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Today we discuss:

• The Trump administration’s deadly military strikes on alleged drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean and Pacific have not reduced the amount of cocaine entering the US, but they’re prompting criminal organizations to develop new strategies and tactics and undermining traditional investigative methods, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

• Russian entrepreneurs have been devastated by Ukrainian drone strikes targeting warehouses belonging to Wildberries, Russia’s largest e-commerce company and the country’s answer to Amazon. At least nine Wildberries warehouses have been struck in the last week, as well as logistics centres from southern Russia to the outskirts of St Petersburg, killing at least nine people and destroying inventory worth billions of dollars.

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The post Deadly U.S. Boat Strikes Have Not Reduced Drug Smuggling | DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

The US is the richest country in the world, yet an international outlier on many measures. Among industrialized nations, the US spends a lower percentage of its GDP on public social expenditure, has no universal healthcare system, union density is at an all-time low, and the average American's standard of living is in decline, as "nearly half of US households can't make ends meet." Of course, delusional President Donald Trump continues to say that the US is the "hottest country in the world." Is the US, however, ready for radical change? After all, isn't there evidence that Americans are losing faith in capitalism and that socialism is gaining ground among voters?

Political scientist, political economist, author, and journalist C. J. Polychroniou shares provocative thoughts on these issues in an interview with the French-Greek writer and journalist Alexandra Boutri. Polychroniou believes that radical change is difficult but still possible in today's United States, even though he realizes there is a strong anti-democratic tradition standing in the way and regards the Democratic Party itself as the graveyard of radical change undertakings.

Alexandra Boutri: Recent polls indicate that capitalism is in trouble in the US, as there is a growing loss of faith in the system, apparently even among Republicans, while socialism is gaining mainstream appeal. So, I want to start this interview by inquiring about your own impression regarding political and ideological trends in the United States. Indeed, is the country on the verge of radical change?

C. J. Polychroniou: I am now old enough to take any talk of radical political change with a grain of salt. That being said, there is no doubt that the US version of capitalism has been an utter failure for the majority of Americans. In contrast to European or Asian versions of capitalism, capitalism in the US has always been structured around what we might call the Sopranos version of doing business, which is the Trump administration’s way of actually running the whole country today. But Trump aside, what kind of civilized society denies its citizens access to universal healthcare, tuition-free higher education, guaranteed long-term parental leave, 4-6 weeks of guaranteed paid vacation, and robust unemployment benefits? The US does!

Only the pathetic leadership of the Democratic Party stands in the way of Trump’s inevitable fall and disgrace.

The younger generations in the US seem to have awakened to the realization that the US economic system is brutal and thus detrimental to their well-being, even if they may not have an alternative socioeconomic system in mind that they would like to see instituted. They have indeed taken notice of the fact that the US is the only industrialized nation in the world without a universal healthcare system and that the standard of living has declined to the level of developing countries. Truth be told, even if North America remains the wealthiest on average, the quality of life in many European countries, which are, of course, still fully capitalistic, is superior to the US. There are stronger social safety nets and greater work-life balance in capitalist Europe than there are in the capitalist United States of America.

Which countries are best on women’s well-being? According to the latest Women, Peace and Security Index, European countries occupy all nine of the top positions while the US ranks 31st, below countries like Serbia and Malta. So, we do need to take into account different versions of capitalism. In that context, it is safe to say that many Americans have finally awakened to the realization that the US version of capitalism sucks! Anything more than that, however, is open to speculation. Socialism is gaining ground, but the challenges of building a unified socialist movement on a national scale and having a socialist political party that can contest power at the federal level are enormous in the United States of America.

Alexandra Boutri: Is the rise of socialism in the US the reason why Trump is reviving the boogeyman of communism?

C. J. Polychroniou: Absolutely. However much of a shallow man Trump happens to be, he is nonetheless a mastermind politician who has the pulse of today’s Republican voters. He is the greatest bullshitter of the modern age, but that’s only because of his audience. He knows how to stir fear. He also knows that he can normalize cruelty because his fanatical and racist fanbase simply loves it. Have his policies worsened economic conditions in the country to the point that even some of his own followers are beginning to doubt him? He only has to raise the volume on culture wars and then becomes again, in the eyes of his own supporters, the nation’s savior. Of course, such tactics have an expiration date even for the most popular authoritarian leaders. Look, for example, at what happened to Viktor Orbán in Hungary. After 16 years in power, even his own core supporters grew tired of his cronyism and corruption. I believe we will see something similar happen to Donald Trump and to the Republican Party, perhaps as soon as this coming November, in spite of how deeply the anti-democratic tradition has entrenched itself in all branches of government. In the end, only the pathetic leadership of the Democratic Party stands in the way of Trump’s inevitable fall and disgrace.

Alexandra Boutri: Are you also saying that the Democrats have been responsible for Trump’s rise to power?

C J. Polychroniou: Of course, and it was the Democrats, with their ability to destroy trust in government by siding themselves utterly and shamelessly with major corporate and financial interests, that rolled out the red carpet for Trump’s arrival on the nation’s political scene. The country had been moving further and further to the right since the early 1980s. In fact, the percentage of Americans identifying themselves as moderates had been declining since the Clinton years. Democrats still talk about Bill Clinton’s achievements, such as turning deficits into surpluses and making the economy more globalized, but his policies ushered in a new era of inequality while he transformed the welfare state by ending social policy. Essentially, the welfare state was dismantled under the Clinton presidency and was largely replaced in turn by volunteerism.

Neoliberalism (embraced by both parties in the US) and cultural relativism (a late obsession of liberals and segments of the left) have been at the core of the political turn to the far right in the US. The main point, though, is that the Democrats failed to advance a meaningful alternative whenever they found themselves in power. The Obama administration also had the chance to make a meaningful impact on the future of the country but opted, instead, to align itself with the status quo on all major issues, both on the domestic and foreign front. The Biden administration did make some progress on economic policy, mainly thanks to pressures from the progressive wing of the party, but failed miserably on foreign policy. As to why Kamala Harris lost to Trump, that's an issue that will forever be debated.

Alexandra Boutri: In a recent campaign speech in Michigan, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said that the Trump administration is “hellbent on tearing down in four years what it took this country 250 years to build.” What did she mean by that, and how likely is it that she will be the Democratic 2028 nominee?

C. J. Polychroniou: Naturally, the country has made progress over the past 250 years. Don’t you think it would have been unnatural if it hadn’t done so? But how do we measure progress? Wars existed in the past, and it appears that war will never end. By the same token, we have taken major steps toward protecting individuals against discrimination on the basis of sex or gender, but economic inequality is greater today than it has ever been in the modern era, while women, people of color, and minorities continue to face economic disadvantages. In any case, it is beyond dispute that Trump is destroying whatever social and economic progress has been made so far. He is a wrecking ball, an unhinged sociopath, but one who is still being treated as America's savior by something like close to 40% of voters. That’s simply mind-boggling, but it says something noteworthy about the persistence of a particular component of American political culture—one that rests on possessive individualism, anti-intellectualism, and the paranoid style. Richard Hofstadter addressed some of those aspects of American political life long before the rise of Trumpism. But we need to add racism, as it also remains a profound component of American political culture.

If popular struggles succeeded in introducing a universal healthcare system in the US, well, that would definitely constitute radical change in terms of how the nation has decided to deal with the well-being of its citizens.

I don’t know if Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will decide to run for president in 2028. I hope she does. Recent polls indicate that she is more popular with Democratic voters than the likes of Pete Buttigieg, Gavin Newsom, and Kamala Harris, none of whom offers hope for a brighter future, although any one of them would be an improvement over Trump. What I do know, though, is that if AOC does decide to run for president in 2028, not only will she have at least half of the country react with extreme fear and paranoia attacks, but she will encounter massive opposition from the Democratic establishment itself. In 2016, the Democratic National Committee derided the Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) campaign. I expect something similar will happen to AOC. The current leadership of the Democratic Party is the graveyard of radical change in the US.

Alexandra Boutri: What would constitute radical change in today’s United States?

C. J. Polychroniou: That’s a very important question, and I’m glad you raised it. Political, economic, and even sociocultural settings must be taken into account whenever we speak of demands for radical change. Take something like universal healthcare. Almost every country in Europe has universal coverage, and it can also be found in many countries around the world. But in the US there has always been staunch opposition to universal healthcare policies by powerful private entities like the health and insurance industries. If popular struggles succeeded in introducing a universal healthcare system in the US, well, that would definitely constitute radical change in terms of how the nation has decided to deal with the well-being of its citizens. No question about it. Radical change should not imply the transformation of a country’s entire system of government. That would constitute a revolution. Even then, we would need to distinguish between a political revolution and a social revolution. For instance, the American Revolution was a political, not social revolution. It did not alter the fabric of society; it did not change wealth distribution and left the class system intact. On the other hand, the French Revolution that began in 1789 and the October Revolution of 1917 in Russia were truly social revolutions in that they transformed property relations and changed radically the class systems in both countries.

Alexandra Boutri: Today’s left focuses too much on cultural issues without really challenging capitalism. Indeed, in the recent past, issues like multiculturalism and even certain variants of feminism have functioned like ideologies of capitalism. In addition, some segments of the left have a knack for spreading ideas that are either not well thought out or simply impractical. For instance, and I believe this also captures your own sentiments, I find talk about “degrowth” and “wealth tax” schemes that fail to address the dynamics of unfettered capital accumulation while making in addition ludicrous claims that their implementation would solve the climate crisis as rather wishy-washy responses to capitalist crises and thus by no means game-changing strategies. My question then is this: What sort of new ideas would qualify, in your view, as game changers for the contemporary capitalist environment in the United States?

C. J. Polychroniou: I have already mentioned universal healthcare. In any case, it would be rather easy for anyone, I think, to simply suggest ideas to improve the state of the US economy and to create a better society but that would be meaningless if the ideas themselves weren't accompanied by concrete steps and specific policy proposals on how to erect alternative socioeconomic arrangements. But we need expertise for that to happen. That being said, a new project has been launched by the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst called Game Changers: Economic Policies for a Working America. It’s a project that was conceived of and is being directed by Gerald Epstein, a world-leading progressive economist who also happens to be PERI’s co-director. The issues addressed range from health and the environment to trade and finance. The policy briefs produced by different economists contain the sort of policy proposals that are desperately needed for rewriting the rules of the US economy in a manner that caters first and foremost to the needs and interests of American workers. I recommend everyone interested in progressive ideas on how to create a fairer, greener, and sustainable US economy to study some of the policy briefs that have been posted on PERI's website.

The United States should not roll out the red carpet for a foreign leader who has systematically starved and slaughtered thousands of people, including children.

This simple principle is what led New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to declare that Benjamin Netanyahu is not welcome in the Big Apple and call on the federal government to honor the International Criminal Court's arrest warrant for the Israeli prime minister.

By publishing this speech, which is now the most popular video he has ever posted on social media, Mayor Mamdani did what no mayor before him dared: speak the truth about American complicity in the Israeli government's human rights abuses.

For decades, New York City's leaders have gone out of their way to embrace all things Israel. From Eric Adams to Rudy Giuliani and beyond, past mayors have praised Israeli leaders, traveled to Israel, encouraged the purchase of Israeli bonds, and supported policies designed to suppress criticism of the Israeli government, including unconstitutional anti-boycott orders.

Mayor Mamdani has made clear that he will not stay silent when a mass murderer of children plans to visit New York City. Most New Yorkers agree with him.

Rather than engage honestly with the substance of Mayor Mamdani's change in course, most Israel advocacy organizations responded to his speech by effectively claiming that criticism of Benjamin Netanyahu is somehow equivalent to criticism of Jewish people. The Anti-Defamation League and other prominent pro-Israel groups even tried to blame the mayor, without any evidence whatsoever, for an attack on an Asian man and Jewish man that occurred in the days after the speech.

The argument that criticizing Israel is inherently antisemitic—which has been used to silence college students, elected officials, and other critics of the Gaza genocide—is both dishonest and dangerous.

It should go without saying, yet must apparently be said again, that Benjamin Netanyahu is not the Jewish community.

Conflating Netanyahu with Jews around the world undermines the fight against real antisemitism. It also insults the many Jewish Americans who have vocally criticized Netanyahu's war crimes in Gaza and called for an end to US support for those crimes.

What the Israeli government's worst enablers have revealed through their hysterical response to Mayor Mamdani's speech is that they simply cannot tolerate any criticism whatsoever of the Israeli government, even criticism focused exclusively on Benjamin Netanyahu, and that they are willing to conflate the entire Jewish community with Netanyahu in a bid to protect Israel from legitimate criticism.

As for those who try to justify the antisemitism smear by claiming that Mayor Mamdani gives an inordinate amount of attention to Israel, this claim ignores three important points.

For one thing, Israel is actively committing its crimes with billions in American taxpayer dollars and weapons, which is why it warrants so much attention from the American people.

Second, the Israeli government's supporters are the ones who insisted that mayors of New York City embrace Israel's policies, defend Israel from criticism, and make Israel their first foreign visit. Mamdani has given Israel far less attention than Eric Adams, Michael Bloomberg, and Rudy Giuliani.

Third, national and local reporters keep asking Mamdani about Israel, sometimes the exact same questions about whether Israel has a right to exist. Don't blame Mamdani for answering the questions

Mayor Mamdani has made clear that he will not stay silent when a mass murderer of children plans to visit New York City. Most New Yorkers agree with him. So do many Americans; a recent poll showed 46% of Americans believe Netanyahu should be arrested if he comes to the United States. Another poll showed that Mamdani has a higher favorability rating among Jewish Americans than Netanyahu.

The claim that criticizing Israel's human rights abuses is antisemitic no longer works on the American public, and it is long past time for Israel's supporters to stop telling it.

It would seem that the Israeli settlers are out of control. Their violent actions have either been encouraged by the Israel Defense Forces or Israeli government, or protected by the former and quietly supported by the latter. This support exists as they set homes on fire, attack Palestinian residents, and destroy their olive trees in the West Bank. Such terrorist activity is rarely penalized in the country’s justice system because the state supports the policy of mass expulsion of the Palestinians from the West Bank.

Last Friday in Tal, four Palestinians and two Israelis were killed after there was an ISIS-like incursion into the Palestinian village. A Palestinian living in one of the attacked homes grabbed a settler’s rifle and shot two Israelis before being killed by the IDF. In response to this act of self-defense, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has advocated for turning the West Bank into Beit Hanoun, a city in Gaza that Israel destroyed during its genocide. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for “intensive counterterrorism operation[s]” and for settler outposts to expand in the West Bank.

The ISIS-KKK-like terrorist settlers reacted by torching mosques and setting fire to homes in villages, attacking an ambulance transporting a patient, and firing live ammunition at Palestinian residents. This comes on the heels of Israeli settlers detaining US Rep. and 2028 presidential hopeful Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) in early July when he visited a Palestinian village that had been destroyed by settlers.

In the wider context, Israeli settlers and the IDF have killed nearly 1,200 Palestinians, including 250 children, in the West Bank since the genocidal war on Gaza after October 7. Making matters worse, Israeli terroristic violence by settlers has increased by 63% in the first half of 2026 compared with the second half of 2025. They may seem unhinged, but it is the far-right government that has fueled this level of violence.

The appearance of the Israeli settlers being out of control is a sleight of hand. They are working, like the KKK did under state governments in the American South, under the auspices of the Israeli government.

With horror, in the ashes of the failed Iraq War, ISIS drove masses of people from their homes across wide swaths of Iraq and Syria during the mid-2010s in the hope of reestablishing an Islamic state that was far more brutal than any Islamic caliphate throughout history. The creation of Israel was similar, in the hope of establishing a long-lost Jewish state in historic Palestine via ethnic cleansing of roughly 750,000 people. Both ISIS and Zionist-Israeli forces and settlers have, over time, driven millions of residents from their homes using genocide, terror, and mass murder to recapture an imagined past. ISIS was defeated thanks to Iran, the United States, Syria, and Iraqi forces working together. After the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, the Israeli version of ISIS reawakened from its post-Nakba lull, but at a slower pace until the 21st century. It was in this century that we have seen vast, state-backed settler expansion, land theft, and the destruction of Palestinian livelihoods, usually under the approving eyes of the IDF and the Israeli government. We have also seen over 73,000 Gazans killed by the IDF in the past three years during the genocidal war; the dead were mostly civilian, including about 21,000 children. Now the Israeli army, reneging on ceasefire terms, controls 70% of the Gaza Strip and already has plans for three Israeli settlements in Gaza where 1.9 million Palestinians have been displaced.

But as Zionists-cum-Israelis have used violence and dispossession for well over a century in attempts to drive Palestinians out of Palestine, do they really think that they will ever fully succeed? They certainly have the US superpower’s blessing.

Yet the people of Palestine have time and perseverance on their side. They have a history that has seen the Assyrian, Babylonian, Roman, and Greek empires come and go. They have seen the uncouth Crusaders’ relatively brief attempt to occupy the Holy Land. They’ve borne witness to the Byzantine, Umayyad, and Abbasid regimes. But they are still resisting in Gaza and the West Bank.

The appearance of the Israeli settlers being out of control is a sleight of hand. They are working, like the KKK did under state governments in the American South, under the auspices of the Israeli government’s goal of annexing and depopulating the West Bank of its Indigenous Palestinians.

However, they will not succeed.

The Palestinians have resilience and justice on their side. They have the support of people around the world, particularly in developing countries, and increasingly in Europe and even the United States. For example, this month Democrats in Congress followed the will of the American people and voted overwhelmingly to block military assistance to Israel.

This is only a start.

Despite the odds, Palestinians have always shown courageous resilience during famine, genocide, and land theft. Having more international support will ensure that they are not removed from their land.

This is the hardest article I’ve ever had to write.

On Sunday July 19th we lost our kind, brilliant friend and colleague, Richard Heinberg.

The world has lost a voice of clear, truth-telling wisdom—a man whose work reached millions of people and fundamentally changed the lives of thousands. Perhaps that includes you. It certainly does me.

Richard died after a short, brutal illness. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer just two weeks before his passing. As you can imagine, we’re reeling and gutted.

In ways big and small, Richard displayed humility, gentleness, and joy—especially for someone grappling with such complex and difficult subject matter.

If Richard’s contributions impacted you in any way, we’d love to hear your reflections. Please visit his memorial site to share your own stories or learn more about Richard.

Countless people came to know Richard only through his books, articles, lectures, and interviews. Yet many felt as though they knew him personally. That was one of his remarkable gifts. He challenged people to face difficult truths without giving up on beauty, community, or the possibility of living well within Earth’s limits.

There’s so much I can and simply cannot say about Richard as a person and as a writer and teacher. Working alongside Richard for the last 18 years has been one of the biggest gifts in my life. In ways big and small, Richard displayed humility, gentleness, and joy—especially for someone grappling with such complex and difficult subject matter. An inveterate introvert, Richard was often quiet in groups but when he spoke it was additive, given with generosity, kindness, and humor, and always with a focus on the greater good.

When he wrote, on the other hand, it was with such powerful clarity, unflinching truth telling, and a talent for presenting complex issues in a brilliantly accessible way. He could weave together ecology, thermodynamics, history, anthropology, behavioral psychology, politics, and more into expansive explorations, as he did with his 14th and final book, Power: Limits and Prospects for Human Survival, or into succinct storytelling, as he did when narrating the award-winning animation, “300 Years of Fossil Fuels in 300 Seconds.” He could jump from writing about the collapse of industrial civilization to writing about what he learned from chickens. Perhaps the best example of Richard’s breadth is this recording of him playing the violin and giving a talk on “Post-Carbon Music” at the New England Conservatory of Music.

I’ll miss Richard’s smile, his laugh. I’ll miss the few times when I got to see him get mad at the stupidity or cowardice of those in power. I’ll miss hearing him talk about trying to conquer an early jazz tune or the simple joy he got from his afternoon chocolate or shot of espresso. I’ll desperately miss the way he could take my meandering ideas for topics to explore and turn them into brilliantly cogent essays in a matter of hours or days. I simply loved our collaborations.

While grieving and in shock, and frankly a little lost about how Post Carbon Institute will find its voice without him, I think what Richard would want is for each of us to redouble our efforts toward his vision of people and nature thriving within ecological limits. One full of bird song, music, and laughter.

We would love to hear from you. Please share your remembrances of Richard here.

With a heavy heart,

Asher Miller

On June 25, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that decisions made by the Department of Homeland Security regarding Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, are not subject to judicial review. As the American Immigration Council notes, because of the Supreme Court’s procedures, that decision will not formally go into effect until 32 days after the ruling was issued. This small window has allowed the lower courts to continue blocking the Trump administration’s efforts to prematurely end humanitarian protections for Haitians and other groups.

That all ends on July 27—today, 32 days after Mullin v. Doe, hundreds of thousands of TPS recipients from Haiti and several other countries are expected to lose their work permits. More terminations will follow in the upcoming months. This includes protections for people from Somalia (August 20), El Salvador (September 9), Sudan (October 19), Ukraine (October 19) and Lebanon (November 27). The latter of which are currently facing violent military invasions from Russia and Israel respectively.

With the Supreme Court’s mandate now going into effect, there will be little, if anything, the lower courts can do to block these terminations.

To be frank, the situation is bleak. While the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) contends that conditions in Haiti have “improved enough that it is safe for Haitian citizens to return home,” the State Department actively advises Americans to avoid traveling to Haiti “for any reason due to the risk of crime, terrorism, kidnapping, unrest, and limited healthcare.” Similar travel advisories have been issued for Syria, Burma, Lebanon, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Ukraine, and Yemen.

This is what passes as “generosity” in President Donald Trump’s “Christian nation”: intentionally putting the lives of hundreds of thousands of hardworking, law-abiding people in danger while offering them a pittance to leave their lives and loved ones behind.

The Trump administration knows these countries are not safe. It knows that deporting TPS recipients to these places puts their lives at risk. It simply does not care.

On July 17, DHS General Counsel James Percival posted on Twitter-X: “For those with an expiring TPS designation, these final days provide one last opportunity to accept $2,600 and a free flight home. We strongly suggest you take advantage of this generous offer.” This is what passes as “generosity” in President Donald Trump’s “Christian nation”: intentionally putting the lives of hundreds of thousands of hardworking, law-abiding people in danger while offering them a pittance to leave their lives and loved ones behind.

Thus far, congressional efforts have failed to stop this blatant cruelty. On July 23, Senate Republicans blocked an attempt to extend TPS for Haitians.

To make matters even worse, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has reportedly made plans to ramp up operations to arrest and deport Haitian migrants. Documents obtained by CBS News suggest that these operations could start as early as this week—not even a month after ICE agents murdered Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero.

These plans include targeting migrants in Ohio, home to one of the nation’s largest Haitian communities. These are the same communities that, in 2024, then-candidates Trump and Vice President JD Vance targeted with their racist lies about “they are eating the dogs” and “eating the cats.” And to be clear, even Vance admits that they were lies: “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that's what I'm going to do.” This is the same vile bigotry that Justice Samuel Alito and the other conservatives on the Supreme Court found to be not “overtly racial.”

Importantly, this is not the first time that ICE has reportedly made plans targeting Ohio. In late January, news outlets reported that ICE was preparing to launch an operation in the state lasting at least 30 days. That operation would have started sometime after TPS for Haitians were slated to end on February 3. Fortunately, a district court intervened and extended those protections, thereby preventing this Minnesota-style raid from occurring.

This is the reality that TPS recipients now face: either they willingly self-deport to an unsafe country or remain in the US and be hunted by ICE agents.

While there is still time (and to be clear, and it’s quickly running out), I urge everyone to call their representatives and senators and demand that they extend TPS for Haitians, Syrians, and others whose protections are at risk.

What few legal options they may have had are quickly disappearing. The Supreme Court’s decision bars review of any non-constitutional claim. Any challenge regarding racial discrimination “will likely fail.” Meanwhile, the Trump administration has indefinitely paused visa processing for nationals from 75 countries, including Haiti, Syria, Somalia, Ethiopia, and Afghanistan. On February 2, the National Immigration Law Center and several other advocacy groups filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of this policy. That case—Catholic Legal Immigration Network (CLINIC) v. Rubio—is currently pending in court.

The administration is also making it harder to obtain a green card, not processing new Deferred Action for Childhood Arivals applications (while also intentionally delaying the processing of renewals), and severely restricting refugee and asylum programs. As the CATO Institute notes, the Trump administration’s policies have significantly cut legal immigration far more than unauthorized entries. Their analysis found that these cuts are harming US citizens, undermining US prosperity, and increasing the US deficit.

Ending TPS for Haitians and other groups will only worsen these problems. Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), for instance, remarked that this decision will “create a crisis in our hospitals, nursing, and in the I/DD [intellectual and developmental disabilities] community” where roughly one-third of Haitian TPS holders work. Gov. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio) has warned, “If [Haitians] lose temporary protected status and they no longer can work and the companies can’t employ them, that’s a blow to the economy, that’s a blow to the state.”

The tragic irony in all this is that the Trump administration’s policies serve no one. TPS is helping people in dire need—people who are contributing to the US. Deporting them only makes the country poorer. If ending those protections leads to more ICE agents flooding our cities, then all of us will be less safe.

As things stand now, Congress remains the most—and perhaps only—viable option for helping TPS recipients. While there is still time (and to be clear, and it’s quickly running out), I urge everyone to call their representatives and senators and demand that they extend TPS for Haitians, Syrians, and others whose protections are at risk.

Helping these people is the morally right thing to do. It is also politically and economically in the best interest of the country and international community. For their sake and our own, we must extend TPS.

When House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries sent out a recent “dear colleague” letter, its second sentence cited “the position articulated by… pro-peace organizations like J Street.” The congressman and J Street were opposing an amendment to block $3.3 billion in military shipments and other aid to Israel.

Jeffries (NY) contended that the measure was “overly broad.” On the same day, using the same phrase “overly broad,” J Street issued a statement declaring that “we support Leader Jeffries’ decision to oppose the amendment.”

Both Jeffries and J Street respectfully noted that many members of Congress had understandable reasons to back the measure. The next day, July 15, a record 103 Democrats voted in favor of blocking weaponry to Israel.

While attempting to prevent a high number of yes votes, Jeffries and J Street had emphasized mutual agreement to validate a position that amounted to support for arming genocide.

After the House vote, J Street said that “we welcome House Democratic leadership taking a stronger stance on using US leverage to pressure the Israeli government to change course.” But there are no credible reasons to believe that J Street or the “House Democratic leadership” are serious about using US leverage to “change course” in ways that would really impede the genocidal state of Israel.

Last month, a United Nations commission concluded that genocide is continuing, as Israeli forces intentionally target children in Gaza. “A significant body of research by legal and rights experts has concluded that Israel is intent on destroying Palestinians, including analyses by UN investigators, rights bodies such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and genocide scholars worldwide,” The Guardian reported this summer.

Jeffries, a seven-term representative from New York City, has received upwards of $1.7 million from pro-Israel donors. He is now third from the top of such recipients among the thousands of House members since 1990.

During the 34 months since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, J Street has evolved from unequivocally supporting Israeli military actions in Gaza to fervently criticizing them and calling for an end to restrictions on humanitarian aid. Yet the organization has never responded adequately in ways commensurate with the actual horrific events.

Early last year, while writing an article for The Nation, I researched J Street’s public statements ever since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza. I found that “none of J Street’s 132 news releases between October 7 [2023] and the start of the [temporary] ceasefire in late January 2025 called for an end to shipments of the US bombs and weapons that were killing those civilians while enforcing Israel’s policy of using starvation as a weapon of war.”

Throughout the 16-month period, as I pointed out: “J Street news releases echoed pronouncements coming from the White House and State Department, becoming grim parodies of wishful thinking and empty warnings. The headlines of J Street releases were largely contoured around hollow claims from the Biden administration that it was diligently striving to end the death and agony in Gaza.”

Only gradually has J Street expressed support for—minimally—curbing US military aid to Israel. Meanwhile, as has been the case since J Street’s founding nearly 20 years ago, many members of Congress have hidden behind J Street to legitimize their support for Israel, while often repeating the expedient “two-state solution” fantasy.

Describing itself as “pro-Israel, pro-peace, pro-democracy,” J Street has long been widely seen as a liberal Jewish-led alternative to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s right-wing politics. But J Street’s record shows that it has gone out of its way to trumpet denial.

On January 16, 2024, the organization put out a news release with this headline: “J Street Rejects Allegation at International Court of Justice of Genocide in War Against Hamas in Gaza.” Four months later, another J Street news release was equally emphatic, making clear that “J Street continues to reject the allegation of genocide in this case.”

In December 2024, both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch released reports unequivocally stating that Israel was engaged in genocide.

At last, in August 2025, J Street’s president and driving force since its founding, Jeremy Ben-Ami, finally acknowledged the reality of Israeli genocide. “Until now, I have tried to deflect and defend when challenged to call this genocide,” he wrote in a blog post. “I have, however, been persuaded rationally by legal and scholarly arguments that international courts will one day find that Israel has broken the international genocide convention.”

J Street’s leader wrote those words a year ago. Yet he and his organization just teamed up with Hakeem Jeffries in support of continuing massive arms shipments to the genocidal Israeli government.

And so continues the convenient evasion with the absurd motto “pro-Israel, pro-peace, pro-democracy.”

“Leader Jeffries, President Trump is calling.”

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY): “Hello, Mr. President, this is a rare occasion!”

Donald Trump: “Well, Hakeem, I want to have a confidential talk with you on a secure line. Agreed?”

HJ: “Sure, since you made the call.”

DT: “By the way, Hakeem, my Saudi friends tell me that your first name in Arabic means ‘wise.’”

HJ: “I try not to dwell on that, Mr. President.”

DT: “Funny! Here is why I am calling. To thank you for opposing Impeachment. You’ve shown amazing political courage by standing up to the vast majority of Democratic voters who want to impeach me, remove me, and more from my beautifully renovated White House (Trump House, as we call it in our inner circle). The people are screaming at your Democrats in local town meetings because, as you know, the Dems aren’t pushing for impeachment.”

DT: “Even more so, are the real guts you have in shutting down your House Democrats shouting for Impeachment now, especially after my remarks about destroying Iran’s 5,000 years of civilization in April. You also blocked them from signing on to Rep. John Larson’s (D-Conn.) treasonous Articles of Impeachment and shut him up as well. TREMENDOUS exercise of power, Hakeem! You’ve freed yourself from Crazy Nancy, who impeached me twice. I admire that and wanted to tell you that directly.”

HJ: “As you say, Mr. President,” (noncommittedly.)

DT: “Hakeem, I wouldn’t say this publicly, but it looks like you will be Speaker in January and by a comfortable margin. So, we’re going to have to DEAL with each other, right?”

“I assume so,” replied Jeffries, wondering what comes next.

DT: “Not on the big issues, like strong support for Israel and a big military budget. I like what you said a while back that Israel could be the Sixth Borough of New York. And you have happily accepted tons of dough from the AIPAC PACs, as we have.”

DT: “Over the years, you’ve backed bigger military budgets to keep our country strong and NO. 1! Keep doing that, and I’ll go along with a tough audit of the Pentagon budget, which I’m told will take four years… I’m also OK with restoring the cuts to Medicaid, food and energy assistance, and filling the empty seats in the regulatory agencies with the required number of Democrats OK'd by you.”

DT: “Plus, as Ronald Reagan did, I’ll propose a task force to come to a bipartisan agreement to shore up Social Security for our elderly. And Melania wants me to say that I’ll join you with a real child tax credit for 60 million kids.”

HJ: “Sounds good, Mr. President. Can you get your GOP up here to go along?”

DT: “I’ll take care of them. With Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), we’ll keep them in line. As you say to your rebellious Dems, where are they going to go?”

DT: “By now, you’re probably wondering what I want in return to make it a Deal? I want you to stay with your opposition to any drive to Impeach. Explain it how you will—‘too distracting, too divisive, don’t have the two-thirds vote in the Senate, the people’s business is your priority, whatever.’ As you know, the Impeachment articles would bring up the Epstein smears, the so-called ‘Kitchen Table’ issues, and alleged non-enforcement of the laws. Also, the tax stuff with the IRS, the necessary spending directly by me for our great military actions abroad, and so on. I got matters pretty much under control with the backing of six Supreme Court justices, my veto, and pardon powers. What I can’t control, without drastic actions, is the impeachment power in Congress that is final and can’t be sent to the Supreme Court. I’m being very frank, here, Hakeem. And you know the ways I can fight back.”

DT: “Also, I don’t want you to oppose funding my beautiful White House ballroom and the greatest Arch in the world. Pretty modest requests, wouldn’t you agree, Hakeem?”

“It is too hypothetical for any response,” said Hakeem. “While I believe in compromise for the ‘greater good’ to be achieved, we have to wait until after November. Besides, as you falsely say about us, you are really trying every day to steal the elections. We also don’t know how pliable the incumbent Republicans will be to your demands. Many may blame you for their losses. I must stress that any understanding we arrive at has to be open and subject to consultation with our leadership.”

DT: “I’m not surprised by what you just said. Still, I think this exchange was worthwhile as a preview of any deal. Before closing—have my buddy Mike Johnson calling on the line again—I got to praise you for shutting down Rep. Jamie Raskin’s (D-Md.) toying with an ugly rogue hearing on impeachment by the Dems on the Judiciary Committee. That would have set me off BIG TIME! Unlike Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Raskin gets so much fawning press that it’s hard to attack him without the fake news media going bananas.”

DT: “I guess you just told him: ‘Raskin, either you’re part of the leadership or you’re on your own—NO IMPEACHMENT HEARING, you understand.’ And he took it, he took it. Great job, I must say.”

HJ: “No comment Mr. President. Thanks for your call. God Save America.”

LIVE 9:00 am Eastern time, Streaming Anytime:

Conflict reporter/writer/cartoonist Ted Rall and political analyst Jamarl Thomas deprogram you from mainstream media every weekday at 9 AM ET.

Today we discuss:

• The Civil War inside the Democratic Party turns spectacularly ugly over the Michigan Primary next week. Desperate to defeat insurgent DSAer Abdul El-Sayed, AIPAC throws $30 million-plus at centrist Haley Stevens in a race that quickly turned to racist Islamophobic slurs, and the involvement of Bernie-shivving North Carolina party boss James Clyburn. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party are far behind Republicans when it comes to money. Trump controls a $400 million super PAC, and the RNC is sitting on nearly $130 million. The DNC is $2 million in debt.

• So much for fleeing the U.S. to Europe. Firefighters in France and Spain are battling wildfires close to the cities of Bordeaux and Madrid. Spanish authorities said fires close to Madrid remain “active and uncontrolled.” The wildfires raging in southwestern France—where 250,000 people have been evacuated—are so intense they have created “fire clouds,” a phenomenon never previously seen in the country. Temperatures in hard-hit areas in both Spain and France are expected to rise in the coming days.

• Ukraine attacked an Iranian commercial vessel in the Caspian Sea, killing a sailor and injuring others, as the war in the Middle East threatened to overlap with the Ukraine conflict. Ukraine implied that the ship carried Iranian-designed Shahed drones destined for Russia. Meanwhile, the US—low on munitions—unilaterally paused bombing Iran.

LIVE ON RUMBLE: https://rumble.com/c/DeProgramShow

https://x.com/tedrall

https://x.com/JamarlThomas

#tedrall #jamarlthomas #news #politics

The post DSA vs. DNC | DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

As Big Tech races to build water-guzzling, energy-hungry data centers for its artificial intelligence, talk of an “AI race” between the United States and China has permeated public discourse. Pundits, politicians, and the media have all joined tech corporations in selling this narrative. And it’s giving license to Big Tech and their political handmaidens to ruin our communities, exploit our every action (both online and via AI-powered surveillance), and steal the wealth of human knowledge for private gain.

But the idea of an AI race between China and the US isn’t grounded in reality. The researchers, companies, and governments behind Chinese and US AI development are pursuing completely different goals.

The discourse in the US assumes that achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI)—computers that mimic human consciousness—would be so momentous and earth-shattering that clearly this must be the goal of anyone pursuing AI development. But that’s not the main goal of Chinese AI development. And a competition in which the competitors are running toward different finish lines isn’t a race.

If we allow the myth of an AI race with China to give Big Tech free rein, we face a more polluted, less equal world.

A Race Doesn’t Have Two Different Finish Lines

While the US is focused on artificial general intelligence (AGI) powered by Large Language Models (LLMs), Chinese developers are focused on AI embedded in products. It’s ChatGPT versus robots.

Yes, China is developing LLMs, although largely in an open-source way as opposed to the for-profit competition in the US. Recent news stories report that China is “catching” the US in LLM development. Indeed, the latest Chinese model outperforms leading US models. But this isn’t evidence of an LLM-AGI race. Instead, it shows that without making AGI its main focus, China is capable of developing its own models almost as quickly as US companies.

If every environmental review, every question raised by a community, every issue around water usage and electricity prices can be dismissed or lessened as “helping China,” then meaningful political debate can be silenced.

More to the point, LLM development in China is incidental to the country’s real goal for AI. Its focus remains on products embedded with AI and robots. Or, as AI policy researcher Liang Zheng says, in China, “The first priority is to use it to benefit ordinary people” (debatable, but indicates the kind of AI they are pursuing).

In the US, the first priority is to exploit people so that the tech oligarchs can profit. It’s chatbots all the way down.

This isn’t to argue that China is doing it “right” and the US is doing it “wrong.” Either approach will lead to a future in which citizens become increasingly disempowered. In which work becomes more scarce and less lucrative for most people. And in which a handful of billionaires grow wealthier and more powerful.

But the arguments being hauled out to support the destructive growth of hyperscale data centers are based on a fallacy. There is no need to “beat China.” China and the US are racing on separate tracks, in different races, with different finish lines.

These two separate approaches also explain the mind-boggling scale of the data center invasion we currently face. The massive hyperscale data centers—recent proposals would demand up to 5 gigawatts, enough electricity to power roughly 3.75 million US households—are only “required” because the US is racing toward AGI. Meanwhile, the embodied AI dominating in China does not require the same amount of computational power.

The truth is, we don’t need hyperscale data centers to “beat China.” We aren’t racing China. We’re killing ourselves so Silicon Valley can race itself.

How Big Tech Is Weaponizing the “AI Race” to Build Data Centers

Yet, the “AI race” story is a convenient lie for Big Tech and its political protectors. It is a neat political argument designed to insulate the industry from criticism and regulation.

If every environmental review, every question raised by a community, every issue around water usage and electricity prices can be dismissed or lessened as “helping China,” then meaningful political debate can be silenced. Real regulation—if even possible—can be avoided. Fear becomes a substitute for policy.

We understand why O’Leary and the other Tech Broligarchs don’t understand the grassroots opposition to data centers building across the country. It’s hard to spot the grassroots from the window of a private jet.

At the same time, data center developers and their minions in Washington have tried to weaponize false claims about foreign ties to the anti-data center movement. Kevin O’Leary of Shark Tank fame has explicitly said that our movement is being funded by China. He has no evidence because evidence of a falsehood can’t exist. In fact, Fox News has been forced to retract its coverage of his claims.

We understand why O’Leary and the other Tech Broligarchs don’t understand the grassroots opposition to data centers building across the country. It’s hard to spot the grassroots from the window of a private jet. But the opposition is real and organic, and no amount of disinformation and pushing the “AI race against China” scare tactic will derail the movement.

Big Tech Is Selling Us a Dystopian Future

The myth of an AI race with China threatens to propel us into Big Tech’s vision of the future—one that’s more unequal than ever. Yes, tech leaders suggest their algorithms will cure cancer, but their real goal is and has been to increase their power and wealth at the expense of the rest of us.

Even as American Tech Broligarchs have distanced themselves from earlier prophecies of widespread job loss, their vision of the future will see the vast majority of us out of meaningful work. We’ll be subject to living off whatever meager handouts are created in an attempt to mollify us.

Even if there were an AI race, is it worth running, let alone winning, if the prize is a dystopian future of mass misery with a thin layer of super wealthy tech oligarchs at the top?

At the same time, our movement will be traced whether or not we use the electronic gadgets they sell us. Already, surveillance devices linked to AI can recognize our faces, record our license plates, and report our movements. Companies and governments can buy this data in order to track us.

Meanwhile, “surveillance pricing” allows companies to change prices in an instant so that they can exploit our needs for their profit. Deepfake videos have already added to the rapidly decaying trust in a commonly shared world and a basic set of facts necessary for a functioning democracy. And this is but a scratch of the surface.

Even if there were an AI race, is it worth running, let alone winning, if the prize is a dystopian future of mass misery with a thin layer of super wealthy tech oligarchs at the top?

Big Tech’s Dystopian Vision Isn’t Inevitable

But we should be clear. This dystopian vision is not the inevitable outcome of unstoppable technological “progress” as the Tech Broligarchs would have us believe. Each and every decision being made to advance AI is a political decision. And, for now, we still have the ability to determine our political future.

Across the country, there is a growing resistance to the nightmare being shoved down our throats. Communities are coming together to fight the spread of destructive hyperscale data centers. Already in 2026, more than $130 billion-worth of proposed data center projects have been defeated and canceled.

That’s the real “AI Race.” Not China versus the US, but us versus Big Tech.

Communities are taking control of their futures by placing moratoriums on new data centers. New York enacted a one-year pause on new centers, and there is growing support for a nationwide pause in Congress.

We aren’t destined to live in Elon Musk’s fever dream. We have the power to stop him and his fellow Broligarchs. When we organize, we win. That’s the real “AI Race.” Not China versus the US, but us versus Big Tech. That’s not only a race worth running—it’s one we have to win.

As the US-Israeli war against Iran expands throughout the Middle East, involving the Houthis and resulting in the closure of the Red Sea as well as the Persian Gulf, oil and gas prices are rising.–oil prices have hit a six-week high amid the conflict.

The post Gas Preppers, Activate appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

Breathe deep, sigh, embrace the next word: W-A-R.

It doesn’t go away. I write about it far too often, and every time I do I feel torn inside... even though I remain personally safe from it (at least for now). Words can so easily turn the actions and consequences of war into abstractions, while failing to question why it exists at all. War is simply who we are. This is a hard certainty to shatter. But...

“Nothing exposes the bankruptcy of America’s approach to Iran more clearly than its return to more war as the answer to its own failures.”

So wrote Sina Toossi and Nancy Okail recently in The Nation. Their words start opening a deeper level of understanding, one that I’m groping for. They go on:

It is tempting to dismiss the war resumption as another example of Donald Trump’s impulsiveness. It is something deeper. Trump is less breaking with America’s approach to Iran than taking it to its logical conclusion.

The logical conclusion, as far as I can tell, is to declare victory and then start looking for the next enemy... the next evil that threatens us. This is “peace”: that brief moment of silence while everyone reloads, as someone once put it. In other words, war is inevitable and ongoing. It solves nothing. It changes nothing, except to intensify people’s hatred, toward “someone,” and their desire for revenge. It shatters connection. It shatters healing.

War’s primary function is to perpetuate itself. It’s a collective addiction to power: power over others, not with them. The enemy is always present and always dehumanized. And war doesn’t always manifest itself through militarism. Consider the criminal justice system, aka the prison system, for instance.

So let me restart this column. The word I want to embrace is: P-E-A-C-E.

Peace equals evolution. Peace means power with others, not over them. And it manifests in numerous, and often unnoticed, ways. Peace is complex and rarely produces great headlines. Over the years I’ve written about many different peace organizations, which exist in many different contexts.

In essence, peace means embracing conflict, understanding it—through non-judgmental communication between everyone involved—and looking for ways to heal, rather than punish, any harm that has occurred.

Here’s part of a column I wrote about 10 years ago, after I had attended a conference on “soul repair” in Des Moines, Iowa:

The community was out of control—the children, oh my God, the children, were sniffing gasoline and pretty much abandoning any pretense of a future—and the social and criminal-justice systems were just adding to the problem. Nothing was working.
“Our children slammed us against a brick wall," Burma Bushie said.

This is the story of a culture in shambles. It was the early ’80s. Bushie’s community is called the Hollow Water First Nation Reserve, a village of about 900 people in eastern Manitoba, more or less at the end of the highway. There was one road in and one road out.

They may have felt utterly isolated in their troubles, but what a few of them started to do—in synchronicity with people in other Indigenous communities—has spread hope and awareness across the planet. They began reaching beyond the known (i.e., Western) world, deep into their souls and into the roots of a lost way of life, to save their children and the future...

“Our children were acting out—not learning. That was our beginning," she said. "We couldn’t hide anymore. The Indian reservation-school system, the child welfare system—all these systems that came to help us more or less became our enemies."

The committed team of change-bringers began talking to one another about their own lives, as well as the troubles around them. They began addressing the issue of alcoholism, an obvious surface manifestation of far deeper matters. "Each time we cleared up one level, we found another," Bushie said. “When we got to sexual abuse—we knew that’s what we had to deal with...”

And it became a community process. When someone has been harmed, people sit in a circle as equals—victim, perpetrator, any others who are affected—and everyone has a chance to talk. When they’re not talking, they listen. There is only one goal: healing

Rupert Ross, who was at the conference with Burma Bushie, wrote about all this in his remarkable book, Returning to the Teachings. He had been a Canadian crown (i.e., prosecuting) attorney, and Hollow Water was part of his coverage area. His job was to prosecute offenders, send them to prison. He began to realize all this was doing was creating more damage to the community, and that Western “justice” had nothing to do with healing. It broke connections. It created bad guys and proceeded to dehumanize them.

He wrote, in his book: “The word ‘healing’ seems such a soft word, but, as I will show later, Hollow Water’s healing process is anything but soft. In fact, jail is a much easier alternative, because it does not require the victimizer to face the real truths about abuse.”

And this is peace: not a simplistic lull while enemies reload—that is to say, nothing at all—but the ongoing creation of a world that belongs to all of us. It’s also known as evolution.

"Thirty-Year Sentence for Transporting Zines Is a Five-Alarm Fire for Free Speech,” an Intercept headline (6/26/26) shouted days after a federal court sentenced eight anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement protesters to a combined 450 years in prison.

The case stemmed from a July 4, 2025, protest outside the ICE Prairieland detention center in Alvarado, Texas. People had gathered for a noise demonstration to show their solidarity with the detainees inside, and one protester discharged his rifle after a police officer pulled his weapon, resulting in a minor injury to the officer.

Charges were brought against a total of 22 people from the Dallas-Fort Worth area in November 2025, after President Donald Trump signed an executive order declaring “antifa” a “terrorist organization,” and after the related National Security Presidential Memo 7 was issued declaring a wide swath of First Amendment-protected political views as “terrorist.”

Eight of the defendants were convicted in March and sentenced on June 23; another eight were sentenced in early July, four of whom became prosecution witnesses and received shorter sentences. This was the first successful government prosecution testing the claims of EO-18709 and NSPM-7 that previously protected views and protest activity are “terrorism.”

National reporting on the sentencing missed the actual story almost entirely: that a group of people opposed to the government’s ethnic cleansing policies were given decades-long prison terms for their political views and the exercise of their First Amendment right to protest.

One of the defendants, Daniel Sanchez Estrada, was not even at the protest. He was, as The Intercept’s headline correctly reported, sentenced to 30 years because he moved a box of zines. “Five-alarm fire” seems an accurate assessment.

No Alarm Bells

Yet the extremely harsh sentences for Sanchez Estrada and the others did not set off any alarm bells among corporate media, and were underreported by national news outlets that should have covered their clearly national implications. The New York Times (6/23/26) published an online piece that ran on page A14 in print—two days later. The Wall Street Journal (6/23/26) ran an article both online and in print, while The Washington Post (6/23/26) gave the story web-only treatment.

Meanwhile, national broadcast media largely sat this story out. CBS and ABC took a pass altogether. NBC (6/23/26) ran a version of The Associated Press’ reporting on its website, as did CNN (6/23/26), but no original reporting and nothing on their flagship evening news shows. PBS NewsHour (6/24/26) ran an analysis piece (I use that term lightly) the next day; and NPR’s Morning Edition (6/24/26) gave it two minutes.

By casually and inaccurately turning the protesters’ convictions into “terrorism” convictions, these outlets further reinforced the government’s narrative of violence and subversive threat.

The coverage of the Prairieland sentencing was similar, in both content and quantity, to the reporting on the case overall. The verdict in March garnered a single article from several national news outlets, but the trial itself was barely covered. An NPR Up First piece (2/17/26) reported on it when it started; The New York Times (2/24/26) ran a piece at the start of the second trial, after the mistrial; The Washington Post (3/5/26) reported on the trial once halfway through.

By comparison, The New York Times alone ran 153 pieces on Kyle Rittenhouse, the white supremacist who shot and killed two people during a Black Lives Matter protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, during the month of his trial in November 2021, a Nexis search revealed. Given the enormous stakes in the Prairieland case—NPR (2/17/26) accurately said “it could have nationwide implications for how left-wing movements are prosecuted”—the relative lack of coverage itself may well have implications for how left-wing movements are prosecuted.

But corporate media’s disinterest in the case is just the beginning of the problems. (There’s so much to cover on this that we’re not gonna have time for the mistrial, but the National Lawyers Guild can catch you up on that.) This piece will focus on the coverage of the June 23 sentencing as representative of the overall national reporting. (It does not look at local coverage.) If anything, the draconian prison terms should have made that coverage more skeptical than the previous coverage, but it did not.

‘Taking Part in an Armed Assault’

With the exception of PBS, every other national outlet covering the June sentencing framed the central and salient nature of the protest on July 4, 2025, as violence. The New York Times lead (6/23/26) said a jury had found the protesters “guilty of supporting terrorism while taking part in an armed assault.” The Wall Street Journal lead (6/23/26) said protesters were “accused of carrying out an attack on a Texas ICE facility.”

The Washington Post headline (6/23/26) characterized the demonstration as a “violent ICE protest.” The AP story (6/23/26) framed the event as “immigration center shooting and protest” (note the order), while NPR’s headline (6/24/26) described it simply as an “immigration center shooting.”

No one mentioned that Kyle Rittenhouse—who actually killed two people—was acquitted on self-defense grounds. Song’s conviction on attempted murder charges would be laughable if it weren’t so horrible.

What actually happened that night was that protesters set off fireworks as planned for their noise demonstration, and the evening was peaceful at first. Some protesters then engaged in property damage, including graffiti and slashed tires. When a police officer drew his gun and pointed it at the protesters, one of them, Benjamin Song, fired “suppressive shots,” aiming his rifle at the ground, in what he claims was self-defense. The bullet that struck the police officer “showed signs of impact with a hard surface,” as In These Times (3/26/26) reported, suggesting that it ricocheted off the ground. None of the national news stories on the sentencing included this information.

In the wake of the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, Song’s fear certainly seems plausible, but the judge in the case had barred the defense from arguing a self-defense claim. That fact was mentioned in only one outlet, NPR (6/24/26), and without any context. And no one mentioned that Kyle Rittenhouse—who actually killed two people—was acquitted on self-defense grounds. Song’s conviction on attempted murder charges would be laughable if it weren’t so horrible.

To describe these events as “an armed assault” is at best a wild exaggeration, and at worst a deliberate mischaracterization. Between the uncritical adoption of the government’s framing of the protest as violent and the omission of so much evidence that contradicts that claim, national reporting on the sentencing missed the actual story almost entirely: that a group of people opposed to the government’s ethnic cleansing policies were given decades-long prison terms for their political views and the exercise of their First Amendment right to protest.

PBS (6/24/26) stands out as the only outlet to have framed the story this way, leading with the headline, “Anti-ICE Protesters Sentenced to Decades in Prison in Latest Crackdown on Dissent.” It interviewed George University Law Center professor Paul Butler, who said, “The concern is, when people are labeled terrorists based on their political views, that chills free speech”—an understatement.

Neither NPR nor The Wall Street Journal managed to even mention the First Amendment, and The Washington Post’s only mention of it (6/23/26) was in a quote from a federal prosecutor who said the protesters’ actions were “a far cry from a peaceful protest or First Amendment expression.”

‘Convicted on Terrorism Charges’

National news stories also failed to interrogate the central claim by the government that the protesters’ action amounted to terrorism, and none explained the charge of “material support for terrorism,” the central charge all but Sanchez Estrada were convicted on.

Several outlets simply conflated “terrorism” and “material support for terrorism,” though the two are legally and substantively distinct. New York Times (6/23/26): “Six of the defendants who were convicted of terrorism charges… which was the first time terrorism charges had been brought against purported members of antifa.” NPR (6/24/26): “The group faced terrorism charges.” AP (6/23/26): “All but one of the eight defendants sentenced Tuesday were convicted on terrorism charges.”

By casually and inaccurately turning the protesters’ convictions into “terrorism” convictions, these outlets further reinforced the government’s narrative of violence and subversive threat.

Has opposition to fascism really been defenestrated from the Overton Window?

The actual charge, material support, rests on that “support” being linked to an identified terrorist organization, and the novelty and grave danger of the Prairieland case was precisely in linking the defendants’ banal activities that allegedly prove their membership in “antifa”—wearing black, being part of a book club that reads anarchist books, having left-wing literature in their possession—to a made-up domestic terrorist organization called “antifa.”

Most of the national reports on the sentencing mention Trump’s executive order designating “antifa” a “domestic terrorist organization,” and a few point out in a half sentence that there is no provision under US law for such a thing as a domestic terrorist organization (New York Times, 6/23/26; PBS, 6/24/26; AP, 6/23/26). But none spell out the alarming precedent being set here by a court legitimizing a legal category that literally does not exist in US law.

(The Brennan Center has an excellent primer on the executive order and NSPM-7 that presciently points out “extending the foreign material support for terrorism regime [to domestic organizations] would allow the government to formally assign the label to domestic groups with unpopular beliefs and prosecute anyone who supports them.”)

‘A Decentralized Movement’

All this brings us, of course, to “antifa.” All the news pieces found a way to counter the government’s fiction that antifa is an organization, variously describing it as “an umbrella term” (AP, 6/23/26), “a decentralized movement” (PBS, 6/24/26), an “ideology, not a centralized organization” (NPR, 6/24/26 ), “a loose network” (Wall Street Journal, 6/23/26), a “loosely knit movement” (Washington Post, 6/23/26), and a “movement [with] no central structure or formal membership” (New York Times, 6/23/26). A few reminded readers that “antifa” is short for anti-fascism.

But every single one of them also characterized it as “far left.” Has opposition to fascism really been defenestrated from the Overton Window? Or are corporate (and semi-corporate public) media contributing to the delegitimation of “antifa,” even as they recognize it is not exactly what Donald Trump declares it to be?

By leaving out the deliberate right-wing creation of “antifa,” while characterizing it as “far left,” media are contributing to the government narrative that “antifa” is a real and dangerous thing.

More fundamentally, “antifa” isn’t really any of those things the media say it is, either—a network, a movement, an ideology. It is a right-wing boogeyman constructed precisely for the purpose it is now being deployed to fulfill.

There are a handful of organizations in the US that explicitly identify as antifa, but the overwhelming majority of US leftists never used the term before the contemporary right, abetted by the media, put it on the map. At which point, most of us reacted with: “Antifa” isn’t a thing, but yes, I am proudly anti-fascist.

By leaving out the deliberate right-wing creation of “antifa,” while characterizing it as “far left,” media are contributing to the government narrative that “antifa” is a real and dangerous thing. This helps legitimize the legal fiction that is being used to criminalize dissent.

That a government with strong fascistic tendencies is going to smear its opponents as dangerous and violent is a given at this point. That a court will wholeheartedly follow them down the path of creating legal fictions in order to prosecute those opponents is an alarming development. But that a national press corps is so cowed by government cries of “terrorism!” that they fail to interrogate those legal fictions is a danger to the very freedoms they purport to embody.

A US$1.5 trillion defense budget isn't an accident; neither is the hunt for critical minerals, which the United States is fighting over with the same hunger it once reserved for oil. Under President Donald Trump, war has become more of a business plan than a matter of security. Strategic military moves are lining the pockets of Trump's friends and family with money. This includes the critical minerals rush to fatten Trump’s profitable war machine.

Feeding the War Machine

On February 28, the US and Israel began a ruthless bombing campaign in Iran, killing over 3,000 people in just 39 days, the majority of whom were civilians. Trump campaigned on “ending wars,” but instead has expanded military interventions and escalated new conflicts. In the first 11 months of his second term, Trump has bombed seven countries: Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela, and Yemen. He also threatened to take over Greenland by force to create missile defense bases and mine for minerals.

War-hungry Trump needs a powerful and constantly replenished arsenal, as his wars deplete weapon stockpiles. Military aggression in West Asia, particularly the war with Iran, has burned through the munitions faster than defense factories can replace them. The US used over 45% of its Precision Strike Missiles, about half of its THAAD and Patriot PAC-3 interceptors, nearly one-third of its Tomahawks, and over a fifth of its JASSMs in its war with Iran. These weapons rely heavily on critical minerals, leaving the US desperate for more to rebuild.

As exposed by the Oakland Institute in its recently released report, a key driver of the current race for critical minerals is the military-industrial complex. Military spending in the United States is growing rapidly, and with it, the need for critical minerals. Trump's proposed 2027 defense budget is a shocking US$1.5 trillion, almost twice the 2023 budget. The only thing a budget this large signifies is plans for future military expansion and campaigns. To support this growth, up to US$100 billion was allocated to the Department of War by Trump's “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” to produce critical minerals and related industries and projects.

AI, Critical Minerals, and Modern Warfare

This record-high military budget isn't just for building more of the same defense machines. The military is expanding its tech capabilities, with a plan for an “AI-first warfighting force.” The Trump administration has declared that its priority is to secure critical minerals for “vital national security and economic activities, including rising military threats and growing high-tech industries, such as artificial intelligence, data centers, nuclear energy, and new energy technologies.”

This web between the government, tech and AI corporations, mining companies, venture capital firms, and military institutions has emerged around a common goal: securing critical minerals and advancing the use of AI in the military.

In 2022, the Pentagon awarded US$9 billion of contracts to Google, Oracle, Microsoft, and Amazon to develop and manage the US military's cloud computing infrastructure. In addition, the Department of War has administered US$75 billion to AI-driven programs and another US$9 billion to data centers since 2016. Since 2020, the Pentagon's contracts with AI firms have grown exponentially, with Palantir Technologies and Anduril Industries seeing the fastest growth. Palantir was the lead contractor on the Maven Smart System, which enabled the US military to sift through large volumes of data and rapidly select targets on the battlefield. The US used Maven in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Ukraine, and Yemen, despite grave concerns about its accuracy. The Pentagon has still not answered whether AI systems like Maven played a role in the massacre at Shajareh Tayyebeh Girls School in Iran, where the US bombed and murdered 156 people, the majority being young schoolgirls.

Cronyism at Large

Expanding the military-industrial complex has created unprecedented opportunities for Trump's inner circle to profit. Business partners, family members, and close friends and associates have secured lucrative government contracts and preferential access to exclusive military and mineral ventures.

Donald Trump Jr. was heavily involved in selecting candidates for Pentagon jobs in 2025. Soon after, companies that his firm, 1789 Capital, had invested in—such as Vulcan Elements, Firehawk Aerospace, SpaceX, and Anduril—secured contracts with the Pentagon. Likewise, Trump's sons are proprietors of a shell corporation that has invested in a New York-based mining investment group, Cove Capital, which is working on a US$1.6 billion tungsten project in Kazakhstan, granted by the Trump administration. US Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) correctly called it “corruption in plain sight.”

By gaining access to more critical minerals, Trump can expand the war machine and, in turn, make a profit. His administration has shown it will stop at nothing to achieve that. A March 2026 leaked memo from the US State Department included a proposal to withhold lifesaving HIV assistance to Zambia if its government denied access to the country’s critical minerals.

The Human and Environmental Price

Beyond the abuse of power, the US takeover of critical minerals comes with devastating impacts on the land and Indigenous communities. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that mining has “severe environmental impacts” with "often […] few if any redistributive benefits for communities in regions where extraction takes place.” Instead of local development, the extraction of strategic minerals is linked to violence, human rights abuses, and conflict. None of these repercussions are a matter of concern for the Trump administration. Conflict and destabilization, in fact, help secure access and control over critical minerals, as evident in Congo.

This web between the government, tech and AI corporations, mining companies, venture capital firms, and military institutions has emerged around a common goal: securing critical minerals and advancing the use of AI in the military. This should be an urgent concern for people around the world, as the hunt for critical minerals will deepen extractivism, militarization, and geopolitical competition at a time when our focus should be on ending conflicts, securing peace, and international cooperation to fight climate change. The administration has also turned its back on Americans in the hunt for critical minerals and the strengthening of the war machine; Trump has drained funding from sectors like education, climate change, healthcare, and science. If this disregard for everyone and everything remains unchecked, irreversible damage will occur to the planet and the people of the world.

As Big Tech races to build water-guzzling, energy-hungry data centers for its artificial intelligence, talk of an “AI race” between the United States and China has permeated public discourse. Pundits, politicians, and the media have all joined tech corporations in selling this narrative. And it’s giving license to Big Tech and their political handmaidens to ruin our communities, exploit our every action (both online and via AI-powered surveillance), and steal the wealth of human knowledge for private gain.

But the idea of an AI race between China and the US isn’t grounded in reality. The researchers, companies, and governments behind Chinese and US AI development are pursuing completely different goals.

The discourse in the US assumes that achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI)—computers that mimic human consciousness—would be so momentous and earth-shattering that clearly this must be the goal of anyone pursuing AI development. But that’s not the main goal of Chinese AI development. And a competition in which the competitors are running toward different finish lines isn’t a race.

If we allow the myth of an AI race with China to give Big Tech free rein, we face a more polluted, less equal world.

A Race Doesn’t Have Two Different Finish Lines

While the US is focused on artificial general intelligence (AGI) powered by Large Language Models (LLMs), Chinese developers are focused on AI embedded in products. It’s ChatGPT versus robots.

Yes, China is developing LLMs, although largely in an open-source way as opposed to the for-profit competition in the US. Recent news stories report that China is “catching” the US in LLM development. Indeed, the latest Chinese model outperforms leading US models. But this isn’t evidence of an LLM-AGI race. Instead, it shows that without making AGI its main focus, China is capable of developing its own models almost as quickly as US companies.

If every environmental review, every question raised by a community, every issue around water usage and electricity prices can be dismissed or lessened as “helping China,” then meaningful political debate can be silenced.

More to the point, LLM development in China is incidental to the country’s real goal for AI. Its focus remains on products embedded with AI and robots. Or, as AI policy researcher Liang Zheng says, in China, “The first priority is to use it to benefit ordinary people” (debatable, but indicates the kind of AI they are pursuing).

In the US, the first priority is to exploit people so that the tech oligarchs can profit. It’s chatbots all the way down.

This isn’t to argue that China is doing it “right” and the US is doing it “wrong.” Either approach will lead to a future in which citizens become increasingly disempowered. In which work becomes more scarce and less lucrative for most people. And in which a handful of billionaires grow wealthier and more powerful.

But the arguments being hauled out to support the destructive growth of hyperscale data centers are based on a fallacy. There is no need to “beat China.” China and the US are racing on separate tracks, in different races, with different finish lines.

These two separate approaches also explain the mind-boggling scale of the data center invasion we currently face. The massive hyperscale data centers—recent proposals would demand up to 5 gigawatts, enough electricity to power roughly 3.75 million US households—are only “required” because the US is racing toward AGI. Meanwhile, the embodied AI dominating in China does not require the same amount of computational power.

The truth is, we don’t need hyperscale data centers to “beat China.” We aren’t racing China. We’re killing ourselves so Silicon Valley can race itself.

How Big Tech Is Weaponizing the “AI Race” to Build Data Centers

Yet, the “AI race” story is a convenient lie for Big Tech and its political protectors. It is a neat political argument designed to insulate the industry from criticism and regulation.

If every environmental review, every question raised by a community, every issue around water usage and electricity prices can be dismissed or lessened as “helping China,” then meaningful political debate can be silenced. Real regulation—if even possible—can be avoided. Fear becomes a substitute for policy.

We understand why O’Leary and the other Tech Broligarchs don’t understand the grassroots opposition to data centers building across the country. It’s hard to spot the grassroots from the window of a private jet.

At the same time, data center developers and their minions in Washington have tried to weaponize false claims about foreign ties to the anti-data center movement. Kevin O’Leary of Shark Tank fame has explicitly said that our movement is being funded by China. He has no evidence because evidence of a falsehood can’t exist. In fact, Fox News has been forced to retract its coverage of his claims.

We understand why O’Leary and the other Tech Broligarchs don’t understand the grassroots opposition to data centers building across the country. It’s hard to spot the grassroots from the window of a private jet. But the opposition is real and organic, and no amount of disinformation and pushing the “AI race against China” scare tactic will derail the movement.

Big Tech Is Selling Us a Dystopian Future

The myth of an AI race with China threatens to propel us into Big Tech’s vision of the future—one that’s more unequal than ever. Yes, tech leaders suggest their algorithms will cure cancer, but their real goal is and has been to increase their power and wealth at the expense of the rest of us.

Even as American Tech Broligarchs have distanced themselves from earlier prophecies of widespread job loss, their vision of the future will see the vast majority of us out of meaningful work. We’ll be subject to living off whatever meager handouts are created in an attempt to mollify us.

Even if there were an AI race, is it worth running, let alone winning, if the prize is a dystopian future of mass misery with a thin layer of super wealthy tech oligarchs at the top?

At the same time, our movement will be traced whether or not we use the electronic gadgets they sell us. Already, surveillance devices linked to AI can recognize our faces, record our license plates, and report our movements. Companies and governments can buy this data in order to track us.

Meanwhile, “surveillance pricing” allows companies to change prices in an instant so that they can exploit our needs for their profit. Deepfake videos have already added to the rapidly decaying trust in a commonly shared world and a basic set of facts necessary for a functioning democracy. And this is but a scratch of the surface.

Even if there were an AI race, is it worth running, let alone winning, if the prize is a dystopian future of mass misery with a thin layer of super wealthy tech oligarchs at the top?

Big Tech’s Dystopian Vision Isn’t Inevitable

But we should be clear. This dystopian vision is not the inevitable outcome of unstoppable technological “progress” as the Tech Broligarchs would have us believe. Each and every decision being made to advance AI is a political decision. And, for now, we still have the ability to determine our political future.

Across the country, there is a growing resistance to the nightmare being shoved down our throats. Communities are coming together to fight the spread of destructive hyperscale data centers. Already in 2026, more than $130 billion-worth of proposed data center projects have been defeated and canceled.

That’s the real “AI Race.” Not China versus the US, but us versus Big Tech.

Communities are taking control of their futures by placing moratoriums on new data centers. New York enacted a one-year pause on new centers, and there is growing support for a nationwide pause in Congress.

We aren’t destined to live in Elon Musk’s fever dream. We have the power to stop him and his fellow Broligarchs. When we organize, we win. That’s the real “AI Race.” Not China versus the US, but us versus Big Tech. That’s not only a race worth running—it’s one we have to win.

In an early victory for President Donald Trump’s protection racket, the leaders of nine prestigious Big Law firms collectively paid almost $1 billion and sacrificed their professional integrity to secure peace with his administration—or so they thought.

They were wrong.

The ABA Defends the Profession

In June 2025, the American Bar Association (ABA) sued the Trump administration for targeting those firms and five others. The ABA claims that Trump has sought to intimidate attorneys from representing clients and causes that he didn’t like.

After a federal judge denied Trump’s motion to dismiss the ABA’s complaint in April, the ABA subpoenaed the files of Trump adviser Boris Ephsteyn, a key liaison in negotiating settlements between the nine capitulating firms and the White House. The Department of Justice (DOJ) moved to quash the subpoena, arguing that the confidentiality of presidential communications is a constitutional safeguard.

Among the problems with the government’s position are that:

1. Ephsteyn is a personal senior counsel to Trump;
2. He has no official position in the White House or the administration; and
3. Trump has not asserted executive privilege.

The dispute may well land in the US Supreme Court, which has become Trump’s preferred forum.

The Justice Department Opens a New Front in Trump’s Continuing War

On July 2, the DOJ took a step that seemed odd: It served subpoenas on the nine capitulating firms, as well as four firms that fought Trump’s executive order and won. (It also subpoenaed a firm that took no public action.) Those subpoenas sought some of the same information that the ABA wanted from Ephsteyn:

All communications on or after January 20, 2025 that [each firm] sent to Boris Epshteyn, received from Boris Epshteyn, or participated in with Boris Epshteyn.

They also sought all communications relating to the negotiations, implementation, enforcement, and monitoring of the agreements.

Presumably the Justice Department already has access to the law firms’ communications with Ephsteyn. If so, why did it subpoena the firms for some of the same material, including documents that it didn’t want the White House to provide in response to the ABA’s subpoena?

Possible answers:

1. The DOJ wants the 14 subpoenaed firms to pressure the ABA into withdrawing its subpoena seeking Ephsteyn’s files. If so, it has misread the room badly. In April, the ABA filed an amicus brief with the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on behalf of its 400,000 members supporting the four law firms that successfully challenged the constitutionality of Trump’s executive orders. The ABA isn’t going to save the capitulating Big Law firms from themselves.
2. The department doesn’t trust Ephsteyn or the White House to provide it with all relevant materials that Ephsteyn has.
3. The subpoenas were a predicate for the DOJ’s next move: trying to disqualify the ABA’s outside counsel—Susman Godfrey, one of the four big firms that won court challenges to Trump’s executive orders.

The Justice Department Tries to Avoid the Plain Language of the Applicable Rule

On July 17, the DOJ moved to disqualify Susman Godfrey from representing the ABA. It relies on the governing District of Columbia Rules of Professional Conduct, specifically, Rule 3.7, which states: “A lawyer shall not act as advocate at a trial in which the lawyer is likely to be a necessary witness….” [Emphasis supplied]

The Justice Department argues that the rule “contains a bright line rule prohibiting a lawyer from serving as both advocate and fact witness in the same matter….”

Not quite.

First, Rule 3.7 does not apply to all “fact witnesses.” It applies only to necessary witnesses. Susman Godfrey lawyers have become potential witnesses only because the DOJ subpoenaed documents from the firm as a whole.

Second, the rule applies only to individual lawyers within a law firm and, except in special circumstances inapplicable to the ABA case, not to all members of an entire firm. The DOJ has sought to depose as potential witnesses only the chairpersons of the 14 firms.

Third, the rule focuses on the interests of the client (here, the ABA), not its opponent (the White House). As the official commentary to Rule 3.7 explains: “If the only reason for not permitting a lawyer to combine the roles of advocate and witness is possible prejudice to the opposing party [the White House], there is no reason to disqualify other lawyers in the testifying lawyer’s firm from acting as advocates in that trial.”

Finally, the rule bars only an advocate who is likely to be a necessary witness at trial. The case may never reach the trial stage, and Susman Godfrey is free to represent the ABA until it does. Since 1992, DC Bar Ethics Opinion 228 has made that clear.

Meanwhile, the nine capitulating firms now face a quandary: What does Trump want from them? If they comply with the DOJ’s subpoenas, they will disclose some of the very information that the Justice Department is trying block by objecting to the ABA’s subpoena.

Regardless of the DOJ’s motivations, federal judges do not take kindly to an advocate’s misreading of the governing law or ignoring precedent that cuts against its position.

Here’s the real kicker: The subpoenas to Susman Godfrey and its fellow resisting law firms have already backfired. They are more evidence supporting the ABA’s claims of presidential intimidation and harassment.

As for the nine firms that settled—and the many other institutions that have that capitulated to Trump—the entire episode demonstrates that appeasing a bully will never produce finality.

In the recent Netflix movie, A House of Dynamite, an intercontinental ballistic missile of unknown origin is detected streaking across the Pacific on a course that, in less than 20 minutes, will turn Chicago to ash. Efforts to shoot the missile down fail, as the ground-based interceptors, or GBIs, miss their target and, as the seconds count down, the president, played by Idris Elba, has only seven minutes to decide how to respond. The consequences of his decision, which the film leaves open, could mean the end of human civilization and even most life on Earth.

What was the official response to the film? A week before it streamed, the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency (MDA) produced a memo attacking the film’s credibility. America’s GBIs, they said, are much more accurate than portrayed in the movie, with a 100% success rate. (The Center for Arms control puts that figure at 55% in carefully controlled tests.) And an article published by the West Point-based Modern War Institute argues that the film’s premise is flawed since no adversary would launch just a single missile at the United States.

It was also judged illogical that the president’s choices were limited to “surrender” or “suicide”—the latter meaning all-out nuclear war. The country could absorb the loss (meaning the 10 million inhabitants of Chicago) and respond only after the missile’s source had been determined. Finally, as the MDA memo helpfully pointed out, the plot of A House of Dynamite is “fictional” and “intended for the entertainment of the audience.” In other words, it’s just another disaster movie.

These themes are not new to governmental pronouncements on films about nuclear war. In the 1959 feature On the Beach, Gregory Peck plays the captain of a submarine that is America’s last surviving naval vessel as it docks in Melbourne, Australia after the entire Northern Hemisphere has been wiped out in a nuclear war—and a cloud of deadly radioactive fallout is inexorably making its way south. After a brief stay and with the inevitability of death by radiation poisoning, the crew votes to return to the US and die at home.

Which way will the Trump administration go in response to Nuclear War: A Scenario the movie? If the film is faithful to the book, it should have an even more devastating impact than The Day After.

Two weeks before the film’s worldwide release, the United States Information Agency produced an “Infoguide” stating that the film was “highly fictionalized and contains scientific inaccuracies.” It argued that, because fallout diminishes rapidly, it would only affect countries directly attacked or those nearby. Moreover, shelters and decontamination measures were effective against fallout and, as far away as the Southern Hemisphere, “if any protection at all were needed, an ordinary basement would suffice.” A later Infoguide reporting on the premier noted: “Most critics review [the] film as pure drama and there has been little emphasis on social and political significance.” In other words, no big deal.

Five years later, in 1964, Doctor Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, starring Peters Sellers in three different roles, was released. In this dark comedy, a psychotic Air Force General orders the B-52 bombers under his command to attack the Soviet Union, sparking a concerted but unsuccessful effort by the president and his advisers to recall the planes. As a single B-52 gets through and the plane’s pilot rides a nuclear bomb down to its target, it is revealed that the Soviets have a yet-to-be announced “Doomsday Machine” that, upon the country being struck by a nuclear weapon, will automatically trigger the detonation of a massive array of cobalt bombs whose radiation will render the Earth uninhabitable for a century.

Although obviously a farce, the film was panned as “juvenile, offensive, and inaccurate.” As reported in The New Yorker: “An expert at the Institute for Strategic Studies called the events in the film ‘impossible on a dozen counts.’ A former Deputy Secretary of Defense dismissed the idea that someone could authorize the use of a nuclear weapon without the President’s approval: ‘Nothing, in fact, could be further from the truth.’” (These assertions are in doubt following the disclosure of the policy of “pre-delegation,” in force at the time, which gave authority to commanders to deploy nuclear weapons in circumstances where the president could not be reached.)

Two decades later, in the feature film Wargames, Matthew Broderick plays a teenager who successfully hacks into the Pentagon’s supercomputer. Unwittingly, he mistakes its nuclear war command and control function for a computer game—and nearly triggers global thermonuclear war.

This time, the government response was quite different. After viewing the film, President Ronald Reagan asked his chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff if something like that could really happen. After a review, the president was told that, not only was the premise of the film realistic, “the problem is much worse than you think.” Fifteen months later, National Security Directive NSD-145 was issued, launching a sweeping governmental effort to improve cybersecurity.

Later in 1983, the television movie The Day After, which reached a record-breaking 100 million viewers, was the first American film to attempt a realistic depiction of the aftermath of a nuclear attack on an American city. The story revolves around a doctor, played by Jason Robards, as he tries to deal with the horrific effects of blast, fire, and radiation on the citizens of Lawrence, Kansas—targeted because of its nearby nuclear missile silos.

In this case, the response was mixed. The White House initially discouraged the making of the film. The Pentagon urged—unsuccessfully—to have the script make clear that the Soviets fired first and later refused to allow the filmmakers to use stock footage of real nuclear detonations. Henry Kissinger criticized the film as “simple minded” and in danger of leading the country to “make policy by scaring ourselves to death.” But the film’s graphic portrayal of the effects on the population of an American city could not be dismissed as easily as some of its predecessors, and Reagan wrote in his diary, “It’s very effective & left me greatly depressed.” It has been argued that the film influenced him to soften his Cold War rhetoric and to meet with Mikhael Gorbachev in Iceland in 1986, where the complete abolition of nuclear weapons was discussed. Unfortunately, that meeting ended without agreement; however, a year later, subsequent negotiations led to the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which resulted in the elimination of a whole class of nuclear weapons.

Which way will the Trump administration go in response to Nuclear War: A Scenario the movie? If the film is faithful to the book, it should have an even more devastating impact than The Day After. With today’s sophisticated special effects, it will, no doubt, create hyperrealistic imagery and make the absolute absurdity of nuclear war manifest. But will the administration call it unrealistic, inaccurate, alarmist or just fiction, as with On the Beach, Doctor Strangelove, or A House of Dynamite? Or will they see it as a prompt to take this existential threat seriously and move to reduce or eliminate the world’s nuclear stockpiles?

Regardless of the response, the movie should motivate us all to work to build a constituency for change in order to end the madness and build a saner world.

The 2026 heatwave is a global phenomenon, inflicting extreme temperatures on billions of people from the United States to Europe and South Asia.

Extreme heat is deadly. In Europe, an estimated 10,000 people have died from heat this summer, and the official count of a few dozen deaths in India and Pakistan is likely to be too low by several orders of magnitude, according to a recent scientific study.

Dozens of Americans died from heat over the Fourth of July weekend alone—a toll that’s still unacceptably high.

Meanwhile, much of the country has been blanketed in smoke from wildfires in Canada and Minnesota, triggered by the hot and dry conditions arising from the heatwaves. Like heat, wildfire smoke is also deadly. A similar wildfire smoke event in 2023 led to an estimated 33,000 premature deaths in the US alone.

Effectively, these legislators—like too many others—were bought by a powerful industry to put their corporate interests over the health, and the very lives, of the broader public. This is naked corruption.

Scientists have found that all of these regional heatwaves were made likelier and more severe because of human-caused climate change, mainly attributable to burning fossil fuels.

Major oil and gas corporations have known for decades that their business model would cause disasters like these. Their response was to minimize or even hide their findings to keep the public in the dark about the risks—and pay front groups to deceive them.

This drive to preserve profits at the expense of humanity has understandably caused outrage. Eleven US states, two tribes, and dozens of local governments are suing fossil fuel corporations for damages for the harm they’ve suffered from climate disasters.

State legislators have also joined the fray. New York and Vermont have passed “Climate Superfund” bills that require fossil fuel corporations to pay for economic losses arising from extreme heat, wildfires, droughts, hurricanes, and flooding. Similar laws are being considered in Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Rhode Island.

The US has experienced more than $200 billion in climate damages every year since 2016, and it’s only fair that fossil fuel corporations pay for some of the damage caused by their reckless greed.

But instead of trying to make Big Oil pay up, some lawmakers in Congress are trying to do the opposite. Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) have introduced House and Senate bills, respectively, that seek to dismiss ongoing climate damages lawsuits, shield Big Oil from similar future cases, pre-empt state Climate Superfund laws, and—most outrageously—block any state level regulation of greenhouse gases.

This is legislation expressly designed to protect a powerful, wealthy industry from having to face any accountability for harming the public. And when you follow the money, you can see why.

Rep. Hageman has received more than $23,000 in campaign money from the petroleum refining and marketing industry in this cycle, making it the second biggest industry (after sugar) backing her candidacy. She’s also received thousands more from other fossil fuel interests.

Also in this cycle alone, Sen. Cruz has gotten more than $129,000 in contributions from different segments of the oil and gas industry.

Effectively, these legislators—like too many others—were bought by a powerful industry to put their corporate interests over the health, and the very lives, of the broader public. This is naked corruption.

And if we want the kind of democracy we need and deserve, the rest of us shouldn’t tolerate it anymore.

By Marilynda Bustamente and Carmen Perez

As California's final state budget has been signed and Gov. Gavin Newsom prepares to leave office, we can’t help but look at the impact of childcare funding on families. To build a future, we must look at the present and past.

Ours is a tale of two families. We are both mothers and parent leaders with Parent Voices—Carmen in Marin and Marilynda in Los Angeles. This year, we both attended the 30th annual Parent Voices CA Stand for Children Day, where we joined hundreds of parents, children, and childcare providers to say something simple and urgent: Children matter. Together, we testified at the State Capitol until the final lap to the signing of the final state budget—to remind lawmakers: Superheroes Choose Kids, Not Billionaires!

We are similar in so many ways, but when it comes to access to childcare, we learned there is a disconnect in state policy across counties.

Imagine a state where every child has access to care from birth, where no parent has to choose between working and staying home, and where no child spends years on a waiting list.

I, Marilynda, was living in a homeless shelter when I was pregnant with my first child. I was fortunate to get off the waiting list for a childcare voucher. Because of that, I was able to get through graduate school, work, hold an internship, and earn my Master of Social Work. My daughter, Serenity, is learning, socializing, and growing, and we wouldn’t be where we are without that childcare.

I, Carmen, saw my oldest son age out of eligibility for a childcare voucher after more than 10 years stuck on the childcare waitlist. Years later, my two daughters gained access to childcare when Newsom added new childcare spaces, and today they are thriving. But now, my youngest son, Dyson, is stuck on the waitlist because the state has not expanded childcare since 2023. I don’t have reliable care for him; I can’t work more hours because I can’t leave him, which hurts my ability to provide for my family.

Our stories make it clear: Funding childcare is the difference between realized dreams and delayed futures. No childcare means lost wages for many California families.

Newsom once recognized that waiting is a policy failure. He made a promise to expand childcare, and that promise gave families hope. But then the promise was delayed. Newsom's May revision of the state budget did not provide enough to reach 200,000 new childcare spaces. It will leave more than 77,000 families remaining on what is now known as the "No Hope” childcare waitlist.

So, we advocated. We put pressure on Gov. Newsom to get closer to fulfilling his promise to childcare. He announced 130,000 childcare spaces, much closer to the 200,000 than originally proposed.

Compromises were made. But more must be done when there are thousands of eligible children stuck on the “No Hope” waitlist.

We teach our kids to keep their word. Why should we expect anything less from our governor?

At the same time, childcare educators will receive a 2% cost of living adjustment while TK-12 teachers get 4.31%. The first five years of a child's development are among the most critical, yet the educators who show up for those years are already the lowest paid and getting less than half the investment. That’s a reminder that childcare providers continue to be disrespected in budget decisions.

We have to ask a hard question: What kind of world are we building for our children?

Imagine if the billions lost to incarceration and tax cuts for corporations were invested in universal childcare instead.

Implementing universal childcare and properly supporting the industry is the solution to the affordability crisis. It unlocks opportunities for parents like us to work, pursue education, pay bills, and afford essentials like gas and food. If care becomes available for every family, the future will brighten for all families.

Imagine a state where every child has access to care from birth, where no parent has to choose between working and staying home, and where no child spends years on a waiting list.

This is not out of reach. It is about priorities.

The State has the money. But the commitment to invest in childcare has fallen short.

Will the next governor get closer to fulfilling the promise to fund childcare for all families?

By Ralph Nader July 24, 2026 “Leader Jeffries, President Trump is calling.” HJ: “Hello, Mr. President, this is a rare occasion!” DT: “Well, Hakeem, I want to have a confidential talk with you on a secure line. Agreed?” HJ: “Sure, since you made the call.” DT: “By the way, Hakeem, my Saudi friends tell me…