Today, the rule of law was thrown out the window — not by Trump but by Special Counsel Jack Smith.

Smith asked a federal judge to dismiss the indictment charging Trump with plotting to subvert the 2020 election.

Smith made a similar filing to an appeals court in Atlanta, thereby ending Smith’s attempt to reverse the dismissal of the federal case accusing Trump of illegally holding on to classified documents after he left office.

Both filings were a grave mistake.

What happened to the rule of law? What became of the principle that no person is above the law, not even a former president? What happened to accountability?

Smith says he had no choice, given the Justice Department’s policy that it’s unconstitutional to pursue prosecutions against sitting presidents.

But he did have a choice. He could have asked the courts to put the cases on hold until Trump is no longer president.

That’s essentially what Judge Juan Merchan did Friday with regard to sentencing Trump on his May conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records.

Sentencing in that case had been scheduled for Nov. 26 but has now been stayed, according to an order issued Friday by Merchan. No new date for a potential sentencing has been set, delaying it indefinitely, although it could be reimposed later.

It’s no answer to say there’s no point in trying to keep the two cases alive because Trump will force his new Attorney General to quash them.

Let Trump do that, so all the world can see him seek to avoid accountability for what he has done. And let Trump’s Justice Department—which will likely be headed by former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi—ask the federal judges involved in the two cases to dismiss them, so all the world can see Trump’s Justice Department acting as Trump’s handmaiden.

Smith should have put the responsibility for avoiding the rule of law squarely on Trump.

In the meantime, Smith should release all the evidence that his team has accumulated about Trump’s plot to subvert the 2020 election and illegally possess highly classified information.

It’s been more than two weeks since the disastrous U.S. presidential election. It’s time to consider what happened, why Vice President Kamala Harris lost to Donald Trump. Obviously, Democrats had problems, and we need to understand what they were so we can fix them before the 2026 midterm elections.

1. Although the overall 2024 vote was down, voters showed up where it mattered. There were about 4.5 million fewer voters in 2024 than there were in 2020 (2.8%). In California there were 1.7 million fewer voters than there were in 2020 (9.7%).

It would be easy to attribute Harris’ loss (2.5 million votes) to this drop-off in overall vote were it not for the fact that total vote in the seven swing states was up. In Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin the vote increased by almost 900,000. In each swing state the 2024 vote exceeded 2020.

Voters saw Trump as the stronger leader who would fix the economy. In 2024 Trump was the change candidate.

In many swing states, Harris did better than Biden had in 2024. But in all the swing states, Trump improved.

2. Who voted for Trump? In politics, sometimes answers are simpler than we expect. The CNN 2024 exit polls contain the question: “[What was your] 2020 presidential vote?” Ninety-three percent of 2024 Harris voters voted for President Joe Biden in 2020; however, 6% shifted to Trump in 2024. Allowing for the 4% of 2020 Trump voters that shifted to Harris, the net shift to Trump was 2%, or 3 million voters. Harris lost by 2.5 million votes.

One answer to the confounding 2024 results is that Biden voters shifted to Trump.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise. Before the election, the No. 1 voter issue was “the inflation and the economy” (YouGov). In the CNN 2024 exit polls, there’s a sharp distinction between Harris and Trump voters on this question: “In the past year, inflation has caused your family____.” For those answering, “severe hardship,” 74% voted for Trump; (77% of Harris voters responded, “no hardship.”)

We could stop here with a terse summary: Harris lost because of the economy. Because of inflation, too many 2020 Biden voters favored Trump on the economy.

3. Why did Trump voters choose this terrible person? While voting solely because of the economy makes sense, there’s still the fact that 76.7 million voters chose Trump, a person who does not believe in the rule of law.

The Harris campaign knew they had a huge problem with the state of the economy. Their campaign assumed they could accomplish three things to overcome this problem: (1) convince voters that Harris was better able to handle the economy than Trump; (2) argue that there were other important issues where Harris was clearly superior to Trump; and (3) make the case that Trump was unfit to be President—because of January 6 and his numerous peccadilloes.

Harris never succeeded on (1). The CNN exit polls showed that 52% of voters trusted Trump to “handle the economy”; (46% said Harris.)

Regarding (2), Harris seems to have succeeded. The CNN exit polls asked voters “the most important issue:” 34% said democracy, and 80% felt Harris would be best on this issue.

Regarding (3), The most polarized CNN exit poll question was: “[Who do you have a] favorable opinion of?” Forty-four percent had a favorable opinion only of Harris, and 43% had a favorable opinion only of Trump.

Writing for Time magazine, Jill Filipovic explained the mentality of Trump voters: “…it’s hard to imagine that a critical mass of people who cast their ballots for Trump don’t, like everyone else, see Trump’s vanity and venality and strongman aims. The dark truth is that a lot of voters seem to want a strongman in charge.”

Trump won the 2024 election because a majority of voters had suffered severe economic hardship. These voters ignored Trump’s faults.

4.The Campaign themes are telling: Trump made the economy the center of his campaign. He asked, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” His closing ad focused on the economy: “Kamala broke it, Trump will fix it.”

Kamala Harris focused on a more general theme, “A new generation of leadership.” (“We’re not going back.”) She closed with “A Brighter Future.” “I will be a president for all Americans.”

The CNN Exit poll asked, “What candidate quality mattered most?” The No. 1 choice was “Has ability to lead” at 30%. Trump prevailed 2 to 1. The No. 2 choice was “Can bring needed change” at 28%. Trump prevailed 3 to 1.

Voters saw Trump as the stronger leader who would fix the economy. In 2024 Trump was the change candidate.

5. What was the role of disinformation? This was a presidential campaign where disinformation played an enormous role. This disinformation was disseminated to an unprecedented level on social media: X, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, podcasts,, etc.

There were two forms of disinformation: (1) Slamming Kamala Harris. (2) Distorting the candidate’s positions on issues.

Regarding (1), the Trump campaign spent more than $200 million on an ad attacking Harris’ position on transgender rights: “Kamala is for they/them, Trump is for you.” Trump implied that Democrats supported gender-affirming surgery for children without parental consent.

Transgender status is a hot button for Trump supporters. Recent polls suggest that MAGA voters vastly exaggerate the number of transgender individuals in the United States; they believe the number to be around 30% where in reality it is less than 1% (0.6).

The Harris campaign did not circulate false information about Trump, but they did run adds linking him to January 6, Project 2025, and other anti-democratic positions.

The net effect of this disinformation was to make both candidates unpopular. To repeat, the most polarized CNN exit poll question was: “[Who do you have a] favorable opinion of?” Forty-four percent had a favorable opinion only of Harris, and 43% had a favorable opinion only of Trump. (Eight percent had a favorable opinion of neither candidate.)

Harris hoped to emerge as a positive alternative to Trump but, because of disinformation, she didn’t. Thus, for Trump voters, the 2024 election can be summarized: “I don’t like Trump, and I know he has done bad things, but I believe he is a strong leader who can change the economy.”

6. Was the election stolen? Because, for many Democrats, the presidential election results were surprising, there’s a lingering belief that MAGA stole votes in swing states. I have seen no hard evidence to suggest that happened.

There are three situations that suggest chicanery. One was that the election polls suggested that Harris had a slight lead. However, there were always several percentage points of “undeclared voters.” In 2024 they broke for Trump. (In my opinion, these were the “shy” Trump voters pollsters also saw in 2016—voters who are hesitant to declare they would vote for Trump.)

The second reason was that Democrats assumed they had a superior ground game to MAGA and, therefore, there would be a late-breaking surge for Harris. This didn’t happen. Trump had a much better ground game than expected.

The third reason that Democrats suspect voter fraud was because in many states there were situations where Harris lost the presidential vote, but a liberal Democrat won the Senate vote. That’s because, sad to say, Harris didn’t have a winning message but, in many cases, the down-ballot Democratic candidate did.

Trump’s core message had two components: “Americans were better off in 2020 than they are in 2024. Biden/Harris scuttled my great economy by opening the border and letting millions of illegal immigrants into the county. They are driving up prices.”

Robert Reich writes that the Democratic response should have been: “[B]ig corporations and the wealthy have shafted average working Americans, whose wages and jobs have gone nowhere for decades and who are understandably frustrated and angry at what they see as a rigged system.” But Kamala Harris didn’t say that. Voters perceived that Trump had an explanation about what had happened to the economy between 2020 and 2024, and Harris did not.

The fact that Harris didn’t have a coherent economic message explains many “split-ticket” situations. For example, “Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez more or less held her voter share in her district even as it swung sharply toward Trump. As Ocasio-Cortez’s own voters told her, the reason her constituents split the ticket between her and Trump wasn’t because they were drawn to Trump’s right-wing policies or his ugly rhetoric. It was because they wanted change, because they viewed both Trump and her as fighting for the working-class.”

7. What about sexism and racism? Many Harris supporters believe that she lost because of her gender and race. Perhaps it’s true that voters wanted a strong man.

There’s no statistical evidence for this. And some contrary poll results. In two swing states, Michigan and Wisconsin, Democrats ran female candidates for Senate; both beat their male opponents. In Michigan Elise Slotkin got fewer votes than Harris. In Wisconsin, Tammy Baldwin got about the same number of votes as Harris.

8. What’s Next? Trump promised to fix the economy. It’s the reason he won on 11/5.

Trump won’t be able to fix the economy because (1) he, personally, has no idea what to do. And (2) the Republican Party’s economic philosophy does not provide the answer. Republicans believe in ”trickle-down” economics; they believe that if they give tax cuts to billionaires then “a rising tide will lift all boats.” Trickle-down economics won’t fix the current economic malaise.

The only thing that’s predictable about the next few months is chaos. Trump and his surrogates are guaranteed to promote outrage and division. When this happens, Democrats should say: “What’s this got to do with fixing the economy?”

History will not be kind to the presidency of Joseph Biden when it evaluates his administration’s handling of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. At best, his response will be judged weak and feckless. At worst, he will be seen as enabling of or even complicitous in the crimes committed.

Examples of both the fecklessness and complicity abound. Here are just a few examples:

On April 4 of this year, the New York Times ran a story under the headline: “President Biden told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that future U.S. support ‘will be determined’ by how Israel treats civilians in Gaza.” The story noted that:

President Biden threatened on Thursday to condition future support for Israel on how it addresses his concerns about civilian casualties and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, prompting Israel to commit to permitting more food and other supplies into the besieged enclave in hopes of placating him. During a tense 30-minute call with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, Mr. Biden for the first-time leveraged U.S. aid to influence the conduct of the war against Hamas that has inflamed many Americans and others around the world.

After the call, Secretary of State Antony Blinken commented “If we don’t see the changes we need to see, there’ll be changes in policy.”

That was seven and one-half months ago. During the intervening months, 12,000 more Palestinians have been killed in schools, hospitals, and mosques where they sought safety. Crowded tent sites of desperate refugees have been bombed and Israel has continued to block deliveries of humanitarian aid. The administration’s “threat” was for naught.

Then on October 13, Secretary Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin wrote to the Israeli government expressing their concern with the “dire” humanitarian situation in Gaza, citing the isolation of the northern part of the territory, repeated evacuation orders, the blocking of humanitarian assistance, targeting aid workers, and a range of other Israeli policies that have had an adverse impact on Palestinians. They said that the U.S. was giving Israel 30 days to improve the humanitarian situation and protection of civilians in Gaza or face unstated consequences.

After Democrats lost elections in November, some commentators assumed that now facing no political pressures, President Biden might use his remaining time in office to make some bold moves to address the crisis in Gaza that could challenge both Netanyahu and the incoming Trump administration. But four actions taken by the Biden administration during the past week demonstrate that such hopes were in vain.

As the one-month deadline given by the Blinken/Austin letter approached, U.S. and international aid groups and officials within the Biden administration charged with humanitarian matters communicated to the Secretaries that the situation in Gaza had worsened, shipments of food, water, and medicines remained intolerably inadequate, aid workers were still being threatened, and there was impending famine. With winter approaching, they warned the humanitarian crisis would only grow more desperate. Nevertheless, on November 12, the U.S. issued what was seen as a delusional passing grade to Israel for “improvements” in Gaza.

On November 20, after months of negotiations on a new United Nations Security Council ceasefire resolution, the U.S. issued yet another veto, stymieing the international community’s efforts to end the war. As disturbing as the veto may have been, even more troubling was the patently false reason for it. They claimed that they opposed the resolution because it failed to call for an immediate release of Israeli hostages, ignoring the fact that the resolution specifically calls for an “immediate, unconditional, and permanent ceasefire and the release of all hostages.”

Also on November 20, the U.S. Senate voted on three separate bills opposing billions in U.S. weapons to Israel. The senators supporting these bills argued that supplying these weapons was in clear violation of U.S. laws restricting such shipments when the recipient country uses them to put the lives of civilians at risk or to impede humanitarian assistance. Ignoring the factual basis of the charges and evidence of violations of U.S. laws, the White House issued “talking points” to senators charging that “Disapproving arms purchases for Israel at this moment would…put wind on the sails of Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas.” It was deeply troubling that the White House would stoop to “Hamas-baiting” leading senators of their own party.

And then on November 21, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant charging them with being criminally responsible for acts including murder, persecution, and starvation as part of a “widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population of Gaza.” In response, President Biden issued a statement denouncing the decision saying that the “arrest warrants against Israeli leaders is outrageous…We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security.”

And so, it appears that President Biden will end his term without a change of heart or policy. In just the last month, he rejected multiple opportunities to distance himself from Israeli policies. Because he rejected each of them, he will “own” this war. It will be his legacy.

It’s very close to being un-American to admit to not liking Thanksgiving. You’re supposed to like the food, even though if it was popular, why don’t we eat these things all year round? In fact, surveys consistently show that Americans, when given the option to answer these questions privately to pollsters, strongly dislike yams, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, stuffing and, yes, even turkey.

Ted Rall has always hated Thanksgiving and isn’t afraid to say so here and now. Although there are deep-rooted psychological reasons going back to his childhood growing up with a single mom, there are also some objective reasons that Thanksgiving is a disliked part of his calendar. In most parts of the country, late November offers some truly terrible weather. What’s the point of having a four-day weekend when you can’t go outside? The food sucks. Yes, all of it. The conceit that everyone has something to be thankful for is ridiculous — should a homeless person with cancer feel grateful on Thanksgiving day for the one day a year that the local food kitchen throws open its doors? Politically, of course, it’s a holiday that commemorates the genocide of the Native American people.

On the TMI show, we give you too much information about everything, including hatred of beloved national holidays. Ted lays out the case for why Thanksgiving well and truly sucks while Manila defends the holiday.

 

The post The TMI Show Ep 27: “Ted Hates Thanksgiving” first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

The post The TMI Show Ep 27: “Ted Hates Thanksgiving” appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

“If they do these things when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?” (Luke 23:31)

Before November 5, millions of us were already struggling with poverty, extreme storms, immigration nightmares, anti-trans bills, criminalized reproductive health, the demolition of homeless encampments, the silencing of freedom of speech on campuses… and, of course, the list only goes on and on. Since Donald Trump and JD Vance were elected, more of us find ourselves in a state of fear and trembling, given the reports of transgender people attacked in broad daylight, misogynist social media posts threatening “your body, my choice,” Black college students receiving notes about returning to enslavement, and the unhoused beaten and battered.

In the wake of the election results, there has also been a flurry of activity in anticipation of the extremist policies Donald Trump and crew are likely to put in place to more deeply harm the nation’s most vulnerable: mass Zoom meetings with MoveOn, the Working Families Party, Indivisible, and more; interfaith prayer services for healing and justice organized by various denominations and ecumenical groups; local actions pulled together by the Women’s March; community meetings with the hashtag #weareworthfightingfor; and calls to mobilize for inauguration day and beyond.

Although some were surprised by the election outcome, there were others who saw it coming and offered comfort and solidarity to their communities even before the results were in. On the eve of election night, a public elementary school in West Harlem, New York sent this message to its families:

We know emotions are running high. Today, and last week at school, many conversations in PreK through 5th grade were had and heard regarding how voting happens… worry from some students about whether they will be safe after tomorrow… We assured all children that our school, no matter what, will always be a safe place for them and their families… It is so hard feeling that this election and its outcomes could have such a huge impact on any person based on their status, race, gender identity, sexuality, religion, country of origin, and so many other identities which make our school so beautifully diverse…It is not easy being a parent/caregiver on a good day, let alone when it feels like times are so turbulent and uncertain and even, scary. We are here for you, parents, caregivers, and we are in this together. No matter what!

That message came from a Title 1 school, nearly 60% of whose students qualify for free school meals. If Trump keeps up with his promise to close the Department of Education, tens of thousands of public schools across the country, like the one in West Harlem, could lose critical funding and programs that sustain tens of millions of students and their families—that is, if public education isn’t completely privatized in some grim fashion.

Of course, not all communities approached Trump’s election with such trepidation. On November 6, the Bloomberg Billionaire Index reported that the 10 richest men in the world added $64 billion to their own wealth after Donald Trump was declared the winner of the 2024 election. Since then, the stock market has had some of its best days in recent history.

An Impoverished Democracy

After inciting an insurrection at the Capitol; being indicted in state and federal court; convicted of 34 felony counts; and using racist, sexist, and hateful rhetoric prolifically, Donald Trump has gone down in history as the only convicted felon to become an American president, receiving more than 74 million votes and securing 312 electoral college votes. Although an undisputed victory, the outcome relied heavily on a weakened democracy and a polarized economy, drawing on discontent and disarray to regain political power.

Indeed, although Donald Trump has the distinct “honor” of being the first Republican to win the popular vote in 20 years, he has done so after more than a decade of assaults on voting rights, unleashed in 2013 when the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act. Over the next 10 years, nearly 100 laws were passed in 29 states that restrict voting access, from omnibus bills to polling location closures, limits on mail-in and absentee voting, harsh ID requirements (including eliminating student ID cards as a valid form of identification), and more. Since 2020, at least 30 states have enacted 78 restrictive laws, 63 of which were in effect in dozens of states during this election. And in 2024 alone, nine states enacted 18 restrictive voting laws, alongside purges of thousands of voters in the days leading up to November 5.

In addition to such prolonged attacks on the right to vote, widespread poverty and economic precarity have become defining characteristics of our impoverished democracy: More than two of every five of us are poor or low-income, and three in five are living paycheck-to-paycheck without affordable healthcare, decent homes, or quality education.

If the poor and our democracy were suffering before Trump was reelected, what will happen now?

According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2024 report Poverty in the United States: 2023, 41% of this country’s population has a household income either under the poverty threshold or just above it, precariously living one emergency away from financial ruin. That translates into approximately 137 million people who are struggling every day to make it through without falling even further behind. Those tens of millions of people include a disproportionate percentage of people of color, including 56.5% of Black people (23.4 million), 61.4% of Latino people (40.2 million), 55.8% of Indigenous people (1.4 million), and 38% of Asian people (8.5 million). They also include nearly one-third of white people, 60 million, and nearly half (49%) of all children in the United States. Such rates are slightly higher for women (42.6%) than for men (39.8%), including 44.6% for elderly women.

When tallied up, these numbers mirror pre-pandemic conditions in 2018 and 2019, during which poverty and low-income rates stood at about 40%, impacting 140 million people in every county, state, and region of the country.

In other words, in this sick reality of ours, poverty is clearly anything but a marginal experience—and yet, as in the last election, it’s repeatedly minimalized and dismissed in our nation’s politics. In the process, the daily lives of nearly one-third of the electorate are discounted, because among that vast impoverished population, there are approximately 80 million eligible voters described by political strategists as among the most significant blocs of voters to win over.

Case in point: In 2020 and 2021, there was a significant dip in the overall number of people who were poor or low-income. Covid-19 pandemic programs that offered financial help also expanded access to healthcare, food stamps, free school meals, and unemployment insurance, while monthly support from the Child Tax Credit lifted over 20 million people out of poverty and insecurity while increasing protection from evictions and foreclosures. Such programs made millions of people more economically secure than they had been in years.

Nonetheless, instead of extending and improving them and potentially gaining the trust of millions of poor and low-income voters, all of these anti-poverty policies were ended by early 2023. By 2024, not only had the gains against poverty been swiftly erased, but more than 25 million people had been kicked off Medicaid, including millions in battleground states like Georgia, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. In that same time period, the Biden administration approved an $895 billion budget for war and another $95 billion in additional aid to Ukraine and Israel.

Rather than speaking to such economic crises or pledging to address such pervasive insecurity, over the course of the election season, the Democrats emphasized a rising GDP, a strong job market, and important infrastructure investments made in recent years—macro-economic issues that had little effect on the material well-being of the majority of Americans, especially those struggling with the rising cost of living. For instance, pre-election polling among Latino voters showed that three-quarters (78%) of them had experienced an increase in food and basic living expenses; two-thirds (68%) emphasized the high costs of rent and housing; and nearly three in five (57%) said that their wages weren’t high enough to meet their cost of living or they had to take second jobs to make ends meet.

When you consider the grim final results of election 2024, such realities—and the decision of the Democrats to functionally disregard poor and low-income voters—should be taken into account.

When the Wood Is Green/When the Wood Is Dry

With just over 74 million votes (to Harris’s 71 million), among a voting-eligible population of more than 230 million, Trump actually received only one-third of the possible votes in this election. Nearly 85 million eligible voters simply chose not to turn out. In reality, he won’t enter office with a popular mandate.

However, buoyed by a Republican-controlled Senate and House of Representatives, his second term brings with it a profound sense of dread, based on a heightened awareness of the policies that Trump 2.0 is likely to carry forward (laid bare in the Heritage Foundation’s nearly 900-page pre-election Project 2025 mandate). From mass deportations to assaults on social-welfare programs, housing programs, reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ families, and public education, millions of people could be thrown into crisis, with alarmingly fewer ways to resist or express dissent, especially given Trump’s long-time willingness to use military force to quell protest. With the passage of the “non-profit killer bill” in the House of Representatives (before Trump even takes office), the infrastructure of resistance is also under threat. Add to all this: Trump has already started talking about overhauling the Medicaid and food-stamp programs that benefit at least 70 million poor and low-income people to offset the costs of extending tax cuts to billionaires and corporations.

All of this brings us to the Bible.

During the fall of the Roman Empire, poor and dispossessed communities banded together to build a movement where everyone would be accepted and all needs would be met.

Poverty was both severe and all too common in Jesus’ day. Ninety percent of the population in the Roman empire was believed to have been poor, with a class of expendable low-wage workers (to which some historians suggest Jesus belonged) so poor that many only lived remarkably brief lives in utter precarity. Shifts in farming and fishing had catapulted some people into great new wealth but left the vast majority struggling for basics like food and housing. Many of the impoverished subjects of the Roman Empire joined political and religious renewal movements, which took various forms and used various tactics to resist these and other injustices.

Some readers may be familiar with the decadence and violence of the Roman Emperor Nero. Popularly known as the anti-Christ, he came to power after Jesus walked the Earth, but as is clear from his nickname, had a grave impact on many of Jesus’ followers. Nero was, of course, the one who was accused of “fiddling while Rome is burning”—holding lavish banquets, using and abusing (even possibly raping) some of his poor subjects, persecuting Christians, and bringing about the decline and eventual fall of the Roman empire through his authoritarian rule and decadent overspending.

As detailed in Luke’s Gospel, during the last week of his life, Jesus turned to the people of Jerusalem and wept. He described the profound suffering they had been enduring and instructed them to brace themselves for the suffering still to come, saying, “For if they do these things when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?” This line foreshadows Jesus’ death on the cross (an execution reserved for those who dared to challenge the Roman Empire and its emperors), the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, and the persecution of his poor followers who continued to practice mutual solidarity, even after that crucifixion.

Writing decades later, the author of Luke’s gospel may have been offering a warning about emperors like Nero that would foreshadow later times. Luke had the benefit of hindsight in the wake of Jesus’ life and death in which there was not exactly a lot of good news about the canceling of debts, the release of those enslaved to unjust structures, or the prosperity of the poor (of the sort Jesus had called for when he started his public ministry). Rather, those who dared to stand up to Rome were being persecuted, while so many others were being overworked and underpaid in a society that was faltering.

Two thousand years later, this sounds all too familiar, doesn’t it?

Looking at Donald Trump’s new appointments and his (and his cronies’) plans for “making America great again,” you really have to wonder: If the poor and our democracy were suffering before Trump was reelected, what will happen now? If, amid relative abundance, the poor were already being abandoned, what will indeed occur when those with the power to distribute that abundance, and protect our air, water, and land, openly disdain the “least of these,” who are most of us, and instead favor the wealthy and powerful?

Donald Trump may liken himself to Jesus in his media appearances and election rallies, but his words and actions actually resemble those of Nero and other Roman emperors. With claims that “I alone can fix your problems” and bread-and-circus rallies like the pre-election one he held at Madison Square Garden, perhaps a more accurate parallel with the incoming administration may, in fact, be Nero and his cronies who stood against Jesus and his mission to end poverty.

If so, then for those committed to the biblical call for a safe and abundant life for all, such times demand that we focus on building the strength and power of the people. During the fall of the Roman Empire, poor and dispossessed communities banded together to build a movement where everyone would be accepted and all needs would be met. Don’t you hear echoes of that in the words and actions of that school in West Harlem, so deeply concerned about its families, and the community actions proclaiming that “we are worth fighting for”?

Such communities of yesteryear knew a truth that is all the more important today: Lives and livelihoods will be saved, if at all, from below, rather than on high. As we approach a new year and the inauguration of Donald Trump (on Martin Luther King Day, no less), let us take to heart a favorite slogan of the authors: “When we lift from the bottom, everybody rises.” This is the only way forward.

President Biden has never wavered from approving huge arms shipments to Israel during more than 13 months of mass murder and deliberate starvation of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Biden’s crucial role earned him the name “Genocide Joe.”

That nickname might seem shrill, but it’s valid. Although Biden will not be brought to justice for serving as a key accomplice to the horrific crimes against humanity that continue in Gaza, the label sticks—and candid historians will condemn him as a direct enabler of genocide.

Biden could also qualify for another nickname, which according to Google was never published before this article: “Omnicide Joe.”

In contrast to the Genocide Joe sobriquet, which events have already proven apt, Omnicide Joe is a bit anticipatory. That’s inevitable, because if the cascading effects of his foreign policy end up as key factors in nuclear annihilation, historians will not be around to assess his culpability for omnicide—defined as “the destruction of all life or all human life.”

That definition scarcely overstates what scientists tell us would result from an exchange of nuclear weapons. Researchers have discovered that “nuclear winter” would quickly set in across the globe, blotting out sunlight and wiping out agriculture, with a human survival rate of perhaps 1 or 2 percent.

While Russia’s invasion and horrible war in Ukraine should be condemned, Biden has compounded Putin’s crimes by giving much higher priority to Washington’s cold-war mania than to negotiation for peace—or to mitigation of escalating risks of nuclear war.

With everything—literally everything—at stake, you might think that averting thermonuclear war between the world’s two nuclear superpowers, Russia and the United States, would be high on a president’s to-do list. But that hardly has been the case with Joe Biden since he first pulled up a chair at the Oval Office desk.

In fact, Biden has done a lot during the first years of this decade to inflame the realistic fears of nuclear war. His immediate predecessor Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of two vital treaties -- Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces and Open Skies -- and Biden did nothing to reinstate them. Likewise, Trump killed the Iran nuclear deal negotiated during the Obama administration, and Biden let it stay dead.

Instead of fulfilling his 2020 campaign promise to adopt a U.S. policy of no-first-use of nuclear weapons, two years ago Biden signed off on the Nuclear Posture Review policy document that explicitly declares the opposite. Last year, under the euphemism of “modernization,” the U.S. government spent $51 billion -- more than every other nuclear-armed country combined -- updating and sustaining its nuclear arsenal, gaining profligate momentum in a process that’s set to continue for decades to come.

Before and after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February 2022, Biden showed a distinct lack of interest in actual diplomacy to prevent the war or to end it. Three days before the invasion, writing in the Financial Times, Jeffrey Sachs pointed out: “Biden has said repeatedly that the U.S. is open to diplomacy with Russia, but on the issue that Moscow has most emphasized—NATO enlargement—there has been no American diplomacy at all. [Russian President Vladimir] Putin has repeatedly demanded that the U.S. forswear NATO’s enlargement into Ukraine, while Biden has repeatedly asserted that membership of the alliance is Ukraine’s choice.”

While Russia’s invasion and horrible war in Ukraine should be condemned, Biden has compounded Putin’s crimes by giving much higher priority to Washington’s cold-war mania than to negotiation for peace—or to mitigation of escalating risks of nuclear war.

From the outset, Biden scarcely acknowledged that the survival of humanity was put at higher risk by the Ukraine war. In his first State of the Union speech, a week after the invasion, Biden devoted much of his oratory to the Ukraine conflict without saying a word about the heightened danger that it might trigger the use of nuclear weapons.

During the next three months, the White House posted more than 60 presidential statements, documents and communiques about the war in Ukraine. They all shared with his State of the Union address a stunning characteristic -- the complete absence of any mention of nuclear weapons or nuclear war dangers—even though many experts gauged those dangers as being the worst they’d been since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

With everything—literally everything—at stake, you might think that averting thermonuclear war between the world’s two nuclear superpowers, Russia and the United States, would be high on a president’s to-do list.

With occasional muted references to not wanting a U.S. military clash with nuclear-armed Russia, during the last 33 months the Biden administration has said it did not want to cross its own red lines—and then has repeatedly proceeded to do so.

A week ago superhawk John Bolton, a former national security advisor to President Trump, summarized the process on CNN while bemoaning that Biden’s reckless escalation hasn’t been even more reckless: “It’s been one long public debate after another, going back to ‘Shall we supply ATACMS [ballistic missiles] to the Ukrainians at all?’ First it’s no, then there’s a debate, then there’s yes. ‘Should we supply the Ukrainians Abrams tanks?’ First it’s no, then there’s a long debate, then it’s yes. ‘Should we supply the Ukrainians with F-16s?’ First it’s no, then there’s a long debate, and it’s yes. Now, ‘Can we allow the Ukrainians to use ATACMS inside Russia?’ After a long debate, now it’s yes.”

Whether heralded or reviled, Biden’s supposed restraint during the Ukraine war has steadily faded, with more and more dangerous escalation in its place.

Biden’s recent green light for Ukraine to launch longer-range missiles into Russia is another jump toward nuclear warfare. As a Quincy Institute analyst wrote, “the stakes, and escalatory risks, have steadily crept up.” In an ominous direction, “this needlessly escalatory step has put Russia and NATO one step closer to a direct confrontation—the window to avert catastrophic miscalculation is now that much narrower.”

Like Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken as well as the Democratic and Republican phalanx of Ukraine war cheerleaders on Capitol Hill, Bolton doesn’t mention that recent polling shows strong support among Ukrainian people for negotiations to put a stop to the war. “An average of 52 percent of Ukrainians would like to see their country negotiate an end to the war as soon as possible,” Gallup reported last week, compared to only 38 percent who say “their country should keep fighting until victory.”

Biden and other war boosters have continued to scorn, as capitulation and accommodation to aggression, what so much of the Ukrainian population now says it wants—a negotiated settlement. Instead, top administration officials and laptop-warrior pundits in the press corps are eager to tout their own mettle by insisting that Ukrainians and Russians must keep killing and dying.

Elites in Washington continue to posture as courageous defenders of freedom with military escalation in Ukraine, where hundreds of thousands have already died. Meanwhile, dangers of nuclear war increase.

Last week, Putin “lowered the threshold for a nuclear strike in response to a broader range of conventional attacks,” Reuters reported, “and Moscow said Ukraine had struck deep inside Russia with U.S.-made ATACMS missiles…. Russia had been warning the West for months that if Washington allowed Ukraine to fire U.S., British and French missiles deep into Russia, Moscow would consider those NATO members to be directly involved in the war in Ukraine.”

For President Biden, the verdict of Genocide Joe is already in. But if, despite pleas for sanity, he turns out to fully deserve the name Omnicide Joe, none of us will be around to read about it.

Like most people in the community she fights for on a daily basis, Philadelphia’s Naiymah Sanchez didn’t sleep at all on the night of November 5. It wasn’t only because Donald Trump’s second election would intensify her work as trans justice coordinator for the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania. It was also the personal anguish that the 41-year-old transgender woman felt knowing Trump had been elected, in part, by spending millions of dollars on TV ads that dehumanized her and people like her in shocking ways American voters had never seen before.

“I took it very personally,” Sanchez—who spent years as an activist around tough issues like combating prison rape before joining the ACLU-PA in 2017, right after Trump’s first election—told me this week. “They voted against me. They wanted to harm me.” She noted how many voters seemed to respond positively to the GOP’s openly anti-trans rhetoric, before adding: “We rest, and then we fight again.”

While Trump’s narrow but decisive win over Democrat Kamala Harris is still Topic A, the early fights over the president-elect’s off-the-wall cabinet picks and TV debates over just how anti-democratically the Trump regime might govern are still an abstraction to most Americans. It’s very different in the transgender community. There, leaders like Sanchez are having gut-wrenching conversations with people wondering if they need to accelerate major life moves, like gender-affirming surgery or a legal name change, before an openly hostile government arrives on January 20.

Selling out more than 1 million transgender Americans would wreck that brand, permanently—telling voters Democrats don’t stand for anything beyond surviving the next election.

Indeed, fears of what life might be like under Trump 47 for at least 1 million transgender Americans already began to hit home this week when the community’s one bright star on Election Day—a victory for the first-ever transgender member of Congress, Delaware’s Rep.-elect Sarah McBride—quickly became a symbol of the GOP’s determination to turn ugly campaign rhetoric into harsh governing reality.

It felt all too fitting that the Christian fundamentalist House Speaker Mike Johnson chose the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance—a day intended to both memorialize past victims of violence, including at least 30 and perhaps far more murder victims every year, and to fight this scourge—to side with South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace’s vocal and bigoted efforts to prevent transgender people from using Capitol restrooms or other single-sex facilities of their chosen identity. Johnson claimed to be solving a problem that didn’t seem to exist for Capitol visitors or staffers before McBride’s arrival. More importantly, advocates like Sanchez know how such high-profile moves give license to everyday people to more openly voice anti-trans hatred.

This normalization of transphobia in American politics, and the signs of looming government repression, poses a major moral test—the first of many to come—for how the political leaders for the nearly 77 million Americans, and counting, who voted against Trump’s MAGA movement (for Harris or third-party candidates) are planning to respond.

Arguably, this is a real challenge for all of us. Can those of us not in the transgender community fully embrace the humanity of our friends, family members, or neighbors who are? Or, in the more meaningful than ever words of Sen. Bernie Sanders, be “willing to fight for a person you don’t know as much as you’re willing to fight for yourself”? How many will instead succumb to a focus-grouped temptation of blaming the anti-trans TV ads for Trump’s win and keep silent as demagogues like Trump and his attention-crazed acolyte Mace step up their attacks?

The early indications are not hopeful. Democratic Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts—one of many seeking scapegoats for Harris’ electoral defeat and his party’s losses on Capitol Hill—threw down the gauntlet by saying Democrats are too worried about offending people before declaring: “I have two little girls, I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.”

Moulton’s campaign manager did resign in protest over those remarks, but more broadly Democrats have struggled to respond—to Moulton but also to the Trump TV ads that seemed to utterly flummox Team Harris, which turned to polling and focus groups before deciding there was no good way to aggressively respond.

And the hard data suggest that, yes, unfortunately, a transphobic message does influence some swing voters—not a huge number, but not many were needed in an election that was arguably decided by fewer than 300,000 ballots in three battleground states. Republicans spent at least $65 million and probably much more on anti-transgender ads in a dozen key states, including here in Pennsylvania, where the spot with the tagline “Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you” aired constantly during the Phillies’ late-season push or the evening news.

One polling group, Blueprint, reported that the third most-cited reason by voters for opposing Harris—after inflation and immigration—was this: “Kamala Harris is focused more on cultural issues like transgender issues rather than helping the middle class.” Blueprint added that this was the No. 1 reason for last-minute deciders rejecting Harris, while other polling groups argued that opposing transgender rights was far down their lists of voter concerns.

Still, the early data suggest why transgender activists fear too many Democrats think privately what Moulton voiced publicly. Thus, how hard will party leaders fight Republicans like Mace, who has already introduced a bill that would extend the Capitol bathroom restrictions endorsed by Johnson to all federal facilities across the United States?

The stakes couldn’t be higher as Trump prepares to take office. History has shown that the transgender community is often an early target of authoritarian strongmen. In the 1930s, for example, Adolf Hitler’s Nazis revoked “transvestite permits” that had been issued by the relatively liberal Weimar Republic, and shut down a transgender-friendly nightclub and research institute almost immediately upon taking power.

Today, in another fraught moment, it seems counterintuitive but the most effective voices for the idea of broadly embracing the humanity of transgender Americans seem to be Democrats who’ve also broken through in areas considered deep-red Trump country. Most famously, Kentucky’s Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear vetoed bills that banned gender-affirming surgery for minors and barred trans girls from cisgender sports, and—although his vetoes were overridden by GOP lawmakers—still won reelection in his heavily pro-Trump state.

“Number one: I talked about why,” Beshear told CBS’s “Face the Nation” last Sunday. “That’s my faith, where I’m taught that all children are children of God, and I wanted to stick up for children [who] were being picked on.” Voters—enough of them, anyway—respected Beshear for sticking to his values rather than doing what a consultant might have advised him to do.

Last week in the Capitol controversy, the maddeningly complicated Democratic Sen. John Fetterman, who won in 2022 after campaigning extensively in Pennsylvania’s reddest rural counties, responded to the attack on McBride not with platitudes but with a gesture: Telling the incoming House member she could use the bathroom in his office any time, and adding: “There’s no job I’m afraid to lose if it requires me to degrade anyone.” (I’m going to skip the obvious diatribe about how Fetterman might want to apply that thinking to Gaza.)

It seems to me that if Democrats want to have any hope of staying relevant over the next four years, let alone regaining power in the anti-small-”d”-democratic climate of the Trump regime, they need to embrace their inner Andy Beshear, and reject the shortsightedness of the Seth Moultons out there. Again, think back to history. In 1964, just months after the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech, 74% of Americans said mass demonstrations were detrimental to racial equality. President Lyndon B. Johnson knew that signing civil-rights legislation would probably mean near-future political pain for the Democratic Party, and he was right.

But think bigger picture. During that era, Democrats and their liberal base did build—however imperfectly—a brand that they were the party that had fought for civil rights and equality, not only for Black Americans but for Latinos, women, the LGBTQ community, and other groups that felt marginalized by conservatives. That brand—built around a moral belief and not the polling data—is how Democrats won the popular vote in seven of the last nine presidential elections, even including the disappointment of Nov. 5. Selling out more than 1 million transgender Americans would wreck that brand, permanently—telling voters Democrats don’t stand for anything beyond surviving the next election.

I might be naive, but I think matters like addressing the needs of literally a handful of athletes or making everyone comfortable at a rest stop aren’t so complicated that America can’t work them out by starting at the simple place where Beshear starts: That we are all God’s children, with some basic human rights.

And if Democrats, as well as all of us still dreaming of a better world than Donald Trump’s dark vision for America, instead choose to say nothing because we are not transgender, people shouldn’t be surprised when their group is targeted next.

In 2002, the American economist Victor R. Fuchs wrote that “national health insurance will probably come to the United States in the wake of a major change in the political climate, the kind of change that often accompanies a war, a depression, or large-scale civil unrest.”

You couldn’t have designed a crisis much better suited to deliver us this outcome than Covid-19. In 2020, the U.S. faced the largest public health emergency in its history, at a time when 28 million Americans did not have health insurance and millions more were underinsured.

The faulty, patchwork nature of our health care system greatly compounded the effects of the pandemic. In fact, a study by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) found that the U.S. could have seen around 338,000 fewer deaths from Covid-19 if we’d had universal coverage and we could have saved billions in health care costs associated with hospitalizations from the disease.

Nobody should die in the richest country on Earth because they can’t afford health care. The Covid-19 pandemic should have made clear once and for all how irrational and cruel our system is. We are the only developed nation that doesn’t guarantee health care to all citizens. As a result, tens of millions of Americans every year suffer without access to basic medical care, while insurance companies are allowed to make record profits. There are people in America who have to ration prescription drugs, while a few miles over the border in Canada, they could get these same pills at a fraction of the cost. There are people who have to forgo life-saving surgeries, because they can’t afford the procedures. Roughly a third of all GoFundMe campaigns in the U.S. go to people raising money for medical treatments.

In April, 2020, a nurse in the intensive care unit of a New York City hospital named Derrick Smith, wrote on Facebook that one of his patients asked “who’s going to pay for this?” before being intubated and placed on a ventilator, seemingly more concerned about the cost of the procedure than what the outcome would be. These would end up being his last words.

Meanwhile, the CEOs of 300 health care companies collectively made more than $4.5 billion in 2021, according to Stat News. The obvious conclusion is scathing.

Lockdown orders during the pandemic led to a massive spike in unemployment, yet despite significant job losses, the number of insured Americans actually increased, primarily due to emergency Medicaid eligibility policies. This amounted to the government (at least, partially) performing the function of a national health care system – i.e. filling gaps in coverage left by the private insurance industry. Unfortunately, as pandemic-era emergency measures ended, millions of Americans lost this coverage and private insurance returned to business as usual.

A number of factors contributed to America’s poor pandemic performance relative to other countries; a slow government response in terms of travel and testing, PPE shortages and delays in testing rollout. But it’s almost certain that addressing Covid-19 would have been easier if everyone had health insurance. According to the consumer health advocacy organization Families USA, roughly 40% of Covid-19 infections were associated with lack of health insurance.

In general, gaps in insurance coverage tend to accelerate the spread of diseases. People are less likely to get tested if they don't have insurance for fear of large medical bills. The more people who have insurance and a relationship with a primary care physician, the more cases can be diagnosed and treated quicker, thus reducing the likelihood of serious infection. Slowing the spread also reduces the strain on hospitals, making it easier to treat all patients.

There were some countries with single-payer that fared poorly during the pandemic. Italy, for instance, was hit very hard, in part because they had a lot of people in the vulnerable age range. However, many of the best-performing countries, particularly outside of Europe (New Zealand, South Korea), were those with single-payer systems. Taiwan, which transitioned to a single-payer system in the 1990s, achieved Covid-19 zero without a lockdown.

There were other factors which should have made Covid-19 uniquely suited to deliver us major health care reform. Unlike a number of other public health crises (the opioid epidemic, homelessness), Covid-19 received near-constant media coverage. It was front-and-center in everybody’s mind for three years. It also came on the heels of two back-to-back election cycles in which Medicare For All was a key issue in both debates and public policy discussions.

Public support for Medicare For All was at an all-time high in 2020. And in 2021, when Rep. Pramila Jayapal introduced the legislation, it was co-sponsored by a majority of Democrats in the House. Nothing like that had ever happened before. Even according to right-wing outlets like the Pacific Research Institute (PRI), Covid-19 led to a significant spike in support for single-payer.

Why, then, did nothing happen? One major problem was that the pandemic kept people inactive. The public was too atomized and immobile for any effective, coordinated response to cohere. The pandemic created a lot of pent-up anger, much of which got unleashed in the summer of 2020 via the Black Lives Matter protests, coming at a time when many people had been stuck in lockdown for months, many without jobs. When the spark was lit, it quickly became a lightning rod for solidarity and popular discontent.

The biggest problem is that single-payer health care is opposed by some of the most powerful special-interest groups in the country; the private insurance industry, pharmaceutical companies, and the for-profit hospitals. Health care is a massive sector of our market economy, a multi-trillion-dollar a year industry, so despite widespread popular support for the program, there is currently no mechanism strong enough to bring this public pressure to bear on politicians.

If we are to rise to the level of the rest of the developed world and guarantee health care to all citizens, we need to constitute an organized popular opposition which can participate in shaping public policy. Ideally, this will mean grass-roots initiatives backed by a strong labor sector—unions in the nursing, trades, and service sectors working in conjunction with local advocacy groups. We must capitalize on the momentum built up in 2020 and continue to push single-payer forward. If we organize and act to exercise our power, this is hardly a utopian goal.

The stakes couldn’t be higher as we enter the final scheduled round of plastics treaty negotiations.

From November 25 to December 1, United Nations Member States will convene in Busan, Republic of Korea for the fifth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-5) to develop an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution—will they deliver a treaty that matches the urgency of the plastics crisis?

What’s at Stake

The global plastics crisis poses an escalating threat to the environment, public health, and the economy. Currently, 99% of plastics are derived from fossil fuels—the main driver of climate change—and production is on track to triple by 2050, accounting for 20% of global oil demand within the next two decades. This surge in plastic production could use up a staggering one-third of the Earth’s remaining carbon budget, seriously jeopardizing efforts to limit global warming to 1.5°C.

Meanwhile, petrochemical and plastic markets face mounting economic challenges as overcapacity worsens, sustainable investments gain momentum, and regulatory pressures tighten. Despite stagnant demand and an oversaturated market, more than 1,400 new plastic production projects are planned by 2027. With historically low profit margins and warnings from credit rating agencies, economists have cautioned that expanding fossil fuel-based plastic production is both reckless and economically shortsighted. The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) urges a production cap to address market imbalances and mitigate risks to the environment and the economy.

A meaningful global plastics treaty must cap production, stabilize market imbalances, align efforts with climate goals, address inequities, and curb the widespread devastation of plastic pollution, including greenhouse gas emissions.

Where Do Negotiators Begin?

Negotiators will arrive in Busan with nearly 70 dizzying pages of draft text and more than 3,700 unresolved brackets—a signal that there is much divergence on what the treaty should or should not include. While INC Chair Luis Vayas has proposed a “non-paper” to streamline discussions, critics, including CIEL, warn that as it stands, it leaves key treaty provisions without suggested text and sets the stage for a weak and ineffective treaty. CIEL and Break Free From Plastic have put together a streamlined comparison of the non-paper and draft treaty text to inform and guide the negotiations.

Essential Elements of an Effective Plastics Treaty

As negotiations unfold, here are the key components a successful treaty must include:

A Cap on Global Plastic Production with Binding National Targets

Plastic’s toxic impacts permeate every stage of its life cycle. With plastic recycling rates below 10%, downstream measures are wholly inadequate to address this crisis. The solution must begin at the source: We need a treaty that caps plastic production. To align with global climate goals, the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) recommends a minimum 70% reduction in plastic production by 2050, using 2019 as a baseline.

A treaty that fails to limit plastic production at its source will not only fall short of its mandate to end plastic pollution—it will fail humanity at a critical juncture. To meaningfully address this crisis, a global reduction target must be paired with ambitious, binding national commitments.

A treaty with a global production target but no binding national obligations risks becoming another “Paris-style” agreement—offering promises while delaying real action. Postponing decisions on national obligations is a dangerous gamble, with no guarantee of success. The first and most critical step toward meaningful reductions is preventing exponential plastic production growth. That’s why the treaty must mandate national measures to halt the expansion of production capacity, particularly for high-volume plastics driving the crisis.

Bans on Chemicals of Concern

Of the 16,000 chemicals used in plastics, more than 4,200 are known to pose serious health and environmental hazards and risks and have been linked to miscarriage, obesity, diabetes, cancer, and more. Nearly 10,000 of them lack adequate data, posing unknown dangers. Following the advice of leading scientists, the treaty must adopt the precautionary principle, globally banning entire classes of hazardous chemicals, mandating transparency, and prioritizing human and environmental safety.

Trade Measures

Plastics are a transboundary issue. Feedstocks, products, and waste flow across global markets, often circumventing regulations. The treaty must establish enforceable measures for tracking and managing trade, including rules for non-party countries that do not ratify, to prevent loopholes and maintain treaty efficacy.

Robust Governance Mechanisms

After the treaty text is finalized and entered into force, a Conference of the Parties (COP) will convene to ensure the treaty’s implementation, monitor progress, and address emerging issues. Future decision-making must avoid the pitfalls of consensus voting, which risks stalling progress. A dynamic treaty must empower regular COPs to swiftly address emerging issues and ensure long-term success by establishing the possibility for qualified majority voting when consensus cannot be reached.

Financial Mechanisms

The treaty must establish a dedicated financial mechanism to support the achievement of its objectives, with a particular focus on assisting low- and middle-income countries. Member States should embrace innovative funding solutions, such as implementing a globally coordinated fee on primary polymer production.

Challenges in Busan
Delay Tactics

As the INCs have already shown, Member States may attempt to dilute ambition and derail progress. These tactics can include a flood of procedural questions, denial of scientific consensus, claims of knowledge gaps, reopening agreed-upon text, and requesting additional information to delay decision-making.

Industry Influence

Fossil fuel and chemical industry lobbyists have infiltrated previous negotiations. According to an analysis by CIEL, the number of lobbyists at INC-4 outnumbered European Union delegates. Strict conflict of interest policies and transparency measures are necessary to ensure that the treaty’s implementation is protected from the vested interests of these industries.

Compromise for Speed

As negotiators feel the pressure of a ticking clock, they may be tempted to scale back ambition, sideline critical topics, or adopt a weak, non-binding framework. Negotiators must balance urgency with ambition to ensure a treaty that meets its mandate.

Trump’s Influence on the Treaty

INC-5 negotiations come just weeks after Donald Trump’s reelection, raising concerns about how this may shape the U.S. delegation’s stance in Busan. Trump has made clear his alignment with an industry that not only undermines climate imperatives but is facing economic decline.

Despite this, most nations have shown a strong commitment to moving away from toxic, polluting plastics. The U.S. negotiating team remains under the Biden-Harris administration’s directive, and global negotiators must not let the recent election derail global progress. If the U.S. fails to advocate for an ambitious treaty, they risk being left behind as other countries forge the way.

What the World Needs from INC-5

The final plastics treaty must deliver more than lofty goals. We call on negotiators to deliver real, enforceable solutions that:

• Cap and reduce plastic production to curb plastic pollution at its source.
• Ban hazardous chemicals to protect human and environmental health.
• Establish clear trade and governance measures for efficacy.
• Commit to binding, ambitious national targets that align with human rights and climate goals.

The Moment of Truth

The world cannot afford a weak or voluntary treaty that prioritizes industry interests over human and planetary health. Leaders in Busan must rise to the occasion and deliver the bold, binding agreement we need to tackle the plastics crisis.

Without a robust treaty, we risk locking in decades of escalating plastic production, worsening climate impacts, and irreparable harm to ecosystems and communities worldwide. The time for incremental steps is over. It’s now or never.

The world is watching. Will INC-5 deliver the treaty we deserve?

Our topsy-turvy morals: Marco Rubio is considered a safe, “normal” nominaiton for Secretary of State even though/because he’s a rabid neoconservative (read: warmonger). Tulsi Gabbard is considered quirky, even loopy, despite her military service because she shares the view of the rest of the world that the US is too imperialistic and aggressive. RFK Jr., who desperately wants to clean up our food, is considered frightening.

P.S. With the holidays soon to be upon us, remember: you could buy the Original Line Art for this cartoon! Either for a friend or yourself. Price is $400, includes shipping within US and a personal hand-signed dedication by yours truly. Contact me here: here.

The post Mainstreamers Are Insane first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

The post Mainstreamers Are Insane appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

After extra time of exhausting negotiations, the 29th U.N. Conference on Climate Change is over.

First, a quick refresher of what COP29 was meant to achieve: dubbed a ‘finance COP,’ countries were expected to come to Baku, Azerbaijan ready to present in good faith various finance deals to strengthen the global response to climate change.

Signs call for for the Global North to "pay up" during a COP29 action in Baku, Azerbaijan. (Photo: Marie Jacquemin/Greenpeace)

The final agreement

After two slow-moving weeks of climate talks, COP29 ended with a woefully inadequate agreement on a new annual public climate finance goal of US$300 billion by 2035, a dismaying offering. The final agreement overall also included disappointing loopholes on carbon markets and little climate action, but no backsliding on the COP28 decision to transition away from fossil fuels. The final outcome in Baku removed the references to the Make Polluters Pay principle at the last hour, further disheartening civil society and countries already bearing the brunt of the climate crisis.

A Greenpeace projection Photo Booth in the Civil Society Hub at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan with portraits and images of climate impacts sends a message to country delegates that the time for action is now. (Photo: Marie Jacquemin/Greenpeace)

COP29 was an opportunity to agree on a significant climate finance goal and follow up on what was promised at COP28 and the Biodiversity COP16. But that did not exactly happen. Despite what was and was not agreed in Baku, meaningful climate action will only become more urgent than ever.

A moment of hope

Not all is lost though. The final outcome fell short of what was hoped for, and what is needed to battle the climate crisis. But the people power in Baku made its presence felt. Navigating tight guidelines and pushback on peaceful protest for a third year in a row, civil society got creative to still make its demands heard, and will return even more determined next year. The time for debate is over; decisive action is the demand of the hour.

A close-up of hands with "pay up" written on them at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan. (Photo: Marie Jacquemin/Greenpeace)

What comes next for climate action

COP30 will return next year, in the Amazon city of Belem, Brazil, with high expectations for renewed climate action.

A sign of "persistir," Portuguese for "to persist," sends a signal that the work must continue onto COP30 in Brazil. (Photo: Marie Jacquemin/Greenpeace)

But climate justice will only be delivered when there is adequate, and then some, finance for climate-vulnerable communities, and not just distributed for loss and damage, but for adaptation and mitigation too. A future with climate justice means the production and consumption of oil and gas has been ended, forests protected, and polluters paying for the damage, destruction, and deaths the climate crisis is causing.

Baku might have stumbled on climate justice, but we will persist in the fight for our future.

Have you heard that Comcast is planning to sell MSNBC? Is Rupert Murdoch planning to buy it? Will America’s media landscape soon resemble those of Hungary and Russia?

Without the rightwing media juggernaut, Donald Trump probably wouldn’t be president next year and wouldn’t have won in 2016. That said, the progressive media landscape looks like it might be about to get a whole lot worse.

Comcast, which owns NBC and its subsidiaries CNBC and MSNBC (among other media outlets) announced this week that they’ll be spinning off MSNBC (among others) next year.

And the consequences are already showing up. It was reported this week that Rachel Maddow just took a substantial annual pay-cut because of the uncertain future of the network.

In part, this probably reflects a belt-tightening at Comcast, but is also an indication of how legacy media — which now includes cable properties — are taking a hit from newer digital media, from social media to podcasts to web-based networks and programs.

The principal analyst and VP of content for the market research company eMarketer, Paul Verna, told the AP that:

“The writing is on the wall that the cable TV business is a dwindling business,” and, the AP noted, is “predicting future consolidation of the networks or acquisitions through private equity.”

Private equity (like Bain Capital) and large media operation acquisitions have a long history of gutting media properties to increase their profitability; often this includes what a study by Stanford University researchers described as a trend to “substitute coverage of local politics for coverage of national politics, and use more conservative framing.”

Air America radio (for which I wrote the original business plan and which carried my program) was on the air in virtually every major market in the United States, having leased over 50 major, high-powered radio stations from Clear Channel.

My program regularly beat Rush Limbaugh in the ratings: When I was invited to the Obama White House following that election, one person associated with the campaign noted to me privately that they believed Air America had played a meaningful role in Obama’s 2008 election.

That same year, Mitt Romney’s private equity company, Bain Capital, acquired Clear Channel and, in 2009, began reclaiming their stations, replacing Air America content with mostly sports. By coincidence, around that same time it appears Romney decided he’d run against Obama in the next election.

As Air America lost station after station, its ability to earn revenue through selling advertising collapsed. By 2010, the entire network was bankrupt just in time for Romney to run for president.

Will the same thing happen to MSNBC? Stay tuned.

Similarly, Republicans in Congress are salivating over Elon Musk’s rhetorical war with NPR after the network stopped using Xitter when Musk labeled the news network as “state-affiliated” media.

As the headline on Fox Business notes:

“Elon Musk renews calls to defund NPR after clip of CEO resurfaces on X: 'Your tax dollars' are paying for this.’”

Musk, of course, will be in charge of identifying those parts of government or institutions funded by government which can be cut to help pay for Trump’s planned $4 trillion in tax cuts for billionaires.

While it won’t fit her proposed new role as UN Ambassador, Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, a top member of Republican House leadership, was unambiguous, posting to Xitter: “I will DEFUND NPR.”

This is nothing new: Republicans in the House voted this past July to remove all federal funding for NPR by 2026; Musk and Ramaswamy, working hand-in-glove with Marjorie Taylor Greene (who was just made chairperson of the new subcommittee charged with implementing their recommendations) could probably speed up that timeline.

While NPR goes to great lengths to avoid political bias in their news (the Corporation for Public Broadcasting even hired last month, “in response to right-wing criticism,” multiple editors specifically to spot and stamp out any progressive perspectives that may creep into their reporting), if they were crippled, it’s safe to assume the roughly 1,500 rightwing hate radio stations in the country stand more than ready and willing to pick up their radio audience.

Rightwing billionaires brought us Fox “News,” Sinclair, two other web- and cable-based rightwing TV channels, nationwide networks of hate radio (now also in Spanish), tens of millions of dollars in subsidies to rightwing podcast hosts, and the destruction of about half the nation’s local newspapers.

Not to mention an entire network of billionaire-funded hard-right phony “pink slime” newspapers that pop up around the country every election year.

There’s no equivalent politically-tilted media systems on the left; Democratic-leaning billionaires have stayed out of the media space ever since Romney’s company took down Air America.

The closest TV and radio counterparts we have are Free Speech TV (available on the web, Dish, Sling, Roku, AppleTV, and DirecTV) and the Progress Channel on SiriusXM (my daily program is carried on both).

In the print media space, Substack is growing (although they also carry hard-right content) and provides a solid community of progressive publications (like HartmannReport.com), but that’s a drop in a much larger ocean; even The Washington Post and The New York Times don’t come close to the strength of editorial bias found in the Murdoch family’s The New York Post or The Wall Street Journal.

Publications like The New Republic, Mother Jones, The Nation, and The Guardian provide solid progressive content, but all have funding bases that are trivial compared to conservative publications supported by rightwing billionaire networks. Ditto for websites like Raw Story, Common Dreams, Alternet, LA Progressive, Democratic Underground, and Daily Kos.

As my old friend and the former CEO/founder of Air America, Jon Sinton, noted on his excellent “reluctant” Substack newsletter:

“The left-wing silo is barren. A couple of old line newspapers and magazines. MSNBC and a handful of smallish digital platforms and shows. Pod Save America stands nearly alone as a left-leaning podcast with a large audience.
“By contrast, the right-wing silo is vast and deep. It houses YouTubians, TikTokkers, broadcasters on Fox, Newsmax, Sinclair TV stations, and talk radio stations; posters on social media; and narrowcasters on myriad podcasts.”

All, I would add, heavily supported by rightwing billionaires. As Politico reported in 2014, the Heritage Foundation used to give $1 million a year to Sean Hannity and $2 million a year to Rush Limbaugh alone.

A close acquaintance who was, for years, a mid-level rightwing talk show host told me how a dozen or more times a year he’d give a speech at a random high school and would receive a check for $20,000-$30,000 by a rightwing foundation as a “speaking fee” each time. It was their way of supporting conservative talk radio.

Again, there is literally nothing like that on the left. Not even close.

I’ve repeatedly called for progressive billionaires to jump into the media space, and perhaps the Musk/Trump assaults that are coming will provoke some to act. It may be wishful thinking, but if it does happen it can’t come too soon.

In the meantime, we all must support (and share with our friends) those outlets where we find useful news and information; if we fail to, America’s media landscape may soon mirror Hungary’s and Russia’s with every station and publication praising Dear Leader 24/7/365.

If you want to play the game of politics, here’s step one: Reduce everything to a linear political viewpoint: “right” or “left.” No matter how deep and large and complex that viewpoint is, politicize it, turn it into something that’s either right or wrong. It’s all about winning or losing.

Did U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris lean too far left? Oh gosh. Neither Liz Cheney nor Taylor Swift could save her.

I’m still immersed in my own recovery process—recovery from the election, of course. And yes, I’m feeling pain because “my side” lost, but my emotions are complicated by the fact that I didn’t really have a side in the election. It wasn’t simply that I was frustrated with the campaigns and claims of both major parties (the only ones that mattered, right?). I’ve apparently reached a point in my life where the entire political game feels problematic; it minimizes our world in a way I can no longer tolerate.

I feel the need to embrace and transcend this paradox: the reduction of our deepest values to a “cause,” which then frees us from actually having to honor those values and reduces the process to winning vs. losing.

How do we transcend our collective awareness beyond the artificial borders we’ve created? I ask this question not from some higher state of awareness, but from the middle of it all. How do we reach a collective state that isn’t competitive? How do we actually live our values rather than simply attempt to impose them—and in the process of doing so, oh so often, completely disregard and violate those values?

Suddenly I’m thinking about the good old Crusades, summarized thus by History.com: “The Crusades were a series of religious wars between Christians and Muslims started primarily to secure control of holy sites considered sacred by both groups. In all, eight major Crusade expeditions—varying in size, strength, and degree of success—occurred between 1096 and 1291. The costly, violent, and often ruthless conflicts enhanced the status of European Christians, making them major players in the fight for land in the Middle East.”

Now it’s all just history, which is the story we tell about ourselves from one war to the next. But, come on: “violent and often ruthless” battles to reclaim, good God, holy sites? Do unto others as you would have them do unto you? Actually, that biblical quote sums up the cost of war pretty precisely. But the paradox sits there like an open wound. Love thy neighbor, love thy enemy—but first you’re going to have to kill him. And his children. Charge!

I’m not saying all this simply to point a moral finger at the political leaders of the world. Rather, I feel the need to embrace and transcend this paradox: the reduction of our deepest values to a “cause,” which then frees us from actually having to honor those values and reduces the process to winning vs. losing. Apparently, we can’t have a cause without an enemy, or at least an inconvenience (Palestinians, for example), which... uh, needs to be eliminated.

It always seems to come down to this: some glaring irritation that stands in the way of the good we want to do. And yes, there are many pushbacks against this mindset—many people who, in defiance of the cynics, believe in, practice and, indeed, create loving and courageous approaches to conflict resolution. But such approaches cannot be reduced to simple stories of good vs. evil, and thus lack large social resonance.

So here I am, dealing with my own frustrations in the present moment—the ongoing genocide in Palestine that the U.S. funds, the possibility of President-elect Donald Trump’s increased militarization of our southern border, the ever-intensifying climate crisis, the ongoing possibility of nuclear war... and oh my God, it gets ever more insane. For that reason, I bring back a story I wrote about a decade ago, which remains close to my heart. It’s a small story: a single incident in the midst of the brutal civil war going on in South Sudan.

It involves the international peacekeeping NGO, Nonviolent Peaceforce, which had several of its members in the country to help facilitate communication between the various sides in the conflict. They were unarmed, of course, which gave them credibility and trust among the warring sides. As I wrote at the time:

Being unarmed doesn’t mean being disempowered. This is worth paying attention to. In South Sudan, unarmed, international peacekeepers have credibility. They stand above the local conflict, facilitating communication between the various sides but not taking sides themselves.

What happened was that armed men attacked a United Nations base on the perimeter of the city of Bor, where thousands of civilians had sought refuge. Two Nonviolence Peaceforce representatives found themselves in the middle of the chaos and took refuge inside a mud hut, which was occupied as well by four women and nine children. On three separate occasions, I noted, armed men came and ordered the peacekeepers out so they could kill the women and kids. The peacekeepers refused, holding up their Nonviolent Peaceforce IDs and saying they were unarmed. They were there to protect civilians and would not leave. After the third time, the armed men left for good.

Some 60 people were killed in the assault, but 13 precious lives were saved. As one of the peacekeepers said afterward: “I think if we had a gun we would have been shot immediately.”

The peacekeepers had had intense training in nonviolence and were able to keep their cool. They didn’t panic.

And, crucially, Nonviolent Peaceforce had credibility in South Sudan. They stood beyond the conflict. “We also had a humanitarian mandate,” one of the peacekeepers said. Being unarmed “opens the doors to look for solutions. If we were armed peacekeepers, the solution is you shoot back. Because we were unarmed, we could find other ways.”

This story transcends the moment of its occurrence. I wish I could multiply it by a million. All I can do is repeat: Being unarmed opens the door to look for solutions.

I’m one of the approximately 72 million people who voted for U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, but this post is written for all my fellow Americans. When I awoke at 4:30 am on November 6 and learned the results of the election, including that my own district in Maine went for Donald Trump, I lay in bed and felt my heart racing. I noticed my harsh and brittle judgments. I experienced incomprehension, sorrow, and fear.

And then I went outside as the sky turned magenta. A loon cried mournfully. An eagle soared above my head. Unlike me, these other species had no idea what could befall them because of human decisions made the day before. But then I realized I couldn’t know the future myself. I had strong evidence to believe that the election results would speed the rate of global warming; reduce the minimal protections for other species; and erode the rights of many living in the U.S., but neither I, nor anyone else, knows the end of this story.

So I asked myself, “Now what?” and the answer for me was clear: Work harder. Work harder to transform systems that are unjust, unsustainable, and inhumane. Work harder at helping those at risk. And work harder to understand others’ perspectives so that bitterness and anger don’t eclipse curiosity and love and so that the persistent perception of “us and them” fades, even in my most private thoughts. I could think of no other way to build a future worthy of our capacity for good and where the dominant pronoun becomes we. We, the people. We, the inhabitants of Earth. We, the parts of ecosystems where all sentient life arises.

If we strive to be a campfire rather than a forest fire, we have a greater capacity to build coalitions that can make a positive difference.

My answer was “work harder” because I can; because I do not face the same risks as others; because, like everyone, I still have a part to play in the unfolding story; and because, as Joan Baez once said, “Action is the antidote to despair.”

What does “work harder” look like practically, especially for those of us who are not at particular risk? I offer the following image for how to work harder humanely and effectively whether we voted against this shift in our government, voted for it with concerns about its potential negative impacts, or didn’t vote at all.

Picture a clearing in the woods. There, in its center, is a glowing campfire, encircled by people drawn to its warmth and light. Now imagine what happens if too much fuel is added to that fire. Suddenly sparks fly and ignite a tree. The beautiful campfire transforms into a blazing forest fire, and everyone flees.

Metaphorically, we all have a fire inside of us. It is the fire of our passions, of love and hatred, joy and grief, empathy and fury. Some of us are more “fiery” than others, but no matter our nature, our internal fire impacts not just ourselves but also others around us. If we strive to be a campfire rather than a forest fire, we have a greater capacity to build coalitions that can make a positive difference. But at a time when many of our emotions are burning so hot, how can we be a campfire? One of the answers lies in determining the right kind and amount of fuel to consume.

What’s this metaphorical fuel? It’s the news and information to which we expose ourselves; the books and essays we read; the podcasts we listen to; the people we seek to learn from; the social media we peruse; and the communities of which we’re a part. We can ask ourselves if we are consuming the kinds of fuel that help us draw a range of people close so we are able to build healthy, collaborative communities to advance solutions to problems moving forward.

It’s possible that instead of drawing people toward us, they are fleeing because we are full of anger and doom, or, alternatively, because we are gloating and dismissive of others’ deep and legitimate fears. If we are fueling ourselves with media that inflames us, we may become less able to respond wisely. We may diminish opportunities to build bridges for positive action, and our potential for collaboration may go up in smoke.

For some, perhaps the conflagration has seared so deeply because we added so much fuel that we are now burnt out, reduced to embers, unable to contribute much at all. We may need to turn inward to regroup, knowing that before long we must rekindle ourselves.

If ever there was a time to tend our fire carefully, surely it is now. What we do at this moment matters. Even amid our strong emotions, it is imperative to focus on being a campfire and not let what others do or say determine how we behave, not only for the sake of others, but for our own sake, too.

Here are three steps we might take:

• To the greatest degree possible, strive to be a person who radiates warmth. There are many solutionary ways to build systems that are good for people, other species, and the environment, and communication across divides will be essential to build coalitions that temper potential inhumane and destructive outcomes. To do this, determine the best methods to calm your mind and strengthen your resolve. Warmth is not weak; it is not giving up or giving in. It is, rather, helpful in creating positive outcomes together.
• Avoid scrolling through hateful or gloating rhetoric, and for goodness sake, don’t share memes that fan the flames of outrage, name-calling, or boastfulness. Before you post or share anything, ask yourself if you are adding fuel that might be incendiary.
• Allow yourself to become as curious as possible about the perspectives of others. Whether you voted for Harris, Trump, a third party candidate, or no one, seek out the fuel of knowledge for the purpose of understanding. With understanding comes the possibility of finding common ground with your neighbors who voted differently than you, yet with whom you can still work for healthier, safer, more humane systems. There are solutions to problems that the great majority of us can agree upon.

Doing these things will not make everything OK. We face potentially catastrophic challenges and terrible suffering. It is not lost on me that fires are not just metaphors for this essay. In the last decade real forest fires have been raging with ever greater force and destruction largely because we’ve failed to take action to reduce carbon and methane emissions, something we could have done and still can do.

That said, not doing these things will make everything worse and, to double down on the fire metaphor, may burn bridges at precisely the time we most need to build them—with our neighbors, in our towns and cities, across the aisle in our state legislatures where cooperation and compromise often still occur, and as a nation of people who are mostly of goodwill and who share a desire for a future in which we and our descendants can flourish.

Whatever postures our country has projected to the world—shining city on a hill, leader of the free world, model of democracy, the indispensable nation, a rules-based order—all have crumbled like a house of cards. Our country’s failures, however, are deeper and older than the recent election.

The United Nations lowered the U.S. ranking to No. 41 among nations in 2022 due to the extreme gap between the rich and the rest and women’s loss of reproductive freedom. Elsewhere the U.S. ranks as a “flawed democracy” because of its severely fractured society. These ongoing societal failures feed a continuous decline in health, such that we now ranks 48th among 200 countries in life expectancy, while having the largest number by far of billionaires and millionaires compared with other wealthy countries. Corporate lobbies for the weapons industry, fossil fuels, pharmaceuticals, processed foods, etc. dictate our federal government’s priorities while 78% of U.S. people live paycheck to paycheck.

Blessed Is the Poor People’s Campaign: This national campaign in more than 45 states is organized around the needs and demands of the 140 million poor and low-income Americans. Its vision to restructure our society from the bottom up, recognizes “we must… deal with the interlocking injustices of systemic racism, poverty, ecological devastation, and the denial of healthcare, militarism, and the distorted moral narrative of religious nationalism that blames the poor instead of the systems that cause poverty.” Add sexism to that list of injustices.

Blessed is Fair Share Massachusetts, a coalition of labor unions and dozens of community and faith-based organizations that won passage of the Fair Share Amendment in 2022. The constitutional amendment has instituted a 4% surcharge on annual income over $1 million. In 2024 the $1.8 billion accrued from the tax on millionaires provides free school meals; free community college; and funds to invest in roads, bridges, and public transit.

In 1948, the United States signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which recognizes adequate housing as one cornerstone of the right to an adequate standard of living. All 27 European Union member states as well as Australia and South Africa institutionalized housing as a human right for their citizens while the United States has not. In every state except Oregon and Wyoming, it can be illegal to be homeless, essentially casting blame on 650,000 adults and over 2 million children for their poverty-stricken homelessness

Blessed is Rosie’s Place, a model to our country of woman-centered humanism. Much more than a shelter, it is a mecca and “a second chance for 12,000 poor and homeless women each year” in Boston. Rosie’s Place was founded on Easter Sunday 1974 in an abandoned supermarket, as the first shelter for women in the country. From providing meals and sanctuary from the streets, it grew into a multi-service community center that offers women emergency shelter and meals plus support and tools to rebuild their lives. Rosie’s offers a food pantry, ESOL classes, legal assistance, wellness care, one-on-one support, housing and job search services, and community outreach. Ninety percent of homeless women have suffered severe physical or sexual abuse at some time in their lives.

Blessed are the nearly 3,000 domestic violence shelters and groups organized throughout the U.S. to provide temporary shelter and help women rebuild their lives, offering legal assistance, counseling, educational opportunities, and multi-services for their children.

A recent Gallup Survey found that the U.S. ranks last among comparable nations in trust of their government and major institutions, including business leaders, journalists and reporters, the medical system, banks, public education, and organized religion—a plunge from top of the list nearly 20 years ago.

Blessed is Hands Across the Hills, a blue-state red-state seven-year effort formed after Donald Trump’s 2016 election to bring together progressive residents in western Massachusetts and more conservative residents of rural eastern Kentucky, for conversations and sometimes intense dialogues about their political and cultural differences. They disputed the idea “that we are hopelessly divided, as a myth sold to us by politicians and mass media, to hide our nation’s all-too-real inequalities.”

Blessed are the peacemakers across dozens of federal agencies, including the military and in communities throughout the country, who challenge, resist, resign, and refuse orders in our flawed hyper-militaristic government. Since the U.S.-enabled genocide in Gaza, more than 250 veterans and active-duty soldiers have become members, respectively, of About Face: Veterans Against the War, Feds for Peace, Service in Dissent, and A New Policy PAC. All have arisen from current and former federal employees aligned with the majority of Americans who want the Israeli-U.S. war on Gaza (now expanded to Lebanon and the West Bank) to end through diplomacy.

Blessed are those of the people, for the people, and by the people—beacons in a country sundered by militarism, rich privilege, origins in slavery and genocide of Native Americans, and persistent inequality for women.

In 2016 I believed this to be true: “Solo el pueblo salva al pueblo/ Only the people can save the people.” It’s the Latin American protest phrase recently used by communities recovering from devastating floods in Spain.

In that spirit, the day after Donald Trump’s first election, I made a pledge to myself (and a plea to others) to welcome difficult conversation, to “call in” rather than “call out,” and to trust the basic goodness of neighbors to bring us through the administration to a safer world of shared values, acceptance, and care.

But eight years later, contemplating another outrageous Trump ascendence, my faith has wavered. Although I still believe in people, we, alone, just don’t seem to be enough. So today, amid intersecting ecological, social, and political crises, I’d like to propose a different phrase: “Only the plants can save the people.”

Plants, on the other hand, are peaceful and apolitical—complex, adaptable, even sentient beings that began filling Earth’s atmosphere with oxygen 2 billion years before the first bipeds traversed soil on two feet.

Hear me out: Is it such a radical idea to suggest we might do well to look beyond human ingenuity alone, and instead toward the vast interconnectedness of species with whom we share the planet? The worldview that puts homo sapiens at the top of the decision-making ladder seems to have done little but entangle us in useless loops of struggle and defeat. Climate disaster has become just another thing many people now accept; a new normal that’s easier, bafflingly, than making any kind of structural shift to quell its root causes.

And yet, while humans doomscroll through paralysis, plants continue sequestering carbon, supporting biodiversity, cleaning the water and the air, and mitigating erosion. What might the world look like if we actually sought leadership, with renewed reverence and kinship, from the dirt beneath our feet?

In 2016 we’d learned to live with burning forests, but not a fire season that spans more than half the year. We knew about hurricanes, but inland folks never imagined the waters could come for them. Over the past eight years, we’ve seen MAGA amplify while biodiversity plummeted. Greenhouse gas levels rose while children in cages screamed for their families; floods, fires, and droughts accelerated while a global pandemic exacerbated suspicions and divisions. Temperatures ticked up as a racial justice reckoning raged and state-sanctioned military violence quashed peaceful protest on public streets and university campuses.

Plants, on the other hand, are peaceful and apolitical—complex, adaptable, even sentient beings that began filling Earth’s atmosphere with oxygen 2 billion years before the first bipeds traversed soil on two feet. The argument that they can save us isn’t a fairytale dream, but one based on real scientific scholarship, ecological principles, and the acceptance that humans are just one small part of a complex web of life on the planet. Native plants that have evolved in sync with insects and animals in specific bioregions are what will continue to support the trophic levels of all life, from insect to megafauna, on which our very existence as humans depends. This basic biological truth persists no matter how many billionaires claim we can technologize our way out of ecological collapse.

There is even evidence that nature can mend divisions between people. From Richard Louv’s Last Child in the Woods to more recent studies linking gardening to general well-being, we are learning “officially” what most people who come in from a walk in the woods or a dip in a sparkling lake have known for millennia: that time spent mingling with and caring for species outside the human realm is not only healing, but critical for our survival. Caring for the natural world can actually ameliorate all sorts of ailments, like loneliness, isolation, and depression—ills that may contribute to the surge of anger and loutishness that’s been plaguing our society.

Over the past eight years I’ve had two children, and I’ve watched them transform from furry, wriggling infants to curious kids who talk to plants and animals just as they talk to other humans. My son spent the morning of November 6 dancing around in pink bunny pajamas, feeding oatmeal to his stuffed animals. My work, now, is focused on preserving his joy while being honest about the fact that there’s been an almost 70% decline in species’ populations since I was his age. My daughter, who will spend her formative years in a country whose top officials don’t value her life, got on the bus to public school today, where she’ll be compelled to put her hand over her heart and recite the Pledge of Allegiance. My work, now, will be to teach her that “America” could stand for a promise of what’s to come; it could honor the billion-plus acres of thriving forest and prairie, the billions of birds and buffalo that fed its landscapes before colonizers arrived. “God” could stand for the spirit of the land that sustains us.

. My belief is that the plants can save the people; my hope is that we’ll let them.

This is not to suggest we turn our backs on other urgent struggles, like resisting authoritarianism and militarism, protecting human rights, stopping fossil fuel extraction, preserving our public education system, further democratizing healthcare access, and more. It does not mean we stop prioritizing the intergenerational solutions of climate justice communities hit first and worst by the ravages of these intersecting crises.

What it does mean is no one has to wait to get started. While those larger struggles persist, we can make change right away in our own homes and neighborhoods.

According to entomologist and Homegrown National Park founder Doug Tallamy, the American lawn (think bright green rectangle) took up close to 63,000 square miles as of 2021. That’s 63,000 square miles of “no vacancy” for the plant life that’s sustained us for millions of years; 63,000 square miles kept poisonously crisp with chemicals, mowers, and blowers. Those miles, almost the size of all our national parks added together, are currently acting not as the carbon sinks, watershed managers, and biodiversity regenerators they could be, but rather as a vast food desert for the insects and birds that critically transport energy within and across bioregions.

Luckily, transforming empty landscapes into regenerative ecosystems is something we can do without professional help or waiting for the next election. Volunteer networks, native plant landscaping companies, books, regional “how-to” guides, and do-it-yourself trial and error are all useful—critical, even—for beginning the vast rewilding needed to improve our environments and communities. A single milkweed plant in a pot won’t change the world, but in community, it’s a great start.

We might not have control over the next administration’s assault on the environment. But for now, what we can do is plant native plants on land that’s considered “private.” That could be three feet on your apartment’s fire escape, a 20x20 green lawn, a garden space in front of your small business, or replacing a tangle of invasives in your backyard. We have the power to change our relationship to the Earth; to do something good, simple and measurable; to reshape the landscapes of the future and transform them into bird-and-bee commons—now—without waiting for policy from above. And we can do it while forging relationships within our communities, getting outside and away from the manipulations of screens, reconnecting with our instincts, rebuilding alongside the species with whom we share the planet by digging our hands in dirt that knows no borders.

My hope is the despair many of us feel in the face of the next administration will not be met with more despair, or even with anger. My hope is we’ll collectively say “enough,” that we’ll recognize our shared worth and commonalities not only with each other, but with the other species around us. My belief is that the plants can save the people; my hope is that we’ll let them. And in reconnecting with our local landscapes, we can reconnect with each other, so that four years from now, the people will be able to save the people once again.

Let’s look at the political scene from Trump’s viewpoint.

Sitting in his luxurious Mar-a-Lago palace receiving the daily obeisant supplicants eager to heed his every word and praise exuberantly his megalomania, Donald J. Trump can hardly believe his good fortune.

Starting in the 2015 presidential race against 16 GOP primary opponents, Trump’s vituperative attacks were unleashed. Never in American history have words from a politician’s mouth ever metastasized into such unchallenged electoral victory and domination. His daily, hourly bullying verbal abuses flooded THE MASS MEDIA, which faithfully transmitted to tens of millions of people like clockwork—lying or false statements and tweets in the tens of thousands.

Looking over his gigantic domain astride the country and soon the world, Trump can recount the pillars of his elected dictatorship.

The Supreme Court in their impeachable June 2024 unconstitutional decision (Trump v. United States) has decreed that the president’s “official conduct” (undefined) is immune from criminal prosecution for whatever they do. This 6-3 decision already fortifies Trump’s previous determination notoriously declared in July 2019 when he exclaimed, “Then, I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.” And he did just that, violating with impunity federal criminal statutes (See the December 18, 2019, Congressional Record, H-12197), violating the Constitution, defying over 125 congressional subpoenas, and according to John Bolton, his national security adviser, making “obstruction of justice a daily practice in the White House.”

Who is going to challenge him? He believes correctly that it will not be the Supreme Court or Congress.

Second, Trump has control of Congress with the Republican majority in the House and Senate, however narrow. Congress is thus far showing no sign of resisting his demands for utter submission. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has already signaled this abdication of his constitutional duty for checks and balances. Senate Majority Leader Senator John Thune (R-S.D.) is more circumspect. However mindful he is of the Senate’s constitutional duty of “advice and consent” regarding Trump’s nominees, Thune has to worry about being overthrown and replaced at any time as Senate majority leader by hovering Trump loyalists.

Trump wants the Senate to declare a recess for more than 10 days to get his team of Cabinet and agency nominees appointed without the usual confirmation hearings. This is an extreme demand. As constitutional law specialist, Bruce Fein asserts: “Such contrived recesses serve no legitimate constitutional purpose. That would make such official acts voidable,” i.e., unenforceable.

This illegal escape hatch for Trump is unlikely to materialize for some of his nominees whom the Senate majority will want to reject. Why? Because, for example, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination for secretary of health and human services will be vigorously opposed by Big Pharma, the Big Food processors, the health insurance giants, and the Big Global Warming Polluters (fossil fuels) industries whom he has long criticized and sued when he was an effective environmental lawyer. He doesn’t have much support from Democratic senators due to his statements about vaccines and their side effects. Guessing, I expect the Senate will turn him down following a conventional nomination hearing.

The military-industrial giants will oppose Tulsi Gabbard as Trump’s director of national intelligence. She is seen as too extreme a critic, too inexperienced, and likely not to “get along by going along” with the entrenched national intelligence agencies like the CIA and NSA.

Trump’s choice for secretary of defense, Fox News host Pete Hegseth, a veteran, with no managerial experience, has made harsh statements about military leadership, women, and Muslims. He evinces wanting to go on a vengeance kick and not on a mission to do what Trump has campaigned for, which is ending “endless wars.” The 47 Democratic senators are likely to be joined by enough Republican senators to block his nomination.

Trump’s choice of Chris Wright, head of a fracking company and a climate-denier, as secretary of energy, will get the full backing of the oil, gas, and coal industries leading to an affirmative vote in the Senate.

None of these problems bother Trump. Just as was the case with former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), who was forced by disclosures, regarding his sexual aggressions and other negatives, to take himself out of the running nomination for attorney general, Trump will find plenty of replacements willing to run a Justice Department which lets him do whatever he wants with impunity.

At the end of the day, what matters to Trump is getting what he wants. He is warranted in such confidence. Who is going to challenge him? He believes correctly that it will not be the Supreme Court or Congress. The state legislatures will be on the defensive due to his willingness to cut grants and federal contracts to the states, including critical Medicaid services for millions of needy Americans, along with other traditional social safety net programs.

The labor unions, worrying about a third of their membership being Trumpsters, among other inhibitions (See, Election Day Delirium by Chris Townsend), are not much of a factor, as they have tethered themselves (with few exceptions) to the Democratic Party bureaucracy. The citizen groups will file their lawsuits and wait for the expected court delays that spell “Justice delayed is justice denied.”

As for the mainstream media CEOs, Trump knows they want higher ratings and more readers so he has given them daily fodder for outrageous epithets, falsehoods, braggadocios, and empty promises. In return, media outlets have faithfully published his crazed bloviations. The media has also reported his many corruptions, lies, ignorance of facts, bigotry, sexual escapades, and indictments —to no avail. The MAGA crowd just gets bigger. All the exposés, helped by blunders of prosecutors and partisan Trump judges, have fallen off Teflon Trump like water off a duck’s back.

He has procrastinated releasing his full medical history, contrary to his promises in 2016, 2020, and 2024. He has also resisted releasing his tax returns. He now has not complied with ethical reports during the transition from President Joe Biden’s regime to his regime. Der Fuhrer Trump believes the rules that his presidential peers have followed do not apply to him.

There is a little light at the end of the tunnel. Democratic state attorneys general will sue and block some of Trump’s violative decisions. Some state prosecutors will go after the burgeoning corruption of Trump’s nominees and their corporate collaborators eager to raid the honey pots of Uncle Sam.

The biggest risk to Trump’s domination will be Trump himself and what damage he will be unleashing that workers, consumers, and communities, even those who voted for him, will feel intensely.

But the biggest risk to Trump’s domination will be Trump himself and what damage he will be unleashing that workers, consumers, and communities, even those who voted for him, will feel intensely. The assault on their health, safety, and economic well-being may weaken Trump’s support. Once people start thinking that MAGA is really MABA (Make America Betrayed Again), the polls should start sliding propitiously from the sky-high expectations of the Paradise that Trump promised every campaign day.

At his core, Trump is not all that much different than his worst predecessors. He continued several Bush/Obama wars overseas in his first term, intensifying his backing of war criminal Bibi Netanyahu. He later swallowed his campaign criticism of price-gouging drug companies. And of course, he loves Wall Street, Houston, (the fossil fuel giants), the corporate welfarists, tax escapes of corporate crooks, those who cheat consumers and crush workers’ rights. Remember that is the way he behaved during his former failed business exploits. Nobody stopped him then and he believes the stars of his destiny will not let anyone stop him now.

Trump is at his core a corporatist and a corporate statist, who pushes bloated military budgets, lawlessness, and police powers, all of which are the frameworks of American fascism.

Buckle your seat belts people, and start the civic resurgence. (See my piece, Rise Up: Congress is Yours for the Taking in the new issue of the Capitol Hill Citizen).

At the same time Democrats and progressives are justifiably enraged at Trump’s gonzo Cabinet picks, they’re all but mute about corporate America’s continued siphoning of economic gains to the top.

Yet this siphoning has created the stagnant wages and insecure jobs that helped propel Trump into the presidency and give Republicans control over both chambers of Congress.

Trump at least gave workers an explanation for what’s happened to them — although it was a lie: It isn’t undocumented immigrants or the “deep state” or transgender kids or any other Trump bogeyman.

It’s corporate greed.

The most recent example: On Friday, GM announced it was laying off 1,000 workers. These layoffs followed another round of GM layoffs in August, which saw 1,500 jobs cut. The cuts affected both salaried and hourly staff, including some United Auto Workers members.

Why aren’t Democrats, who still control the Senate and presidency, moving more aggressively to outlaw stock buybacks — which were considered illegal stock manipulations before Ronald Reagan’s SEC gave them the green light?

Most of the workers being laid off Friday were notified via email early Friday morning. Some had been working for GM for over thirty years.

GM says it has no choice. It must cut costs.

This is what we hear again and again from corporate America. We’ll be hearing even more of this as Artificial Intelligence takes over white-collar as well as blue-collar jobs.

No choice?

GM is on track for making record profits this year, surpassing its 2022 record profit of $14.5 billion. In the third quarter of 2024 alone, GM made $3.4 billion. That’s a $200 million increase from the same period last year.

GM CEO Mary Barra’s compensation for 2024 is $27.8 million. This includes a base salary of $2.1 million, stock awards of $14.6 million, stock option awards valued at $4.9 million, an “incentive plan” compensation (as if she needed more incentive) of $5.3 million, other payment of $997,392, and perks (personal travel, security, financial counseling, company vehicles, and an executive health plan) valued at $389,005.

The ratio of Barra’s compensation to that of the typical GM employee is estimated to be 303-to-1.

In June, GM announced $6 billion in stock buybacks. This means $6 billion of GM’s record profits will be used to purchase its own shares of stock — thereby boosting share prices (and the portion of Barra’s compensation in stock grants and options) simply because fewer shares of GM stock will be in circulation.

Keep in mind that the richest 1 percent of American hold over half of the value of all shares of stock held by Americans, and the richest 10 percent hold 92 percent.

So, in fact, GM’s savings from axing 1,000 jobs will be transferred into the pockets of wealthy Americans (including GM’s CEO).

Why aren’t Democrats up in arms about this? I haven’t heard Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, or any other leading Democrat say a critical word about GM’s latest move.

Democrats have offered no alternative explanation for what’s happened to average working people or agenda for remedying it. Trump's baseless explanation and agenda are the only ones available. So it’s no surprise that many working Americans voted for Trump on Election Day.

Why isn’t Michigan’s Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer — who may be in the running for president in 2028 (assuming we have another election) — accusing GM of sacrificing jobs for profits that are siphoned off to big investors?

Why aren’t Democrats, who still control the Senate and presidency, moving more aggressively to outlaw stock buybacks — which were considered illegal stock manipulations before Ronald Reagan’s SEC gave them the green light?

Why aren’t they demanding that capital gains taxes be increased on the super-wealthy, whose stock gains this year alone have made America’s billionaires 30 percent richer?

Why aren’t they moving to increase corporate taxes on corporations whose ratio of CEO pay to their median workers is more than 50 to 1? And impose even higher taxes if the ratio exceeds 100 to 1? (Senate Budget Committee Chair Sheldon Whitehouse, along with Representatives Barbara Lee and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have introduced just such a bill, but no one knows about it. Why isn’t the Democratic leadership loudly pushing this?)

The lesson of the debacle of the 2024 election is that big corporations and the wealthy have shafted average working Americans, whose wages and jobs have gone nowhere for decades and who are understandably frustrated and angry at what they see as a rigged system.

But Democrats have offered no alternative explanation for what’s happened to average working people or agenda for remedying it. Trump's baseless explanation and agenda are the only ones available. So it’s no surprise that many working Americans voted for Trump on Election Day.

Now Trump and his Republican stooges think they’ve been given a license to blow the system up — initially by appointing a bunch of clowns, conspiracy theorists, and sexual predators to key posts.

It’s important to rail against Trump’s appointments. But unless we attack the sources of the outrage Trump has tapped into, working Americans will continue to go along with whatever Trump and his lapdogs want to do.

This week, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the co-directors of a non-existent Department of Government Efficiency (or DOGE), authored a Wall Street Journal op-ed outlining their vision for restructuring the entire federal government. The piece, entitled “The DOGE Plan to Reform Government," is notable for the combination of its breadth in scope and utter cluelessness.

As a key point, the duo decries “millions of unelected, unappointed civil servants” within an “ever-growing bureaucracy [which] represents an existential threat to our republic.” In fact, there are currently a total of less than 3 million federal civilian employees. This workforce is smaller than the same total in 1990. It is also smaller than the federal civilian workforce at the end of World War II, some 80 years ago.

Contrary to the impression that federal employment is spiraling out of control, overall, the total federal workforce has remained largely static, despite steady population growth over the decades. In addition, well more than one-third of all federal civilian employees now work in just three agencies: Defense, Veterans Affairs, and Homeland Security. These departments are hardly hotbeds of what they are calling “illicit regulations.”

Their assumption, prior to any analysis, is that thousands of federal workers should be fired. Their thesis does not allow for the possibility that some federal agencies are significantly understaffed. Also unmentioned are government contractor jobs, such as those at Musk’s Space X, estimated to number well more than double the total of all federal civilian employees who are supposed to manage this ever-growing stream of funding with fewer people.

To guide these reductions, they propose that the “number of federal employees to cut should be at least proportionate to the number of federal regulations that are nullified.” What, if anything, does that mean for agencies such as the National Park Service, Social Security Administration, or the State Department—agencies with big workforces but little regulatory footprint?

Contrary to the impression that federal employment is spiraling out of control, overall, the total federal workforce has remained largely static, despite steady population growth over the decades.

Even more striking is that these two themselves concede they do not have any concrete idea of what needs to be changed. That is because, as they profess, they are “entrepreneurs” with no expertise in this field. Instead, this effort will rely upon a yet-to-be-assembled “lean team of small-government crusaders, including some of the sharpest technical and legal minds in America.”

Presumably, these "sharpest minds" will want to be paid a salary commensurate with their market value. Consequently, this hiring spree would be a curious first step in an effort to cut costs and reduce federal payrolls.

Despite pledging to cutback agency staffing, Musk and Ramaswamy say they will be working “with experts embedded in government agencies, aided by advanced technology” to compile a “list of regulations” for President Trump to suspend enforcement or “initiate the process for review and rescission.” Notably, these embedded, apparently otherwise unoccupied “experts” resemble the very people this duo wants to fire on day one.

Moreover, the idea that “advanced technology” would serve as a magic wand to analyze the need for regulations sounds somewhat fanciful. Presumably, in this world of regulation by chatbots, AI would need a detailed orientation before being effectively unleashed government-wide.

Republican presidential candidate, former U.S. President Donald Trump greets U.S. entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy while speaking during a campaign rally at the Atkinson Country Club on January 16, 2024 in Atkinson, New Hampshire. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Image)

Perhaps the most eyebrow-raising part of their essay is their vow to stand up to the “entrenched interests in Washington” who benefit from unjustified government largesse. Yet, one of the most favored special interests, in terms of billions in subsidies consumed, is the oil and gas industry. This is the same industry that Candidate Trump has promised behind closed doors to protect in return for their campaign contributions. This is one promise he can be expected to keep.

In addition, despite portraying themselves as disinterested “volunteers” guided only by the U.S. Constitution as their "North Star," Mr. Musk has substantial business dealings with the federal government. Presumably, the billions NASA spends on Space X contracts will be spared DOGE's harshest scrutiny.

One of the very few specific examples the pair cites is the nearly trillion-dollar Pentagon, which cannot pass an agency-wide audit. However, to manage this fiscal behemoth, President-elect Trump has tapped Pete Hegseth, a person with no discernible management experience whatsoever.

Nor is it a promising sign that the House of Representatives is creating a new subcommittee to liaison with DOGE to be headed by one Marjorie Taylor Greene. This would appear to illustrate the widely held belief that cluelessness is not a quality improved by doubling down.

As U.S. voters cast their ballots on November 5, an Israeli Brigadier General told the press that Palestinians forcibly transferred out of northern Gaza would not be allowed to return. This admission adds to a large and growing body of evidence that Israel is planning to annex parts of Gaza.

For more than a month, the Israeli military has encircled northern Gaza, trapping hundreds of thousands of people. All aid into the area has been halted and the last remaining hospitals attacked and blockaded. People are being starved to death and bodies are piling up in the streets. Israel has killed at least 1,800 Palestinians since the intensified attack and siege began last month.

While the situation in all of Gaza is dire and the entire population at risk of famine, conditions in the north are beyond imagination. The United Nations has described the north as “apocalyptic.”

The Israeli military has repeatedly demanded that all civilians remaining in northern Gaza leave their homes and displacement shelters for locations in the south. But leaving is nearly impossible; many are trapped by the constant bombings, and those who do try to leave are shot at, detained, or disappeared. Israel is preventing humanitarian organizations from providing health services, clean water, and food.

The attacks, forced displacement, and isolation of Palestinians in internment camps all serve a bigger goal: the annexation and settlement of parts of Gaza.

The military actions and the near total denial of medical and humanitarian aid to Jabalia Refugee Camp, Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun and other areas in the north indicate that Israel is implementing the “General Eiland Plan.” This plan calls for the complete ethnic cleansing of northern Gaza and the forced transfer of the entire population. Those forcibly displaced from the north to the south would undergo invasive screening by the Israeli military.

Already, Israel is searching and detaining Palestinian men en masse. They are then placed in the Israeli military prison system. Human rights organizations have documented systematic torture, starvation, sexual violence, and abuse of detained Palestinians. Thousands have been forcibly detained and disappeared with little or no information known about their status.

Under what has become known as the General’s Plan, anyone who refused to leave northern Gaza would be considered a legitimate target by the Israeli military and would likely be killed, in violation of international law. A total blockade within the already existing blockade would also be put in place in the north to starve to death those who do not leave. All of these actions—forced evacuations, unilaterally declaring civilian populations as combatants who can be killed, and the use of starvation as a weapon of war—are atrocity crimes.

Legally and morally the U.S. must take immediate steps to stop the annexation of northern Gaza, block the creation of concentration camps, end the ongoing genocide, and hold those responsible for international crimes accountable.

Israel is also exploring the possibility of creating isolated, fenced-in areas into which any civilian population remaining in northern Gaza will be moved for an undefined period of time. These areas will be controlled by either the Israeli military or private military contractors. Palestinians interned in these locations will be monitored using biometrics. Armed private contractors working with the Israeli military will be responsible for providing basic services including access to water, food, and medical care.

Israeli officials are calling these areas “bubbles.” It would be more accurate to call them concentration camps.

Israel would control entrance and exit to the camps, which would only be for people they designated as “civilians.” All other areas of northern Gaza would likely be targeted for ethnic cleansing.

The attacks, forced displacement, and isolation of Palestinians in internment camps all serve a bigger goal: the annexation and settlement of parts of Gaza. On October 21, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Likud party co-sponsored a conference called “Preparing to Settle Gaza” which outlined plans for establishing new settlements on the ruins of Palestinian cities. The calls for settling Gaza are not marginal, they are being made by key Israeli ministers and must be taken seriously. The infrastructure being set up in the Netzarim Corridor in Gaza by the Israeli military, including permanent military bases with water and electrical infrastructure, could serve as the basis for permanent reoccupation and settlement.

Israeli officials are calling these areas “bubbles.” It would be more accurate to call them concentration camps.

And it is not just Gaza being targeted for annexation. Shortly after the U.S. elections, Israel’s finance minister Bezalel Smotrich announced his intention to seize even more Palestinian land. Smotrich said he had instructed civil authorities to “begin professional and comprehensive work to prepare the necessary infrastructure for applying sovereignty” over the Israeli-occupied West Bank. This would be another flagrant violation of international law.

On October 13 Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin sent a letter to the Israeli government giving Israel a 30 day deadline to improve humanitarian access in Gaza. As documented by international aid organizations, Israel failed to meet any of the criteria set out in the U.S. letter; instead the humanitarian situation in Gaza deteriorated dramatically. Despite these facts, Sec. Blinken has said that the U.S. will not change policy and weapons will continue to flow to Israel.

The Biden administration has supplied Israel with more than $17 billion in weapons and military assistance over the last year, and blocked any efforts by the international community to hold Israel accountable. Without the U.S., Israel could not carry out this genocide with impunity. The letter from Secretary Blinken and Secretary Austin was woefully inadequate when issued, and the refusal of the U.S. government to take action to hold Israel to account for its failure to comply with the letter is inexcusable.

Legally and morally the U.S. must take immediate steps to stop the annexation of northern Gaza, block the creation of concentration camps, end the ongoing genocide, and hold those responsible for international crimes accountable.

President Biden has two months left in office. If he wants his legacy to go beyond abetting a genocide, he must change policy and impose an arms embargo on Israel now.