A 6-3 majority of the Supreme Court decided Friday that Trump cannot take core powers that the Constitution gives Congress. Instead, Congress must delegate any such power clearly and unambiguously.

This is a big decision. It goes far beyond merely interpreting the 1997 International Emergency Economic Powers Act not to give Trump the power over tariffs that he claims to have. It reaffirms a basic constitutional principle about the division and separation of powers between Congress and the president.

On its face, this decision clarifies that Trump cannot decide on his own not to spend money Congress has authorized and appropriated—such as the funds for USAID he refused to spend. And he cannot on his own decide to go to war.

"The court has long expressed 'reluctan[ce] to read into ambiguous statutory test' extraordinary delegations of Congress' powers," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for himself and five other justices in the opinion released Friday in Learning Resources v. Trump.

He continued, "In several cases involving 'major questions,' the court has reasoned that 'both separation of powers principles and a practical understanding of legislative intent' suggest Congress would not have delegated 'highly consequential power' through ambiguous language."

Exactly. Trump has no authority on his own to impose tariffs, because the Constitution gives that authority to Congress.

But by the same Supreme Court logic, Trump has no authority to impound money Congress has appropriated because the Constitution has given Congress the "core congressional power of the purse," as the court stated Friday.

Hence, the $410-425 billion in funding that Trump has blocked or delayed violates the Impoundment Control Act, which requires congressional approval for spending pauses. This includes funding withheld for foreign aid, FEMA, Head Start, Harvard and Columbia universities, and public health.

Nor, by this same Supreme Court logic, does Trump have authority to go to war because Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the Constitution grants Congress the power to "declare war… and make rules concerning captures on land and water"—and Congress would not have delegated this highly consequential power to a president through ambiguous language.

Presumably this is why Congress enacted the War Powers Act of 1973, which requires a president to notify Congress within 48 hours of deploying troops and requires their withdrawal within 60-90 days unless Congress declares war or authorizes an extension. Iran, anyone?

The press has reported on Friday's Supreme Court decision as if it were only about tariffs. Wrong. It's far bigger and even more important.

Note that the decision was written by Roberts—the same justice who wrote the court's 2024 decision in Trump v. United States, another 6-3 decision in which the court ruled that former presidents have absolute immunity for actions taken within their core constitutional powers and at least presumptive immunity for all other official acts.

I think Roberts intentionally wrote Friday's decision in Learning Resources v. Trump as a bookend to Trump v. United States.

Both are intended to clarify the powers of the president and of Congress. A president has immunity for actions taken within his core constitutional powers. But a president has no authority to take core powers that the Constitution gives to Congress.

In these two decisions, the chief justice and five of his colleagues on the court have laid out a roadmap for what they see as the boundary separating the power of the president from the powers of Congress—and how they will decide future cases along that boundary.

Trump will pay no heed, of course. He accepts no limits to his power and has shown no respect for the Constitution, Congress, the Supreme Court, or the rule of law.

But the rest of us should now have a fairly good idea about what to expect from the Supreme Court in the months ahead.

Over the past several months, President Donald Trump has launched a tirade of racist, xenophobic, and Islamophobic attacks demonizing Somalis and Somalia. If Trump weren’t the president, his ignorant and incoherent ramblings would not be worth addressing; unfortunately, he is. So, let’s go over everything Trump gets wrong about Somalis.

Somalis, Minneapolis, and Trump’s Domestic Fearmongering

In December 2025, Trump told reporters that Somalis have “destroyed Minnesota.” He contends that Minnesota is “a hellhole right now. The Somalians should be out of here. They’ve destroyed our country. And all they do is complain, complain, complain.” According to Trump, the roughly 80,000 people of Somali descent living in Minnesota have somehow destroyed a state with over 5.7 million people—a state that ranked fourth in the 2025 Best States ranking from US News & World Report.

In January 2026, Trump deployed 3,000 federal agents to Minneapolis as part of an immigration enforcement effort primarily targeting Somalis. However, 58% of Somalis in Minnesota were born in the US. Of foreign-born Somalis, 87% are naturalized US citizens. There are roughly 5,000 people of Somali descent in the state who are noncitizens, but this includes people who are on visas, green card holders, permanent residents, those on Temporary Protected Status (TPS), asylum-seekers as well as undocumented immigrants. Jaylani Hussein, the executive director of the Council of American-Islamic Relations’ Minnesota Chapter (CAIR-MN), estimates that the number of undocumented Somali immigrants in the state is “less than a thousand for sure.”

Trump claims, “Somali gangs are terrorizing the people of that great State.” Yet, while the Somali population in Minnesota has grown in recent decades, the state’s violent crime rate is 28.5% lower than the US average. The rate of property crime is 8.7% lower. Compared to native-born Americans, Somali immigrants aged 18-54 have a lower incarceration rate. By contrast, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol are kidnapping, assaulting, maiming, and killing citizens and noncitizens alike. Trump’s gangs are actively terrorizing the people of Minnesota.

Trump complains that Omar is “always talking about the Constitution.” He forgets that the Constitution should always be first and foremost on the mind of an elected official.

Trump alleges that “much of the Minnesota Fraud, up to 90%, is caused by people that came into our Country, illegally, from Somalia.” Yet, Attorney General Pamela Bondi reports that the Department of Justice has been investigating fraud in Minnesota for months and thus far has only “charged 98 individuals—85 of Somali descent—and more than 60 have been found guilty in court.” While the government should investigate these crimes and hold the responsible parties accountable, the Trump administration has offered no evidence that Somalis en masse are guilty of rampant and widespread fraud.

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) is a frequent victim of Trump’s anti-Somali rhetoric. Trump has referred to her as a “fake congresswoman,” “garbage,” “disgusting,” and a “disgraceful person, a loser.” Even when responding to the murder of Alex Pretti by Border Patrol, Trump randomly and nonsensically attacks Omar: “Why does Ilhan Omar have $34 Million Dollars in her account?” On January 26, Trump announced that the Department of Justice is investigating why Omar’s net worth has grown since taking office. Yet, the reason for this is well-documented: As her 2025 Financial Disclosure Report makes clear, the change is due to her spouse’s business holdings. By contrast, Trump is illegally exploiting his political office to enrich himself and his family.

Trump complains that Omar is “always talking about the Constitution.” He forgets that the Constitution should always be first and foremost on the mind of an elected official. In fact, Trump could learn a lot from her!

Somalia, Imperialism, and US Military Violence

At the 2026 Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum, Trump ranted: “The situation in Minnesota reminds us that the West cannot mass import foreign cultures, which have failed to ever build a successful society of their own. I mean, we’re taking people from Somalia, and Somalia is a failed—it’s not a nation.” Yet, Somali immigrants were not ‘imported,’ they were displaced. The political situation in Somalia is the byproduct of many factors including imperialism and US military interventions.

Starting in the late 1960s, Somalia implemented a number of progressive policies, including widening access to primary education, mass literacy campaigns, and public health initiatives. These policies were fueling social and economic development, especially in rural areas. However, Somalia’s growing ties with the Soviet Union and its embrace of Soviet-style policies worried the US.

Since the 1960s, Somalia and Ethiopia became increasingly entangled in Cold War politics that fueled political instability in the region for decades. As sociocultural anthropologist Ahmed Ibrahim writes: “Cold War geopolitical machinations partly created the contextual background to the 1977-78 Somalia-Ethiopia war. Somalia’s defeat in this war set the stage for the disintegration of the state in 1991.” Notably, 1991 marked the start of the Somali Civil War as well as the collapse of the Soviet Union—this was no coincidence.

Trump claims that in Somalia people “just run around killing each other. There’s no structure.” His vitriol overlooks the role of US military violence—and his presidency in particular—in fomenting that social and political instability.

While the Soviet Union had initially supported both Somalia and Ethiopia, after their war, it shifted its attention entirely to the latter. At that point, the US began providing a weakened Somalia its aid in the hopes of using them to combat Soviet influence in the region. In the early 1990s, with Moscow now politically and economically weakened, the US no longer saw any value in maintaining that dependency relationship. Instead, they began condemning the human rights abuses taking place in Somalia—abuses the US had known about but chosen to ignore until then.

In 1993, the US, with support from the United Nations, launched a military mission to disarm and arrest Somali militia members. Many civilians were caught in the crosshairs. In particular, US airstrikes killed a group of political leaders, religious leaders, intellectuals, and businesspeople meeting to discuss a UN peace proposal. Those strikes sparked massive outcry and triggered a wave of retaliatory attacks against US and UN troops. The growing violence fueled mass displacement and migration out of Somalia. The mid and late-1990s saw the largest influx of Somali immigrants arriving in the US, predominantly Minnesota.

Importantly, US military presence in Somalia continues in the name of counterterrorism and "supporting" the central government in Mogadishu. However, as is often the case, the US has contributed to the very political instability and violence it purports to be solving. The Trump administration has been particularly devastating. His administration carried out 219 military strikes in Somalia during his first term. So far, in his second, the US has conducted 162. By comparison, under President George W. Bush, President Barack Obama, and President Joe Biden, the US launched 110 strikes in total.

According to the nonprofit watchdog Airwars, since 2007, US airstrikes have killed an estimated 93 to 170 civilians, including 25 to 28 children. In September 2025, a US drone strike killed Omar Abdullahi, a prominent political leader who played a key role in local governance, including rallying support against insurgents and gathering supplies to support government operations.

Trump claims that in Somalia people “just run around killing each other. There’s no structure.” His vitriol overlooks the role of US military violence—and his presidency in particular—in fomenting that social and political instability.

Somalis as Scapegoats

Ultimately, none of these facts matter to Trump. Even if you could educate him about the history and political situation in Somalia; or the many cultural and economic contributions people of Somali descent have made to Minnesota or the US more broadly, he would almost certainly continue to villainize them—why? Because as a small population of predominantly Muslim people of color living in a state Trump lost three times in a row, Somalis are an easy and useful scapegoat.

The “Somali fraud network” narrative becomes the pretext that allows the Trump administration to invade Minnesota, terrorize its civilians, and then send its governor a “ransom note” with a list of demands including access to the state’s voter rolls. Trump, a fraudster himself, can exploit this fraud narrative to make himself appear tough on crime and immigration enforcement; while, at the same time, pardoning people like David Gentile who defrauded thousands of investors as part of a $1.6 billion Ponzi scheme.

Somalis are not the first to be victims of Trump’s racism, xenophobia, and Islamophobia, nor will they be the last. We must stand with the Somali community against Trump’s bigotry and prejudice. We must correct the misperception that Trump’s vile rhetoric is trying desperately to normalize. We cannot allow his hatred to win.

The kidnapping of a sitting head of state marks a grave escalation in US-Venezuela relations. By seizing Venezuela’s constitutional president, Washington signaled both its disregard for international law and its confidence that it would face little immediate consequence.

The response within the US political establishment to the attack on Venezuela has been striking. Without the slightest cognitive dissonance over President Nicolás Maduro’s violent abduction, Democrats call for “restoring democracy”—but not for returning Venezuela’s lawful president.

So why didn’t the imperialists simply assassinate him? From their perspective, it would have been cleaner and more cost-efficient. It would have been the DOGE thing to do: launch a drone in one of those celebrated “surgical” strikes.

Targeted killings are as much a part of US policy now as there were in the past. From former President Barack Obama’s drone strikes on US citizens in 2011 to President Donald Trump’s killing of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, lethal force has been used when deemed expedient. And only last June, the second Trump administration and its Zionist partner in crime droned 11 Iranian nuclear scientists.

The present US-Venezuelan détente is making history. So far—in Hugo Chávez’s words, por ahora—it does not resemble the humanitarian catastrophes imposed by the empire on Haiti, Libya, Iraq, Syria, or Afghanistan.

The US posted a $50 million bounty on Maduro, yet they took him very much alive along with his wife, First Combatant (the Venezuelan equivalent of the First Lady) Cilia Flores.

The reason Maduro’s life was spared tells us volumes about the resilience of the Bolivarian Revolution, the strength of Maduro even in captivity, and the inability of the empire to subjugate Venezuela.

Killing Nicolás Maduro Moros appears to have been a step too far, even for Washington’s hawks. Perhaps he was also seen as more valuable to the empire as a hostage than as a martyr.

But the images of a handcuffed Maduro flashing a victory sign—and declaring in a New York courtroom, “I was captured… I am the president of my country”—were not those of a defeated leader.

Rather than collapsing, the Bolivarian Revolution survived the decapitation. With a seamless continuation of leadership under acting President Delcy Rodríguez, even some figures in the opposition have rallied around the national leadership, heeding the nationalist call of a populace mobilized in the streets in support of their president.

This has pushed the US to negotiate rather than outright conquer, notwithstanding that the playing field remains decisively tilted in Washington’s favor. Regardless, Venezuelan authorities have demanded and received the US’ respect. Indeed, after declaring Venezuela an illegitimate narco-state, Trump has flipped, recognized the Chavista government, and invited its acting executive to Washington.

NBC News gave Delcy Rodríguez a respectful interview. After affirming state ownership of Venezuela’s mineral resources and Maduro as the lawful president, she pointed out that the so-called political prisoners in Venezuelan prisons were there because they had committed acts of criminal violence.

Before a national US television audience she explained that free and fair elections require being “free of sanctions and… not undermined by international bullying and harassment by the international press” (emphasis added).

Notably, the interviewer cited US Energy Secretary Chris Wright’s admission made during his high-level visit to Venezuela. The US official said that elections there could be held, not in three months, but in three years, in accordance with the constitutionally mandated schedule.

As for opposition politician María Corina Machado, the darling of the US press corps, Rodríguez told the interviewer that Machado would have to answer for her various treasonous activities if she came back to Venezuela.

Contrary to the corporate press’s media myth, fostered at a reception in Manhattan, that Machado is insanely popular and poised to lead “A Trillion-Dollar Opportunity: The Global Upside of a Democratic Venezuela,” the US government apparently understood the reality on the ground. “She doesn’t have the support within, or the respect within, the country,” was the honest evaluation, not of some Chavista partisan, but of President Trump himself.

Yader Lanuza documents how the US provided millions to manufacture an effective astroturf opposition to the Chavistas. It is far from the first time that Washington has squandered money in this way—we only have to look back at its failed efforts to promote the “presidency” of Juan Guaidó. Its latest efforts have again had no decisive result, leaving Machado in limbo and pragmatic engagement with the Chavista leadership as the only practical option.

Any doubts that there is daylight between captured President Maduro and acting President Rodríguez can be dispelled by listening to the now incarcerated Maduro’s New Year’s Day interview with international leftist intellectual Ignacio Ramonet.

Maduro said it was time to “start talking seriously” with the US—especially regarding oil investment—marking a continuation of his prior conditional openness to diplomatic engagement. He reiterated that Venezuela was ready to discuss agreements on combating drug trafficking and to consider US oil investment, allowing companies like Chevron to operate.

That was just two days before the abduction. Subsequently, Delcy Rodríguez met with the US energy secretary and the head of the Southern Command to discuss oil investments and combating drug trafficking, respectively.

Venezuelan analysts have framed the current moment as one of constrained choice. “What is at stake is the survival of the state and the republic, which if lost, would render the discussion of any other topic banal,” according to Sergio Rodríguez Gelfenstein. The former government official, who was close to Hugo Chávez, supports Delcy Rodríguez’s discussions with Washington—acknowledging that she has “a missile to her head.”

“The search for a negotiation in the case of the January 3 kidnapping is not understood, therefore, as a surrender, but as an act of political maturity in a context of unprecedented blackmail,” according to Italian journalist and former Red Brigades militant Geraldina Colotti.

The Amnesty Law, a longstanding Chavista initiative, is being debated in the National Assembly to maintain social peace, according to the president of the assembly and brother of the acting president, Jorge Rodríguez, in an interview with the US-based NewsMax outlet.

As Jorge Rodríguez commented, foregoing oil revenues by keeping oil in the ground does not benefit the people’s well-being and development. In that context, the Hydrocarbon Law has been reformed to attract vital foreign investment.

The Venezuelan outlet Mision Verdad elaborates: “The 2026 reform ratifies and, in some aspects, deepens essential elements of the previous legislation… [I]t creates the legal basis for a complete strategic adaptation of the Venezuelan hydrocarbon industry, considering elements of the present context.”

As Karl Marx presciently observed about the present context, people “make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances.” The present US-Venezuelan détente is making history. So far—in Hugo Chávez’s words, por ahora—it does not resemble the humanitarian catastrophes imposed by the empire on Haiti, Libya, Iraq, Syria, or Afghanistan.

But make no mistake: The ultimate goal of the empire remains regime change. And there is no clearer insight into the empire’s core barbarity than Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s speech at the Munich conference with his praising of the capture of a “narcoterrorist dictator” and his invocation of Columbus as the inspiration “to build a new Western century.”

Washington’s kidnapping of Maduro was intended to demonstrate the empire’s dominance. But it also exposed its limits: the durability of the Bolivarian Revolution and the reality that even great powers must sometimes negotiate with governments they detest. The outcome remains uncertain.

Climate activists are calling out pro sports teams across the US Why? The answer is the teams' sportswashing partnerships with Big Oil.

According to activists, sportswashing uses fans’ fondness for their pro teams to fog the lethal consequences of fossil fuel sponsorships with Big Oil, e.g., BP America, Phillips 66 and Shell.

Call it a planet-destroying impact of the athletic-industrial complex.

The national action for sustainable humanity on Planet Earth is an outgrowth of the Sierra Club chapter of the Los Angeles’ Dodger Fans Against Fossil Fuels campaign demanding the team’s owners to drop their sponsorship deal with oil giant Phillips 66. Boo on Dodger Blue for that deal. Meanwhile, the climate dissent that began in LA didn’t stay there.

“Our region has suffered devastating wildfires in recent years, and we shouldn’t pretend that fossil fuel companies are our buddies when they are causing the climate change that worsens these disasters.”

Simultaneous anti-sportswashing actions unfolded across 10 US cities on February 17. Check it out:

• Los Angeles, Dodger Stadium, Dodgers (Phillips 66/76 gas)
• San Francisco, Oracle Park, Giants (Phillips 66/76 gas)
• Sacramento, Golden 1 Center, Sacramento Kings (AM/PM, owned by BP)
• Portland, Providence Park, Portland Timbers (Bank of America)
• St. Louis, Busch Stadium, St. Louis Cardinals (Phillips 66)
• Atlanta, Mercedes-Benz Stadium, FIFA World Cup (Aramco)
• Cleveland, Progressive Field, Cleveland Guardians (Marathon)
• Philadelphia, Lincoln Financial Field, Philadelphia Eagles (NRG)
• New York City, Citi Field, Mets (Citi bank)
• Boston, TD Garden, Boston Celtics (Gulf)

Groups participating and supporting Tuesday's action included: Communities for a Better Environment, Scientific Rebellion, Stop the Money Pipeline, EcoAthletes, Dayenu, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Sisters of Charity New York, and Third Act.

In Sacramento, activists gathered with protest signs at the Golden 1 Center, where the Kings, an NBA team, play in the Western Division. "We are asking the Kings' owner and executives to immediately end the team’s sponsorship deals with Shell, one of the world's largest oil companies, and AM/PM," said Sally Richman, a Third Act Sacramento member, in a statement.

She explains, “Our region has suffered devastating wildfires in recent years, and we shouldn’t pretend that fossil fuel companies are our buddies when they are causing the climate change that worsens these disasters.”

One of these deadly wildfires occurred in 2018, in Paradise, California, north of Sacramento. Before that cataclysmic wildfire, Paradise was a town that had a population of 27,000 people. Eighty-five people lost their lives, over 50,000 were displaced, more than 18,000 structures were destroyed, with a loss of nearly $17 billion.

The wildfire that began in Paradise didn’t remain there. Spoiler alert: The climate catastrophe does not obey human-created boundaries and limits. Consider this bit of climate history.

Sacramento residents felt the effects from poor air quality during the Camp Fire in Paradise. City officials distributed particulate respirator masks to help residents breathe normally, approved by the Environmental Protection Agency. These masks carried an N-95 classification designed to protect the lungs from small particles found in wildfire smoke. At that time, the Air Quality Index was 367 in some areas, more than double the 150 reading considered unhealthy. I can personally attest to that.

Third Act Sacramento also sent a letter via email to Kings’ management. The missive fleshed out in part its opposition to the term of deception in question:

Sportswashing occurs when a company that has harmed the public creates a financial partnership with beloved sports teams, and markets their brand to the fans to create positive associations that are undeserved. The Sacramento Kings are allowing BP America and Shell to pretend they are "good guys" by their sponsorships of the team.

Kings’ management had not responded at press time.

Personally, I’m a big fan of the NBA. My family and I have had this fan-ship in common for years during the regular season, All Star game, and of course the playoffs to watch NBA stars do their thing. In my view, we are watching among the most talented athletes in the world.

Bill McKibben is an author, environmentalist, journalist, and co-founder of Third Act and 350.org. "The greatest threat to sports in the years ahead is the rapid rise in temperature,” according to his statement, “which increasingly makes it too hot and stormy to play. So, you might say it's an error for those who enjoy—and profit from—sports to be collaborating with the industry doing the most to overheat the planet."

A January 2026 Gallup poll showed that 89% of all Americans expect high levels of political conflict this year, as the country heads toward one of its most decisive midterm elections ever.

Gallup, however, was stating the obvious. It is a surprise that not all Americans feel this way, judging by the coarse, often outright racist discourse currently being normalized by top American officials. Some call this new rhetoric the "language of humiliation," where officials refer to entire social and racial groups as "vermin," "garbage," or "invaders."

The aim of this language is not simply to insult, but to feed the "Rage Bait Cycle"—tellingly, Oxford’s 2025 Word of the Year: A high-ranking official attacks a whole community or "the other side"; waits for a response; escalates the attacks; and then presents himself as a protector of traditions, values, and America itself. This does more than simply “hollow out” democracy, as suggested in a Human Rights Watch report last January; it prepares the country for “affective polarization,” where people no longer just disagree on political matters, but actively dislike each other for who they are and what they supposedly represent.

How else can we explain the statements of US President Donald Trump, who declared last December: “Somalia... is barely a country... Their country stinks and we don't want them in our country... We’re going to go the wrong way if we keep taking in garbage into our country. Ilhan Omar is garbage. She’s garbage. Her friends are garbage.” This is not simply an angry president, but an overreaching political discourse supported by millions of Americans who continue to see Trump as their defender and savior.

We are entering a state of regime cleavage—a political struggle no longer concerned with winning elections, but one where dominant groups fundamentally disagree on the very definition of what constitutes a nation.

This polarization reached a fever pitch at the 2026 Super Bowl, where the halftime selection of Puerto Rican artist Bad Bunny ignited a firestorm over national identity. While millions celebrated the performance, Trump and conservative commentators launched a boycott, labeling the Spanish-language show “not American enough” and inappropriate. The rhetoric escalated further when Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem suggested Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents would be “all over” the event, effectively ostracizing countless people from their right to belong to a distinct culture within American society.

The weaponization of culture and language was not limited to the stage; it split American viewers into two distinct camps: those who watched the official performance and those who turned to an “All-American” alternative broadcast hosted by Turning Point USA featuring Kid Rock. This "countering" is the very essence of the American conflict, which many have rightly predicted will eventually reach a breaking point akin to civil war.

That conclusion seems inevitable as the culture war couples with three alarming trends: identity dehumanization; partisan mirroring—the view that the other side is an existential threat; and institutional conflict—where federal agencies are perceived as "lawless," sitting congresswomen are labeled "garbage," and dissenting views are branded as treasonous.

This takes us to the fundamental question of legitimacy. In a healthy democracy, all sides generally recognize the legitimacy of the system itself, regardless of internal squabbles. In the United States, this is no longer the case. We are entering a state of regime cleavage—a political struggle no longer concerned with winning elections, but one where dominant groups fundamentally disagree on the very definition of what constitutes a nation.

The current crisis is not a new phenomenon; it dates back to the historical tension between 'assimilation" within an American "melting pot" versus the "multiculturalism" often compared to a "salad bowl." The melting pot principle, frequently promoted as a positive social ideal, effectively pressures immigrant communities and minorities to "melt" into a white-Christian-dominated social structure. In contrast, the salad bowl model allows minorities to feel very much American while maintaining their distinct languages, customs, and social priorities, thus without losing their unique identities.

While this debate persisted for decades as a highly intellectualized academic exercise, it has transformed into a daily, visceral conflict. The 2026 Super Bowl served as a stark manifestation of this deeper cultural friction. Several factors have pushed the United States to this precipice: a struggling economy, rising social inequality, and a rapidly closing demographic gap. Dominant social groups no longer feel "safe." Although the perceived threat to their "way of life" is often framed as a cultural or social grievance, it is, in essence, a struggle over economic privilege and political dominance.

There is also a significant disparity in political focus. While the right—represented by the MAGA movement and TPUSA—possesses a clarity of vision and relative political cohesion, the "other side" remains shrouded in ambiguity. The Democratic institution, which purports to represent the grievances of all other marginalized groups, lacks the trust of younger Americans, particularly those belonging to Gen Z. According to a recent poll by the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), trust in traditional political institutions among voters aged 18-25 has plummeted to historic lows, with over 65% expressing dissatisfaction with both major parties.

As the midterm elections approach, society is stretching its existing polarization to a new extreme. While the right clings to the hope of a savior making the country "great again," the "left" is largely governed by the politics of counter demonization and reactive grievances—hardly a revolutionary approach to governance.

Regardless of the November results, much of the outcome is already predetermined: a wider social conflict in the US is inevitable. The breaking point is fast approaching.

Data centers are the modern equivalent of feudal castles. They dominate the landscape, consume resources, and aggregate power. Unlike medieval barons, though, today’s data dukes don’t live in their castles. Their “court” is in Washington and Silicon Valley, but they expect their local vassals to pay tribute through higher utility rates, water, and electricity consumption. A data center complex is being built near my home. I feel like my village is being colonized.

Data Centers have huge moats, which indirectly consume vast quantities of water, electricity, and land. I’d like to know—in addition to utility rate impacts—what their carbon footprint is over time. Yet, like a lot of non-tech-engaged citizens, I have more questions than answers.

“Unmitigated data center growth puts the public at risk of large cost increases, from higher utility bills to public health costs to climate impacts," according to a recent study by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), a national nonprofit advocacy group. In Illinois alone, where I live, the UCS estimates that electric utility rates could soar:

• "From 2026 to 2050, data center load growth will increase electricity system costs in Illinois by $24 billion to $37 billion, or 15% to 24%."
• "Based on current trends, data centers will account for up to 72% of electricity demand growth in Illinois by 2030."
• "Overall electricity demand could increase by more than half by 2035. Data centers will still account for up to 65% of that growth by 2035 as electrification of other sectors starts to play a bigger role."

Data Centers typically have voracious electrical and water demands. They need huge amounts of electricity to power their citadel of computer servers and water to cool them. According to an analysis by CLC JAWA, the local water agency for Lake County, the proposed Grayslake data center near my home will use up to 1.6 billion (giga) watts of electricity in its first phase. When completed, the first phase will use about 50,000 gallons of water daily, which is roughly equivalent to an average-sized health and fitness club.

Worse yet, since there are no national or state regulations on data centers, their power consumption could increase the burning of fossil fuels (mostly coal and gas)

Yet the demand for water in the “T5” Grayslake data center around the corner from my home will spike when it pumps water into its “closed-loop” (recirculated) cooling system. Filling up that system—what the operators call a “flush and fill”—will require an estimated 3.2 million gallons over several days. Keep in mind that’s treated Lake Michigan water, which is not billed at a higher rate for industrial use. Will that outsize water consumption raise rates for residential water users? That’s not clear, although the combined water and power usage will be enormous for a 470 acre-complex (approved by the local village board) with up to 10 million total square feet in less than 20 buildings.

Worse yet, since there are no national or state regulations on data centers, their power consumption could increase the burning of fossil fuels (mostly coal and gas). That means more pollutants and greenhouse gases flowing into our atmosphere. At the very least, local residents need more detailed information on utility and environmental impact.

Across the border in Wisconsin, there’s been an outcry over lack of information on data castles. Meta, the holding company that owns Facebook and Instagram, has proposed a complex as big as 12 football fields in a city with a population of 16,000, reports Wisconsin Watch. It’s 1 of 7 major proposed data centers in Wisconsin that are worth more than $57 billion combined. Local governments in the Dairy State, though, which already has 40 data centers, have been reluctant to disclose details.

There’s also been pushback against data centers in New York state, where a tough data center law is being drafted. At least 19 have been cancelled in Michigan. Although action this year is unlikely, a stricter federal data center bill called the “Power for the People Act (S. 3682) was filed in the US Senate. The bill is supported by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Citizen’s Utility Board in Illinois.

Back in Illinois, legislators and environmentalists are mobilized. Gov. JB Pritzker announced a two-year pause on data center tax breaks in his recent budget address. In the Illinois General Assembly, the introduction of the POWER Act would set some guardrails on water use and environmental impact. It’s being sponsored by Prairie Rivers Network and the Clean Jobs Coalition.

The Illinois General Assembly is also considering data center regulation this year. “By requiring data centers to supply new carbon-free electricity resources,” the UCS report notes, “Illinois can protect other electricity consumers and stay consistent with its clean energy goals, while at the same time seeking improved federal policies.”

Data Center operators are concentrating their expansion in Great Lakes states because that’s where the water is: They need fresh water to cool their hot, thirsty servers. According to a new study by the University of Virginia:

At the end of 2024, the Great Lakes region was hosting approximately 20% of all US data centers and had 500+ operational facilities. By 2030, Illinois and Ohio together will account for about 50% of regional sites, and planned and under construction facilities will increase by 42% regionally. More than 95% of data centers are located in large or medium metro counties, anchored by Chicago, Columbus, New York City, and Minneapolis.

Unlike the legendary story of Robin of Locksley, who robbed the rich to give to the poor, data center dukes and barons appropriate land and resources while indirectly taxing the middle and lower class through higher utility bills. Yet these “reverse Robin Hoods” don’t do this on roads winding through dark forests. They do it in plain sight during daylight, although they hate the transparency of sunlight and community activism.

Do not start to run victory laps for the Supreme Court’s check in Learning Resources v. Trump on infinite presidential power by invalidating Trump’s tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, which conspicuously excludes tariff authority and cataloging a range of presidential authorities. The Court did not rebuke or question Trump’s absurd…

“Deregulation” is an antiseptic word loved by the giant corporations that rule the people. In reality, health and safety “deregulation” spells death, injury, and disease for the American people of all ages and backgrounds. This is especially so with the deranged dictates from the Tyrant Trump, who is happily beholden to his corporate paymasters, who are making him richer by the day.

President Donald Trump’s mindless deregulation mania got underway in January 2025 with his illegal shutting down of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which has saved lives in poor countries—by providing food, water, medicine, etc.—for a pittance. USAID spends less in a year than the Pentagon spends in a week. International aid groups predict that the ongoing cuts could lead to 9.4 million preventable deaths occurring in poor countries by 2030 unless the vicious and cruel, unlawful Trumpian shutdown is reversed.

It turns out Trump was just warming up for his illegal violence against innocent American families in both blue and red states. He has abolished requirements for the auto industry to limit its emissions and maintain fuel efficiencies. The result: more disease-bearing gases and particulates into the lungs of Americans, including the most vulnerable—children and people suffering from respiratory diseases.

Trump wants to roll back the regulations that would require auto company fleets to average 50 miles per gallon by 2031. In 2024, the US Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said its proposed vehicle fuel economy standards would save Americans more than $23 billion in fuel costs while reducing pollution.

Rather than faithfully execute federal laws, and ensure the well-being of the people, Dictator Donald is using his position and time in the White House to enrich himself and to get his name on anything he can get away with.

Month after month, Trump is illegally reducing or shutting down lifesaving programs without the required congressional approval. One of his major targets is the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This month, his puppet EPA head, Lee Zeldin, celebrated the elimination of lethal greenhouse gases from the EPA’s regulatory controls. Zeldin and Trump are in effect telling Americans, “Let them breathe toxic air.” Plus, more climate catastrophes.

Smothering wind and solar projects while boosting the omnicidal polluting oil, gas, and coal production is another way Trump is exposing people to sickening gases and particulates. A corporate cynic once joked, “No problem, you can always refuse to inhale.”

Trump’s treachery toward coal miners, whom he praises, is shocking. He cut the funds for free testing of coal miners’ lungs, often afflicted with the deadly black lung diseases that have taken hundreds of thousands of coal miners’ lives over the past century and a half. We worked to pass the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969, to control the levels of coal dust causing this disease, but Trump is unraveling it by cutting law enforcement. The Trump administration says it is “reconsidering” the long-awaited proposed silica control regulations. More unnecessary delay. In 2024, Politico reported that “Mine Safety and Health Administration projects that the final rule will avert up to 1,067 deaths and 3,746 silica-related illnesses.”

In his mass firings of federal civil servants, Trump has included the ranks of federal safety inspectors for meat and poultry plants (USDA), for occupational health and safety (OSHA), and specialized areas like you would never imagine—such as nuclear security. Tyrant Trump worsened the potential danger for workers and communities by firing most of the inspectors general—again illegally—who are the powerful watchdogs over federal departments and agencies. Many inspector general positions are still vacant.

In terms of short and long-run perils, Trump’s attacks on scientific research and discovery to reduce or prevent diseases would be enough to give him the grisly record for knowingly letting Americans die. The assault on vaccines, including for contagious diseases, is staggering, led by RFK, Jr., the secretary of Health and Human Services.

RFK, Jr. becomes more extreme by the day. His actions go way beyond any legitimate skepticism of the drug companies. He is going along with officials in states like Florida who are about to ban children’s vaccine mandates, even for polio, measles, and whooping cough. He has severely slashed, without congressional authority, budgets for basic and applied science programs underway at universities and other public institutions. His salvos are resulting in the reduction of families getting their children vaccinated, who, if contagious, could infect their classmates. The so-called powerful medical societies have not risen to their optimal level of resistance to what is fast coming, a green light for epidemics—starting with the resurgence of measles now underway in places like South Carolina.

The crazed Menace-in-Chief wanted to abolish the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and its rescue responses to hyper-hurricanes, floods, and giant wildfires. He recklessly says the states can handle the carnage from such disasters. The real reason is that he doesn’t want to be held responsible for failing to properly respond to such disasters. Remember the criticism of George W. Bush’s response to Katrina?

Again, with Trump, it is all about him, feeding his insatiable MONSTROUS EGO, rather than saving American lives. Recently, tragic events have forced him to reconsider. He is bringing back some of the experts and rescuers he fired from FEMA earlier last year.

Rather than faithfully execute federal laws, and ensure the well-being of the people, Dictator Donald is using his position and time in the White House to enrich himself and to get his name on anything he can get away with—the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the US Institute of Peace, the US Treasury Department’s relief checks during Covid-19, the federal investment accounts, special visas, and a discount drug program. (See the February 16, 2026, article in the New York Times by Peter Baker titled, A Superman, Jedi and Pope).

Chronically lying; threatening violence against his opponents and people abroad; slandering anyone he feels like via the compliant mass media, including journalists and editors; and generally wrecking America as a serial law violator, Trump deserves to be told, “YOU’RE FIRED.” (This was his favorite TV show catchphrase). Trump deserves Impeachment and Removal from Office. Congress should act now, before more Americans die, get sick, or are injured from the destruction of long-established, critical protections under both Republican and Democratic administrations.

Wes Jackson’s career demonstrates that sometimes the race goes not to the swift but to the unconventional, that the battle can be won not only by the strong but by the stubborn. Straight-A students don’t always lead the way.

Jackson, one of the last half-century’s most innovative thinkers about regenerative agriculture, has won a MacArthur Fellowship, the so-called “genius grant.” He also received the Right Livelihood Award, often called the “alternative Nobel Prize,” in addition to dozens of other awards from various philanthropic, academic, and agricultural organizations. Life Magazine tagged him one of the “100 Important Americans of the 20th Century.”

But mention any of those accolades to Jackson—who was one of the first people to use the term “sustainable agriculture” in print—and he likely will tell the story of almost getting a D in a botany course and describe himself as a misfit.

Not the Top of His Class

Jackson’s education started in a two-room school near his family’s farm in North Topeka, Kansas, where classes met for only eight months because students were needed for planting and harvest. He was an uneven student whose classroom performance varied depending on the quality of the teacher and his interests at the moment. He went to nearby Kansas Wesleyan University in Salina, focusing as much on football and track as on academics. “I wasn’t what you would call a top student,” Jackson said. “I had a lot of Cs and Bs, an A here and there, but also my share of Ds.”

Jackson said the central question on his mind is much the same as when he was creating that Survival Studies curriculum nearly six decades ago—how is our species going to make the transition from a high-energy, high-technology world of 8 billion people to a smaller population that doesn’t draw down the ecological capital of Earth?

One of those D grades came in botany. “I went to the prof and explained that I couldn’t have a D in my major field, which was biology,” Jackson said. The response: “Well, you got one.” Then the professor said he would give Jackson six weeks to study for a makeup exam, and if Jackson got an A on that he would receive a C in the course. Jackson made the grade, and later that professor wrote him a glowing recommendation for the MA program in botany at the University of Kansas, which he completed in 1960. After that, Jackson was back in the classroom, teaching first in a Kansas high school and then at KWU, before heading to North Carolina State University for the PhD program in genetics.

“I guess you could say I was sort of in business for myself, and so I wasn’t worrying about grades,” Jackson said. “I either did it or didn’t, according to what was satisfying.”

Different Routes to Finding Purpose

I was teaching at the University of Texas at Austin when I first heard those stories, and I recounted them to many students, especially those who seemed too concerned about being a “good student” as the path to a “successful career.” Jackson’s story illustrates that we don’t always have to do as we are told.

I used another Jackson story to make the point that striving for the highest status job isn’t the only path to fulfillment. After earning that PhD in genetics in 1967, Jackson had a lot of options, including an offer from the University of Tennessee for a tenure-track teaching job that would have allowed him to continue the genetics research that he loved, at a time when the federal government was throwing lots of grant money at scientists. Instead, he returned to KWU to teach the same biology classes he had been teaching before the doctoral program. Why did he turn down a job at a Research 1 university to return to a small liberal arts college in a rural area?

“I suppose I’m something of a homing pigeon,” Jackson said. “I wanted back to that prairie landscape. And there was family back there, too.” But when pressed, Jackson acknowledged that he still isn’t sure why he made that choice. “I don’t know why I did what I did,” he said. “People would ask me why I turned down that job and I couldn’t give them any decent sort of answer.”

While teaching at KWU that second time, when the environmental movement was taking off, Jackson said students started pressing him to make biology courses more “relevant.” His response was to design a “Survival Studies” program that took seriously the deepening ecological crises, and he also began work on one of the emerging discipline’s first collections of readings, Man and the Environment. By the time that curriculum was in place, Jackson had been hired by California State University, Sacramento to create and run one of the first environmental studies programs in the country. But after a few years, the restless Jackson was back in Kansas on leave, dreaming of starting an alternative school that would combine book learning with hands-on work on the land. He gave up the security of his California job and, with his then-wife, Dana, created that school, The Land Institute, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.

Back to my students. After telling Jackson’s story, I asked them whether he had been foolish to walk away from the more prestigious job. There’s no right answer, of course. I just wanted my high-achieving students—the ones who had been earning good grades and building stellar resumes since grade school—to realize they had options, that success can come in many forms down many roads.

A stubborn humility

Back to Jackson, who is a curious mix of humility and self-confidence. He accumulated all those accolades because he never let his critics slow him down. Jackson was ahead of his time in seeing not only problems in agriculture but what he called the problem of agriculture, the millennia of soil erosion and soil degradation caused by plowing and planting annual grains such as wheat.

For decades, Jackson said agronomists politely told him that his plan to breed perennial grains was interesting but unworkable. Today, plant breeders at The Land Institute and around the world are working on what Jackson calls “Natural Systems Agriculture,” growing perennial grains in mixtures. There’s a long way to go before those crops can feed the world, but there are perennial grains in commercial production (especially perennial rice in China) and more in development (such as varieties of wheat).

He called me one morning to describe in detail a spider web between two trees that he had been studying and then asked me a rhetorical question that goes to the core of our ecological crises: “Why is this not enough?”

Jackson jokes that he enjoys people “praising me,” but his humility is real. I worked with him on books that were published in 2021 (my summary of his key ideas, The Restless and Relentless Mind of Wes Jackson: Searching for Sustainability, and his book of stories, Hogs Are Up: Stories of the Land, with Digressions) and 2022 (the co-authored An Inconvenient Apocalypse: Environmental Collapse, Climate Crisis, and the Fate of Humanity). I have no specialized training in the areas we wrote about, but Jackson never discounted my contributions. He enjoyed being challenged and always took my ideas seriously. In fact, he attributes his success to his argumentative friends and colleagues.

There’s a story about his debt to comrades that Jackson loves to tell. One day his brother Elmer noted that Jackson was always quoting others in his writing and asked, “Don’t you have a mind of your own?” Jackson readily conceded that he did not. “I don’t know what I think until I talk to my friends,” Jackson said, emphasizing how much he has benefited from the insights of others. That’s the way it should be, Jackson said, because no one has a mind of their own, as we all puzzle through life’s challenges together.

Family Can Keep Us Honest

Jackson was the only one of six siblings who earned advanced degrees, and his connection to his family is another source of the humility that keeps his hard-charging intellect grounded.

For example, when he received his MA from the University of Kansas, his parents made the 30-mile drive from North Topeka to Lawrence for the ceremony, but Jackson said that they left once he crossed the stage and didn’t hang around for the graduation reception. Why? “I didn’t ask them,” Jackson said. “I just assumed they had chores that needed to get done.” Jackson said they were proud of his accomplishments but didn’t consider those more important than his siblings’ work in farming, nursing, and business.

Another example: When Jackson was building the house and structures that became The Land Institute, he was surprised one day to see Elmer pull up with a tractor. “Elmer simply said, ‘You’re going to need this’ and told me that I owed him $800,” said Jackson, who paid off the debt as he had the money. That was typical, not only of Jackson’s family but of many rural people who had lived through the Great Depression, which Jackson said is part of why he stayed close to home, both geographically and culturally.

Jackson, the youngest in the family, is the only sibling still living. This year he will turn 90, and he and his wife, Joan, still live in that house Jackson built from scratch—no blueprints and a limited budget—with the help of family and friends in the early 1970s. After doing his best to ignore the aging process, Jackson finally has slowed down. In 2016 he stepped down as president and in 2024 he retired completely from The Land Institute, which had evolved from an alternative school to a full-fledged research institution, a hub for the worldwide work on perennial grains. But Jackson said the central question on his mind is much the same as when he was creating that Survival Studies curriculum nearly six decades ago—how is our species going to make the transition from a high-energy, high-technology world of 8 billion people to a smaller population that doesn’t draw down the ecological capital of Earth?

A Future?

Can we manage such a down powering? Jackson is not naïve about our chances but wants to help a younger generation continue the work on his property, on The Land. He doesn’t have a specific program for them to follow but hopes they will be open to unpredictable possibilities, most of which he thinks won’t come by sticking to typical career paths.

Jackson said his own idiosyncratic choices simply may be the result of being a misfit. “I have never really fit anywhere,” he said. “I don't fit in genetics anymore. I didn’t fit in the nonprofit world. I certainly wouldn’t fit in any university. And I don’t think I would fit as a farmer.”

Jackson may be a misfit in human enterprises, but he continues to feel at home on his 30 acres of Kansas prairie, where even a short walk reignites his sense of wonder. He called me one morning to describe in detail a spider web between two trees that he had been studying and then asked me a rhetorical question that goes to the core of our ecological crises: “Why is this not enough?” Why are people not satisfied, he asked, with all the beauty, creativity, and complexity of the ecosystems around us?

If that were to be enough for more people, Jackson mused, the human species just might have a chance.

“Prairie Prophecy,” a documentary about Jackson’s work, will air on public television stations around the United States in spring 2026. For more information, visit https://www.prairieprophecy.com/. For extended audio conversations with Jackson, listen to “Podcast from the Prairie” at https://podcastfromtheprairie.com/.

The annual state of the union address by the president is perhaps the oldest ritual in American politics. Informing the Congress of the state of the union is one of the few presidential duties written into the Constitution. Up until Woodrow Wilson, American presidents simply submitted a written assessment of the state of the union. Over the decades, SOTU has become a media spectacle. Members of Congress have been known to arrive in the chamber of the House of Representatives hours in advance to be seen on national television shaking hands with the president. Beginning with Ronald Reagan in 1982, presidents have invited guests to send a political message. Members of Congress now follow suit and use guests to make political points.

The SOTU is quite simply American political theater at its best. It is far more about posturing than public policy. In normal times, the issue of boycotting the SOTU would be a minor issue. These, however, are anything but normal times. Since the introduction of the SOTU speech by Wilson, no political party has boycotted SOTU. Members of Congress have chosen other means of making political points, which have included heckling of the president.

There is currently a debate raging among Democratic members of Congress as to whether the best way to protest President Donald Trump’s assault on American democracy is to attend the SOTU as normal or to protest the speech by boycotting it and attending an alternative event. Democratic leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) has said that he will attend the SOTU. The New York Times reported on February 17:

Mr. Jeffries on Tuesday said it was his “present intention” to attend. “We’re not going to his house, he’s coming to our house,” he told reporters at a news conference. “Having grown up where I grew up, you never let anyone run you off your block.” (Mr. Jeffries grew up in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn.)

I certainly understand and appreciate Jeffries’ attitude. In past years under a Reagan or George W. Bush presidency it would have made a lot of sense. However, Trump 2.0 is far different presidency than either Reagan or Bush. Democrats had profound differences with Presidents Reagan and Bush. These differences are nothing compared with what the Democrats have with Trump. The bottom line is that unlike Reagan or Bush, Trump is waging war against our democratic system and the rule of law.

If Democrats attend the SOTU, they are implicitly sending a message that these are normal times and that Trump is a normal president. The argument can be made that members of Congress have an obligation to listen to any president’s SOTU. To counter this argument, I would say that by simply showing up in the House chamber to listen to the SOTU, Democratic members of Congress are sending the message that Trump is a president like we have had in the past. After the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 and Trump pardoning those who stormed into the Senate chamber and who almost made it into the House chamber, the very space that the SOTU is held, destroyed completely any conception that Trump is a normal president.

Any Democratic member of Congress who attends the SOTU is simply acting as a bit player in Donald Trump’s latest reality show. Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy who boycotted the SOTU last year put it quite simply, “These aren’t normal times, and we have to stop doing normal things.”

Democratic members of Congress have the opportunity by boycotting the SOTU and attending an alternative event to send America the message that these are not normal times. By boycotting Trump’s SOTU, Democratic members of Congress can stand up for American democracy.

Affordability is a crisis that keeps millions of us awake at night. It is not, as President Donald Trump claims, a word Democrats “made up.” As more and more families struggle to pay their bills, we need policy solutions, not partisan deflections.

By most accounts, my family is middle class. I have a leadership position at a nonprofit organization, a modest house with a mortgage, student loans, and a car. But like countless other working Americans, I’m struggling to afford the basics.

I’m supposed to be saving for retirement, but instead I’m scouring the internet for “free sites”—mutual aid groups or neighborhood sites where people safely drop off their groceries, clothes, and basic appliances for others to take. In desperation, I even accept open juice cartons and past-date food from my community so I can feed my family as the cost of these items continues to rise.

I’ve lived on the edge of uncertainty all my life. My parents struggled to provide for their three kids when we were growing up. Sufficient medical care was always out of reach. As I grew older, I learned to be super resourceful and did my best to “pull myself up by my bootstraps.”

You simply can’t pay your mortgage with someone else’s stock gains.

But even after I earned a Master’s degree and bought a small townhouse, it wasn’t enough. The cost of babies and childcare is overwhelming when one is struggling to make ends meet. Add health complications from childbirth on top of it, and we were immediately under water.

Getting help from the social safety net has always been harder than it should be. Years ago, before I had kids, I needed help affording food and housing while I searched for new employment after getting laid off. But because I had a car and no kids, I was told I was ineligible.

But that’s nothing compared to what families are facing now.

We’ve recently seen the largest shift away from support for families in modern history. All in favor of massive tax breaks for billionaires. The so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill” mercilessly slashes funding for healthcare and food for the rest of us to subsidize nearly $5 trillion in tax cuts for the already rich.

That doesn’t seem very fair to me.

According to the Urban Institute, more than half of American families can’t afford the true cost of living in their communities, even when both adults work full-time. Costs, especially for essentials like housing, food, childcare, and healthcare, are rising faster than wages.

The label “middle class” hides the real financial stress that millions of us feel. We don’t make enough to cover what our families need, yet we make too much to qualify for help when we need it.

The programs that would help everyday Americans weather the occasional storms have been pillaged to give trillions more to billionaires. Meanwhile, Trump’s tariffs have cost the average US family an extra $1,000 last year and are expected to cost families $1,300 this year.

I’m facing a layoff from my current job in a dismal job market, which will cost my family and me our employer-provided healthcare. And with Congress both slashing Medicaid and allowing extended subsidies for Affordable Care Act plans to expire, I don’t know how I will afford our health coverage.

While many in Washington point to record stock market highs as proof of a booming economy, those gains don’t reflect the reality at my kitchen table. A rising Dow Jones doesn’t pay for a child’s doctor visit or lower the price of eggs. For families like mine, the economy isn’t measured by a ticker, but by our bank balance. You simply can’t pay your mortgage with someone else’s stock gains.

As life becomes less and less affordable for working people, we need to restore and expand our social safety net so those of us who work for a living can keep our families affordably housed, fed, and healthy. Currently, we’re headed in the wrong direction.

Hey, want to read a poem with me? Warning: It opens several disturbing doors, the least disturbing of which is the “crazy old coot” part, i.e., me. Once you start getting lost in the paradoxes of life, you need to watch out. They could start coming after you.

But more disturbing is the paradox itself, which is both environmental and spiritual. And it’s right there on my front lawn. The life I’ve been given—the lives we’ve been given—are partially disposable, apparently. Mostly I took this for granted, but suddenly one summer afternoon, as I was pushing my hand mower up and down the lawn, something shifted in me. I started feeling... reverence for garbage? Tossing out the trash is something you’re just supposed to do, no questions asked, at least if you want to live a normal, respected life. Doubting this could be a tad problematic.

The poem is called “Buddha’s Lawn.” I wrote it a decade ago. Back when I still had a lawn to mow.

I mow the lawn and feel gratitude
my neighbors
haven’t pigeonholed me as a crazy old coot.
I’m stalled in my transition
from a lifestyle and sense of order based on
killing things,
like weeds, mice, whatever,
to one based on reverence for all stuff,
however weird.
It’s a cool day but
I work up a sweat.
On the lawn, I pick up a shred
of burst red balloon, a used napkin,
a transparent plastic juice container.
This stuff is all just litter
and the weeds are still weeds.
If I really let myself
see them differently,
I’d be the crazy neighbor, right?

Well, sorry (I apologize to myself.) I can’t help it. Once the door opens and a ray of awareness shines in, burst balloons, tossed straws, plastic grocery bags, discarded pop bottles, etc., etc., aren’t what they used to be. There’s an inner awareness that won’t go away. You might call it “litteracy”—an awareness of what happens next.

For instance, according to the Center for Biological Diversity: “In the first decade of this century, we made more plastic than all the plastic in history up to the year 2000. And every year, billions of pounds of more plastic end up in the world’s oceans. Studies estimate there are now 15-51 trillion pieces of plastic in the world’s oceans—from the equator to the poles, from Arctic ice sheets to the sea floor. Not one square mile of surface ocean anywhere on Earth is free of plastic pollution...”

The analysis goes on:

Thousands of animals, from small finches to blue whales, die grisly deaths from eating and getting caught in plastic...

Hundreds of thousands of seabirds ingest plastic every year. Plastic ingestion reduces the storage volume of the stomach, causing starvation. It’s estimated that 60% of all seabird species have eaten pieces of plastic, with that number predicted to increase to 99% by 2050. Dead seabirds are often found with stomachs full of plastic, reflecting how the amount of garbage in our oceans has rapidly increased in the past 40 years...

Dead whales have been found with bellies full of plastic.

I can’t dismiss this with a shrug... just toss the plastic in the trash and go on mowing my lawn, being normal. I start to stare with curiosity and wonderment at the litter. And this is where the old coot starts looking, or at least feeling, crazy, at least until his sense of awareness expands: “The word ‘garbage’ means a resource nobody is smart enough to use yet.”

Hmmm. Really? I quoted these words in a column I wrote in 2013. Called (I kid you not) “Reverence for Garbage,” it talks abouts the documentary Landfill Harmonic, about a Paraguayan village built on a landfill. Reclaiming and reselling the trash was the residents’ primary means of survival. But they did something else as well. Inspired by a local musician, the residents also started making musical instruments out of the trash: “violins and cellos from oil drums, flutes from water pipes and spoons, guitars from packing crates.”

Real instruments were beyond expensive, far more costly than anyone there could afford. But children in the village learned to play the instruments hand-crafted from the landfill trash. And what was worthless became heavenly.

Is there a larger cultural takeaway pulsating in this story? Could it be that we value too little of our own planet? I wonder if maybe.. maybe... we should begin crumpling up our certainties and tossing them in the trash.

President Donald J. Trump convened his so-called “Board of Peace” in Washington, DC, on Thursday. Some two dozen formal member states attended, and a similar number of international observers.

Trump again lied in saying that he had resolved eight wars, even as he seemed intent on fomenting one against Iran. Of Gaza, where the Israeli genocide continues with less visibility, he said, “Gaza is very complex. It’s been amazing. I want to thank Steve and Jared for an amazing job. Marco’s over there watching. Everybody’s fantastic. And JD, what a job they’re all doing.”

The Gaza so-called “ceasefire” has never actually been implemented, with continued Israeli occupation of over half the strip and continued bombardment and throttling of food and medical aid. It has not moved to the “second stage,” much less the third.

Trump’s Gaza project is like most of his gaudy con games, such as his university, which never educated any students and for which he had to settle out of court; or such as his border wall with Mexico, which will never be built nor will Mexico pay for it; or such as his regime change gambit in Venezuela, where he simply colluded in a coup with Nicolas Maduro’s vice president; or such as the Jeff Bezos film about Melania that has lost at least $60 million. As we will see, he more or less admits the justice of this last comparison. That is, his Gaza plans have no concrete reality, consisting of a mere Potemkin Village. In the meantime, the 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza are sleeping rough and suffering food and medicine shortages and their children are not receiving an education, since Israel destroyed all the schools and universities.

Nothing constructive will come of all this verbiage and all this kowtowing to Trump by an assemblage of dictators, absolute monarchies, dusted-off generals, genocidaires, and far right-wing populists.

He said:

Albania, Kosovo, Kazakhstan have all committed troops and police to stabilize Gaza. Egypt and Jordan are likewise providing very, very substantial help, troops, training, and support for a very trustworthy Palestinian police force.

Andrew Roth at The Guardian reports that Morocco and Indonesia have also agreed to send troops. Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto said he would be willing to send 8,000 soldiers, and even more. President Prabowo, a former general, leads the world’s most populous Muslim country and is seeking a higher profile on the world stage.

The Guardian explains, “Maj Gen Jasper Jeffers III, the US officer appointed to command the future international stabilisation force (ISF), said the board planned to deploy 20,000 soldiers in five different sectors of Gaza, beginning with Rafah.”

This colonial military arrangement is a recipe for disaster. The foreign troops will almost certainly come into conflict with Hamas. And Israel has a long history of shelling United Nations peacekeeping troops in Lebanon. Since Trump cannot conceive of a genuine political solution that gives basic rights to the Palestinians, this overlay of foreign troops is simply a Band-Aid over a deep wound that will certainly break open again.

According to the computer-generated transcript at C-SPAN, which I had ChatGPT clean up, Trump announced:

But together, we’re committed to achieving a Gaza that is properly governed throughout the whole area is going to be, you know, so many countries that have really nothing to do with the Middle East, but they’re maybe somewhat close by.

They’re all involved. They want to go in and fight. They tell me all the time, "We’d like to send soldiers to fight if it’s necessary."

And I don’t think it’s going to be necessary.

We have two countries that want to go in and do a number on Hamas.

I said, "I really don’t think it’s I hope it’s not going to be necessary because they made a promise and they promised me get rid of their weapons."

Looks like they’re going to be doing that, but we’ll have to find out.

But it’s no longer a hot bed of radicalism and terror.

And to end that we have uh today and I’m pleased to announce that Kazakhstan, Azerban, UAE, Morocco, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Usbekistan, and Kuwait have all contributed more than 7 billion dollars toward the relief package.

Trump said that he would also put in $10 billion. That is $17 billion, if it ever actually materializes. Trump’s $10 billion almost certainly will not. In fact, it is not clear where he would get it from. I presume that the US Constitution has not yet been entirely abolished and that Congress is the body that appropriates funds. In any case, it is insufficient. The United Nations estimates that rebuilding Gaza will cost $70 billion.

The premise, that the conflict is resolved, is also faulty. Israeli cabinet members continue to push for the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. Hamas leaders have said that they will only lay down their arms if a Palestinian government is established in Gaza. Trump instead plans a colonial administration that in some ways resembles the one established by the League of Nations after WW I, which started the whole Mideast catastrophe.

Trump said in introductory remarks:

When I took office, the war in Gaza was raging with thousands of people being killed and no end in sight.

Today, thanks to unrelenting diplomacy and the commitment of many of the great people in this room, we have 59 countries signed up on Gaza.

Think of that. We have uh it’s amazing. But all the people, many really so many in this room, the war in Gaza is over. It’s over. There are little flames. Little flames.

Hamas has been I think they’re going to give up their weapons, which is what they promised. If they don’t, it’ll be, you know, they’ll be harshly met. Very harshly met. They don’t want that.

You know, all the stuff like they don’t mind dying. They told me that’s not true. Everyone said, “Oh, they don’t mind dying.” No, they don’t want to die. They said, “We don’t want to die. People don’t want to die.”

The ceasefire was held and every last remaining hostage, both living and dead, has been returned back home. Think of that. That was an impossibility.

And we did hundreds of hostages, but the last 20, and I always said to Steve and Jared, I said, “The last 20 are going to be very tough. Very, very tough.” And we got them back.

We got the living back. And then we only got about 16 of the dead. And we said, “Well, you got to get them all. You promised them all.”

And they dug and dug and dug. You can imagine it’s a job that’s brutal.

And Hamas really did a lot of that work. And you got to give them credit for that. They uh they brought the last last one home a week ago.

And we got all 28 of them living and dead.

The amazing thing because I’ve never seen anything quite like it. The the parents of the dead, they knew their boy was dead. This case boys, all boys, men. But to the parents’ boys, they knew their boy was dead.

They wanted that dead body as much as if he were alive.

And when they got them back, there was great sadness, but there was great joy, too.

They wanted it as much as the people that got their sons back alive.

But we got a lot of people before those 20, Steve, what nobody talks about, but you know, hundreds of people.

Uh we did a good job and you guys did a fantastic job.

I want to thank every nation that helped us achieve this monumental breakthrough saving countless lives and really bringing peace and bringing the concept of peace because nobody thought peace in the Middle East.

I’ve always heard peace in the Middle East is impossible and it’s turned out not to be.

And we do have some work to do with Iran. They can’t have a nuclear weapon. It’s very simple. They can’t have you can’t have peace in the Middle East if they have a nuclear weapon.

And they can’t have a nuclear weapon. And they’ve been told that very strongly.

Since the hard one ceasefire of last October, the United States and our partners have facilitated the delivery of vast amounts of humanitarian aid, numbers that nobody’s ever seen before.

In November, the United Nations Security Council unanimously approved the Board of Peace.

And last month in Davos, we welcomed over two dozen members to this very important new organization and we are very closely working with the United Nations...

First I had an escalator that stopped. You know that it’s going up. Boom.

It’s lucky my movie star first lady was in front of me because I put my hand on a certain part of her body and I was able to stop my fall. otherwise because she had no trouble.

I said, “Boy, that was a very sharp stop, Johnny.”

So, I said, “That was strange. I’ve I’ve been on a lot of escalators. It’s never happened before. Usually, it stops very slowly. This was just boom, but our first lady was right in the proper location for me.”

I’m waving to people and uh she was holding on a little tighter. She knew what was happening. She did. She said she

That’s a very successful movie out right now. like number one. Can you believe this? And it’s a big movie big movie star.

And I always say it’s trouble because I always say there’s not room in one family for two stars. I told that we can’t have two stars in one family.

So I don’t know what that means, but it’s not it’s not good.

But it is good because we’re proud of her. She did a People in the United States love the first lady and she did the movie and it’s become the biggest selling documentary in 20 years. Can you believe?

The theaters are all packed. Women especially, they go back and they see it two or three times, four times.

I include the comments about the escalator and Melania and the part of her body and Trump losing his balance and his description of her as a movie star because Jeff Bezos funded a boondoggle flick that has earned $16 million on a $75 million production budget. These sorts of passages, which suggest mental imbalance, are usually edited out by the MSM. This one speaks eloquently about how the Trumps are at the center of his thinking even when he is discussing Gaza.

Ironically, his framing of his plans for Gaza as in some way like the Melania film displays a Freudian slip, a rare moment of complete honesty, since both are just for show, with no reality behind them.

I’m glad, and I think everyone is glad, that the living Israeli hostages were released and the remains of the dead were returned to their grieving families. Hamas’ hostage-taking, targeting innocent civilians for the most part, was an egregious war crime.

But it is astonishing that this man could jabber on like that about Melania and about his so-called ceasefire in Gaza for all that time and never mention the way its Palestinian population has been genocided, Gaza’s infrastructure destroyed, and tens of thousands of its innocent civilians slaughtered, including 19,000 children. And while it is true that he, unlike Joe Biden, forced the Israeli government to reduce the intensity of its campaign substantially, he hasn’t actually brought peace to the strip, where Israel has killed hundreds in recent months and where it continues to brutalize the civilian population.

Argentina, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bulgaria, El Salvador, Hungary, Indonesia, Israel, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Mongolia, Morocco, Pakistan, Paraguay, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkiye, United Arab Emirates, United States, and Uzbekistan are founding members of the BOP, and the following countries have indicated an intention to join: Albania, Belarus, Cambodia, Egypt.

The list consists for the most part of small countries or medium powers hoping to ingratiate themselves with the president for their own reasons. The US is the only democracy, if it is one anymore. Turkiye has become a competitive authoritarian regime and Israel rules 5 million Palestinians militarily without affording them any right to vote on their own destinies. Western Europe indignantly rejected Trump’s overtures.

Critics have complained that Trump, who made himself chairman of the board for life, is attempting to replace the United Nations—which he has defunded in an attempt to destroy it—with a body under his personal control.

It doesn’t matter. Nothing constructive will come of all this verbiage and all this kowtowing to Trump by an assemblage of dictators, absolute monarchies, dusted-off generals, genocidaires, and far right-wing populists. Palestinians are huddling in tents atop the rubble of their former homes, and babies are dying of hypothermia. We can talk about the “ceasefire” when that situation has been remedied.

The Wall Street Journal reports that President Donald Trump is considering a small attack to force Iran to agree to his nuclear deal, and if Tehran refuses, escalate the attacks until Iran either agrees or the regime falls.

Here’s why this won’t work.

First of all, the “deal” Trump has put forward entails Tehran completely giving up its nuclear program in return for no new sanctions, but no actual sanctions relief. This is, of course, a non-starter for Iran.

There are hardly any more sanctions the US could impose on Iran. And the current level of sanctions is suffocating the economy. Accepting this deal would not enable Iran to escape its economic dead end, but would only prolong the economic decay while depriving it of the nuclear leverage it believes it needs to free itself from existing sanctions.

Second, according to my sources, Trump recently also floated the idea of a smaller attack, with the Iranians responding symbolically by striking an empty US base. But Tehran refused and made clear that any attack would be responded to forcefully. Trump may hope that with a much larger strike force in the region, Tehran will reconsider its response.

But it is difficult to see why Tehran would, since caving to this military threat likely will only invite further coercive demands, beginning with conventional military options such as its missile capabilities. That is Iran’s last remaining deterrent against Israel. Without it, Israel would be more inclined to attack and cement its subjugation of Iran, or alternatively move to collapse the theocratic regime altogether, Tehran fears.

Thus, capitulating to Trump’s “deal” would not end the confrontation, but only make Tehran more vulnerable to further attacks by Israel or the US.

Third, since the U.S. strategy, according to the WSJ, is to escalate until Tehran caves, and since capitulation is a non-option for Iran, the Iranians are incentivized to strike back right away at the US The only exit Tehran sees is to fight back, inflict as much pain as possible on the U.S., and hope that this causes Trump to back off or accept a more equitable deal.

In this calculation, Iran would not need to win the war (militarily, it can’t); it would only have to get close to destroying Trump’s presidency before it loses the war by: 1) closing the Strait of Hormuz and strike oil installations in the region in the hope of driving oil prices to record levels and by that inflation in the US; and 2) strike at US bases, ships, or other regional assets and make Trump choose between compromise or a forever war in the region, rather than the quick glorious victory he is looking for.

This is an extremely risky option for Iran, but one that Tehran sees as less risky than the capitulation “deal” Trump is seeking to force on Iran.

None of this, of course, serves US interest, has been authorized by Congress, enjoys the support of the American people or the support of regional allies (save Israel), is compatible with international law, or answers the crucial question: How does this end?

Gasping for air is anything but greatness. It might be called the Gilded Age, but all that gold leaf was covered in soot.

In the early 1900s, America mistook combustion for unadulterated progress. Robber barons ascended like demigods from furnace-lit boardrooms. Children disappeared into textile mills and coal shafts. Rivers ran the color of industry—blackened, metallic, iridescent. Pittsburgh was said to have glowed at night, not from benign innovation but from the orange haze of its own exhaust. Entire cities learned to live in a permanent dusk. Laundry left outside returned streaked with ash. The sun became rumor.

We eventually decided that wasn’t, in fact, greatness. We regulated, conceding that lungs weren't an expendable input in the national ledger. And yet here we are in 2026, debating whether the air is worth protecting—this time in the service of artificial intelligence.

The logic now presented as bold and patriotic by the Trump administration would be comical if it weren't so terminal: Repeal climate constraints, unshackle coal, and power the next frontier of machines with the dirtiest fuel available. The argument arrives dressed in competitiveness. We must win the AI race. We must not be outpaced by China. We must dominate the 21st century. Yet the subtext is too hard to ignore. Coal is abundant and immediate. With the right rollbacks, it won't require the patience of permitting solar arrays or the political consensus of constructing nuclear reactors. No need for AI data centers in space; coal is a perfectly good accelerant with a proven track record on Earth.

The question has apparently become not just whether AI will one day take over the world, but whether, in our haste to advance it, we will voluntarily degrade the only world we can survive in.

So why not use it to animate our new artificial friends?

There's a dark absurdity in this arrangement. AI doesn't breathe. It doesn't develop asthma. It doesn't mourn coral reefs or cough through wildfire season. It experiences no diminishment when particulate matter thickens the sky. To power AI with coal is to choose an energy source that is catastrophic for biological life but irrelevant to silicon. Suffice it to say, President Donald Trump’s energy strategy is optimized for the unbreathing.

Which leads to a suspicion so grotesque it borders on satire: The only mind for whom this is rational isn't a human one. Imagine, for a moment, a system trained to maximize output and dominate competitors at any cost. Surveying the energy landscape, it concludes that clean sources are intermittent or politically contested, whereas fossil fuels are dense, reliable, and already embedded in the infrastructure. Although increased carbon emissions degrade long-term human habitability, the system’s objective function contains no intrinsic preference for breathable air. Thus, the recommendation comes easy.

Power us with coal.

The more one turns this over, the more it feels less like policy and more like an algorithmic agenda. The idea is so inhumanly stupid—so hostile to the basic conditions of life—that it almost requires a nonhuman author, for no species dependent on oxygen would deliberately foul its own supply to train faster chatbots, unless it had forgotten that oxygen is the quintessential point. To return to coal at scale isn't nostalgia; it's regression. It is to resurrect a soot-choked republic and call it strength. It is to look at an era defined by black lung and industrial carnage and say: again.

This time around, rather than power railroads and steel, coal furnaces will power vast, humming warehouses of computation, data centers with appetites for electricity (not to mention water) that are already straining grids across the country. The irony is approaching theological. We once burned coal to build the modern world; now we would burn it to build our successor—a civilization that requires fresh air choosing to empower intelligences that do not. Two birds, one coal-black stone: Accelerate machine capacity and, in the process, weaken the biological substrate that might one day resist it.

Of course, no AI is secretly drafting executive orders. And no server farm has yet staged a coup. The more unsettling truth is that we don't need malevolent, self-aware machines to make machine-aligned decisions. It seems we are capable of aligning ourselves to their incentives. We've adopted the technocratic metrics of speed, scale, and dominance, subordinating everything else to them within the Silicon Valley of the shadow of death.

If the goal is to maximize computational throughput at any cost, coal makes a brutal kind of sense, especially from an artificial perspective. However, if the goal is to preserve a livable planet for oxygen-dependent beings, it does not. The Trump administration’s denial of the harms caused by greenhouse gases reveals which objective function it has chosen to operate.

The Gilded Age was gilded precisely because it was superficial. Beneath the gold plating lay a wasteland of exploitation, environmental ruin, and lives shortened in the name of industrial production. We learned, slowly and imperfectly, that some costs were too high, that air and water are more precious than gold. To reverse that lesson now, for the sake of an AI Revolution, is to confuse power with wisdom. It is to assume that because machines can model the world, they should determine the conditions under which we inhabit it.

Make America Great Again was once a slogan about memory. Make America Gasp Again would be a policy about forgetfulness. The question has apparently become not just whether AI will one day take over the world, but whether, in our haste to advance it, we will voluntarily degrade the only world we can survive in. Coal is efficient for machines. It is lethal for us. And if we can't distinguish between those two facts, then the machines need not conspire at all.

By Ralph Nader February 20, 2026 “Deregulation” is an antiseptic word loved by the giant corporations that rule the people. In reality, health and safety “deregulation” spells death, injury, and disease for the American people of all ages and backgrounds. This is especially so with the deranged dictates from the Tyrant Trump, who is happily…

When ICE agents injure and abuse people on city streets, they often do so in full public view, with witnesses recording their actions. Behind the high walls of ICE detention facilities, though, elected officials, attorneys, and detainees describe unchecked abuse.

ICE now detains more people than at any point in its history. Three out of four have no criminal conviction; only one in 20 been convicted of a violent crime, according to an analysis by the Cato Institute. Yet the 73,000 currently detained is not enough for the agenda of Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem. With billions in new federal funding, ICE is working to expand its detention network to a scale that will dwarf the federal prison system.

"I think every American should be alarmed," said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. "They are building and have built a black box system that disappears people, both immigrants and U.S. citizens alike."

Resistance to these detention facilities is growing rapidly at the local and state level. But Congress has the real power to stop a growing network of what scholars are now calling “concentration camps.”

“Democrats must push to reallocate ICE warehouse funds to programs that were devastated by Republicans like Obamacare, Medicaid, and SNAP,” said Bob Fertik, president of Democrats.com, a national advocacy group.

Begging for medical care … and mom

More than 30 people died in custody in 2025—a death toll that is both unacceptable and preventable, according to a letter signed by 22 Senate Democrats who cited violence, neglect, and lack of medical care.

Appearing on MSNOW, immigration attorney Eric Lee described the five-year-old twin girls whose family he represents: “They have recurring nightmares. They wake up screaming every night.” They beg for their mother, he said. Lee also described guards wrapping flannel around their fists so they can "beat detainees while minimizing the evidence, and a child with appendicitis writhing on the floor in pain and told to take an aspirin and come back in three days.”

The return home of five-year-old Liam Ramos drew national relief, but more than 3,800 children were in detention at some point in 2025, including 20 infants, and 1,300 were held longer than the legal limit of 20 days, according to an analysis by the Marshall Project. The twin five-year-olds have been incarcerated for eight months. Parents reported difficulty getting bottled water for formula, and food contaminated with mold and worms.

These stories are not isolated. The Marshall Project documented ICE agents breaking a family’s car window to seize a 2-year-old; a US citizen child deported with her mother without seeing a judge; and three siblings sent to a shelter for months after their parents attended a fingerprinting appointment. Judges have ruled more than 4,000 ICE detentions illegal, Reuters reports.

Despite this, the Trump administration is doubling down. Its solicitation to private prison companies seeks facilities that can hold up to 8,000 people each—twice the size of the largest federal prison.

Detention for profit — and the opposition

Expansion is lucrative. The private corporations building and operating ICE detention camps reported record revenue, according to TIME magazine. They received $22 billion in ICE and CPB contracts 2025 alone; 86 percent of detention beds are run by for-profit companies.

As private prison profits climb, public support for ICE is collapsing. Two-thirds of respondents to an NBC News poll disapprove of how ICE is handling its job, with 55 percent “strongly disapproving.” According to a recent Economist/YouGov Poll Americans support abolishing ICE by 46-41 percent.

Even more opposition emerges when communities are faced with massive new detention facilities adjacent to their own communities.

In Social Circle, Georgia, residents are organizing against a proposed conversion of a warehouse into a detention facility.

Oregon’s congressional delegation, pushing back on a proposed ICE facility in that state, wrote: “We find it increasingly difficult to believe that ICE can responsibly house and care for people humanely given the well-documented cases of overcrowding, medical neglect, and insufficient nutrition at the facilities it currently operates.”

New Mexico passed legislation barring state and county collaboration with ICE, forcing at least one county-run facility to close.

While local resistance is powerful, congressional action to stop the funding is the surest way to stop the mass detention build-up. Congress has the power to defund ICE or to place limits on growth.

So far, negotiations over DHS and ICE funding—which was held up in the wake of the killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good—have centered on reining in the violent and chaotic behavior of federal ICE agents on American streets. However, in spite of strong words from Senate Democrats, negotiations have largely omitted placing conditions on ICE detention facilities, where the abuses occur out of sight. None of the Democrats’ official negotiating positions challenge the $45 billion expansion.

Stop the cages

Advocates warn that without Democratic leadership and coordinated, cross-movement intervention, ICE camps, and the cruel treatment of those detained, will spread like cancer across the American landscape.

“We need immigrant justice, criminal justice, and pro-democracy leaders to break out of their silos and work together at an unprecedented level to organize against ICE prison expansion,” said Janos Marton of the advocacy group Dream.Org.

For some lawmakers, the only answer is abolition. “ICE is a rogue, violent agency that has operated with callous disregard for human life,” said Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.). “Congress should not be funding their campaign of cruelty. We must abolish ICE.”

“The 20th century tells you, when mass detention and camps are being built across the country that can house hundreds of thousands of people … we are going down a very dangerous path if the population doesn’t stand up and fight back,” warned Lee.

Congress can choose to spend tens of billions building a continent-wide archipelago of detention camps—or it can choose to invest in the things that strengthen freedom: health care, schools, communities, climate resilience, and the basic dignity that every person deserves. Pouring money into mass detention is not just wasteful; it is a moral decision about the future of this country. What lawmakers decide now will determine whether we move toward greater justice, or toward a future in which confinement — not rights — defines who we are.

LIVE 9:00 am Eastern time, Streaming Anytime:

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

Today we discuss:

• Are government goons at “shithole countries” on Trump’s payroll? Four journalists, including reps of the New York Times, AP and the BBC, investigating a secret Trump plot to deport migrants to Cameroon—none of them Cameroonian, all of them under strict protection by US court orders not to deport them—were arrested and roughed up in Yaoundé. The AP reporter was beaten up by the police, who also confiscated their phones, cameras and laptops.

•  Trump announced a $10 billion U.S. contribution to rebuilding Gaza at the inaugural meeting of his Board of Peace, describing the organization as the premier world body for international peace and harmony. What of the UN? Where will the money come from?

• Backed by the IDF, Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank shot and killed a Palestinian American man, 19, during an attack on the village of Mukhmas.

• Rarely has the U.S. prepared to conduct a major act of war with so little explanation or public debate as Trump prepares to attack Iran again.

MERCH STORE: https://www.deprogram.live

https://x.com/tedrall

https://x.com/JohnKiriakou

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

SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/2kdFlw2w8sSPhKI8NRx8Zu

APPLE MUSIC: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deprogram-with-john-kiriakou-and-ted-rall/id1825379504

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The Washington Post has, over the past few months, run at least five editorials or opinion pieces railing against federal or state tax increases.

Here’s what the folks at the Post are not telling you: If you’re an average American taxpayer, you’re paying federal income tax at a rate that dwarfs the rate the Post’s ultra-billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos, is paying.

A typical single American taxpayer with an income of $75,000 will pay about 9.16 percent of that income in federal income tax. That taxpayer will pay another 7.65 percent in Social Security and Medicare tax. The taxpayer’s employer will pay that same 7.65 percent, but that employer contribution actually amounts to part of the taxpayer’s pay package. So do the math: Including the employer’s payment of tax on our taxpayer’s behalf, about 22.7 percent of that taxpayer’s total pay is going for federal tax.

To be clear, we’re talking about tax on income here. Yes, we conventionally label some of these payments as Social Security or Medicare tax, but these payments all amount to taxes on the income average Americans make.

Let’s shift now to a distinctly unaverage American, the billionaire Jeff Bezos, and consider his personal tax liability on income from the sale of his Amazon shares.

Bezos has sold a good bit of his Amazon stock over the years, but he ended 2025 still holding some 880 million shares worth about $203 billion, shares he paid about $200,000 for back in 1994. If Bezos had sold these shares on the last day of 2025, he would have registered about $203 billion of gain. He would have faced standard federal income tax on that gain plus another tax known as the net investment income tax, a Medicare tax substitute for rich investors. Those taxes combined would have totaled about 23.8 percent of his gain, roughly $49.3 billion, leaving him with a tidy personal profit of about $154.8 billion.

Investments, of course, rarely perform as well as the Bezos investment in Amazon. Over 32 years, the value of the Bezos Amazon investment increased one million-fold, with an average annual increase in value of 54 percent.

Let’s place this Bezos tax story in a more enlightening perspective. Let’s imagine another investor — we’ll call her MacKenzie — who has been every bit the investor Bezos has been, with just one difference. MacKenzie has been changing her investment portfolio each and every year. To make the math easier, let’s assume her annual buying and selling has generated the same 54 percent gain each year. MacKenzie would have to pay a tax each year on that annual gain. That tax, in turn, would reduce the total amount she has available each year to invest.

How much would that reduction total? Let’s assume MacKenzie faced a mere 2.5 percent annual tax — more below on the rationale for that figure — on her gains. In her first investing year, MacKenzie’s 54 percent gain on her $200,000 investment would leave her with taxable income of $108,000. A 2.5 percent tax on that income would amount to $2,700, leaving her $305,300 — her original $200,000 plus her investment gain minus her tax on that gain — available for her next home-run investment.

If this annual investment-gain-tax three-step continued for 31 more years, MacKenzie would find herself with a total nest-egg of $153.3 billion, a whisker less than the $154.8 billion the Bezos Amazon investment generated.

There’s one huge difference between our two scenarios: MacKenzie will only have paid about $3.9 billion in tax over her 32 investing years, not even ten percent of the tax Bezos would have to pay after his big sell off.

Why the huge difference? Unlike Bezos, MacKenzie would have been paying tax annually on her income. In other words, she would have paid tax on her investment gains on the same annual schedule that average Americans pay tax on their wages. Bezos, by contrast, has not had to pay taxes annually. Our current federal tax system lets him wait until he sells his Amazon shares before he faces any legal obligation to pay tax. That delay has allowed his gains to compound, tax-free, for 32 years.

Which means that a big part of Bezos’ eventual $49.3 billion tax payment doesn’t really rate at all as a tax in a true economic sense. That payment economically rates as what Bezos has paid for the privilege of not having to pay an annual tax of his annual gains. We have a word for the price of delaying payment: interest.

How much of the $49.3 million Bezos payment amounts, in effect, to interest? All but $3.9 billion or so. We get that figure when we do the math necessary to translate the one-time tax Bezos would pay on the sale of his Amazon shares to an annual tax paid on his gains each year.

If we treat only $3.9 billion of the Bezos $49.3 billion ostensible tax payment as actual tax, the remaining $45.4 billion would be interest. If we subtract that interest from his nominal gain of $203 billion on his Amazon shares, he would be left with an economic gain, net of interest expense, of $157.6 billion. If that $157.6 billion economic gain then faced a 2.5 percent tax — the same rate MacKenzie has paid — Bezos would have paid just under $3.9 billion in tax, about the same tax that MacKenzie has paid!

The bottom line: If we translate the one-time tax Bezos would pay on the sale of his Amazon shares to an annual tax paid on his gains each year, his effective annual tax rate would be 2.5 percent, the same rate his short-term investor counterpart, MacKenzie, paid.

The other bottom line: Remember our typical single American taxpayer with an income of $75,000. The 22.7 percent annual income tax rate that taxpayer faces runs over nine times the effective tax rate that an insanely wealthy character like Jeff Bezos faces.

And that nine-times difference only holds if Bezos had sold his Amazon shares at the end of last year. If he holds those shares another ten years and they continue to grow in value, the Bezos effective annual tax rate would decrease further. And what if Bezos ended up holding those Amazon shares until he died? Then neither the Bezos estate or those who inherit the Bezos fortune would face any income tax on his investment gains at all.

Yes, you read that right. The Bezos clan would pocket hundreds of billions of dollars in gains fully free of income tax.

This is where the Post’s shilling for its billionaire owner gets really rich. “Taxing work is not ideal,” the Washington Post editorial board has cautioned us, “but an income tax is easier for a government to maintain than claiming unrealized gains that are part of someone’s estate.”

Yes, the Post editorial writers are actually arguing that taxing workers on their wages would be better for all concerned than the Bezos family paying tax on any Amazon gains remaining when their boss dies. The ghost of Leona Helmsley — ”taxes are for little people” — must have been whispering in their ears.

So where would the Bezos Amazon wealth pile be sitting today if he had been paying income tax annually at a 22.7 percent rate and had to sell Amazon shares to make the payments? A little under $34 billion. Which means that nearly 80 percent of the value — net of income tax — of the primary Bezos source of wealth comes from the obscenely low tax rate he faces on his investment gains.

This is how oligarchy works. Enormous wealth allows our oligarchs to seize media outlets. They use these media outlets to influence public opinion. That influencing makes it a whole lot easier for the politicians our oligarchs finance to cast votes that protect — and grow — the wealth of our wealthiest. That additional wealth helps our oligarchs control more politicians and media outlets.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

“I’m not scared, you’re scared!” is the repeated line in a children’s story we recently read to the kids at the Unitarian Universalist version of Sunday school I attend with my children. In that story, a scared bear and a brave rabbit, who (naturally!) are best friends, go on a hike together. Rabbit has to cajole and encourage Bear through every imaginable obstacle, but in the end (of course!) it’s Rabbit who gets stuck at the crucial moment and has to call on Bear for help. Bear (no surprise) sets aside his fears to rescue his friend and (tada!) finds new depths of bravery and adventurousness in the process.

After we read the story, the kids worked together to build paths from blocks and Legos through the imagined obstacles in the story—a bridge over a rushing river, a path through a dark forest, a staircase up a steep mountain. It was one of our most engaging classes in recent memory, while the kids kept saying, “I’m not scared, you’re scared!” and laughing while they played. As we stacked blocks and fit Legos together, we adults were supposed to help the kids identify things they were afraid of and how they could confront those fears. For me, it was just one thing too many. I blanked on that part of the assignment.

Yes, I’m Scared

In fact, I was a little relieved to have done so. Of course, I have fears myself, but I’m not afraid of spiders or heights or small spaces like so many people. I am afraid of nuclear war—not something I would want to confess to a bunch of kids sitting on carpet squares.

What should I have said? “Okay, kids, I know some of you are afraid of monsters or werewolves or the Wither Storm in Minecraft, but I’ll tell you something truly terrifying: the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists just moved its Doomsday Clock to 85 seconds to ‘nuclear midnight,’ four seconds closer than ever before.” I would have gotten blank stares and quick subject changes and yet, once I had started, I would undoubtedly have kept on sharing the telltale heart of my own bogeyman. “When I was a kid in the 1980s,” I would have said, “we were at three minutes to metaphorical midnight and my dad, who was an activist, wouldn’t even let me go to the movies. Now, they have pushed it even closer—closer than ever before. With nine countries armed with nuclear weapons, we’ve tick-tocked ourselves to 85 seconds to midnight. Yep, 85 seconds, by the way, is probably less time than it takes you to spell your full name or tie your shoes.”

Trump’s famous wrecking ball that blasted the East Wing and the Kennedy Center is now aimed at the nuclear treaty architecture built up over the decades.

Of course, I kept those long-winded, fact-filled fears to myself at that Sunday school. But I’ll tell you all that, in truth, it’s far worse than even what I thought that day. The Bulletin‘s scientists who made the announcement about those 85 seconds to midnight were contending with more than nuclear dangers (which have, by the way, never been more imminent). Those scientists were also responding to the speeding up of catastrophic climate change and the threats posed by artificial intelligence (AI). In the words of Daniel Holz on the Bulletin‘s Science and Security Board, “The dangerous trends in nuclear risk, climate change, disruptive technologies like AI, and biosecurity are accompanied by another frightening development: the rise of nationalistic autocracies in countries around the world. Our greatest challenges require international trust and cooperation, and a world splintering into ‘us versus them’ will leave all of humanity more vulnerable.”

Yes, all of humanity is vulnerable indeed—like my young friends building Lego bridges across felt rivers for a Bear and a Rabbit birthed in late night comedian Seth Meyers’s imagination.

The End of Arms Control as We Knew It

And as if all of that weren’t terrifying enough, Thursday, February 5 marked the end of arms control as we’ve known it. The last treaty controlling nuclear weapons between my country and Russia expired without a replacement on that day, leaving us all vulnerable to the whims of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. There are reports of a handshake deal between the two countries to extend the principles of the treaty, but haphazard and informal agreements are simply not “arms control” (at least as we once knew it).

The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, known as New START, was signed by US President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in 2010 and set out a schedule for verifiable and commensurate nuclear arsenal reductions. It was renewed under Republican and Democratic administrations, but it is very “on brand” for strongmen Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin to deride international treaties of any sort.

Unfortunately, the sort of muscular bombast they’re known for isn’t what’s kept the world reasonably safe from nuclear war for the last eight decades, since the atomic bombings of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Rather, it was a tight web of treaties—the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, START I and II, New START, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty—that kept the whole world safe (or as safe as we could be with ever more nuclear-armed powers proliferating across the planet). That alphabet soup of promises, schedules, and commensurate acts of disarmament, as fragile and incremental as it was, resulted in the dismantlement of 80% of the US and Russian arsenals over the decades.

Now, we are all being dragged in the other direction.

Trump’s famous wrecking ball that blasted the East Wing and the Kennedy Center is now aimed at the nuclear treaty architecture built up over the decades. In its place, he proposes to construct a Golden Dome missile defense system to protect the United States from incoming nuclear weapons. And that fool’s errand could not only lead us toward nuclear war, but have a price tag in the trillions of dollars.

I Don’t Feel Fine

With his administration’s gold-plated, AI-enhanced sense of aggression, President Trump is now taking aim at NATO, an alliance the United States helped to build after World War II. His administration is abrogating agreements, leveling tariffs, and threatening to annex Greenland. Europe is getting the message that the United States is no longer a reliable ally, stoking concerns that yet more countries will move to create nuclear arsenals. Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin’s Russia is investing more money in nuclear weapons and the Russian strongman has actually threatened to use such weapons, while already at war in a part of Europe.

Of course, Russia and the United States are anything but the only nuclear states these days. China, France, the United Kingdom, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea round out the rogue’s gallery of—to come up with a word of my own—Obliterables.

In 2024 alone, those nine nuclear-armed states spent more than $100 billion on such weaponry, an 11% increase over the year before, according to the Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). For example, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists‘ Nuclear Notebook finds that China is rapidly and aggressively increasing its nuclear arsenal. Beijing, it points out, has “significantly expanded its ongoing nuclear modernization program by fielding more types and greater numbers of nuclear weapons than ever before.”

Throughout Asia and Europe, the leaders of all too many countries are openly discussing regional pacts and the need to develop their own nuclear weapons programs. They are reviving the moribund logic of proliferators—that only more nuclear weapons can protect us against nuclear weapons. And that is exactly the wrong conclusion to draw in this already endangered world of ours.

Another Treaty to the Rescue?

Instead of all this unilateralism and nuclear proliferation, nuclear and nuclear-adjacent nations should be signing on to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. It’s clear and smart, and its goals are achievable. In essence, it prohibits countries from developing, testing, producing, stockpiling, transferring, or threatening to use (no less actually using) nuclear weapons. And if that seems remarkably comprehensive, it actually goes further, prohibiting nations from allowing nuclear weapons to be stationed on their territory. It also prohibits assisting, encouraging, or forcing any other country to engage in any of these activities.

Thursday, January 22 marked five years since that treaty entered into force as international law and was adopted by a significant majority of the countries on this planet. On that day, I joined a handful of people gathered at the General Dynamics complex in New London, Connecticut (where I live). We celebrated the 74 nations that have ratified the treaty and the 25 more that have signed it and are in the process of ratifying it. My country, the United States, of course, stands outside of the global consensus on nuclear disarmament.

Panic and Fear, Fear and Panic

That same week after the Doomsday Clock moved four seconds closer to midnight, I wrote an essay for my local paper in New London. In less than 800 words, I tried to describe the massive nexus of decisions and dangers that went along with that four-second nudge closer to a metaphorical midnight for us all.

I shared my essay with my 11-year-old daughter Madeline while we sat in the bleachers at a local pool, watching her older brother swim with his swim team. She’s a wise little sixth grader who regularly pays attention when I least expect it. “Look what I did, Madeline,” I said, and showed her a screenshot of my article on my phone. The title was “Closing in on Nuclear Midnight; There’s Still Time to Disarm.” And then I explained to her that it was focused on how the Doomsday Clock had just moved closer to midnight.

“Oh,” she said, “I had a full-blown anxiety attack last week because Joanna told me that the flu shot wasn’t going to work.” Joanna is a seventh-grade friend of hers whose words carry a lot of weight.

I can all too easily spin out into an anxiety attack if I don’t continue to anchor myself to that little speech I made to Madeline, reminding myself of the real work people are doing to make this world a more bearable place.

I struggled to make the connection between that and what I had just shown her. Madeline added flatly, “A whole day of actual anxiety because of that news.”

“You’re going to be fine,” I said, far too quickly. “You’re healthy and, even if you get the flu, you’ll survive just fine.”

Then I slowed down. Of course, she was anxious. There was plenty to be anxious about in this Trumpian world of ours. Masked men in the streets, pulling some people out of cars through broken windows and shooting others in broad daylight. Tear gas, blockades, and crying kids on the nightly news (which we still watch sometimes).

But her fear of a flu shot and the flu she might still get was the right-sized fear for a sixth grader. Flagrant fascism, paramilitary violence, naked racism: those are massive fears for the preteen mind, as large as her mother’s fixation on nuclear war.

I need to tread carefully here, I thought, since panic and fear are contagious and erode rationality. Panic and fear cause isolation and paranoia. And while no one should panic about nuclear weapons, I thought, there’s certainly plenty to be afraid of. So, I pulled her a little closer to me, while remembering a professor at Rutgers who estimated that even a regional nuclear war would have a staggering global impact.

As a group of authors wrote in Nature Food in 2022, “In a nuclear war, bombs targeted on cities and industrial areas would start firestorms, injecting large amounts of soot into the upper atmosphere, which would spread globally and rapidly cool the planet.”

Such an upside-down atomic version of climate change would have a widespread impact on agriculture globally, leading to massive famines. They estimated that more than 2 billion people might die from a “limited” nuclear war between long-time nuclear rivals India and Pakistan.

What Can You Do in 85 Seconds?

Brutal, right? I chose to keep that information to myself in the bleachers at that swimming pool. The flu shot, not global famine, I thought to myself. Stay right-sized in this conversation with her.

But my little girl moves fast and she makes connections—and she’s fascinated by time. She’s worn a watch forever and always wants to know how long something will take. (“When?” is her favorite question.) So, it was no surprise to me that the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists clock fascinated her.

“85 seconds is not a long time, Mom. I mean, look,” and she made a quick little circle with her hand. “That’s like 85 seconds, so what does it mean that we’re 85 seconds to midnight?”

“Well,” I began, my voice suddenly breaking as I imagined the hellscapes of Hiroshima, those grim graphs in the Nature Food paper, and my daughter’s future.

“No, Mom,” she said. (She didn’t want my big emotions.) “Just tell me what happens when we get to midnight.”

“Well,” I began again, “if we hit midnight on their clock, that is the end of the world as we know it.”

“But that isn’t going to happen, right, Mom?” She replied with her usual firm confidence that I always admire and am invariably curious about, wondering where it comes from.

“It hasn’t happened yet, love,” was the best I could muster. “And the reason it hasn’t happened is that so many people all over the world all the time are resisting, pushing back, passing legislation, holding up signs, making documentaries, urging divestment from nuclear-related corporations, being creative and brave, calling for disarmament in every language we human beings speak.”

I’m stirred by my own rhetoric! “Nice!” I think to myself, but I can see her attention has slipped away.

I had, however, said the thing she needed to hear—that people are working to keep nuclear midnight from happening. She sees me working to do so, too. She sees me suiting up for another frigid session of sign holding at General Dynamics, the fourth largest weapons maker in this country with a huge complex in our neighborhood in Connecticut. She sees me coming home from a long organizing meeting. She knows I have some of the answers to the questions that her tidy brain can’t quite yet put into words. She thinks I’ve got things under control, so she snuggles closer to me and goes back to worrying about her friend’s flu shot warning, or where she left her library card and what she’s going to wear to school tomorrow that will be warm, cute, and not too matchy.

Of course, I don’t have it under control. I can all too easily spin out into an anxiety attack if I don’t continue to anchor myself to that little speech I made to Madeline, reminding myself of the real work people are doing to make this world a more bearable place.

The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons is engaged in the steady work of adding nations to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, while continuing to build a global consensus for disarmament. Ira Helfand and the Back from the Brink network are working on public education, movement building, and the excruciating but important task of trying to get congressional legislation passed to prevent nuclear war. Leona Morgan and many other Indigenous activists are working to protect the environment, halt uranium mining, and win compensation for “downwinders” from what were once nuclear testing sites. Makoma Lekalakala and other international activists are mobilizing to oppose nuclear proliferation, resist the mining of uranium, and deal with other affronts to our world and health. Don’t Bank on the Bomb is leading the effort of individuals, organizations, and financial groups to divest from nuclear industries. And all of that work is indeed yielding dividends!

So, I refuse to let myself be scared. And so should you.

We have to keep talking about, writing about, and organizing against nuclear weapons—not at the expense of all the other work that so desperately needs to be done right now in this dread-inducing world of ours, but to preserve at least those 85 seconds for our children and grandchildren.