but dismantled. Believe it or not, in December 2022, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) voted 5-0 to slash incentives for residents to place more solar power on their homes. Part of the boilerplate justification offered by the CPUC, Newsom, and the state’s utility companies was that payments to individuals whose houses produce such power were simply too high and badly impacted poor communities that had to deal with those rate increases. They’ve called this alleged problem a “cost-shift” from the wealthy to the poor. It matters not at all that the CPUC, which oversees consumer electric rates, has continually approved rate increases over the years. Solar was now to blame.

It’s true that property owners do place those solar power panels on their roofs. What is not true is that solar only benefits the well-to-do. A 2022 study by Lawrence Berkeley Labs showed that 60% of all solar users in California then were actually low- to middle-income residents. In addition, claiming that residential solar power is significantly responsible for driving the state’s electricity rates up just isn’t true either. Those rates have largely risen because of the eternal desire of California’s utility companies to turn a profit.

Here’s an example of how those rates work and why they’ve gone up. Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E), whose downed power lines have been responsible for an estimated 30 major wildfires in California over the past six overheating years, was forced to pay $13.9 billion in settlement money for the damage done. The company has also been found guilty of 84 felony counts of involuntary manslaughter for deaths in the devastating 2018 Camp Fire in Butte County. In response to those horrific blazes and the damages they inflicted, the company claims it must now spend more than $5.9 billion to bury its aging infrastructure to avoid future wildfires in our tinder-box of a world. Watchdog groups suggest that it’s those investments that are raising electric bills across the state, not newly installed solar power.

In short, large utilities make their money by repairing and expanding the energy grid. Residential solar directly threatens that revenue stream because it doesn’t rely on an ever-expanding network of power stations and transmission lines. The electricity that residential solar power produces typically remains at the community level or, better yet, in the home itself, especially if coupled with local battery storage. Not surprisingly then, by 2018, 20 transmission lines had been canceled in California, mainly because so many homes were already producing solar power on their own rooftops, saving $2.6 billion in total consumer energy costs.

A recent Colorado-based Vibrant Clean Energy analysis confirmed the savings rooftop solar provides to ratepayers. Their report estimated that, by 2050, rooftop panels would save California ratepayers $120 billion. That would also save energy companies from spending far more money on the grid (but, of course, that’s the only way they turn a profit).

“What our model finds is that when you account for the costs associated with distribution grid infrastructure, distributed energy resources can produce a pathway that is lower cost for all ratepayers and emits fewer greenhouse gas emissions,” said Dr. Christopher Clack of Vibrant Clean Energy. “Our study shows this is true even as California looks to electrify other energy sectors like transportation.”

However, such lower costs also mean less profits for utility companies, so they have found an ingenious workaround. They could appease climate concerns while making a bundle of money by building large solar farms in the desert. In the process, nothing about how they generated revenue would change, energy costs would continue to rise, and little would stand in their way, not even a vulnerable forest of Joshua trees.

Solar Panels vs. the Joshua Tree

“Why Razing Joshua Trees for Solar Farms Isn’t Always Crazy,” a troubling Los Angeles Times headline read. Sammy Roth, an intrepid environmental reporter who has written insightfully and cogently on the way humanity is altering the climate, was nonetheless all in on uprooting thousands of Joshua trees in California’s Kern County to make space for that giant solar farm. The “Aratina Solar Project,” a sprawling 2,300-acre installation in the heart of the Mojave Desert, would transfer electricity to wealthy coastal areas, powering more than 180,000 homes. As Roth reported, “There are places to build solar projects besides pristine ecosystems. But there’s no get-out-of-climate-change-free card… Hence the need to accept killing some Joshua trees in the name of saving more Joshua trees. I feel kind of terrible saying that.”

He should feel terrible. Roth believes that tearing up Joshua trees, already in great jeopardy due to our warming climate, is the price that must be paid to save ourselves from ourselves. But is sacrificing wild spaces—and, in this case, also threatening the habitat of the desert tortoise—truly worth it? Is this really the best solution we can come up with in our overheating world? There do appear to be better options, but they would also upend the status quo and put far less money in the pockets of utility shareholders.

Just three big box stores in California cities ripe for solar power would provide more acreage than the 2,300-acre Joshua-tree-destroying solar installation in Kern County.

Here’s how Californians could think outside the box or, in this case, on top of it. A single Walmart roof averages 180,000 square feet. In California, there are 309 Walmarts. That’s 55,620,000 square feet or 1,276 acres of rooftop. Home Depots? There are 247 of them in California and each of their roofs averages 104,000 square feet, totaling 25,668,000 square feet, or around 589 acres. Throw in 318 Target stores, averaging 125,000 square feet, and you have over 39,750,000 square feet or another 912 acres. Add all of those up and you have 2,777 acres of rooftops that could be turned into mini-solar farms.

In other words, just three big box stores in California cities ripe for solar power would provide more acreage than the 2,300-acre Joshua-tree-destroying solar installation in Kern County. And that doesn’t even include all the Costcos (129), Lowes (111), Amazon warehouses (100+), Ikeas (8), strip malls, schools, municipal buildings, parking lots, and so much more that would provide far better options.

You get the picture. The potential for solar in our built environment is indeed enormous. Throw in the more than 5.6 million single-family homes in California with no solar panels, and there’s just so much rooftop real estate that could generate electricity without wrecking entire ecosystems already facing a frighteningly hot future.

In 2014, it was estimated that solar power from California homes produced 2.2 gigawatts of energy. Ten years later, that potential is so much greater. As of summer 2024, the state has 1.9 million residential rooftop solar installations capable of churning out 16.7 gigawatts of power. It’s estimated that 1 gigawatt can conservatively power 750,000 homes. This means that the solar generation now installed on California’s roofs could theoretically, if stored, power 12,525,000 homes in a state with only 7.5 million of them. Already, in 2022, it’s believed that the state wasted nearly 2.3 million megawatt-hours worth of solar-produced electricity.

And mind you, this isn’t just back-of-the-napkin math. A 2021 geospatial analysis of rooftop solar conducted by researchers at Ireland’s University of Cork and published in Nature confirmed what many experts have long believed: that the U.S. has enough usable rooftop space to supply the entire country’s energy demands and, with proper community-based storage, would be all we would need to fulfill our energy production demands—and then some! If properly deployed, the U.S. could produce 4.2 petawatt-hours per year of rooftop solar electricity, more than the country consumes today. (A petawatt-hour is a unit of energy equal to one trillion kilowatt-hours.) The report also noted that there are enough rooftops worldwide to potentially fully feed the world’s energy appetite.

If residential solar has succeeded exceptionally well and has so much possibility, why are we intent on destroying desert ecology with massive, industrial-scale solar farms? The answer in Gavin Newsom’s California has much more to do with politics and corporate avarice than with mitigating climate change.

Profit-Driven Utilities

Despite what Gov. Newsom and the California Public Utilities Commission have claimed, electric rates have increased not because of solar power’s massive success but because of old-school capitalist greed.

“Rooftop solar has value in avoiding costs that utilities would have to pay to deliver that same kilowatt-hour of energy, such as investments in transmission lines and other grid infrastructure,” reports the solar-advocacy group, Solar Rights Alliance. “Rooftop solar also reduces the public health costs of fossil fuel power plants and the costs to ratepayers of utility-caused wildfires and power shut-offs. Rooftop solar also provides quantifiable benefits through local economic development and jobs. It preserves land that would otherwise be used for large-scale solar development. When paired with batteries, rooftop solar helps build community resilience.”

Nonetheless, blaming rooftop solar for California’s increased electricity rates has been a painfully effective argument. So, here’s a question to consider: Why does it seem like Newsom is working on behalf of the utilities to limit small-scale rooftop solar? Could it be related to the $10 million Pacific Gas & Electric donated to his campaigns since he first ran for office in San Francisco in the late 1990s? Or could it be because key members of his cabinet are tight with PG&E executives? (Dana Williamson, his current chief of staff, was a former director of public affairs at PG&E.)

Growth means more money for California’s utilities, so they’ve gone all in on expansive and destructive solar farms.

Then, consider the potential conflict of interest when the law firm O’Melveny & Myers, which previously worked for PG&E, was tasked by Newsom with drafting wildfire legislation to save the company from bankruptcy. PG&E would, in fact, end up hammering out a deal with CPUC to pass on the costs of the bailout, a staggering $11 billion, to ratepayers over a 30-year period.

It all worked out well for the company. In 2023, PG&E, which serves 16 million people, raked in $2.2 billion in profits, nearly a 25% jump from 2022.

“The coziness between Gavin Newsom and [PG&E] is unlike anything we’ve seen in California politics… Their motive is profit, which is driven by Wall Street,” says Bernadette Del Chiaro, executive director of California Solar & Storage Association, who has over a decade of experience monitoring the industry. “[The utility companies] have to keep posting record profits, quarter after quarter. It’s a perversity that nobody is really thinking about.”

It’s pretty simple really. Growth means more money for California’s utilities, so they’ve gone all in on expansive and destructive solar farms. Ultimately, this means higher bills for consumers to cover the costs of a grid they are forced to rely on as home solar systems become increasingly expensive.

(More) Bad News for the Climate

Newsom’s war on rooftop solar has had another detrimental impact: It’s threatened the state’s clean energy goals. And the governor hasn’t said a word about that. The California Energy Commission estimates that, to meet its climate benchmarks, the state must add 20,000 megawatts of rooftop solar electricity by 2030. At this pace, they’ll be lucky to install 10,000 megawatts. With such a precipitous decline in home solar installations, the 20,000 megawatts goal will never be reached by that year, even when you include all large-scale solar developments now in the works.

The Coalition for Community Solar Access estimates that 81% of solar companies in the state fear they’ll have to close up shop. Bad news for the solar industry also means bad news not just for California, the nation’s leader in solar energy production, but for the climate more generally.

The slow death of new residential solar installations is likely to mean that most of California’s electricity will continue to be made by burning natural gas and sending more fossil fuel emissions into the atmosphere.

A rapid decline in new solar installations also means massive job losses, possibly 22% of the state’s solar gigs, or up to 17,000 workers. In addition to such bleak projections, disincentivizing rooftop solar will also hurt the Californians most impacted by warming temperatures and in need of relief—those who can’t afford to live along the state’s more temperate coast.

“Rooftop solar is not just the wealthy homeowners anymore,” State Senator Josh Becker, a San Mateo Democrat, recently told CalMatters. “Central Valley people are suffering from extreme heat. The industry has been making great strides in low-income communities. This [utilities commission decision] makes it harder.”

The slow death of new residential solar installations is likely to mean that most of California’s electricity will continue to be made by burning natural gas and sending more fossil fuel emissions into the atmosphere. All of this may also be a sign that rooftop solar across the country is in peril. Utility companies and those hoping to gut residential solar programs in Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Nevada, and North Carolina are already humming Newsom’s “cost-shift” tune.

“They [the big utilities] know it’s a pivotal time,” Bernadette Del Chiaro tells me, with a sense of urgency and deep concern for what lies ahead. “They are fighting really hard, and they are fighting hardest in California because where California goes, there goes the nation.”

Project 2025: The MAGA Plan to Take Your Freedom 

A second Trump term would be more dangerous than the first — in part because of something called Project 2025, a plan to extend Trump’s grip into every part of your life.

Trump’s gross incompetence in his first term wasn’t all bad. It kept some of his most extreme goals out of reach. That’s why his inner circle, including more than 20 officials from his first term, have written a step-by-step playbook to make a second term brutally efficient.

At nearly a thousand pages, it’s longer than most Stephen King novels, and a lot scarier. The Associated Press wasn’t kidding when they called it “a plan to dismantle the US government and replace it with Trump’s vision,”

Project 2025 is a road map to ban abortion, give greedy corporate oligarchs everything they want, and strip Americans of our most basic freedoms — all without needing any support from Congress.

There’s more to it than I can get into, but here are three things I want you to know.

#1 How would Project 2025 work?

Every nonpartisan government agency would be turned into an arm of the MAGA agenda.

Some of the worst things Trump reportedly tried to do as president — like having the military  shoot protesters or seize voting machines to overturn the election  — were only stopped because sensible leaders in the military or the professional civil service refused to go along with it.

In a second term, there would be no sensible leaders in the military or professional civil service because Trump would fire anyone more loyal to the Constitution than to him.

Trump started the process in October 2020 with an executive order that would have let him fire tens of thousands of civil servants and replace them with MAGA henchmen. I’m talking about traditionally non-political positions, like scientists at scientific agencies and accountants at the IRS.

Trump could not act on the executive order then because he lost the election. If he wins now, he’s pledged to pick up where he left off and go further…

TRUMP: …making every executive branch employee fireable by the President of the United States.

#2 Project 2025 is about controlling Americans’ lives & bodies

Restricting abortion is such a big part of Project 2025 that the word “abortion” appears 198 times in the plan.

Trump largely made good on his campaign promise to ban abortion.

Thanks to Trump’s Supreme Court justices, 1 in 3 American women of childbearing age live in states with abortion bans. Project 2025 would make that even worse, without needing new laws from Congress.

Page 458 of the playbook calls for a MAGA-controlled FDA to reject medical science and reverse approval of the medications used in 63% of all abortions, effectively banning them.

Page 455 plans “abortion surveillance” and the creation of a registry that could put people who cross state lines to get an abortion at risk of prosecution.

Another way around Congress is to enforce arcane laws that are still technically on the books. Page 562 plans for a MAGA-controlled Justice Department to enforce the Comstock Act of 1873, which bans the mailing of “anything designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion.” This could be used to block the shipment of any medications or medical instruments needed for abortions.

But Project 2025’s control of American families goes even further. It plans for government agencies to define life as beginning at conception — a position at odds with the process used for in vitro fertilization.

Page 451 declares that “Families comprised of a married mother, father, and their children are the foundation of a well-ordered nation and healthy society,” thereby stigmatizing single parents, same-sex couples, unmarried coparents, and childless couples.

Project 2025 even takes a stand against adoption, declaring on p. 489 that “all children have a right to be raised by the men and women who conceived them.”

#3 Project 2025 would turn America into a police state.

Maybe you live in a blue city or state, where you think plans like arresting teachers and librarians over banned books (which is on p. 5) could never happen. Well, guess again.

Trump has said one of the big things he’d do differently in a second term is override mayors and governors to take over local law enforcement.

Page 553 lays out how to do this, and even plans for Trump’s Justice Department to prosecute district attorneys he disagrees with.

Immigration enforcement is to be conducted like a war, with the military deployed within the U.S., and millions of undocumented immigrants rounded up and placed into newly constructed holding camps. This is outlined starting on p. 139.

Members of the Project 2025 team also reportedly told the Washington Post about plans to invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy the military against anti-Trump protests.

There is much more to Project 2025. There are more than a hundred pages of anti-environmental policies that would help Trump make good on what he reportedly promised to do for oil executives if they contribute a billion dollars to his reelection. It would make drilling and mining a top national priority while killing clean energy projects, barring the EPA from regulating carbon emissions, and replacing all government climate scientists with climate deniers.

There are even cartoonishly cruel plans like slaughtering wild horses. Yes, that’s really in there on p. 528.

I thought I understood the stakes of this election, but reading this plan… Well, it gave me chills. If Trump gets the chance to put this plan into place, he will. The country it would turn America into would be hard for any of us to recognize.

Israel and its lobby have, for years now, been engaged in a frenzy of activity to further insulate Israel from accountability by using their influence in the West to effectively outlaw organized opposition to Israel. Foremost among these efforts has been the Israeli campaign to penalize calls to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel for its gross violations of human rights. As a result, countless laws and policies are now on the books across the U.S. and the broader West, trampling on core constitutional principles and internationally guaranteed human rights in defense of Israeli impunity. But an advisory opinion issued last month by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) should help to turn that around.

In its historic ruling, the ICJ found that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza is entirely unlawful, that Israel practices apartheid and racial segregation, and that all states are under a duty to help bring this to an end, including by cutting off all economic, trade and investment relations with Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. In other words, as a matter of international law, all countries are obliged to participate in an economic boycott of Israel’s activities in the occupied Palestinian territory and to divest from any existing economic relations there.

Because the court was bound by the parameters of the request from the UN General Assembly that triggered its findings, it did not address duties and obligations relating to activities inside the 1948 Green Line. However, the court’s authoritative statement of the requirements of international law makes clear that proponents of BDS have not only the moral high ground but also a firm grounding in international law.

The court’s advisory opinion in July comes on the heels of the commencement of genocide proceedings against Israel in the ICJ last December, and a request in May by the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court for arrest warrants for the Israeli Prime Minister and the Defense Minister for crimes against humanity, including extermination. Together, they represent a historic shift away from 76 years of Western-sponsored Israeli exceptionalism and impunity, feeding hope of a new era of accountability.

Recognizing this, Israel, as well as its Western allies accused of complicity in Israel’s international crimes (chief among them, the U.S., UK, and Germany) have been scrambling to oppose, delay, and obstruct action by these courts, both by intervening in court proceedings and, in some cases, by threatening court officials. And indeed, the ICC warrant process has already been inordinately delayed when compared to previous cases. Nevertheless, for its part, the ICJ advisory opinion was both timely and uncompromising in its application of international law to Israel.

Israel and its allies also defensively claim that advisory opinions of the ICJ are “non-binding” and, indeed, the court cannot compel a state to comply with its findings. But what this tactic ignores is that the laws to which the court refers in its authoritative opinion are, in fact, binding on all states. For example, the court observed that the right of the Palestinians to self-determination, their rights under international human rights and humanitarian law, and the prohibition of Israel’s acquisition of territory by force impose so-called “erga omnes” obligations, that is, binding obligations that apply to all countries.

Among these obligations are the duty not to recognize or assist the occupation in any way, and the duty to take action to realize the equal rights and self-determination of the Palestinian people. It follows that any policies or acts by a Western country that in any way recognize Israel’s occupation, assist Israel in that occupation (economically, militarily, diplomatically, etc.), or prohibit persons under its jurisdiction from respecting international law by boycotting or divesting from Israel’s illegal occupation, would be unlawful.

Of course, the U.S., which has long ignored the constraints of international law and invested decades of effort in carving out an exception for Israeli impunity, is likely to reject the court’s findings and oppose the implementing resolution of the UN General Assembly, which is expected to follow. Some other Western states invested in the Israeli axis, like the UK and Germany, may follow suit. But it is likely that most countries, including other Western states, will adjust their policies to ensure legal compliance.

Groups and individuals targeted by efforts to penalize BDS or to compel people to reject it will now have an important new tool in their legal arsenal as they assert their rights either administratively or judicially. They can now invoke the authoritative ruling of the World Court to credibly assert that participating in boycotts, divestment, and sanctions against Israeli occupation, colonization, and apartheid is not only a moral imperative and constitutional and human right, but also an international legal obligation.

The war in Ukraine is a catastrophe that has plunged the country into a humanitarian crisis and sparked global geopolitical tensions from the China/Taiwan conflict to growing Russian influence in swaths of Africa. Russia continues to use disinformation campaigns to help swing elections in the USA, Europe, and across the planet. But Russian President Vladimir Putin's most immediate target is its Western neighbor, where Russia is intensifying its assault on Ukraine's power structure, resulting in massive suffering in summer, with life-threatening situations for millions predicted this winter.

The recent attack on Ohmatdyt Children's Hospital exemplifies the immense suffering endured by the Ukrainian people. Despite taking place thousands of miles away, the war continues to be a political football used by former U.S. President Donald Trump and his followers to attack their opponents, further dividing people in the USA, just as Putin wants. Even with all of these challenges, there is potential for significant help in all these areas, through creative strategies and the adoption of clean energy solutions, which can also help defeat climate change.

The war in Ukraine has dramatically impacted the global energy landscape, highlighting the vulnerabilities of outdated and polluting fossil fuel systems, and the risks associated with Russia's manipulation of energy supplies. This situation underscores the urgent need for a global transition to clean energy. However, it also offers an opportunity for a mutually beneficial partnership between the United States and Ukraine. By collaborating on renewable energy projects in Ukraine, both countries can secure beneficial economic, environmental, and geopolitical gains.

Economic Benefits, Clean Energy Competitiveness, and Stopping Climate Disruption

The clean energy sector in the United States is booming. Related job growth reached 4% in 2022, bringing the total number of workers in the sector to more than 3.3 million. This sector represents not only a path to future economic prosperity for retrained working- and middle-class people but also an avenue for the United States to build an edge when compared to China, which has been well documented as using forced labor to keep solar prices artificially low.

By partnering with Ukraine on renewable energy projects, the U.S. can leverage this skilled domestic workforce in renewable energy to support project development and component manufacturing. This strategic collaboration could also lower production costs for U.S. companies, speeding up the clean energy transition in America, boosting impact of the Green New Deal, and enhancing global efforts to beat climate change.

Domestic renewable energy projects, such as solar or wind installations, can also contribute to the economic revitalization of war-torn regions in Ukraine.

Increased collaboration would also boost demand for U.S.-made clean energy technologies, such as solar panels, wind turbines, and energy storage systems. This, in turn, would revitalize domestic-quality job creation in the energy sector as fossil fuel industries like coal disappear. This aligns with post-pandemic economic recovery efforts by creating high-skilled jobs and bolstering domestic supply chains.

The urgency of this transition is underscored by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which warns of the catastrophic outcomes if global warming exceeds 1.5°C. The U.S. is already experiencing the economic impacts of climate change, with the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) reporting that weather and climate disasters since 1980 exceeded $2,7 trillion. Supporting a Ukrainian renewable energy revolution also helps mitigate the worst effects of climate disruption, saving trillions of dollars and countless lives in the long run through avoided climate-related damages.

Strengthening Ukraine's Energy Security and Fostering Stability

Russia's manipulation of energy resources has long been a tool of geopolitical coercion, particularly against Ukraine. By developing a diverse mix of renewable energy sources, Ukraine can reduce its dependency on imported energy sources, enhancing its energy security and resilience. This shift is not just strategic but necessary, as the country seeks to replace destroyed Soviet-era coal plants and phase out risky nuclear facilities. Energy experts have noted that it is significantly harder for an adversary to disable a solar installation or wind farm's dispersed turbines compared to incapacitating a conventional power plant.

Domestic renewable energy projects, such as solar or wind installations, can also contribute to the economic revitalization of war-torn regions in Ukraine. Hospitals and schools can stay open by installing new, affordable solar panels on their roofs, which are easy to replace by local technicians. These projects can be rapidly deployed and maintained, fostering local economies and job creation in war-torn regions, crucial for long-term stability.Collaboration and Building Capacity

To maximize the benefits of a U.S. -Ukraine clean energy partnership, strong collaboration is essential. The U.S. government, alongside clean energy providers and civil society stakeholders, must play a proactive role. The U.S. can utilize its expertise and resources to facilitate investment and knowledge transfer, with state-backed investment guarantees like much of Europe offers. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), with its existing and growing clean energy experience in Ukraine, can offer technical assistance and capacity-building programs to help Ukraine develop a skilled clean energy workforce and a rapidly growing clean energy infrastructure.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has championed the clean energy revolution. Streamlining permitting processes, and offering further incentives, will boost cooperation in the clean energy sector. By engaging local communities and ensuring inclusive participation, these projects can gain widespread support and foster social equity.

Stronger collaboration between the United States and Ukraine in clean energy is more than a response to an immediate crisis; it is a forward-looking initiative with global implications. This cooperation can demonstrate leadership in the fight against climate change, promote peace and stability, and boost economic health for precarious workers in both nations. By moving to create a better sustainable energy future in Ukraine, we not only address the urgent challenges of today but also lay the groundwork for a more secure and prosperous tomorrow there and in the USA, free from the grip of petro-dictators like Putin and those who will undoubtedly come after him.

On August 14, 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Social Security into law. Eighty-nine years later, our Social Security system is at a crossroads. Even as we rightfully celebrate the widespread, enduring popularity and success of Social Security, it is imperative we recognize the threat aimed at our earned benefits by Republican politicians.

If the Trump-Vance ticket prevails this November, former U.S. President Donald Trump will continue his long track record of trying to cut and dismantle Social Security. Don’t be fooled by his rhetoric to the contrary. When Trump was president, he proposed cuts to Social Security in every one of his budgets.

When Trump couldn’t get the cuts enacted, he employed the old tactic of “starve the beast.” Figuring that tax cuts are easier to enact than benefit cuts, he sought to hold a Covid-19 relief package hostage to Congress agreeing to cut Social Security’s dedicated revenue. When that failed, he grabbed the questionable power to go after its dedicated revenue unilaterally—something without precedent. Because Trump was limited to executive action, he was able to only defer the revenue, but he made clear that he would not just defer the revenue, but eliminate it, if he were reelected. Insufficient dedicated revenue leads to automatic cuts. Conveniently, automatic cuts means there is no one to clearly be held accountable.

Republican politicians are ignoring the will of their own voters in favor of protecting their wealthy donors.

If Trump wins again, he will be even worse. Imagine Donald Trump as president, paired with a Republican Congress dominated by Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) vision of a fiscal commission to cut Social Security behind closed doors and the Republican Study Committee’s plans to cut Social Security by $1.5 trillion over just the next decade and trillions more after that (including raising the retirement age). That would be a nightmare scenario for Social Security and the millions of Americans and their families who rely on their earned Social Security benefits.

And it is just as important to recognize the immense opportunity that is available to make Social Security even better going forward.

As a Senator, Vice President Kamala Harris cosponsored legislation protecting and expanding Social Security. And her fantastic running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, shares her commitment to Social Security. When he was in Congress he too cosponsored legislation to protect and expand Social Security.

He understands, from first-hand experience, just how important Social Security is. Here’s what he said in 2010:

As a young man watching my father die of a lengthy illness and a nine-year-old brother at home and a stay-at-home mother watching Social Security survivor benefits be there to allow my little brother to go on and go to college and my mother to go back in the workforce. Many people will say and they are absolutely right, “Pull yourself up by the bootstraps.” They were right of that. We just didn’t have any boots. They were loaned to us by Social Security. And for that we have paid that back ten times over. Our family is stronger, our community is stronger, our country is stronger.

Both Vice President Harris and Gov. Walz recognize that Social Security is the most secure, efficient, and important source of retirement income for the vast majority of Americans. But its benefits are inadequately low.

With the disappearance of traditional private-sector retirement plans, our nation is facing a retirement income crisis. Too many Americans fear that they must work until they die, because they will not be able to retire without a drastic decline in their standard of living. The solution is to expand Social Security.

Both Vice President Harris and Governor Walz understand this reality, and will fight to expand Social Security. They want to require multimillionaires and billionaires to start paying their fair share.

In stark contrast, Trump and his Republican allies in Congress support cutting Social Security and ultimately ending the program as we know it. This is laid out in the budget proposal from the Republican Study Committee (RSC), a group that counts about 80% of House Republicans as members. And rather than require the wealthy to pay more, they want to give huge tax breaks to the uber-wealthy. Republican politicians are ignoring the will of their own voters in favor of protecting their wealthy donors.

In this election year, voters should celebrate Social Security’s 89th birthday by supporting the party that is working to expand, not cut, their earned benefits.

Kamala Harris has been running for president for weeks. Yet she still hasn’t given a press conference or an interview….just like Joe Biden. Why not? Is she like Joe Biden?

The post Just Like Biden first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

One issue that has slipped beneath the radar in terms of news coverage is the recent decision by the Biden administration to resume the sale of offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia. For starters, the U.S. will be sending a shipment of bombs worth $750 million in the coming months.

These weapons were cut off by the Biden administration in 2021 because the Saudis were using them in Yemen in their war against the Houthis, killing thousands of civilians.

The resumption of the sale of offensive weapons is part of U.S. efforts to push the Saudis to normalize relations with Israel. In 2020, Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) signed normalization agreements that are collectively known as the Abraham Accords. These deals were brokered primarily by the Trump administration. Some of the countries that signed on, such as the UAE, view the accord not only as a way to bolster trade, but as a military alliance against their historical rival, Iran.

For the Saudis, however, normalization has been pushed off the table by the Israeli assault on Gaza and public sympathy for the Palestinians. A December 2023 survey by the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy found that a near unanimous 96 percent of Saudis say that Arab countries should break all contacts with Israel to protest against Israeli attacks in Gaza.

The Saudis say that Israel must first end the war in Gaza and, even more elusive, create a credible pathway to a Palestinian state. Saudi Arabia has told the United States it will not open diplomatic relations with Israel unless it agrees to accept an independent Palestinian state on the internationally-recognized pre-1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital. Such a Palestinian state is precisely what Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Knesset are dead set against.

But U.S. officials still want to push for normalization, and the Biden administration has offered a series of incentives, including negotiating a defense pact and an agreement for civil nuclear cooperation.

The U.S. also wants to build closer Saudi ties to drive a wedge into the peace process between Saudi Arabia and Iran that was brokered by China last year, and to counter the inroads that China is making in the region. More immediately, the U.S. wants Saudi cooperation in repelling Iranian retaliatory attacks on Israel. In mid-April, when Iran retaliated against the April 1 Israeli airstrike that killed a top Revolutionary Guard commander in Syria, the Saudis, along with Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, cooperated with the U.S. and Israel in repelling some 300 missiles and drones that Iran fired on Israel. The Israelis are now bracing for another Iranian response to the killing in Tehran of Hamas political leader Ismael Haniya.

But the arms sales violate the Biden administration’s earlier promises of a new approach to Saudi Arabia that would focus on human rights. In 2020 Biden vowed to treat Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto ruler, as a “pariah,” mainly because of the 2018 assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Despite recent cosmetic openings like musical concerts and some real reforms like giving women the right to drive and the abolition of the religious police, Saudi Arabia remains one of the most repressive countries in the world. While U.S. officials regularly criticize elections in neighboring Iran, there are no elections in Saudi Arabia. It continues to be one of the last remaining absolute monarchies in the world.

You don’t have to look at the damning reports from groups like Amnesty International and Human Right Watch to see the extent of Saudi repression. Just look at the U.S. State Department’s 2023 human rights report. It talks about extrajudicial killings; enforced disappearance; torture; life-threatening prison conditions; arbitrary arrest and detention; lack of an independent judiciary; punishment of family members for alleged offenses by a relative; violence against journalists and press censorship; serious restrictions on internet freedom, religious freedom and freedom of movement, including the right to leave the country; bans on independent trade unions; violence against gay and transgender persons; and the excessive use of the death penalty.

Remember: this stinging critique is coming from the US government–a major ally of the Saudis.

Sending more weapons to the Saudis will only strengthen this repressive regime and increase regional conflicts. But, of course, it will also increase the profits of weapons companies, such as Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. That, in turn, increases the campaign coffers of our politicians.

So the U.S. government is authorizing the sale of offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia, while it continues to tout itself as the defender of the “free world.” Go figure.

JD Vance Is a Working Class Phony

J.D. Vance wants to con America into believing he’s some “working class hero.” 

Baloney!

He worked for a law firm that lobbied for Purdue Pharma — the company that pleaded guilty to three felonies for its role in creating America’s opioid crisis.

He’s a former venture capitalist who benefited from tax loopholes designed for the super-rich.

He won his Senate seat thanks to tech billionaire Peter Thiel, who spent $15 million on Vance’s Senate campaign.

He visited a picket line for a photo op, but opposed legislation to protect workers’ rights to organize.

He weakened his own railway safety bill at the request of rail and chemical lobbyists.

He opposed the Inflation Reduction Act, which has unleashed a wave of investment in American manufacturing and created over 300,000 clean energy jobs so far.

J.D. Vance isn’t a “populist.” He’s a phony.

He doesn’t give a fig about workers.

On this episode of The Final Countdown hosts Ted Rall and Steve Gill discuss a plethora of current events, including Elon Musk’s interview with Trump.    The show begins with journalist and YouTuber Peter Coffin discussing Elon Musk’s interview with Donald Trump on X.   Then, counselor-at-law Tyler Nixon weighs in on Trump suing the DOJ for over $100 million over the Mar-a-Lago raid, claiming political persecution.  The second hour starts with international relations and security analyst Mark Sleboda sharing his expertise on Ukraine’s incursion into Russia.  The show closes with the managing editor of Covert Action Magazine Jeremy Kuzmarov weighing in on the latest out of Gaza and Iran amid increasing tensions in the Middle East.   The post The Final Countdown – 8/13/24 – Trump’s Interview with Musk Nets Tens of Millions of Views first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

Les Leopold, a long-time union advocate and economist has a new book out called “Wall Street’s War on Workers, How Mass Layoffs and Greed are Destroying the Working Class and What to Do About It.” Leopold, who founded the Labor Institute, has been hammering away at how the middle class has been “strip-mined” by the financial sector for decades. At 178 pages, this latest strike against the gods of wealth is a quick read. Yet it is packed with facts, analysis and ideas that you won’t see in most of the media outlets Americans read (no matter what point on the news spectrum you tap into). His goal is to give all of us a different perspective on what’s wrong with the economy, how average folks are losing ground and how we can fix it.

In some ways, Leopold tries to do too much in one writing. He’s trying to open our eyes to the ways that Wall Street is sucking the life out of healthy enterprises and good jobs. He’s also trying to make the case that the blue-collar workforce and the white working class are not lost to the extreme right wing of our politics. His message to the Democratic Party and liberals is, if you fix these things, you can get these voters back. In an effort to impact this election cycle, he packs it all in one book.

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Leopold’s central economic assault is on stock buybacks. This is where a company spends its cash to repurchase its stock, thus driving the stock price up. This used to be mostly illegal, until the deregulation craze got into full swing. As Leopold details in case after case, stock buybacks are at the root of mass layoffs and the strip-mining of good companies. The stock buyback cycle is fairly simple. A financial vulture buys a healthy company, uses tremendous debt to make the purchase, then spends that enterprises cash and the borrowings to buy back stock. This drives the stock price up artificially, and the vultures, along with those in management who get paid in stock options, cash out. What’s left is a once thriving business, now shackled with debilitating debt. The way that debt is paid off is by mass layoffs of workers, the sale of assets and curtailment of any spending on improving the business. Leopold provides a chart of all the companies that have been run through this destructive model. The current US Steel/Nippon deal has all the hallmarks of this financial rip-off. His solution is also simple. Declare stock buybacks illegal again and limit the amount of stock options given to top management. In other words, redirect the purpose of enterprises to investment in capacity, workers and expansion of jobs.

At its root, Wall Street’s War on Workers is a call to rethink what ails us and retool our policy options. The question is, when will we listen to voices like Les Leopold’s?

The second theme of the book is to debunk the stereotype of the blue-collar worker and the white working class. Using reliable polling over a long period of time, Leopold makes a convincing case that these groups are actually fairly progressive on social issues. Not the Neanderthal’s that the media and pundits put forward. Leopold shows the correlation between the mass-layoff phenomenon in this nation and the shift of blue-collar and white working-class people away from the Democratic Party. Essentially, as the jobs and economic security disappeared, people began casting around for a different deal. One that would satisfy their basic economic needs. Since Leopold believes that stock buybacks are at the root of why this happened, he concludes that a reversal of the “financialization” of our economy can reverse the trend toward an autocratic and divisive national direction. “Financialization” is just a big word for sucking companies dry instead of building and creating new capacity.

While Leopold makes the case for putting controls back on Wall Street, he concedes that the political will to do that is not strong enough in today’s public debate. His message is that we’re arguing about the wrong things and therefore the solutions being presented to us won’t help. His call is for both a different direction and new leadership that can get us there.

Leopold goes beyond the stock buyback dilemma to offer a number of other proposals. I’ll list them here, but to get the reasons and detail, read Chapter 12:

1. End Stock Buybacks.
2. Prohibit shareholder activists (the vulture capitalists) from serving on boards of directors.
3. Change the way top corporate officers are paid.
4. Place worker and public representatives on the board of directors.
5. Create Public Banks.
6. Protect Contingent and Gig Workers.
7. Limit Corporate Debt.
8. Prevent Corporate-Focused Trade Deals.
9. A “Marshall Plan” for the victims of mass layoffs.
10. Make Unionization easier and simpler.
11. Ramp up the Availability and Affordability of Education.
12. Fight each and every mass layoff.

The book is a call for action. It is a plea to focus on economic displacement and its impact on our entire society. It is a direct assault on the idea that corporations exist to make money. It demands that money and business factor in workers and communities as an essential part of their business model. It insists that workers and public representatives be guaranteed a seat on corporate decision-making boards. Leopold points to Germany and other countries that do this, and the success their companies and economies have enjoyed as a result.

At its root, Wall Street’s War on Workers is a call to rethink what ails us and retool our policy options. The question is, when will we listen to voices like Les Leopold’s? Or will we continue to be diverted by that which divides us instead of that which unites us?

Recently, a retired woman seeking advice wrote into MarketWatch’s financial advisor, saying:

“I was ‘financially set’ after my husband died. But my current adviser lost $500,000 over the last few years, and then a new adviser said my portfolio was ‘a mess’ and wants 1.25% to fix it. What’s my move?”

She was the victim of an unethical financial advisor hustling decades of churning commission-based products that essentially transferred her money into his pocket. As she told MarketWatch, “The adviser was paid per trade.”

President Biden wants to do something about this.

“This is about basic fairness,” Biden said when announcing a new rule to protect people like her. “People are tired of being played for suckers.”

He added:

“Bad financial advice by unscrupulous financial advisers driven by their own self-interest can cost a retiree up to 1.2% per year in lost investment. That doesn’t sound like much but if you’re living long, it’s a lot of money. Over a lifetime, it can add up to 20% less money when they retire. For a middle-class household, that can amount to tens of thousands of dollars over time.”

But Republicans have declared war on Biden and middle class people who want to save for retirement.

Odds are you’ve never heard of their shock troops: Judge Jeremy Kernodle or Judge Reed O’Connor, both federal judges appointed to Texas districts by Donald Trump and George W. Bush respectively.

For reference, both are hard-core rightwingers: Kernodle was one of the 13 federal judges who pledged not to hire clerks from Columbia University after the student demonstrations there against Israel’s destruction of Gaza; O’Connor struck down the Gun Control Act of 1968 and tried to take down Obama’s Affordable Care Act.

But even if you’ve never heard of them, they’re trying their best to have a huge impact on your ability to comfortably retire when the time comes, or on how you can live off your retirement funds if you’re already past 65.

Republicans... claim to believe in a mythical so-called “free market” where giant corporations and sleazy brokers can rob us of our retirement and then make campaign contributions to the GOP with some of that money.

Millions of Americans use investment advisors to manage their retirement funds; the total that could be affected by these judges’ actions is, according to The Washington Post yesterday, more than $770 billion.

While there’s a wide variety of companies and financial products (insurance, annuities, 401Ks, simple investment accounts, etc.) people use to invest their retirement funds, the advisors and brokers who handle them on your behalf basically fall into two categories: those who’re looking out first and foremost for your interests and those who’re looking out first and foremost for ways they can siphon off your funds into their own pockets.

Those advisors and brokers who are looking out for you are called “fiduciaries,” an industry and legal term that requires them to put your interests ahead of their own. Typically, this means they don’t sell products that pay them a commission, but instead work on a simple and transparent fee basis. It also means they won’t churn your account just to earn per-trade fees.

Most of those agents and companies that aren’t fiduciaries are working in what could be described as the wild west of finance: they’re constrained by fraud and embezzlement rules but can easily shave off part of your savings with every transaction they make on your behalf simply by putting you into products that pay them a commission.

And those commissions aren’t chicken feed: just for Americans who put their money into annuities, if all brokers and agents selling them were required to act as fiduciaries, the people buying those annuities would save over $32 billion over the next decade.

Commissions on insurance-based products can run as high as 70% of the first year’s payment, and can hit 10% on annuities. Advisors who churn your investments can drain your funds before you realize what’s happened to you, and there’s usually no recourse to get your money back.

It comes down to America having a regulated investment industry where it’s against the law to rip off its customers by hustling high commission products versus being a country where every American is at the mercy of unscrupulous investment advisors who’re getting rich by shaving a few points in commissions off every trade or financial product bought or sold on our behalf.

To deal with this problem and make America a safe place for average citizens to save for retirement, the Biden Labor Department put into place earlier this year a set of rules that would require most investment advisors and insurance brokers to act as fiduciaries and put their customers’ interests first.

The industry immediately sued in the courtrooms of judges Kernodle and O’Connor, who, three weeks ago, put the DOL fiduciary rules on hold pending appeals.

Democrats, of course, are on the side of average American consumers and retirees, which is why the Biden Labor Department put those rules into place requiring a huge chunk of the investment industry to operate as fiduciaries.

Republicans, on the other hand — including the two judges mentioned earlier — claim to believe in a mythical so-called “free market” where giant corporations and sleazy brokers can rob us of our retirement and then make campaign contributions to the GOP with some of that money.

Contributions, for example, to Representative Virginia Foxx (R-NC), whose top contributor according to opensecrets.org is Apollo Global Management and who’s top two donating industries are “retired” and “securities and investment.” Of the $2,938,046 in cash-on-hand Foxx has for her campaigns, a mere $38,896 came from individual under-$200 donors.

Foxx, in exchange for this retirement industry largesse, has sponsored legislation in the House of Representatives that would permanently bar the Labor Department from putting fiduciary requirements into law.

While shilling for the investment industry, she pretends she’s defending the little guy — a popular Republican scam — saying that requiring investment advisors and brokers to put the customer first and not shave commissions off of their retirement funds would “eliminate options for working-class Americans, reduce their ability to retire and limit their access to financial advice.”

And arguably that’s at least partially true. Fiduciary requirements do “eliminate” the option of buying products that rip you off and also “limit” your access to bad financial advice that will leave you poorer than when you started. But, to Foxx’s concern, they also prevent the industry from extracting that estimated $33 billion in fees and commissions from your pension, annuity, IRA, 401k, etc.

Republicans in the House are also going to try to zero out of the Labor Department’s budget any money that could be used to enforce the rules if they survive in the courts; expect that to be part of the GOP’s threat to shut down our government this fall if they don’t get their way.

Every day, it seems, brings new examples of the stark differences between Democrats and Republicans, this merely being the most recent.

Of course, there won’t be a peep about this on Fox “News” or rightwing hate radio, keeping GOP voters safely and quietly in their ignorant little bubble.

The rest of us, however, can see what’s going on with Republican scams at every level from taxation to climate policy to protecting our retirements.

“Someone said something stupid on the internet and I must correct them” is one of the great traps of all time—but when the someones are the richest person in the history of money, and the former and quite possible future president of the United States, and when they are spreading the most absurd and dangerous misinformation about the biggest crisis the world has ever faced…well.

Elon Musk had Trump over to his Space last night for a conversation. As Musk explained, it wouldn’t be an “adversarial” interview because instead he wanted to help “open-minded, independent voters” simply “catch a vibe. I want to emphasize it’s a conversation, and it’s really intended to just get a feel for what Donald Trump is just like in a conversation,” Musk said. In fact, the conversation ended up giving us at least much of a feel for Musk, who will definitely go on being a key player after November’s election.

One thing it showed, of course, is that he’s careless: the conversation started 40 minutes late because he’s essentially broken the $50 billion toy he brought. All around him people are conducting enormous Zoom conversations (Hair Stylists for Harris) but he failed to get his audio online. Eventually, sadly, he connected, which was when the insanity really began.

If what you really need in your life is rapid reaction to climate disinformation from an aging and dyspeptic typist, consider taking out a voluntary subscription to keep this free service coming.

There is not a serious climate scientist on planet earth who has ever contemplated a thousand parts per million with anything less than panic and horror. And yet here are these two blithe fools just wandering on in their talk.

I’m only going to talk about the climate parts of the two-hour colloquy, but I have no doubt experts on other areas could make the same hay. Still, on this issue they spelunked down into entirely new levels of stupidity. Not at first—at first Trump just gave his standard riff about how it was no problem if the sea level rose because it would just create “more oceanfront property.” This is of course offensive and ridiculous—right now people around the Gulf are trying to figure out how to pay skyrocketing insurance bills, and it’s not much help to them to point out that the guy two streets back will have a better view when their house topples into the sea. But it’s also just factually wrong, if you think about it for even two seconds: a rising ocean clearly reduces the amount of oceanfront property. If Florida goes underwater there will be a new stretch of seafront along what’s now the Georgia border—but the amount of oceanfront will be greatly reduced. If you lie in the bath with your stomach sticking out of the water, and you keep the tap running, eventually the oceanfront around your belly button will simply disappear. This is not hard.

Still, who cares—it’s just the kind of dumb talk we’ve gotten used to. It was when they got into details that the real trouble emerged. I’m going to give you a big dose of transcript here, and please read it

Musk: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I should probably say something about like, you know, maybe my views on, you know, climate change and oil and gas, because I think I'm probably different from what most people would assume.

Because my views are actually pretty, I think moderate in this regard, which is that I don't think we should vilify the oil and gas industry and the people that have worked very hard in those industries to provide the necessary energy to support the economy. And if we were to stop using oil and gas right now, we would all be starving and the economy would collapse. So it's, you know, I don't think it's right to sort of vilify the oil and gas industry.

And I, you know, the world has a certain demand for oil and gas and it's probably better if the United States provides that than some other countries. And it would help with prosperity in the US. And at the same time, obviously my view is like, we do over time wanna move to a sustainable energy economy because eventually you do run out of, I mean, you run out of oil and gas.

It's not there, it's not infinite. And there is some risk. I think it's not, the risk is not as high as, you know, a lot of people say it is with respect to global warming.

But I think if you just keep increasing the cost per million in the atmosphere long enough, eventually it actually simply gets uncomfortable to breathe. People don't realize this. If you go past a thousand parts per million of CO2, you start getting headaches and nausea.

And so we're now in the sort of 400 range. We're adding, I think about roughly two parts per million per year. So, I mean, it still gives us, so what it means is like, we still have quite a bit of time, but so there's not like, we don't need to rush and we don't need to like, you know, stop farmers from farming or, you know, prevent people from having steaks or basic stuff like that.

What Musk is explaining here is that he didn’t buy Tesla because he thought he could help solve global warming—he doesn’t care about global warming at all because he doesn’t think it’s real. He’s mildly worried about what we used to call ‘peak oil,’ the idea that at some point we’ll run out of hydrocarbons. But the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? That will only become a problem at 1,000 parts per million, and only then because of its direct effects on human beings. What he’s talking about is research from about five years ago that showed that once you got levels of CO2 that high inside buildings you “may cut our basic decision-making ability by 25 percent, and complex strategic thinking by around 50 percent.”

One should check the CO2 levels at Musk’s studio and at Mar-a-Lago, but of course that’s not what anyone else is talking about when they assess dangerous levels of carbon in the atmosphere. The historic level of CO2, for all of human civilization prior to the Industrial Revolution, was about 275 parts per million. It’s now at about 420 parts per million, an increase of fifty percent. Scientists think that anything above 350 parts per million is intensely dangerous. Here’s how Jim Hansen and his colleagues put it in 2008:

If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm.

And of course time has proved them right. We’re now living through the hottest temperatures in 125,000 years; it’s causing crazy levels of flood and drought, fire and storm. The poles are melting. The latest study predicts that the great currents of the Atlantic will collapse between 2037 and 2064, with a median prediction of 2030.

The world’s serious people are at work trying to somehow hold the rise in CO2 and equivalent gases like methane in check—the entire massive global effort that the Secretary General of the UN, and the Pope, and Joe Biden, and even Xi Jinping are engaged in is predicated on the hope that we might be able to stop the rise of CO2 in the atmosphere short of 500 parts per million. There is not a serious climate scientist on planet earth who has ever contemplated a thousand parts per million with anything less than panic and horror. And yet here are these two blithe fools just wandering on in their talk.

What Musk’s math implies, of course, is that we have endless time to deal with this crisis. If 1,000 is the danger level, and we’re going up two parts per million per year, that does indeed “give us quite a bit of time.” Three hundred years, roughly. Not good enough for Trump, by the way, who suggested later in the “conversation” that five hundred years might be more like it.

This is the point of their conversation, at least when it comes to climate. It is to insist that nothing need be done now, that we should just go on expanding the fossil fuel industry. (Trump explained in pornographic detail his eagerness to dig up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge). I know why Trump thinks this—as the Washington Post reported this morning, Trump’s biggest funder after Elon may be Harold Hamm, the fracking billionaire. He took Trump up on his offer that for a billion dollars he’d give the oil industry whatever it wanted, and he’s been working the phones ever since:

Hamm is working “incredibly hard to raise as much money as he can from the energy sector,” said a Trump campaign aide. “We’ve gotten max-out checks from people we’ve never gotten a dollar from before.”

Some of the Trump campaign’s top individual donors include Texas oil billionaires Jeffery Hildebrand and George Bishop and pipeline mogul Kelcy Warren.

“Harold Hamm is back there — he’s my original oil guy that taught me so much about oil,” Trump said at a fundraiser in Houston in May, according to donors who attended. “This guy knows more about oil and gas. ... That’s all he knows. That’s the problem. He’s so boring to be with, you know, because all he wants to talk about is oil and gas. No, we love Harold. He’s a piece of work. I’ll tell you that.”

At another event, Trump said: “Harold can just stick his finger in the ground, and oil will come up.”

Mike Cantrell, a former Continental Resources executive, said that if anyone could eventually raise $1 billion from the oil industry, it’s Hamm. “It’s limitless what he can raise, if he wants to do it,” he said.

Why is Musk doing this? Who knows? After all, the success of Tesla has been mostly driven by government subsidy that grows out of the effort to slow the growth of carbon in the atmosphere. My only conjecture is that he hopes the world will become barren enough that we simply have to pony up for his big trip to Mars.

But figuring out the psychology of fools and grifters is not useful. What’s useful is weakening them, and right now that means winning the November election. Join us at Third Act in making phone calls and knocking on doors, or find somewhere else to do it. Because these are the most dangerous men on earth.

Public policy is important.

And in a well-functioning democracy, it is important that there be real debates about policy alternatives, so that elections offer citizens some real choices and, by doing so, offer at least some minimal sense of ongoing accountability.

But we live in a democracy that is barely functioning, hampered by counter-majoritarian institutions that make serious policy innovation difficult if not impossible and forms of private power that severely undermine civic equality.

It is time for television pundits and foolish so-called “journalists” to stop treating this election as a “normal” election in which both sides are serious about policy and Donald Trump’s bombastic and lying policy claims require the Harris campaign to start communicating like the Kennedy School of Government.

Further, we are living through a moment in which one of the two major parties is not even committed to a functioning democracy centered on policy debates. The Republican Party—led by a dictatorial individual whose “policy talk” is simplistic, bombastic, and centered not on policy but on disparaging and demonizing those who oppose him—is committed above all to weakening the hard-won policy gains achieved in the past by progressive social movements.

It is beyond cynical for former U.S. President Donald Trump and his running mate Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) to denounce Vice President Kamala Harris for failing to outline a policy vision. And it is beyond dumb for commentators to give credence to this criticism.

The criticism is cynical because while Harris and the Democratic Party have yet to iron out an actual platform, Harris has made it clear that she stands behind and intends to carry forward most of the priorities and accomplishments of the Biden-Harris administration, whether we are talking about immigration or environmental policy or deepening affordable medical care or defending reproductive freedom and women’s healthcare. And Harris is very clear about her central policy issue: Roe needs to be codified in law, and the Republican assault on reproductive freedom needs to be defeated.

It is also cynical because Harris has also made clear that she supports passage of three very important democratic reforms: the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, the Freedom to Vote Act, and the Pro Act strengthening the rights of workers to organize unions.

Harris’ policy commitments, in other words, are rather substantial and clear, at least by the conventional standards of American politics and surely in comparison to the rhetoric of her opponent.

And that is the most important reason why the rhetoric of Trump and Vance is so cynical: because the Trump-Vance “policy agenda” consists of nothing more than a set of literally reactionary promises that barely engage the “problems” they purport to “solve,” and Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, have made it very clear that they oppose this cruel and reactionary agenda. And a commitment to oppose bad things is as important as a commitment to attempt good ones.

Here are some things that a Harris-Walz administration clearly will not do:

It will not organize the arrest and deportation of 10 million undocumented immigrants, requiring the establishment of detention centers, i.e., concentration camps, throughout the country, instituting a police state;

It will not gut the federal bureaucracy (Project 2025) and destroy the forms of social, economic, and environmental regulation that have protected the health and welfare of Americans for over a century;

It will not extend the repressive abortion regime now being codified by Republicans in states across the country in the wake of the SCOTUS overturning of Roe in 2022;

It will not use the Justice Department to seek retribution against political opponents and to harass and weaken autonomous institutions, especially universities;

It will not attack public education;

It will not repeal the Affordable Care Act;

It will not extend Trump’s extremely regressive 2017 tax cuts;

It will not weaken or destroy global institutions and alliances in the name of “America First” isolationism;

It will not allow Russian President Vladimir Putin to destroy Ukraine and encourage him to to extend Russian hegemony in Europe and Eurasia;

It will not make common cause with authoritarian nationalists throughout the world, from India’s Narendra Modi to Hungary’s Viktor Orban to Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Russia’s Putin to Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu.

Most importantly, a Harris-Walz administration will not attack voting rights, promote mass repression of dissent, strengthen violent and racist forms of policing, offer encouragement to paramilitary and vigilante “patriots,” and in other ways seek to undermine constitutional democracy itself.

That Trump promises to do these things, and that the Democratic party opposes all of them, is very well known.

It is time for television pundits and foolish so-called “journalists” to stop treating this election as a “normal” election in which both sides are serious about policy and Donald Trump’s bombastic and lying policy claims require the Harris campaign to start communicating like the Kennedy School of Government.

For in 2024 the GOP is serious about one thing—elevating an unhinged and unrestrained Donald Trump to the presidency and supporting his plan to institute a harsh and authoritarian policy regime. And the Democratic party is equally serious about stopping this autocratic attack on constitutional democracy.

The Harris-led Democratic Party has policy commitments, to be sure. And it surely will expand on these commitments after next week’s convention in Chicago.

But its most fundamental “policy” commitment is a commitment to the constitutionally-prescribed democratic process itself.

And as flawed, limited, corrupt, and hypocritical as this process can be, what Trump and his MAGA accomplices offer is much worse—chaos, corruption, and cruelty.

That is now the choice before us.

And this choice ought to be the overriding preoccupation of everyone interested in the November election and its outcome.

When was our humanity divided along partisan lines?

Here, I'll give you an example of what I mean. A rocket was fired from Lebanon in late July. It struck a soccer field in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights. And it killed 12 children.

Right-wing media—including Fox News—immediately erupted. Red-faced pundits spent hours lambasting the atrocity as a heinous war crime—which I agree with. Fox News, Ben Shapiro, and all the other partisan media entities decrying the wrongful deaths of those 12 children on July 27 are right.

If we cannot agree that the murder of a child—whether by an Islamic militant or by a politician in a suit and tie—is evil, period, then our moral compass has been rendered useless.

What's odd, however, is that they only seem outraged by self-serving political narratives. Where was their rage the last 10 months, as piles of young Palestinian corpses have been stacked thousands high? It begs the question: Does the murder of children only anger us when it suits our neatly defined, partisan worldviews?

Only the willfully ignorant have been spared the horrific imagery of modern Gaza the rest of us have seen: charred and mangled limbs sprouting from heaps of rubble; the ashen-white, limp bodies of lifeless children; and the soul-torturing wails of a weeping mother or father.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his bloodthirsty cronies aren't being too subtle about their motivations either. See, this isn't just a war against Hamas. This is a war against the Palestinian people as a whole. And those aren't my words. Those are theirs.

"I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed (...) We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly."

-Yoav Gallant, Minister of Defense

"Those are animals, they have no right to exist. I am not debating the way it will happen, but they need to be exterminated.”

-Yoav Kisch, Education Minister

"I don't care about Gaza. I literally don't care at all. They can go out and swim in the sea. I want to see dead bodies of terrorists around Gaza."

-May Golan, Minister of Social Equality

"The majority of the 12,000 dead Palestinians were terrorists. [...] Good riddance.”

-Yair Lapid, Leader of the Opposition

"The war will never end if we don't expel them all.”

-Nissim Vaturi, Member of the Israeli Knesset

"It is not Hamas that should be eliminated. Gaza should be razed and Israel's rule should be restored to the place. This is our country."

-Moshe Feiglin, Former Member of the Israeli Knesset

"The fighting will continue and expand to any place necessary in the Gaza strip. There will be no sanctuary cities.”

-Benny Gantz, Former Minister of Defense

"One of the options is to drop an atomic bomb on Gaza. I pray and hope for [the hostages'] return, but there is also a price in war.”

-Amichai Eliyahu, Minister of Heritage

"We are the people of the light, they are the people of darkness... we shall realize the prophecy of Isaiah."

-Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister

Not a great look, guys. Especially given that every aforementioned quote came from the tongues of Israeli leaders, the very people whose hands are on the levers of power. The rhetoric is damning, and precisely why South Africa (a country that knows all too well what apartheid looks like) levied a genocide case against Israel, and why the International Criminal Court prosecutor's office has requested arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Gallant, and three Hamas leaders.

Thousands of Palestinians have been murdered. Many more are maimed and starving. Meanwhile, the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem reports that Israel is running "a network of torture camps."Palestinian prisoners, many detained unjustly, allege they've been raped, sometimes with objects, and sometimes by even female soldiers.

Israel's finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, just recently said, "No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”

Put together, the evidence creates a macabre mosaic that is most aptly described in one word: genocide. Indeed, this is an extermination campaign, and one that my government is enabling. (Since October 7, 2023, the U.S. has enacted legislation providing more than $12.5 billion in military aid to Israel).

As Americans, I wanted to think we'd rally, together, against a state-sponsored extermination campaign that we are funding. Though I was wrong. Even today, as Gaza has become a slaughterhouse, so-called intellectuals—even self-described liberals like Bill Maher and Bari Weiss—are unable to see the Israeli government for what it is: a gaggle of bloodthirsty politicians using American dollars to systematically murder innocent Palestinians.

Earnest criticism of rape, concentration camps, and genocide is not antisemitic. A government cannot be inoculated from scrutiny with identity politics. Don't be fooled: Criticizing Israel's shameful war is not Jewish hate by default. Those who say it is are intellectually dishonest and moral cowards.

It is a shame that many of us can stomach the murder of innocents so long as it behooves our political tribalism. Of course I condemn Hamas. But we're well past the point of condemning Hamas as a prerequisite for criticizing Netanyahu. As an American, if I criticize the Bush administration's nonsensical war in Iraq, I am not first asked to denounce al Qaeda or Saddam Hussein. None of my fellow Americans assume that, when I criticize Dick Cheney, the Iraq war, and the White House's lies about weapons of mass destruction, that I am an apologist for Osama bin Laden or that I approve of the deaths of my fellow countrymen on September 11, 2001.

No longer can America lay claim to the idea that we don't negotiate with terrorists. Because on July 24, a terrorist by the name of Benjamin Netanyahu walked into our capital, castigated Americans critical of his war as "idiots,"and was applauded.

I am worried about the soul of America. If we cannot agree that the murder of a child—whether by an Islamic militant or by a politician in a suit and tie—is evil, period, then our moral compass has been rendered useless. If we are more outraged by the students protesting genocide than the genocide itself, we have not only failed the Palestinians, but we've failed Israel. But worst of all, we've failed ourselves. Partisan schisms have sterilized our hearts, I'm afraid. And it's why the term never again is happening again.

I didn't understand this as a boy. Because when I was young, I simply couldn't wrap my mind around how and why the world could allow evil things to happen. Now, I think, I know.

I received a 60-year prison sentence for a murder I didn’t commit. After 25 years of fighting this injustice, I was exonerated.

I’ve learned some hard lessons about our criminal justice system. I’ve also learned how simple safety net policies—like a modest guaranteed base income or no-strings-attached child allowance—could have kept millions of struggling young people like me out of trouble.

I had a good childhood in Flint, Michigan, but we were poor and opportunities were few. My parents were loving and supportive, but engaged in illegal activities to make ends meet. It seemed normal to me, but I was in an environment that normalized abnormal things.

I eventually dropped out of high school, moved to Indianapolis, and started a family. But when I got laid off, I turned in desperation to the drug life, trying to do for my family what my parents did for me.

If I’d had a modest child allowance for my own children, I wouldn’t have had to rely on the most accessible path available to me, the drug business.

One fateful night, I heard gunshots near the building where I had my drug business. I didn’t think much of it—shots weren’t unusual in that neighborhood. I finished my business for the day, proud of the money I’d made, and went home to my family.

Later, I learned a young man had been shot—and I was arrested for the murder.

I’d been blamed by someone with a drug-related grudge against me. A bystander had identified a very different man with a different physical description, but the detective buried that evidence. Advocates uncovered this evidence 25 years later, and I was exonerated and released. I’d spent a hellish 11 of those 25 years in solitary confinement.

During my incarceration, I became a teacher and mentor. Now I’m an advocate for people returning to society after incarceration.

I see the systemic barriers they face. Returning citizens are prohibited from hundreds of jobs—from working in education, health, and government to even becoming a barber or Uber driver. They’re barred from public assistance, public housing, and student loans. They face discrimination in housing and employment. They often have significant physical and mental health issues they can’t afford to treat.

These are the very conditions that sometimes lead to offenses and recidivism. Numerous studies have found that when people are securely employed, housed, and allowed to receive an education and meet their health needs, they don’t re-offend.

These people have already been punished and served their time—sometimes for offenses they never committed, like me. We shouldn’t be punished again when reintegrating into our families and societies.

As part of my work, I volunteer with Michigan Liberation, a statewide organization looking to end the criminalization of Black families and communities of color. Recently, they joined a Guaranteed Income Now conference co-hosted by Community Change and the Economic Security Project.

Guaranteed income can take many forms. It can be an expansion of current tax credits like the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit. It can be a no-strings-attached Child Allowance or a monthly payment to qualifying people, families, unpaid caretakers, undocumented immigrants, and returning citizens—all of whom are currently ineligible for assistance.

In Flint, it looks like a new program that offers pregnant people and new parents a monthly check for the first year of the baby’s life.

If my parents had a guaranteed income floor, we wouldn’t have been in danger of falling through into hunger and homelessness. They would have had significantly better chances to pursue well-paying jobs to provide for my security—without relying on illegal activity.

If I’d had a modest child allowance for my own children, I wouldn’t have had to rely on the most accessible path available to me, the drug business. I wouldn’t have been anywhere near the site of that murder—and wouldn’t have lost decades of my life to a false accusation.

It’s worth it to support our families and communities, no matter where we live or what we look like. When those facing the most systemic barriers receive sufficient income support, then economic security, thriving, and freedom are the result.

And I can tell you, there’s nothing sweeter than freedom.

On January 6, 2021, we risked our lives to protect the American people’s duly-elected representatives from a violent mob that sought to overturn the results of a free and fair election. In doing so, we fought to defend American democracy itself. We could have never predicted the violence we would face that cold, January morning, but it was the mission we faced, and we rose to the occasion. We wish that we could say the same about the election deniers in Congress.

Despite the fact that thousands of MAGA rioters stormed the Capitol, assaulted over 140 police officers, and threatened the lives of congress members, 147 extreme MAGA Republicans still voted to overturn the 2020 election, including the Speaker of House Mike Johnson (R-La.). Today, we are 147 days away from January 6, 2025, when Congress will be tasked with certifying this year’s election results. Between now and then, we need Americans across the country to demand that their lawmakers have the courage to certify the 2024 election results and reject the extreme Project 2025 agenda so that the horrific tragedy of January 6, 2021 never happens again.

We have spent the last three years calling out those who voted to overturn the election because we know that another insurrection is possible. January 6 only happened because the former president and his lap dogs in Congress stoked insidious election lies among their followers. Elected officials like Speaker Johson were not merely responding to election deniers’ “concerns,” they were manufacturing them. By entertaining the Big Lie and developing fraudulent legal strategies to overturn the election, they gave permission to their supporters to attack American democracy. As a result, seven people, including several of our law enforcement colleagues, lost their lives.

On January 6, 2025, members of Congress will have to ask themselves: will they fulfill their duty to the American voters, protect the peaceful transfer of power, and disavow the Project 2025 agenda, or will they put their own political ambitions ahead of public service?

Two-thirds of Americans fear another January 6 because MAGA extremists haven’t changed their tune about the Big Lie. In fact, they’ve doubled down. Former U.S. President Donald Trump’s remarks at the National Association of Black Journalists convention, where he said he “absolutely” would pardon the convicted January 6 rioters, demonstrates this. Unfortunately, they aren’t stopping there. House Republicans are laying the groundwork for another insurrection and pushing their extreme Project 2025 agenda forward.

Project 2025 moves us from the physical violence we faced on January 6 into a bureaucratic assault on the rule of law. It is nothing short of a takeover of the federal government that would threaten our freedom to vote and undermine the ability of federal agencies to protect much-needed election infrastructure. Project 2025 would fundamentally alter our government and weaken guardrails around presidential power—all for the benefit of corporations, wealthy donors, and the far-right fringe—to the detriment of everyday Americans like us. MAGA Republicans’ support for this extreme agenda clearly shows that their mission remains the same as it did four years ago.

Even though these extremists’ anti-democratic actions are no longer surprising, it is still hard for us to fathom that Republicans in Congress are still committed to the Big Lie and Project 2025 even after running away in fear from a violent mob that was targeting them and their colleagues while wielding bear mace, zip ties, and firearms. Clearly, they prioritize power and party politics over duty and service—values that the 140 police officers showed when defending the Capitol. But we don’t need to understand it, we need to stop it from happening again. We are calling out MAGA extremists’ election lies because we want to ensure that no one has to risk their life to ensure a free and fair election.

Several congressional leaders have already committed to defending and certifying this year’s election results regardless of the outcome. For the next 147 days we are calling on Congress to courageously stand up for our democracy. On January 6, 2025, members of Congress will have to ask themselves: will they fulfill their duty to the American voters, protect the peaceful transfer of power, and disavow the Project 2025 agenda, or will they put their own political ambitions ahead of public service?

The 140 police officers who saved their lives that day will be watching to see how they answer.

Access to affordable, reliable energy is a fundamental right. It’s disheartening to see the Financial Oversight and Management Board oppose Law 10, which safeguards net metering and thus ensures that solar customers receive fair credit for the electricity they generate but do not use.

Law 10—passed earlier this year—extends Puerto Rico’s net metering program through 2031, thereby providing stability for homeowners and businesses who have invested in solar energy. By challenging Law 10, the FOMB risks disrupting this compensation system, which could drastically slow the growth of solar energy in Puerto Rico. This would be a setback not just for solar panel owners, but for everyone on the island who benefits from cleaner, more affordable energy.

Here’s how solar energy works: Homeowners with solar panels often produce more electricity than they consume. This surplus energy flows back into the grid, benefiting their neighbors. Net metering is a billing arrangement that ensures these homeowners receive fair credit for their excess electricity at the current rate. This credit system benefits all electricity users, even those who haven’t installed solar panels.

If the FOMB’s attack on Law 10 is successful, it could jeopardize net metering, leaving us stuck with an expensive, unreliable system that benefits outside interests at the expense of Puerto Rican families.

Increasing the amount of local solar energy in our electrical grid will lower costs for everyone and enhance the island’s energy independence. Currently, 94% of Puerto Rico’s electricity comes from expensive fossil fuels like oil, diesel, coal, and gas. This reliance means that 71% of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) budget is spent on importing these fuels.

In contrast, solar energy relies on abundant, free sunlight. It’s irrational to depend on costly foreign fuels when we have ample solar resources and the technology to store solar power. Additionally, our local workforce is ready to install these systems and reinvest the savings into our communities rather than sending money off the island.

Rooftop solar systems make our grid more reliable by reducing blackouts and producing energy exactly where it’s needed. Solar power is generated close to the point of consumption, which is especially important when the island’s power plants are struggling to meet demand. These systems are more reliable because they depend less on fragile transmission infrastructure and imported fuels.

According to a study by Gabel Associates, the social and direct benefits to the grid, and all customers, are four times greater than the value earned by solar energy owners through net metering. Solar power does more than provide affordable energy; it offers peace of mind and essential support to vulnerable communities.

This past May, I attended the opening of a solar resilience center at the Nuestra Señora del Carmen church in Cataño. This church supports many low-income families, providing meals, medicine, and shelter to the homeless. It relies on solar-charged batteries to maintain power during outages, cutting utility costs through net metering credits. These savings are used to further support the community.

Solar United Neighbors, the organization I represent, helped support this church’s solar project. With its solar and battery storage system, the church can maintain power even during grid outages. This is crucial for many, especially those who depend on electricity for medical equipment.

If the FOMB’s challenge to Law 10—which ensures fair net metering compensation—succeeds, then projects like this would face more obstacles. Individuals and organizations would also be hindered from recovering their investments in solar power and storage batteries while facing rising energy costs. It would also devastate the more than 10,000 Puerto Ricans who work in the solar industry. Similar changes in California led to a 22% reduction in the state’s solar workforce.

LUMA Energy, the company managing Puerto Rico’s electricity grid, has warned of upcoming energy bill increases, even as blackouts continue to plague the island. The current system is expensive, unreliable, and flawed. By undermining Law 10, the FOMB is attacking one of the few effective solutions that helps fix our broken system and creates economic opportunities for Puerto Ricans. This potential outcome is deeply troubling.

Hurricane Maria devastated our electrical grid, and we are now rebuilding a system that is resilient, affordable, and locally powered. Rooftop solar energy systems create jobs and ensure energy independence for all Puerto Ricans. If the FOMB’s attack on Law 10 is successful, it could jeopardize net metering, leaving us stuck with an expensive, unreliable system that benefits outside interests at the expense of Puerto Rican families.

Defending Law 10 is crucial not just for current solar users but also for the future of Puerto Rico’s energy independence. We urge Puerto Rico’s legislators to unite and defend the benefits of solar energy for everyone.