Fifty-nine years ago today, President Lyndon Johnson signed Medicare into law—a high-water mark in the fight for universal healthcare that had started decades before and that continues to this day.

Ever since Medicare became law, it has been a shining example of what is possible in U.S. healthcare: a truly public, truly universal program that has saved countless lives and prevented untold financial ruin among America’s seniors. But alongside this success, corporate health interests have also grown immeasurably more powerful. Insurers like UnitedHealthcare and Blue Cross Blue Shield have erected cruel barriers to care and are laughing all the way to the bank.

If we want to build on the promise of Medicare—and win the best possible version of Medicare for All—then we’re going to have to grapple directly with the power of corporate health insurance. That starts with taking on the so-called “Medicare Advantage” program.

The Strategic Importance of Medicare Advantage

Single-payer advocates understand that there can’t be “Medicare for All” if there is no “Medicare.” And no, Medicare Advantage (MA) doesn’t count as Medicare. The health insurance corporations that run these plans have a business imperative to prioritize profits above all else; this is anathema to any public health program.

Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) has compiled overwhelming evidence that MA insurers are harming patients, physicians, and hospitals by delaying and denying care—harms that are virtually unseen in Traditional Medicare. Nor is this cruelty even a trade-off for lowering the cost of healthcare. In fact, these corporations are paid far more than what is spent for similar patients in Traditional Medicare—up to $140 billion per year, or as much as 35% above the funding levels of Traditional Medicare.

There is no road to Medicare for All that ignores this existential threat.

Where we see middlemen standing between patients and the care they need, we should remove them. Where we see limited provider networks, we should expand them. Where we see piles of pre-authorization paperwork, we should shred them.

Thankfully, support for eliminating overpayments to MA extends far beyond those who are already committed to single payer. This fight builds our movement by mobilizing a wide range of people who understand, or can be educated about, the damage insurance companies are doing to patients. When we find common ground, we should walk together.

For that reason, PNHP is exposing MA overpayments and demanding a more fiscally responsible approach from policymakers. We are working closely with several organizations to change the national conversation and provide a badly needed counterweight to the lobbying might of big insurance.

When MA was created, way back in 2003, corporate insurers promised to reduce the cost of healthcare by improving care coordination and health outcomes. A healthier population, they claimed, would be less expensive. We should demand that MA corporations live up to these lofty promises without billions of dollars in overpayments.

We’d like to see them try.

Improved Medicare… for ALL

Winning back $140 billion in annual overpayments begs a tantalizing question: How can we use those funds to improve Medicare for all seniors?

Instead of the paltry benefits that MA plans offer, those funds would help us add robust hearing, vision, and dental benefits; totally eliminate Medicare Part B premiums; and fold in the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit. Imagine the relief a senior on Medicare Advantage would feel when enrolling in a plan that actually covers the full range of dental care, while also freeing themselves from the narrow provider networks and prior authorization requirements imposed by MA plans.

Most critically, we need to establish a low out-of-pocket maximum for Medicare. Insurance corporations lure seniors and people with disabilities into the MA trap by selling lower up-front costs while hiding substantial barriers to care. It’s a classic bait and switch. Eliminating the need to purchase Medigap would level the playing field and allow everybody to remain in Traditional Medicare.

Let’s work to build a movement of seniors, physicians, students, people with disabilities, and everybody else who cares about Medicare.

Well, not everybody—but that’s our ultimate goal. PNHP advocates for a national single-payer health insurance program, and what better way to get there than through an improved version of the already popular Medicare program?

Where we see middlemen standing between patients and the care they need, we should remove them. Where we see limited provider networks, we should expand them. Where we see piles of pre-authorization paperwork, we should shred them.

We should also expand benefits to include all medically necessary care, and ultimately eliminate out-of-pocket costs that deter people from seeing a doctor. Once these improvements are in place, we will have a program that’s truly worthy of the name Medicare for All.

The advocacy work for these priorities—ending MA overpayments, improving Traditional Medicare, and realizing our vision for single payer—overlap and build on one another.

Let’s work to build a movement of seniors, physicians, students, people with disabilities, and everybody else who cares about Medicare. Together, we can take on the corporate insurers that are wreaking so much havoc in our lives and lay the groundwork for winning a single-payer program that brings everybody in and leaves nobody out.

On this episode of The Final Countdown, hosts Ted Rall and Steve Gill discuss an array of current events worldwide, including Trump’s performance in the polls.    The show begins with CEO of Heartland Journal Steve Abramowicz joining to discuss the latest out of the Trump campaign in response to Kamala Harris’s newly launched presidential campaign.    Then, U.S. representative for Tennessee’s 5th congressional district Andy Ogles joins the show to discuss why he’s filing an impeachment against presidential candidate Kamala Harris.    The second hour starts with Venezuela-based independent journalist Paul Dobson sharing the latest developments out of the Venezuela elections.    The show closes with the Managing Editor of Covert Action Magazine Jeremy Kuzmarov joining the show to weigh in on the latest Russian advances in Ukraine.     The post The Final Countdown – 7/29/24 – Donald Trump Dominates Latest Polls Despite New Democratic Candidate first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

President Joe Biden lost a lot of support, especially among young voters and climate voters, when he approved the foolish Willow Project. The Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) was equally unpopular with those groups but they rightfully placed most of the blame for that project on Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V).

What a lot of people, including reporters, don’t realize is that Pete Buttigieg, as Secretary of Transportation, had (and still has) the power to stop MVP. The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) reports to Buttigieg and PHMSA, as its name implies, has the authority and responsibility to ensure the pipelines are built and operated safely. But the MVP was not built—nor is it operating—safely. That is not an opinion pulled out of thin air by a climate activist. Rather it is the conclusion of a study done by TC Energy (formerly TransCanada), the company that wanted to build the Keystone XL Pipeline (KXL). That study was the subject of an article (pg 16) in the Jan/Feb 2020 issue of Corrosion Management, a journal of the Institute of Corrosion.

This topic has been written about extensively for over a year. If reporters and other readers want to understand the particulars they can find them here. The long and short of it is that the TC Energy/KXL study proved that MVP’s corrosion-proof coating is “no longer fit for purpose.” That’s a pretty damning indictment, especially given the enormous diameter (42 inches) of MVP and the extremely high pressure it will be operating under. It’s particularly scary for all those who live within MVP’s blast zone.

MVP is made of thick steel. It isn’t going to corrode extensively tomorrow or anytime right away. But pipelines like MVP are built with the intention that they will operate for many, many decades, which is why legally they MUST have an adequate corrosion-proof coating. Otherwise they will corrode prematurely which could lead to a massive explosion. Delaney Tercero was 3 when a 10 inch gas pipeline exploded near her home because defective coating allowed the pipe to corrode. She died 2 days later in a hospital burn unit. Again, MVP is 42 inches.

The National Association of Pipe Coating Applicators (NAPCA) recommends that the pipe coating that was applied to MVP pipe should not be exposed to the harmful rays of the sun for more than 6 months. MVP pipe sat out in the sun for 6-7 years. A KXL pipeline manager, speaking at an oil and gas forum in Canada, said that, when the coating has deteriorated to such a degree, the pipe either needs to be replaced or sent back to the factory for stripping, cleaning, and recoating. He said this is a problem that can’t be remedied in the field. MVP pipe was neither replaced nor properly recoated. It was just quickly buried and covered up, as if that would make the problem go away.

Pete Buttigieg is obviously a very smart guy. He’s articulate, does his homework and has a knack for making members of Congress look ridiculous when they try to question him. If anyone can explain why the KXL coating study doesn’t apply to MVP, it would be Secretary Buttigieg. But neither he nor PHMSA nor MVP nor anyone else has ever offered that explanation. Buttigieg seems to pop up everywhere these days but he hasn’t met with the people who live next to MVP and been willing to address their fears about the defective pipe coating. And the reason he hasn’t is because he can’t explain away the KXL study’s obvious relevance to MVP which leaves him unable to defend PHMSA’s decision to allow MVP to operate.

And this problem isn’t limited to MVP. Pipeline giant, Williams, has just built pipelines in Louisiana and Pennsylvania using old pipe intended for the now-dead Constitution Pipeline in NY. That pipe has been sitting out in the sun for over a decade. Williams has now buried it right next to houses, schools, playgrounds, ball parks, through golf courses and under interstate highways.

Essentially, despite all their posturing, Pete Buttigieg and PHMSA are just part of the Good Ol’ Boy network that oversees much of our country’s energy regulatory system which remains heavily controlled by the fossil fuel industry. Up and down the chain of command people go along to get along, as pointed out in this article that Bill McKibben called landmark by Mike Soraghan of Politico’s E&E News. That system has resulted in America being the largest oil and gas producer ever, which is deplorable given the scientific consensus regarding climate change. It is why we are so far behind in achieving our climate goals.

Kamala Harris needs to lead the country in addressing this biggest of all problems. She needs to separate herself from the Good Ol’ Boy network. She should start by picking someone other than Pete Buttigieg to be her VP.

Labor Day in Reality for September 2, 2024 is a huge, ignored asset, except by the commercial interests offering “sales.” A neglected Labor Day symbolizes the decline of labor unions and the absence of vigorous leadership generating higher levels of energy for Labor supremacy over Capital. Up to now, many labor leaders have had little focused interest in making Labor Day a grand national media day, from appearances on the Sunday news talk shows to producing thousands of events around the country that nourish labor solidarity, regardless of political labels.

Corporatist predations and exploitations make all workers, regardless of their political leanings, bleed the same color. Vibrant Labor Day events would be grounded not in nostalgia or self-anthems, but in the vital need to overcome worsening structural injustices at all levels of the workplace.

Overdue worker necessities include a living wage, affordable universal health care, child tax credits, the Western European safety nets of paid childcare, paid family leave and maternal care. Crackdowns on corporate crimes, fraud and abuse, and ending autocratic workplaces under fine print concessionary contracts which turn workers into modern-day serfs are also needed.

The Trumpsters want to TAKE AWAY many existing worker rights and limit the ability of unions to gain power. The AFL-CIO has highlighted several anti-worker policies of the Project 2025 Agenda developed by the Trumpsters. It includes:

• Banning unions for public service workers;
• Firing civil service workers and replacing them with Trump anti-union loyalists;
• Letting bosses eliminate unions mid-contract;
• Letting companies stop paying overtime and allowing states to opt out of federal overtime and minimum wage laws; and
• Eliminating child labor protections.

Communities can organize events on reversing corporate-managed trade agreements. Depending on the location, special events can be tailored, especially in swing states, to give workers a platform to talk about the outsourcing of jobs to low-wage repressive countries and other attacks on labor. Assemblies, rallies, voter registration drives, marches, demonstrations and even agenda-driven parades – a lost tradition in most regions – could build support for a pro-worker agenda. Organizing these events could either induce or demand commitments by invited candidates for office in November. No diverting candidate handshakes, fake smiles and sweet talk on this no-nonsense day.

Firm commitments, wrapped in a “WORKER COMPACT” for America, in the weeks after Labor Day, can be tied to enabling legislation, copies of which can be distributed at the events. Challenging anti-labor laws like Taft-Hartley and weaknesses in NLRB procedures, weak corporate sanctions, coming out for card checks, etc., should be a part of the “WORKER COMPACT.” In truth, Labor Day could also be an occasion for formally summoning Senators and Representatives and state lawmakers to worker-organized and conducted Town Meetings. (See: Sending Citizens Summons to Members of Congress at nader.org or my book “Breaking Through Power: It’s Easier Than We Think” for boilerplate formal summons language.)

The publicized focus on concrete improvements in livelihoods and shifts of power advancing the lives of workers where they work and raise their families will excite voters and motivate them to raise their own sense of significance and encourage them to participate in Labor Day actions with fellow workers. The momentum can be carried forward to election day showing the stark contrasts between the pro-worker and anti-worker candidates and political parties.

Labor Day is the opening bell for the final stretch drive before election day. (See my August 17, 2022 column: To Democrats: Make Labor Day A Workers’ Action Day).

In a winner-take-all Electoral College system, a 10% turnout from eligible non-voters and turning out more occasional voters will answer, with jackhammer determination, the age-old voter question of “Which Side Are You On?” Politicians and political party officials who don’t show up due to their indentured corporatism will be exposed in the raw by name. The Labor movement arouses and achieves dominance as stronger and more resolute, sweeping aside the “divide and conquer” manipulations that dominate reporting in the rancid social and mainstream media.

Purposeful Labor Day events will also bring forth support and participation by civic organizations. Nationwide, they have millions of members.

There are six weeks or so to Labor Day. Too much of the AFL-CIO sat out the last election (2022) leaving it up to “the more credible locals” according to Damon Silver. An aroused AFL-CIO can provide the galvanizing strategy and resources to use Labor Day as it should be used, and then some, to build a decisive momentum for November and beyond. Used to defeatism, accustomed to tying themselves unconditionally to the corporate Democratic Party – itself suffering from this trait – this reversal would shock the media and the young generation into attentiveness.

There are many Labor Leaders who would spearhead a massive Labor Day event including Sara Nelson of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, Mark Dimondstein of the American Postal Workers Union, and other long-time labor union leaders and activists such as Baldemar Velasquez (Farm Labor Organizing Committee), John Samuelsen (Transport Workers Union), Carl Rosen (UE General President), Gene Bruskin (National Labor Network for a Ceasefire) and RoseAnn DeMoro (retired executive director of National Nurses United), Larry Cohen (CWA former president) and many others. And the pulsating Culinary Union in Nevada and the UAW have shown some of labor’s true potential to galvanize support for a “WORKERS COMPACT.”

Some elected candidates can bear down publicizing this venture, as well as some suggested sparkplugs such as the great author/speaker Jim Hightower. What is needed, for starters, is a major national call for action and then moving into person-to-person outreach. Adequate funding is essential and grassroots outreach will be much more effective than millions of dollars spent on corporate conflicted media consultants craving their 15% commissions from forgettable Democratic Party TV ads.

Imagine a huge rally next to the New York Stock Exchange to demand a stock, bond, derivatives tiny progressive sales tax that can raise over $300 to $500 billion a year. New York State has collected and rebated this tax since 1981 — about $40 million a day to the brokers. Hundreds of billions of foregone dollars could have been devoted to specific necessities of New Yorkers. See the ongoing corporate campaign website: greedvsneed.org

Time is of the essence, but there is still time to make Labor Day a lasting Workers Action Event. A new tradition, if you will.

No Asian American woman, regardless of political party or loyalties, is spared from being the target for anti-Asian, anti-immigrant racism and misogyny.

Now that Vice President Kamala Harris has entered the presidential race, the onslaught of racist and misogynistic attacks she has endured will surely only intensify. As the first Black American and first Indian American woman to serve in her office as Vice President, her eligibility to hold the office of the president is already being scrutinized.

And it certainly didn’t take long for members of the far right to focus their hate-fueled attacks on one of their own—the wife of Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance. Despite being a highly-educated, successful corporate litigator and mother, Usha Chilukuri Vance and her children have incurred the wrath of many online. For her Indian ancestry. For her faith. For the names given to her children.

I can’t say that it comes as any real surprise. We’ve seen it time and again, an experience common for both high-profile Asian American women, as well as everyday people in our communities. These kinds of racist, xenophobic attacks are not new and they are not exclusive to Vice President Harris or Vance.

We’ve seen it time and again, an experience common for both high-profile Asian American women, as well as everyday people in our communities.

This has held true for former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, Congresswoman Judy Chu, former Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, and so many others.

We know that the vast majority of women in our communities report experiencing racism and discrimination. Yet, anti-Asian “jokes” continue to be a seemingly accepted mainstay of popular culture and politics. Too many people feel comfortable maligning Asian Americans and immigrants in the name of political gain.

The “model minority” myth is dangerous for many reasons. It not only has been used to create and deepen the divisions among Asian Americans and other people of color, but it also continues to harm Asian Americans within our own communities. It invisibilizes the lived experiences and realities that many Asian Americans face.

When we talk about Asian Americans, that includes more than 50 ethnic groups who speak more than 100 languages. It erases the experiences of Asian American women who are overrepresented in frontline and low-wage work and the millions of Asian American women who experience some of the widest wage gaps while also serving as caregivers to children and elderly family members.

We must continue to cast light upon the ways in which Asian American women are talked about, stereotyped, invisibilized, hypersexualized, and dehumanized.

The myth has also created the illusion that Asian Americans - if we work hard enough, if we don’t complain, if we align ourselves with white communities and people in power - can overcome being regarded as perpetual foreigners. Upholding the model minority myth can be tempting when you have been indoctrinated by a society with a history of pitting racial groups against one another. Being considered exceptional can provide perceived safety and belonging to people who want to build a life for themselves and their families.

But the model minority myth is a lie and for too many people in this country, Asian Americans will always be regarded as invisible, at best, and expendable or a threat, at worst.

Many of the attacks on Harris, Vance and other Asian Americans have been centered around the “Great Replacement Theory,” which has been accepted by many white nationalists as a conspiracy to replace white, Christians with people of color and immigrants. It is often described as an “invasion” and recently has been the underpinning of the way some people talk about the southern border or the influx of Indian immigrants into the U.S.

As a society, we cannot simply brush off verbal attacks and racist misogyny as acceptable speech. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw that racist rhetoric of the “China virus” contributed to increased violence and hate-induced attacks against Asian Americans, including the murders of six Asian American women in Atlanta, devastating the lives of their families and the communities in which they lived.

Acts of verbal abuse and violence lead to the acts of physical abuse and violence against members of Asian American communities. We must continue to cast light upon the ways in which Asian American women are talked about, stereotyped, invisibilized, hypersexualized, and dehumanized.

Working towards real systemic change in a world that recognizes and addresses the real harm caused by anti-Asian and racialized misogyny will take all of us speaking up against these kinds of attacks that have been allowed to go on for far too long.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the US to address a joint session of Congress provided us with a lot to digest. It was his fourth such invitation—more than any other world leader in history (surpassing the UK’s Winston Churchill who made the trans-Atlantic trek to address Congress on three occasions).

As was the case on the three earlier visits, Netanyahu and the Republican Speaker of the House who had extended the invitation, each used the other to serve their own purposes. Speaker Michael Johnson sought to exploit Netanyahu’s address both to embarrass President Biden and to further the GOP’s effort to make support for Israel a “wedge issue” in the upcoming election.

Netanyahu was only too willing to play along with Johnson’s game as he has long viewed the Republican Party (especially the 40% of the party who are right-wing “born-again” Christians) as a more reliable partner for Israel than the more liberal-leaning American Jewish community. This is why for the past several decades he has courted Republican leaders and accepted three other GOP invitations to challenge Democratic presidents—Clinton (over the Oslo Process) in 1995, and Obama in 2011 (over the 1967 borders) and in 2015 (over the Iran nuclear deal). Another factor in Netanyahu’s eagerness to speak to Congress was to demonstrate his mastery over US politics to an Israeli public that has turned against his rule.

Johnson may have scored a point toward his goal, but it may prove to be a Pyrrhic victory. The Republicans turned out in force and gave the Israeli PM scores of standing ovations during his one-hour oration. But the speech was boycotted by more than one-quarter of the Democrats, with many of those who were in attendance sitting silently, refusing to stand or applaud.

Netanyahu’s speech itself was a startling mix of Herzlian colonialism and neoconservative Manichaeism. Echoing the racist rhetoric of Political Zionism’s founder, Netanyahu opened his remarks calling the conflict “a clash between barbarism and civilization,” and “between those who glorify death and those who sanctify life.” And, like Herzl, he described Israel as both the West’s agent defending its interests in the Middle East and the civilizing agent that would transform the region from being a “backwater of oppression, poverty, and war into a thriving oasis of dignity, prosperity, and peace.”

The neoconservative thread in Netanyahu’s remarks were also striking. That political ideology which came to power during the Reagan administration is a secularized version of a peculiar version of Christian Evangelical thought. Both share characteristics of Manichaeism: there are forces of absolute good and absolute evil in the world; not only is there no possibility of compromise between them, in fact, conflict is inevitable and necessary; and if fought with total commitment, good will always triumph, with evil ultimately eradicated.

During the Reagan era, the evil was defined as the Soviet Union and its allies. In Netanyahu’s view the source of all evil is Iran and its allies. No compromise is possible, and diplomacy is seen as weakness. And so his appeal to his allies in the West and the Arab World is to join him in this cosmic battle against evil—with the assurance that with determination, victory can be won and evil eradicated.

Because from his earliest days in the Senate Joe Biden had been mentored by one of the architects of American neoconservativism, Netanyahu felt he had an ally in the US President. But with Biden stepping aside as the Democrat’s nominee for president in favor of Vice President Kamala Harris, Netanyahu’s visit to Washington was to end on a sour note. Instead of the warm embrace he was used to receiving from Biden, Harris’ reception was more restrained.

After their meeting, instead of a joint appearance, Harris addressed the press alone. While affirming Israel’s right to defend itself, she added that it was how Israel went about defending itself that mattered. She then went to great lengths to describe the horrible costs to human life and suffering resulting from the war in Gaza. And made it clear that the conflict had to end, and Palestinians needed a future that ensured them freedom and self-determination. With this she implicitly rejected Netanyahu’s call for “total victory,” while also directly indicating that she was not afraid of the GOP’s challenge to make support for Netanyahu’s Israel a “wedge issue” in this election.

What the visit exposed was the reality that the American electorate is deeply divided over this issue. It’s not a matter of Israel being rejected; rather it’s the idea of unquestioning support for Israel no matter what they do that’s been rejected. As Harris put it in her post-meeting remarks, it’s no longer correct to see this conflict as a “binary choice.” There are needs on both sides that must be met and they can best be met through peace and diplomacy.

With that, Netanyahu left Washington and made a pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago to meet with the one presidential candidate who shares his belief in “total victory,” Donald Trump.

In the weeks leading up to President Biden's withdrawal from the presidential race, most of the editorial boards, party activists, and elected officials calling for him to end his reelection campaign focused on only one issue: age.

But there was another reason President Biden needed to drop out: Gaza.

Long before President Biden's debate meltdown sparked panic in the Democratic establishment, his support for the Israeli government's war in Gaza sparked outrage in the Democratic base, where 56 percent of the party's supporters have described the war as a genocide.

At least half a million Democratic voters protested President Biden's support for the Gaza genocide by voting uncommitted or submitting blank ballots during the presidential primaries earlier this year, including over 100,000 people in Michigan, 88,000 in North Carolina and 46,000 in Minnesota.

Over 1 in 5 Democrats or independents in key swing states said they were less likely to vote for President Biden due to the war, according to a YouGov-AJP-Action poll in May. Over a quarter of those voters said that an immediate and lasting ceasefire, full entry of humanitarian aid to Gaza, and conditions on military aid for Israel’s war were the minimum policy changes needed to secure or solidify their votes for Biden.

Vice President Harris has already neutralized the concerns of voters worried about President Biden's age. Now she must address the concerns of voters who opposed his support for the war on Gaza.

Many Democratic voters were alienated even more by President Biden's failure to call out reports of anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobic violence with the same fervor he uses to call out reports of antisemitic rhetoric, as well as his criticism of the diverse, overwhelmingly peaceful student protests on college campuses.

Frustrated voters included Muslim Americans, Arab Americans, Black Americans, young people and others who helped carry him to victory in 2020. If those voters ended up supporting third party candidates or boycotting the presidential race altogether in November—as some promised to do if Biden remained on the ticket and did not change course—they could have easily tipped the results in Michigan and other key swing states.

Now that President Biden has withdrawn from the presidential race, Vice President Kamala Harris has a chance to turn the page, chart a new course, and win back those voters, including American Muslims.

That's what our coalition of American Muslim political organizations is calling on her to do.

Vice President Harris has already neutralized the concerns of voters worried about President Biden's age. Now she must address the concerns of voters who opposed his support for the war on Gaza.

Many American Muslims are open to supporting Vice President Harris if she distances herself from President Biden's Gaza policy, respectfully engages with all of our community leaders, picks a vice presidential nominee who does not have a history of explicit hostility towards our community like Governor Josh Shapiro, and commits to concrete policy proposals that would stop the genocide, end the broader occupation of the Palestinian people, and establish a just peace.

Taking these steps will set her apart from not only President Biden, but also from President Trump.

Most American Muslims do not want Donald Trump to return to office for perhaps obvious reasons. The former president has made it clear that he plans to round up undocumented immigrants as part of the largest mass deportation in American history, reinstate the Muslim Ban, stack the federal civil service with political loyalists, and pursue a foreign policy just as or even more, immoral than President Biden’s foreign policy.

During the presidential debate, President Trump even said that the Israeli government should be allowed to complete its war on Gaza, ignored the question of whether he would support the recognition of a Palestinian state to achieve peace, and weaponized Palestinian identity as a racist insult.

After President Trump's speech at the RNC, Republican Jewish Coalition CEO Matt Brooks reportedly said that he believes Trump will give the Israeli government a "blank check" to “finish the job quickly” in Gaza.

“If you need to carpet bomb the area, do it," Brooks said.

Vice President Harris now has the opportunity to contrast herself with Trump on this issue in ways President Biden could not. She has already built up some goodwill in the American Muslim community by using a noticeably more humane tone when discussing Palestinian suffering compared to others in the administration.

She just took heat from the far-right Zionist Organization of America, which ridiculously accused her of embracing "Arab Islamist criminality" because she dared to express some understanding of college students protesting the war on Gaza.

This week, Vice President Harris also declined the opportunity to sit behind Benjamin Netanyahu during his controversial address to Congress. After privately meeting with him on Thursday, Harris delivered remarks about Gaza that were far more balanced and humane than anything Joe Biden has said in nine months.

By fully charting a new course on Gaza policy, Vice President Harris can build on this goodwill, win back the support of American Muslims and other voters in key swing states and, ultimately, save the country from another Trump presidency. She must not miss this opportunity.

Kamala Harris has gained strong support as the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate. Putting Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro on the ticket would likely fracture that support.

The most divisive issue among Democrats is the U.S.-enabled Israeli war against the civilian population of Gaza. To unify the party and defeat Trump’s MAGA forces, Harris needs to distance herself in a meaningful way from Joe Biden’s Gaza policy. If she does so, she can win back the votes and energy of young activists, progressives, racial justice organizers, Arab Americans and Muslims—many of whom devoted weeks or months of their lives in 2020 to defeating Trump on behalf of the Biden-Harris ticket.

But a Harris-Shapiro ticket would jeopardize all that.

Today, parallels are apparent with pivotal events of 1968, when President Lyndon B. Johnson—increasingly unpopular among Democrats and others because of his Vietnam War—stunned the political world by announcing he would not seek reelection. At the Democratic convention in Chicago, the party nominated LBJ’s vice president, Hubert Humphrey, as its standard-bearer. Humphrey’s halting efforts to distance himself from Johnson’s war policy were too little, too late, and he was unable to connect with many of the dedicated Democratic activists and voters who were antiwar. Failing to detach himself sufficiently from the president’s war policy, Humphrey lost a winnable election to Republican Richard Nixon.

If Harris now chooses a running mate who intensely connects her to Biden’s policies on the Gaza war that are so unpopular with much of the Democratic base, party unity—and the chances of defeating Trump—would be undermined.

A broad coalition to defeat Donald Trump and the fascistic MAGA movement is exactly what we need.

Overall, Josh Shapiro is liberal and sometimes progressive on domestic issues (though notably not on fracking or tax subsidies for private schools). But on the contentious issue of Israel’s relentless war against Palestinian civilians in Gaza, Shapiro sounds much less bothered by the lethal violence than by U.S. ceasefire activists, many of whom he has demonized. Here’s a bit of the history:

In 2021, after Ben & Jerry’s (a company founded and led by Jewish Americans) refused to sell its products in Israel’s illegal settlements, then-Attorney General Josh Shapiro threatened the company by urging Pennsylvania state agencies to enforce a constitutionally suspect law targeting advocates of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel over its discriminatory policies. Shapiro smeared such advocates by claiming that “BDS is rooted in antisemitism” – although the effort has wide support globally, including from many Jews, as a thoroughly nonviolent tactic in advancing Palestinian rights.

After the horrific Hamas attack of October 7, several dozen Pennsylvania-based Muslim groups wrote a letter protesting Governor Shapiro’s one-sided comments: “Not only did you fail to recognize the structural root causes of the conflict, you chose to intentionally ignore the civilian loss of life in Gaza.” Responding to the letter after Israeli bombs and missiles had killed more civilians in Gaza than had been killed by Hamas in Israel on October 7, the governor’s spokesman said: “We all must speak with moral clarity and support Israel’s right to defend itself.”

Last December, after he amplified the Capitol Hill demagoguery of MAGA Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, Gov. Shapiro contributed to the firing of the University of Pennsylvania president. Referring to UPenn’s president, Shapiro said: “I thought her comments were absolutely shameful. It should not be hard to condemn genocide.” By then, after two months of Israeli bombing, more than 17,000 Gazans had been killed, mostly women and children—and later that month, Israel was charged with violations of the Genocide Convention in South Africa’s filing at the International Court of Justice.

In early April, after Democratic governors in other states had called for a ceasefire in Gaza, Muslim leaders in Philadelphia criticized Shapiro for his refusal to do so.

Beginning in late April, Gov. Shapiro and his office repeatedly prodded campuses to “restore order” and take action against student encampments, including the University of Pennsylvania Gaza Solidarity Encampment which called on the college administration to provide greater transparency on university investments, divest from Israel, and reinstate the banned student group Penn Students Against the Occupation.

On May 9, Shapiro invoked student “safety” in demanding the encampment be shut down. Police shut it down the next day, arresting 33. In two different interviews, Shapiro seemed to compare campus ceasefire activists, many of whom are Jewish or students of color, to “white supremacists camped out and yelling racial slurs” and “people dressed up in KKK outfits or KKK regalia making comments about people who’re African American.”

In May, as activism continued to grow over Israel’s lethal violence against civilians in Gaza, Gov. Shapiro issued an order aimed at Israel’s critics that revised his administration’s code of conduct to bar state employees from “scandalous or disgraceful” conduct—a vague and subjective directive criticized by the legal director of Pennsylvania’s ACLU as a possible violation of free speech protections.

In a July 23 post on X, progressive leader and former Ohio State Senator Nina Turner wrote: “Choosing Governor Josh Shapiro for Vice President would be a mistake. Governor Shapiro compared pro-peace protesters to the KKK. That’s simply unacceptable & would stifle the momentum VP Harris has. Hopefully she is looking to build a broad coalition to beat Trump.”

A broad coalition to defeat Donald Trump and the fascistic MAGA movement is exactly what we need. Making Josh Shapiro the nominee for vice president is exactly what we don’t need.

           Democrats were relieved when President Biden finally pulled out of the presidential race. That was understandable. It was easy to see why they quickly coalesced behind Vice President Kamala Harris as Biden’s replacement: time was short, there’s no standard party process for putting on a snap second round of primaries, passing over a woman of color who has served dutifully if not impressively would have been a bad look for the party.

Completely inexplicable, on the other hand, is the Democrats’ immediately creating an “I’m with her” cult of personality for Harris—the same slogan that helped sink Hillary Clinton in 2016 because it violated the #1 rule of politics: the politician is supposed to be with us. Why are gullible Democrats donating at record levels for a candidate who has yet to make a single campaign promise? They’re lining up to volunteer for an incumbent politician who didn’t accomplish a single thing in her current job—no new law attributable primarily to her, no policy initiative she pushed through, no big idea she championed. And they’re overlooking the prosecutor position where she did get stuff done, defending oppressive state policies and leaving behind a trail of broken lives shattered by injustice she helped perpetuate.

We know why: she’s not Trump.

That’s nowhere close to be being good enough. Mainly because it’s a faulty assumption. How do we know she’s better than Trump? Until Harris tells us what she’s for, there is no objective way to compare her to her Republican counterpart.

            If a politician wants votes, they should earn them. They must identify our problems and develop policies to address them. They must explain why their solutions are better than those proffered by their opponents. They must defend their record. They must explain their mistakes and explain why they will not repeat them.

            Kamala Harris is not doing any of this. And there’s no sign she plans to.

            A social media ad distributed July 27th by the Harris Victory Fund says it all: “I am running to be President of the United States. If that’s all you need to hear, then make a donation to fund my campaign today.” [underline hers, not mine] No. It’s not. I need to hear a lot more—and so should you.

Reagan quoted a Russian proverb: “Trust, but verify.” When a leader asks you to trust her without offering any reason to do so, when she asks for a blank check, when citizens willingly suspend skepticism, when those who wish to wait-and-see are shouted down as party poopers in service to evildoers (in this case, Trump), you are observing a key democracy, votes, elections, Kamala Harris, record, promises, policies, Ronald Reagan, Hillary Clinton, blank checkcomponent of fascism: blind trust in The Leader. Jason Stanley, a Yale philosopher, noted: “Truth is required to act freely. Freedom requires knowledge, and in order to act freely in the world, you need to know what the world is and know what you’re doing. You only know what you’re doing if you have access to the truth.”

What is the truth about Kamala Harris? No matter what, her supporters say, she’ll be better than Trump. To which I ask, citing the Boston punk band The Lyres, “How Do You Know?”

This is a tough question to answer.

Which is outrageous.

In a democracy, a citizen should not have to resort to Cold War-style Kremlinology to guess how a candidate for president would govern the country. Yet here we are, casting our votes blindly.

Whatever you think of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s ambitious right-wing wish list for a second Trump Administration, or whether you believe Trump’s claim that he has nothing to do with it, you have to give Republicans credit for having a plan. Voters can read Project 2025 and watch Trump’s rallies and read the GOP platform and decide, as informed free citizens, whether or not they want to vote for a candidate who, more likely than not, would carry out those policies were he to be reelected. We know who Trump is. We know what he’s for.

The same cannot be said of Kamala Harris, a sidelined vice president whose record in the White House is startlingly sparse. New York magazine described the veep last year as “a minor character who has little role in the administration’s domestic and foreign policy.” She only served part of a single term as senator, the highlight of which was her grilling of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. No bill that she co-sponsored ever made it into law.

If anyone owes voters a detailed policy agenda, it’s Harris. Would she be Biden 2.0? Is she a progressive or a corporatist? She’s run as both. Democrats should issue their own version of Project 2025 so we know who and what we’re voting for—or against.

Unless we hold politicians’ feet to the fire, representative democracy is unaccountable and therefore worthless. When we give our votes away without any promises in return, we are reduced to speculation about what they might or may not do. Once elected, they do whatever they want.

They’ve promised us nothing. So they owe us nothing. We are worse, and our system is worse, than people in a corrupt autocracy who sell their votes for money or, as in some countries, kitchen tools. As voters, we are worse than whores. We are sluts of democracy—we give it away for free.

Without specific policy promises, our analysis of Harris must, by necessity, ignore the dictum that past performance is no guarantee of future returns. People change. But if Harris has evolved since her days as a prosecutor—the only period of her career that documents her own actions, in a position where she had wide discretion—we have no way to know that. Is she better than Trump? The only hard data we have is her record as a DA and AG.

That record is pretty bleak. Hers is the portrait of ambitious careerist who marketed herself as a tough-on-crime prosecutor with a view toward setting herself up for a situation like the one in which she finds herself now, running for high office at a time when people are freaked out about street crime. (Bonus! Trump is a convicted felon!) Trouble is, like most self-styled crime fighters, she committed a lot of crimes herself. She violated due process, cheated the rules of evidence, fought to preserve flawed convictions, refused to pay wrongfully-convicted defendants and worked overtime to keep the innocent behind bars by denying DNA tests.

A different kind of evil than Trump’s—but not a smaller kind. What could be more disgusting than using your position as an officer of the court to oppose the interest of justice?

Fortunately for Harris, she can easily lay these skeletons in her closet to rest. She can apologize, say that she has seen the light, and write up a credible plan for criminal justice report that shows she has changed her views.

Hopefully we’ll see something before Election Day.

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

The post Make Kamala Earn Our Votes first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

Joe Biden was praised for his decision to step aside from his 2024 presidential campaign. But it came after nearly a month of dithering, delaying and deflecting about his obviously diminished mental acuity, leaving his legacy and dignity severely compromised.

The post Biden Still Has His Dignity first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

On this episode of The Final Countdown, hosts Ted Rall and Steve Gill discuss the latest news nationwide, including Kamala Harris’ campaign.    The show begins with economist and professor Mark Frost joining the show to discuss the current state of the U.S. economy.   Then, Ted Rall and Steve Gill dive into the latest out of Kamala Harris’s campaign, and California Governor Gavin Newsom’s crackdown on homelessness.    Later, political analyst and host of ‘Pasta 2 Go’ Craig ‘Pasta’ Jardula shares his perspective on the Venezuelan elections.   

The show closes with RT journalist Nebojsa Malic joining to discuss Rupert Murdoch’s legal battle with his children. 

       The post The Final Countdown – 7/26/24 – Kamala Harris’ Cult is Without a Personality: Ted Rall first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

The homeless problem in America is not funny. It’s serious and apparently growing. It helps little to call people “unhoused” instead of homeless. Under either name, they’re still on the street and need shelter.

But I got a belly laugh recently when it was announced that the reactionary U.S. Supreme Court has solemnly ruled that homeless people could not sleep outside. That struck me as funny. If they can’t sleep inside because they’re homeless, and now the Supreme Court forbids them to sleep outside, then where in the world can they sleep? People have to be somewhere, either inside or outside.

Then I realized it’s not a laughing matter after all. Because of the Supreme Court’s decision, officials in California, Oregon, and several Western states are now moving quickly to force people off the streets and into city shelters. If they don’t have a place to sleep, they have decreed, they must be rounded up like sheep and put into official sheepfolds.

Can Americans summon the compassion for their fellow citizens—for the estimated 650,000 men, women, and children in the U.S. who are currently homeless—to seek a lasting solution to this situation?

That makes a certain amount of sense, and seems to be compassionate, but it isn’t. First, there aren’t enough shelters. Then the cost to city and state budgets is sure to be high. Under this ruling, people become pawns of the civic authorities. When they resist they’re inevitably treated roughly by police, who don’t like herding people instead of fighting crime.

Now California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a possible vice presidential candidate, has announced that the California state police must become involved in rounding up the homeless. What a brilliant move—a bit like the slogan, “Whippings will continue until morale improves.”

But there’s a more sober—even ominous—dimension to this issue. We are all protected by the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution in our Bill of Rights, which forbids cruel and unusual punishment. Under the legal implications of this decision, that right has now been taken away from all the rest of us.

The MAGA-tilted U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in the case filed by the town of Grants Pass, Oregon, was that homeless people—(who can’t sleep inside because they have no home) have no right to sleep outside either. The court said that forcing them into state or city-run shelters is not cruel and inhumane. What does that mean for them—or for us, if we find ourselves in that perilous condition? We just can’t sleep anywhere we choose. One of our rights has been taken away.

I have a friend who rebuked me for giving money to beggars and the “unhoused” homeless. He said, “There are plenty of government programs and service agencies dedicated to helping those people.” I inquired further and found that there is no “one size fits all” solution when it comes to the indigent. People on the street face multiple problems in getting appropriate aid. Each person has his or her own story to tell. “One size fits all” is not an appropriate answer.

What’s needed is more money to address the problems these people are facing. That includes counseling, better healthcare, adequate social security payments, improved socialization activities, opportunities for useful employment, and above all neighborly treatment. Each person is a child, brother, sister, spouse, parent, or grandparent—“somebody’s darling”—after all. For our own sake as well as theirs, let’s not allow public policy to strip them of their remaining shreds of human dignity.

Can Americans summon the compassion for their fellow citizens—for the estimated 650,000 men, women, and children in the U.S. who are currently homeless—to seek a lasting solution to this situation? Doing so is timely—and requisite for our own humanity.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump just gave Vice President Kamala Harris what might prove to be the most effective line of attack for the entire presidential election campaign.

On a telephone call-in to Fox & Friends, Trump said Harris was “real garbage.” It was typical of Trump’s ad hominem attacks against all of his opponents.

But such attacks have never really been effectively parried, so he’s gotten away with them. They’ve worked. Everybody remembers “Crooked Hillary,” “Little Marco,” and other epithets.

But since it was Trump who uttered the line, it is now fair game for Harris to take it up and use it against him. It will be utterly devastating, throwing back into his face the truth about who he is.

“Who’s the real garbage,” curated to an epigram in the culture, can become the four-word death knell for Trump’s re-election bid, exposing in his own words, and illustrated by his own actions, just how unfit he is to be president.

First, let’s remember who Kamala Harris is.

She has a law degree from the University of California Hastings School of Law. In 2003, she was elected district attorney of San Francisco. From there, she was elected attorney general for the state of California. In 2016, she was elected to the U.S. Senate, the second African-American woman to serve in the Senate and the first Asian-American woman to serve.

In 2020, she was elected vice president of the United States, receiving over 81 million votes on the ticket with Joe Biden. That is almost 8 million more votes than were cast for Donald Trump. She is the first woman ever to hold that office, the highest elective office in the U.S. ever filled by a woman.

She has performed those duties for a president, Joe Biden, who is already ranked as the 14th best president in American history by 154 presidential scholars. In that same survey, Trump was voted the worst president in history.

This is the profile of one of the highest achieving women in the history of the country, and a double-minority one, to boot. In no world is it even close to “garbage.”

But since Trump offered the opening, Harris should make it a standard part of every appearance she makes—from rallies to debates—asking, “Who’s the real garbage?” And then, marching through the astonishing litany of Donald Trump’s character as revealed by his own actions.

For example…

Donald Trump has accused me of being “real garbage.” I’m serious! Let’s take a look at who’s the real garbage.

I’m not a convicted criminal. He is. Thirty-four times over! So, who’s the real garbage?

I never had an affair with a porn star and tried to hide it by buying her off to keep her quiet. He did. So, who’s the real garbage?

I don’t owe more than half a billion dollars(!) in legal judgements for things like tax evasion and defamation, but he does. So, who’s the real garbage?

The Washington Post says—and I’m quoting here—“Trump Was Found to Have Raped E. Jean Carroll.” Let me say that again. This is the headline. Quote: “Trump Was Found to Have Raped E. Jean Carroll.” RAPE! So, who’s the real garbage?

My boss wasn’t ranked the worst president in American history by a group of 154 presidential scholars. HE was. The worst president in American history. Look it up. So, who’s the real garbage?

I didn’t try to overturn a presidential election and steal the votes of 81 MILLION people who voted for Joe Biden and me. He did. So, who’s the real garbage?

And, I haven’t been lying about it for four years because I couldn’t admit that I was a loser. But he has. He’s not just a loser. He’s a sore loser, which everybody hates. So, who’s the real garbage?

I didn’t inherit $413 million from my daddy, and then pretend for decades that I was a self-made man. But, he did. So, who’s the real garbage?

I didn’t go bankrupt six times while stiffing thousands of workers of their rightful pay. All the while claiming to be a business genius. He did. So, who’s the real garbage?

I’m not a pathological liar, telling more than 30,000 DOCUMENTED lies during four years in office. THIRTY THOUSAND! But he did. So, who’s the real garbage?

Very quickly, the refrain will be taken up by everybody in the audience, in a question-response manner that will become a signature statement of the campaign. It will carry from rally to rally, through the convention, naming the lowlife for what he is, in a way that he will never be able to escape.

This is so important. We can already see that Trump is going to wage a vicious, scurrilous campaign. Harris cannot let him control the narrative, nor define her in his terms, as he’s trying to do with “real garbage.” Trump’s prior opponents have mistakenly allowed him to do that.

“Who’s the real garbage?” needs to become the “Lock her up” of Harris’ campaign. That is, the repeated, raucous, reflexive recitation of contempt for Trump that becomes embedded into the culture and, therefore, larger than life.

“Who’s the real garbage,” curated to an epigram in the culture, can become the four-word death knell for Trump’s re-election bid, exposing in his own words, and illustrated by his own actions, just how unfit he is to be president. Every American will know it.

The deliciousness of it comes from the fact that it’s all true, and that somebody, for the first time, is truly nailing Trump for who he is. It will make him the central figure in the campaign, as he’s always so desperate to be. He deserves no less. Nor do we.

Since the rise of the United States into a global power, U.S. policymakers have been keen on halting the spread of popular government abroad by undermining democratic institutions; overthrowing or assassinating elected leaders; and installing brutal, vicious military dictatorships. Indeed, the fact of the matter is that the United States has invaded more countries, organized more coups, and installed more military dictatorships than any other imperialist power in the course of history. During the Cold War alone, Washington staged dozens of invasions, orchestrated or sponsored numerous coups that installed subservient governments, and engaged in total in over 70 attempts at regime change.

U.S. involvement in foreign coups was so widespread that a common joke was that there has never been a coup d’état in the United States because there is no U.S. Embassy there. Of course, the joke was before the political era of former U.S. President Donald J. Trump and thus has lost some of its sting. Because what happened at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 was a coup attempt incited by the rhetoric of an outgoing president as part of his effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. Moreover, Trump has warned voters of a “bloodbath” for the country if he is not elected in November 2024.

The roosters have come home to roost. The U.S. is sleepwalking toward democratic collapse and into a Trump proto-fascist dictatorship. If Donald Trump gets elected in November, “the gloves are off… its four years of scorched earth,” as Republican National Committee boss Lara Trump proudly announced to an audience a few months ago. Never mind people like John Bolton who tried to make the argument that Trump did not attempt a coup on January 6 because he is not competent enough to have done so. Those who entertain such thoughts seem to imply that it takes brilliance to destroy democracy. Yet, a reactionary revolt against democracy (or what’s left of it in the U.S.) has been underway since Trump gained control of the GOP. Trump encouraged violence during his 2016 campaign and levied harsh attacks against his opponents. Upon assuming office as president, he exhibited blunt authoritarian tendencies and levied attacks against the press. And when he lost a free and fair election in 2020, he tried to block a peaceful transfer of power.

There should be little doubt in any concerned citizen’s mind that the reactionary forces in this country, led by one of the most authentic con artists in political history, are as close as they have ever been to dismantling U.S. democracy.

But even if Trump isn’t capable enough to draw up a plan on his own for the dismantling of our democracy from within, there are plenty of extreme right-wingers able and willing to show him how it can be done. Indeed, the authoritarian, dystopian settings that the U.S. created in so many places across the world from the end of the Second World War to the present—through Washington’s support of oppressive political regimes that committed massive violations of human rights against their own citizens and forced them to live under constant threat—are being reconceived by ultra-conservative forces affiliated with Trump for the purpose of introducing them here inside the United States. This is precisely the aim of Project 2025, a Heritage Foundation plan to reshape the United States in a manner consistent with the ideology and vision of neoliberal proto-fascism.

Project 2025 is not Trump’s plan, but a plan for Trump. It’s also fair to point out that Trump has publicly denied knowing anything about the dystopian Project 2025. Yet, many of the people who worked in high-level positions during his presidency served as authors of the project. In fact, CNN reported finding some 240 people “with ties to both Project 2025 and to Trump.” It is thus ludicrous for Trump to claim ignorance of this extreme far-right agenda and having “no idea who is behind it.” Also, Paul Dans, director of the 2025 Presidential Transition Project at The Heritage Foundation and who had previously served in the Trump administration as the chief of staff at the Office of Personnel Management, said on a radio show during the Republican primary race last year that “Trump’s very brought in with this.” Last week, the same person suddenly claimed that the idea that Trump is attached to Project 2025 is a “hoax.”

More important, while Trump and his campaign staff have pointed out that Agenda 47 is their official policy platform for the 2024 presidential election, Project 2025 and Agenda 47 have a lot of overlap in terms of ideas and policy plans. They both contain plans for the reshaping of U.S. government and civil society that can only be described as “fascist.” They both assert that the mission they serve is to rescue the country from the influence of the radical left.

Project 2025 envisions the end of the administrative state by placing the entire federal bureaucracy under direct presidential control. In other words, the plan is for Trump to rule as a Unitary Executive, long considered a pathway for autocracy. Likewise, Trump’s plan in Agenda 47 is to dismantle what it calls the “deep state” by firing thousands of civil servants and replacing them with party hacks (though in Agenda 47 they are called “patriots who love America”). In doing so, Trump claims, federal bureaucrats and politician will be “held accountable to the American people.” Not to the president, mind you, who will now have complete control of the federal bureaucracy, but to the American people. Of course, not a single word is mentioned in Agenda 47 about how the “people” even enter the power equation of holding bureaucrats and politicians accountable to the popular will. But authoritarian leaders and wannabe dictators have always been masters of propaganda who engineer techniques of mass manipulation through the politics of illusion. And no propaganda tool is more effective in the authoritarian playbook than the one that justifies the dismantling of checks and balances as “corrupt obstacles to the popular will.”

State control over public education and teachers has always been an integral component of fascist ideology and strategy. In the neoliberal proto-fascist mentality that guides the thinking of the architects of Project 2025, the contention made however is that federal intervention in education should be severely limited and that, ultimately, the federal Department of Education should be eliminated. This is because their reactionary vision for the future of the United States would not object to the conversion of public schools into religious zones and calls for the rejection of “gender ideology” and the banning of “critical race theory.” Thus, it is of paramount importance that complete authority over primary and secondary education, including funding, transfers to the state and local level. Likewise, Project 2025 also endorses universal school choice and allowing families to access public funds to pay for private school tuition. Moreover, Project 2025 wants to ban any public education employee or institution from using a pronoun in addressing a student that does not “match a person’s biological sex” without the written permission of a student’s parents or guardians.

The call for the banning of “critical race theory” is utterly revealing of the ideological underpinnings of the architects of Project 2025. They want to see “critical race theory” forced out of classrooms because, they argue, its emphasis on the racist history of the United States “disrupts the values that hold communities together.” It’s rather shameful though that they omitted mentioning slavery as one of the values that should “hold communities together.”

As for higher education, which comes under severe attack by the reactionary minds behind Project 2025 for being “hostile to free expression” and “American exceptionalism,” student loans and grants should be placed into the hands of the private sector. They also call on the next president to downplay the value of a bachelor’s degree by removing it as a requirement for any federal job unless it is specifically demanded.

Agenda 47 is an even more extreme version of Project 2025 on the issue of education and comes much closer to authentic fascism. Trump’s proposals for K-12 schools call for, among other things, ending federal funding to any school teaching “critical race theory,” certifying only teachers who embrace “patriotic values,” firing Department of Education employees deemed radical zealots and Marxists, pushing prayer in public schools, and abolishing teacher tenure.

Trump’s Agenda 47 and Project 2025 also share the same extremist views on immigration and climate change. Project 2025 wants to demolish the entire U.S. immigration system while Trump wants to engage in draconian measures against undocumented immigrants, which includes a pledge to deport millions of undocumented immigrants living in the United States.

Regarding climate change, Project 2025 is all about a project that backs a fossil fuel agenda and wants to go so far as to eliminate the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration because it’s “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry.” Trump’s stance on energy and climate as expressed in Agenda 47 is in full alignment with Project 2025 and can be summarized by three words: “DRILL, BABY, DRILL.”

Finally, both the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 and Trump’s Agenda 47 (along with his already established record on the matter) make abundantly clear that serving the interests of a plutocracy is of equal importance to them as destroying the environment and turning back the clock on social and cultural progress through the implementation of extreme authoritarian measures. Among other major changes to the tax system, Project 2025 calls for reducing the corporate tax to 18% and cementing the tax on capital gains and dividends at 15%. A second Trump presidency would most certainly also see another round of tax cuts targeted at the very rich.

In sum, there should be little doubt in any concerned citizen’s mind that the reactionary forces in this country, led by one of the most authentic con artists in political history, are as close as they have ever been to dismantling U.S. democracy and replacing it in turn with a dystopian setting guided by the very same vision, values, and even tactics that have been the hallmark of U.S. imperialist efforts to install and support neo-fascist regimes around the globe.

More than 38,000 dead in Gaza. Fighting with the Houthis in the Red Sea and Yemen. A never-ending stream of back and forth strikes between American forces and Iran-backed groups in Iraq and Syria.

Conflict in the Middle East is escalating, fueled by weapons and military actions that increase the very real risk of a greater regional war. All the while a wave of military coups in Africa continues, aided by training and assistance carried out in the name of “counterterrorism.”

As militarism increasingly demonstrates that it is incapable of resolving conflict with non-state armed groups, the need to reevaluate the approach to such violence is as pressing as ever.

It is long past time to move beyond Band-Aid counterterrorism that only fuels the very injustices that cause the formation and growth of violent non-state groups in the first place.

Following the horrific events of 9/11 and the beginning of the so-called “Global War on Terror,” the United States embarked on more than two decades of using war as the foundation for its response to terrorism threats abroad. Today, it remains in armed conflict with numerous non-state groups across the Middle East and Africa, including ISIS, al-Shabaab, al Qaeda, and others.

However, while the War on Terror was intended to quash terrorism, the United States’ violent approach has instead served to fuel it. Annual attacks from non-state groups increased by 1900%—or 20 fold—in the seven countries the U.S. either invaded or conducted air strikes in between 2001 and 2018. Annual attacks worldwide increased fivefold during the same time period. And as the U.S. continued to pour billions of dollars into training foreign forces to combat “militants,” the result was increasing reports of gross violations of human rights by government forces, exacerbated violence, instability, and military coups. This approach has proven deeply counterproductive while failing in combatting terrorism worldwide.

So, what can the U.S. do to more effectively address the threat of international terrorism?

A new report from the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) provides concrete recommendations for critical non-military tools to both prevent and respond to this complex issue. These recommendations fall into three broad categories: (1) diplomacy; (2) development and peacebuilding; and (3) law enforcement, intelligence gathering, and restorative justice.

The report details the need for increased investment in and use of State Department experts in strengthening state stability and other core competencies, as well as using leverage to support negotiated settlements to wars with non-state armed groups. This requires properly resourcing and deploying the State Department’s Negotiations Support Unit of trained, experienced experts in negotiating and implementing peace agreements; effectively executing long-term economic development and peacebuilding programs like the Global Fragility Act; and moving away from a war paradigm and the use of lethal force as a first resort in responding to international terrorism. Instead, the U.S. should prioritize the use of law enforcement and intelligence gathering to disrupt plots and hold individuals accountable through Article III courts—a strategy which has been highly effective and grossly underappreciated throughout the post-9/11 period.

Rather than partnering with autocratic regimes and training their militaries to kill suspected militants, we must pursue nonviolent means that are grounded in respect for human rights and help address the root causes of violence. In regions suffering from discrimination and corruption, non-state militants rise up to oppose the current power structure. By addressing the issues that contribute to the formation and expansion of these groups, the U.S. and its partners can more effectively counter global terrorism. But responding to the emergence of violent groups through greater violence and oppression, with resulting civilian casualties and destabilizing impact, serves only to reinforce the beliefs of non-state actors and bolsters their ability to recruit others to their cause.

For too long, the focus in the executive branch and Congress has been on the question of whether or not to utilize force against non-state actors. It is time to expand this question and prioritize other avenues for counterterrorism. These nonviolent approaches have proven to be highly successful: Peaceful negotiations have accounted for the resolution of 43% of conflicts involving non-state actors. In contrast, just 7% of these conflicts were resolved through military action.

It is long past time to move beyond Band-Aid counterterrorism that only fuels the very injustices that cause the formation and growth of violent non-state groups in the first place. Addressing the core reasons for international terrorism and responding to it strategically and skillfully is the only realistic avenue toward a safer, more just world.

When will big money’s corruption of democracy become so obnoxious people will find it intolerable?

Perhaps a couple of troubling “hypothetical” examples will do the trick. Let’s pretend, as absurd as it sounds, that an American citizen, the wealthiest person in the world, happens to also be a rabid conspiracy theorist and, frankly, a bit of a political nutcase. And let’s further hypothetically pretend this person decides that by throwing enough of his money around he, together with other far-right billionaires, can effectively turn America into a plutocrat’s Shangri-La.

Unfortunately, this Shangri-La will be run by an authoritarian leader who throws his political opponents into jail, reverses environmental regulations while all but embracing climate change, subverts the Constitution, makes the ridiculously wealthy even more ridiculously wealthy, finishes the job of stuffing the federal courts with ultra-right political hacks, and so much more. To accomplish this, he will join with other ultra-right billionaires in opening his checkbook to help propel former U.S. President Donald Trump back into the White House. He is doing this by way of his own pro-Trump PAC. (He now denies making a $45-million-a-month commitment).

The combination of power and money easily grows into greater power and greater money, and both can continue to grow until they become unbreakable.

Or how about when another group of wealthy individuals—admittedly less rich, less nutty, and less evil in a Lex Luthor sense—decide to publicly join together to put pressure on the incumbent Democratic president to get out of the race by withholding campaign contributions? Now, to be hypothetically fair to this hypothetical group, unlike the Lex Luthor wannabe, most of these folks’ hearts are largely in the right place. But, leaving aside whether asking President Joe Biden to withdraw was politically wise, does it bother anyone that they felt so free to try to dictate to the broader electorate who should run for president? Is that a privilege we really want to cede to the wealthy?

But if we don’t want either of these things, where’s the public outrage?

Do we as a nation really believe the fact someone inherits a fortune, or makes a fortune through stock manipulation, creates a hot new internet startup, makes popular movies, or even builds a fortune through wise business practices means that person is wiser and more knowledgeable than everyone else about... well, everything?

Think how much more power Elon Musk (the unnamed billionaire/Lex Luthor imitator mentioned above, of course) has to impact government policy on issues such as climate change, education policy, and economic policy and taxation than the most talented experts in these fields?

It is tempting to think Elon Musk’s motive in at least claiming to intend to invest substantial funds in politics is purely for the fun of making a splash. What’s a few hundred million dollars to a guy worth around $200 billion? His actual political spending probably works out to a lower percentage of his annual income than many people spend on golf or bowling. This sort of pure joy in projection of power could also explain why he overpaid $40 billion dollars for Twitter only to then destroy much of its value by turning it into a swamp increasingly filled with far-right lunatics. He gets to play the King of Twitter (yeah, I know, X), or if you prefer, mayor of Crazyville, leaving him free, whenever he pleases, to share his political nonsense with millions of readers. But, of course, there is almost certainly more at play in his political investments than fun and games. Follow the money, as they say. Donald Trump’s election would save Elon Musk billions of dollars through tax and regulation changes. It must also never be forgotten that much of Musk’s profits come from the federal government. What’s a few dollars in contributions compared to all that?

If we truly want to preserve democracy for the long-term this has to change. True, the immediate threat is Donald Trump, but even if he loses, American democracy is far from safe. The growing power of the small group of far-right-American oligarchs is slowly grinding our democratic institutions into dust. Money from these economic grandees, and their predecessors going back decades, has financed right-wing organizations, advocacy groups, political campaigns, media sources, think tanks, and more.

Their money built the Federalist Society, and with the help of Republican presidents and senators has also created the right-wing Supreme Court majority. This in turn led to the court’s constitutional sanctification of money in politics with Citizens United. Thanks to these wealthy conservatives’ money, and the court that money helped to buy, it is now constitutionally established that money in politics is speech, subject to protection under the First Amendment. Personal liberties of actual human beings haven’t always done that well before the court, but the power of money, in all its glory, always wins. To the court’s majority nothing smells as sweet as the stench of money in politics.

With only the fewest of exceptions, election to political office requires this money—and in increasingly large piles. And with economic inequality growing like pancreatic cancer, big money is increasingly concentrated in relatively few hands. Ambitious politicians know better than to get on the wrong side of this group of wealthy donors. Small donors are important, but support from those with substantial assets remains critical to most candidates for major office and increasingly for minor offices as well.

This is true for the left as well as the right. It’s hard not to think this has something to do with the fact liberalism in recent decades has been so closely associated with social, rather than economic, issues—abortion rights are very important and a major focus as opposed to union rights, also very important, but less of a focus. Democrats are, of course, much better than Republicans on union rights, and got even better under Biden, but economic inequality has continued to grow during Democratic as well as Republican administrations. And as this inequality grows stronger, democracy grows weaker. The combination of power and money easily grows into greater power and greater money, and both can continue to grow until they become unbreakable.

I wrote a novel a few years ago titled, The Patriot’s Grill. It was anything but a best seller, but its topic, a recounting of a future post-democratic America, is relevant here. One sentence in particular: “The truth is no one took freedom from us. In the end, we just gave it away.”

I guess that is the ultimate question. Are we prepared to work to save our democracy, first, by defeating Donald Trump, then, second, by struggling to build a fairer and with it more democratic nation, or in the end, will we end up just giving it away?

In a move that surprised few but disappointed many, former U.S. President Donald Trump has chosen JD Vance, the bestselling author of Hillbilly Elegy and junior senator from Ohio, as his potential running mate for the 2024 presidential election. This choice, while generating the expected media buzz, represents far more than just another calculated political maneuver. It embodies a troubling trend in American politics: the weaponization of identity politics by both major parties to create a veneer of representation while sidestepping substantive policy changes.

Vance's nomination is a clear play for the rural working-class vote, a demographic that has become increasingly crucial to Republican electoral success. His personal narrative—rising from an impoverished Appalachian-adjacent background to Yale Law School and eventual political office—is meant to resonate with voters who feel left behind and "forgotten" by globalization and technological change. In this way, the GOP is attempting its own version of identity politics, one focused not on racial or ethnic minorities, but on the white working class that forms much of its base.

This strategy mirrors long-standing Democratic efforts to court historically marginalized communities through high-profile appointments and symbolic gestures. Both parties now engage in a kind of political theater, where the appearance of representation often substitutes for meaningful policy reforms. It's a game where faces change, but the underlying power structures too often remain frustratingly the same.

The Vance Gambit: The Republican's Pro-Worker Mirage

JD Vance's meteoric rise from obscure memoirist to potential vice presidential nominee encapsulates the GOP's attempted pivot towards a more worker-friendly image. His critiques of coastal elites and championing of Rust Belt revival have positioned him as a voice for the disaffected working class. Yet, a closer examination reveals a stark disconnect between Vance's rhetoric and his actual policy positions.

While Vance speaks passionately about the struggles of working-class Americans, his actual views and voting record in the Senate has consistently aligned with traditional Republican pro-business stances. He has voiced support for tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the wealthy and policies directly threatening the power of unions. Indeed behind his "pro-worker" stance appears to be a xenophobic nationalism centred on the mass deportation of immigrants.

The selection of Vance represents an attempt by the Republican establishment to co-opt the language of economic populism without embracing its substance.

The rise of figures like JD Vance reflects a new conservative policy agenda championed by groups such as American Compass, which seeks to blend traditional conservative values with populist economic nationalism. This approach advocates for policies like family-friendly labor laws and restrictions on global trade, supposedly representing a new "Trumpian version of the GOP, the one that threw away the country club, Chamber of Commerce, free trade, and foreign wars."

However, beneath this worker-friendly veneer lies a fundamentally corporate-aligned ideology. While paying lip service to workers' concerns, this brand of "national conservatism" often stops short of embracing true economic democracy or structural reforms that would significantly shift power to workers. Instead, it offers a limited, top-down version of economic populism that ultimately preserves corporate interests and existing power structures.

This contradiction lays bare the hollowness of the GOP's newfound "populist" messaging. It is a Party that invites the head of the Teamsters to speak at its convention while doing all it can to undermine unions and actual worker power. The selection of Vance represents an attempt by the Republican establishment to co-opt the language of economic populism without embracing its substance. By elevating a figure who can speak convincingly about working-class struggles, the party hopes to maintain its grip on a crucial voting bloc while continuing to advance policies that often work against their economic interests.

This approach is not without precedent. The Tea Party movement of the early 2010s similarly channeled working-class anger into support for policies that ultimately benefited the wealthy and corporate interests. Vance's nomination suggests a continuation of this strategy, repackaged for the post-Trump era.

The Democratic Parallel: Kamala Harris and the Limits of Representation

While the Republicans court the white working class through figures like Vance, the Democratic Party has long engaged in its own form of identity politics, particularly focused on racial and ethnic minorities. The selection of Kamala Harris as Joe Biden's running mate in 2020 exemplifies this approach.

Harris, as the first woman of African-American and Asian descent to serve as vice president, undoubtedly brings important representation to the executive branch. Her nomination was deservedly celebrated as a historic milestone, particularly for Black and South Asian Americans. However, much like Vance, Harris' personal identity and the symbolism of her position often overshadow the substance of her political record.

The narrative surrounding Harris' candidacy has largely centered on what she represents demographically, rather than critically examining her track record, policy proposals, or how she might address the pressing issues facing the nation.

Throughout her career as a prosecutor and later as California's attorney general, Harris often took stances that were at odds with the criminal justice reform movement that has become central to many progressive platforms. Her "smart on crime" policies and past resistance to independent investigations of police shootings contrast with calls for police reform and racial justice that have gained prominence in recent years.

This critique of Kamala Harris is not meant to single her out or suggest a monolithic view on crime among Black voters. Rather, the point is to highlight a broader pattern of symbolic representation with limited substantial policy change. Indeed, the Biden administration has fallen far short on its promises to address disproportionate levels of Black unemployment, the plight of Black farmers, and the need for far-reaching criminal justice reform.

Since President Biden's unexpected withdrawal from the 2024 presidential race, the phenomenon of performative representation has been thrown into stark relief with Vice President Kamala Harris emerging as the presumptive Democratic nominee. Media coverage has overwhelmingly fixated on Harris' identity as a woman of Jamaican and Indian heritage, often at the expense of substantive policy discussions. Pundits and commentators repeatedly emphasize her racial background and historic potential to be the first female president, while giving comparatively little attention to her actual policy platform or vision for the country.

This focus on identity over substance exemplifies the troubling trend in American politics where symbolic representation often overshadows meaningful policy debates. The narrative surrounding Harris' candidacy has largely centered on what she represents demographically, rather than critically examining her track record, policy proposals, or how she might address the pressing issues facing the nation. This imbalance in coverage risks further entrenching a political culture that prioritizes optics over genuine progress.

This underscores a systemic problem wherein political gestures often substitute for meaningful reform, leaving many of the underlying issues unaddressed and communities still grappling with longstanding injustices. The growing potential of a Harris to be the presumptive Democratic nominee for present, while breaking important barriers, also reveals the limitations of representation without corresponding policy shifts. Her presence in the administration often served as a shield against criticism, with her identity being invoked to deflect concerns about the administration's failure to enact far-reaching changes.

Beyond a Politics of Mere Representation

The nomination of JD Vance as Trump's running mate, much like the selection of Kamala Harris as Biden's VP and now likely presidential nominee, represents a troubling trend in American politics. It reflects a system where the appearance of representation often substitutes for meaningful transformation, where identity is weaponized to maintain existing power structures rather than challenge them.

This allows political parties, far too often, to avoid grappling with difficult structural issues. By focusing on representation at the top levels of government, parties can sidestep the harder work of addressing systemic inequalities or economic challenges. The result is a politics of gestures rather than genuine action.

While increasing representation and challenging the traditional white rich male dominance over U.S. politics is urgent and necessary, it is far from enough. Real progress requires policies that address the root causes of inequality and injustice, not just gestures towards inclusivity. Ultimately, revitalizing American democracy will require embracing a politics of substance over symbolism. Advances in political representation must be coupled with a genuine commitment to addressing the deeper needs and concerns of all Americans. Only then can we move beyond the politics of performance and toward a more responsive and effective system of governance that can legitimately address the nation's deeper problems.

As the surreal and high-stakes 2024 Presidential election careens through its surprising twists and turns, one thing is near certain—at the finish line the election will be decided by a relatively small margin. U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, as the likely Democratic nominee, would do well to appeal to the over 650,000 people who voted for “uncommitted” or cast other protest votes in the primary.

Vice President Harris has seen polling revealing that the Democrats suffered from a large enthusiasm gap—trailing Republicans by 11 points in one Gallup poll before President Joe Biden Biden dropped out. Given Democratic-leaning voters’ well-founded existential angst about former President Donald Trump’s authoritarian impulses, such a gap in this election is astounding.

At least part of that “enthusiasm gap” was reflected in the “uncommitted” vote over the last few months. In addition to the 650,000 Democrats voted against Biden by choosing options such as “uncommitted,” etc., millions of rank-and-file Democrats are unhappy with the war in Gaza. According to one Reuters poll, 44% of Democratic voters disapprove of the administration’s handling of the Gaza crisis and these voters said they were less likely to vote for Biden come fall. Obviously, Arab American voters are watching Harris’ actions on Gaza closely. But so are other critical constituencies. Younger voters, and particularly younger voters of color, are more likely to support an immediate cease-fire in Gaza and disapprove of Israel’s actions. Seven major labor unions, representing 6 million workers, just wrote to President Biden and called on him to “shut off military aid to Israel.”

Harris is unlikely to truly change course without being pushed to do so by her base.

Some former Biden administration officials who resigned over Biden’s Gaza policy are “cautiously optimistic” about a fresh approach with Harris. They point to Harris speaking in favor of a cease-fire before Biden did. Former State Department arms control expert Josh Paul described Harris as less “fixed and intransigent” on Gaza and said, “I have cautious and limited optimism—but also a deep sense of relief that the Democratic party will not be nominating for the presidency of the United States a man who has made us all complicit in so much and such unnecessary harm.” At the same time, most observers feel it is unrealistic to expect her positions to be a radical departure from Biden’s based on her history of strong support for Israel.

Clearly Biden-Harris messaging has recently become more focused on seeking peace and a cease-fire. In Biden’s historic address explaining his decision to drop out of the race, the president courted peace voters by bragging that he was “the first president this century to report to the American people that the United States is not at war anywhere in the world.” That was at best a fib, given that the U.S. had just bombed Yemen hours earlier. But it displayed recognition of the importance of the peace vote. He also promised to work for a cease-fire for Gaza.

VP Harris’ remarks after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reflected an even greater emphasis on a cease-fire. She bluntly stated, “It is time for the war to end.” It was refreshing to hear her emphasize the famine in Gaza, a critical issue that the media is underreporting. As Randa Slim of the Middle East Institute put it in a post on X (formerly Twitter): “This is the best speech I heard so far from a senior U.S. official about Israel[’s] war on Gaza. [The] VP mentioned the word Palestinians more times than in all Joe Biden speeches combined. There is hope fellow Arab #Americans!” But simply displaying more empathy toward Palestinians, while shipping arms to Israel that are used in killing those same Palestinians, is not likely to win over recalcitrant uncommitted voters or to truly energize peace voters.

The task in front of Harris is daunting. Ideally she needs to deliver a cease-fire despite the fact that she is not (yet) the president of the U.S., let alone the prime minister of Israel. But the U.S., as Israel’s crucial ally, has immense leverage, and it’s long past time to fully deploy it. Netanyahu has ignored U.S. calls to prevent human rights violations for months. He is resisting a cease-fire. One way to reach a desperately needed lasting cease-fire—including the release of all Israeli and Palestinian captives—is for the U.S. to put real pressure on Netanyahu by ending the flow of weapons to the Israeli government.

If Netanyahu will not agree to a cease-fire, the Biden-Harris administration needs to become more assertive in concrete policy terms. Matt Duss, of the Center for International Policy, laid out some of the policy changes that could be the basis of a real pivot on Gaza that goes beyond a change in tone:

She can announce that as president, she will immediately suspend the U.S.-supplied military aid being used in violation of U.S. law. She can reject the baseless and inflammatory claims that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the largest and most important relief agency in Gaza, is a “Hamas front,” and state that she’ll work to see UNRWA funding resumed as soon as legally possible.

The grassroots has a role to play in all this. Harris is unlikely to truly change course without being pushed to do so by her base. The Uncommitted National Movement, now that their ballot box campaigns are over, is pushing a “Not Another Bomb” campaign to push Harris to take a bolder position on ending the war. Peace groups like Peace Action are calling on Harris to support an arms embargo on Israel and other concrete policies. Everyone who cares about these issues should be contacting the vice president and getting out the message that her empathetic words are refreshing, but it is long past time for bold action to end the killing and famine in Gaza once and for all.

I visited Annunciation House in November of 2019. This is a Catholic-run haven for homeless migrants, a drop of water to combat a limitless thirst. Most people, fleeing climate catastrophe and the political violence orchestrated by decades of U.S. efforts to destroy progressive regimes in Latin America, find no such respite. Nonetheless, people flee starvation, political instability, and death squads, even if the trek across the searing desert kills a great many of them. Families, children, pregnant women, the elderly—people with absolutely nothing—have been trapped between the proverbial rock and a hard place. During my 2019 visit to El Paso, Annunciation House was nearly empty due to then-U.S. President Donald Trump's "remain in Mexico" policy.

Refugees flee from deadly conditions no matter how slight their chances for asylum. These migrants are chess pieces for U.S. politicians. North of the Rio Grande, refugees seeking asylum encounter the myths and biases of political theater. Immigrants—suffering, dreaming, striving, and dying—have only symbolic worth to politicians. They are the commodities that can be driven with the sledge hammer of propaganda, deep into our reptilian brains.

Many Americans have always hated immigrants, and U.S. leaders have used that hatred to pump up frothing voters. We have drawn a peculiar line of delineation between those whose ancestors arrived long ago, and those who belatedly attempt to make the same transition. The collective sport of reviling the foreign born has grown in direct proportion to the ruin of forests and fields. As the climate slashes bloody fissures in the agricultural systems of the Global South, politicians in wealthy countries gather the spoils and trade cruelty for votes.

Do Trump's reprehensible promises inevitably become policy? Likely, yes. Trump has staked his legacy to his vow to punish undocumented residents mercilessly.

On the walls of Annunciation House residents display their works of art—a random jumble of shoes lie haphazardly within a glass display case. These shoes represent those who died in the desert. Thousands of people succumb to heat stroke, hypothermia, falls in rough terrain, and dehydration. Border patrol agents have famously spilled water from containers left by good Samaritans. The Chihuahuan Desert heat acts in tandem with the merciless border agents. One staff person at Annunciation House told me about a man and a small child on their knees in prayer. They gave thanks for having survived a 10 day ordeal in the desert, she told me.

One recalls that a much larger pile of shoes represent the gassed victims of Auschwitz. We associate shoes with mobility, opportunity, life—"pull yourself up by your bootstraps." When an assassin's bullet flicked off a piece of Trump's ear, he dropped and his shoes fell off to be photographed on the stage. Even the near death of a tyrant can be reduced to shoes.

Our media pundits seldom focus on refugees with discipline and depth. We rarely reflect on why people come to seek asylum—it is our government that has assisted in the installation of right-wing military juntas, and thus intervened in the political systems of Brazil, Nicaragua, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. The U.S. has instituted embargos upon Cuba and Venezuela in the effort to inflict suffering on citizens of these countries and spread instability. Our relentless burning of fossil fuels and our corporate plunder of Amazonian rain forest have caused climate collapse in the Global South.

We don't usually have an election that has been as perfectly choreographed as this one in 2024. Every brick, every bolt, wire, and ornament has been lovingly placed by predetermined forces. President Joe Biden's descent into slobbering senility, a bullet that precisely pinpricked Trump's ear (drawing just enough blood for dramatic effect and not a drop more), a cascading series of events in Israel and Gaza to frame the Democratic Party's suicidal connection to the genocidal IDF, the rise of the Supreme Court in its newly mutated enormity—everything has been handcrafted to give us fair warning. Every nuance of random chance has fallen exactly in the direction of Republican favor.

It may seem that Biden's withdrawal and the abrupt emergence of Kamala Harris from the crypt of vice-presidential anonymity now changes Republican good fortunes, but it does not. Harris is unlikely to significantly distance herself from the travesty of Gaza, or crawl out from Biden's shadow (though I anxiously hope that she surprises skeptical progressives and becomes an advocate for peace). Democrats continue on the treadmill of hasty choices. So long as the Democrats fail to produce a movement of working class passion in favor of pulling centrists out of the emergency supply closet, the groundswell of fascism will continue. This will not be an election like 2016, where people wake up in shock the next morning.

In 2016 comedian Jim Jefferies quipped that he might vote for Trump to see "just how crazy shit gets." We more or less know now, but not exactly. Trump has no policy, no platform, no values. He is absolutely not Hitler with an orange wig. Hitler was young and riveted upon the fine details of a society driven by the principles of eugenics. Trump is ancient, scattered, barely intelligent, and trivial to the core.

His bigotry is less deeply felt than transactional. Still, like a rat that understands which lever releases a pellet of food, Trump has figured out that cruelty toward immigrants inspires the love of his acolytes. His chaotic, stupid, disorganized blather gains coherence and meaning only by returning again and again to the fantasy that millions of snarling migrants have been marauding throughout the nation, murdering, raping, selling fentanyl, living in luxurious hotels, and sucking the life blood out of the American people.

Are we to watch passively as up to 20 million innocent souls are dragged from their homes to be interned, deported, or butchered? The only line of defense against genocide is the American public.

Without this preposterous, delusional tale, Trump could not get enough votes to become the animal control officer of the town of Bumfuck. Immigration, or rather, the racist fairy tale about dark-skinned, barbarian invaders raping and pillaging at the urging of the Biden administration—which allegedly aspires to bludgeon white political power with an unlimited roster of illegal voters—is pretty much the solitary plank in the MAGA platform.

There are a few so-called cultural issues that add flavor to the MAGA gruel—stuff like eliminating transgender access to bathrooms of choice and tossing books willy-nilly out of schools and public libraries. The Republicans also cling to their free market/neocon policies—welfare for billionaires, charity for fossil fuel megaliths, private prisons, increased funding for military and police—but these are honorable, bipartisan policies near and dear to the heart of America. No one gets excited about erasing Darren Woods' tax bill. The crown jewel, indeed the only jewel, in the MAGA world view is the imminent public display of vicious and violent military force enacted upon unarmed, dark-skinned civilians. Immigration narratives provides cover for an old-fashioned, Tulsa-styled race riot.

That is what energizes voters, and that is why Trump rambles distractedly about windmills and flushed toilets, but always returns to the horror story of a nation being ravaged by criminals and insane asylum escapees from the Global South. The true target of MAGA rage is not even immigrants or illegals, but rather, poor people. This passage from Ken Cuccinelli, writing for the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025—the reimagining of the Department of Homeland Security as The Waffen-SS—displays the MAGA passion for a eugenics informed policy of immigration:

The incoming administration should spearhead an immigration legislative agenda focused on creating a merit-based immigration system that rewards high-skilled aliens instead of the current system that favors extended family-based and luck-of-the-draw immigration. To that end, the diversity visa lottery should be repealed, chain migration should be ended while focusing on the nuclear family, and the existing employment visa program should be replaced with a system to award visas only to the "best and brightest."

Cuccinelli's vision involves military deployment on the southern border and Coast Guard intervention on the high seas. Cuccinelli's MAGA utopia features internment camps and strong-armed threats of sanctions against countries that balk at receiving the millions and millions of rounded up unfortunates. Police forces across the nation will be preoccupied with this anti-Latino pogram.

How will this be implemented? We all have the German WW II template in our brains—we picture door to door roundups, a bureaucratized system of collaborators and para-military forces, and a parallel deployment of Jewish police. But the U.S. is not WW II Germany or occupied Eastern Europe. Jews were well under 1% of the German population, whereas undocumented people comprise 3% of U.S. residents, and many of these have blood or marriage connections to people with U.S. citizenship. Those with Hispanic heritage comprise nearly a fifth of the U.S. population.

We have been warned well before the fact that the Trump administration, upon its inauguration in January of 2025, will launch a protracted genocidal action upon a large segment of our residents. This policy will be costly—potentially ruinous to our economy with lost labor and tax money in the trillions. But political theater defines life in the U.S. Trump is a mirage. We never quite understand the connection between his lies and his behavior. Do Trump's reprehensible promises inevitably become policy? Likely, yes. Trump has staked his legacy to his vow to punish undocumented residents mercilessly.

Depend on the Democratic Party to do jack shit. The Dems are already neck deep in MAGA immigration mimicry. What about the rest of us? Are we to watch passively as up to 20 million innocent souls are dragged from their homes to be interned, deported, or butchered? The only line of defense against genocide is the American public.

We should not be caught ruminating about our plan of action as the deed unfolds. We have about six months to prepare. And, please, no one should be believed in the future when they claim, "We had no idea."

Trump Is Project 2025

Trump claims he has “no idea who is behind” Project 2025.

Hogwash!

Project 2025’s nearly thousand-page plan for a total MAGA takeover of America was assembled by more than 25 of Trump’s own administration officials.

Trump’s Make America Great Again PAC is running ads calling it “Trump’s Project 2025.”

CNN found that at least 140 people who worked for Trump are involved in the project, including six of his cabinet secretaries.

Trump’s campaign press secretary and his adviser Stephen Miller star in Project 2025’s recruitment video.

If Trump has “no idea” who they are, that’s some serious cognitive decline!

I can see why Trump wants to distance himself from such a toxic plan. Page 5 calls for jailing teachers and librarians over banned books.

Page 455 calls for “abortion surveillance” and stripping Americans of reproductive freedom.

Pages 587 and 592 have plans to gut overtime pay rules.

Page 489 demands the government prioritize “married men and women” over any other type of family.

Page 371 proposes privatizing nuclear waste disposal. What could go wrong?

Trump has promised to be a “dictator” on Day One. The Supreme Court has given their blessing. Project 2025 is the how-to manual for Trump’s dictatorship.

Trump is Project 2025. He cannot escape it.