In the wake of the Democrats' devastating loss last month, there has been no shortage of arguments and analyses about what went wrong and how the party should move forward. It has been deeply concerning to see some of these arguments taking Republican fearmongering and propaganda as a basis, particularly on the subject of transgender rights. Falling for Republican propaganda will not only bring terrible harm to the most vulnerable members of society; I believe it is also a losing political strategy for Democrats. Instead, the Democratic Party must be vigilant against Republican propaganda, and must proactively counter it.

The Democrats' failures in messaging on transgender rights were evident throughout the campaign. Despite the Biden-Harris administration's progress - such as signing executive orders aimed at curbing discrimination, expanding health care access, and raising awareness of the societal barriers and violence that transgender people regularly experience - the Harris campaign appeared to studiously avoid discussing transgender people at all.

Democrats must make clear to the public that while Republicans cynically claim to be "protecting children," they are in fact doing the opposite.

One of the few exceptions, and thus the most visible mention of trans people by Kamala Harris during the campaign, was in her October 16 interview on Fox News. When the host, Bret Baier, challenged the Biden-Harris administration's policy supporting gender-affirming medical care for prisoners, Harris had an opportunity to make a defense on moral grounds. Instead, she counterattacked by pointing out that the Trump administration followed the same laws, and thus the argument was "throwing...stones when you're living in a glass house." By doing so, she implicitly condoned the narrative that gender-affirming care is a luxury rather than a necessity, or, worse, somehow wrong or shameful, rather than a fundamental human right that should be afforded to all, including incarcerated people.

Setting aside for a moment the moral aspect, try to coldly consider the political message this phrasing sent to voters. After the provision of gender-affirming care was presented as though it were a problem, the Democrats seemed to be saying, 'it is a problem that both we and the Trump administration failed to deal with.' Meanwhile, the Republicans were promising to 'solve' it in the next administration. So why would an uninformed voter, after hearing both parties apparently acknowledge a 'problem' but only one party offer to 'solve' it, be expected to support the Democrats?

If Democrats want to be seen as competent, then they must stop catering to the Republicans' fearmongering and dehumanizing narrative and instead proactively counter it. Democrats must stand up and say yes, our policy is to support the provision of gender-affirming care, and we are proud of this policy. It is not a problem, but a protection of our citizens' basic human rights. The Democrats already campaigned on messages of freedom, self-determination, and bodily autonomy; these are precisely the values that must be applied not only to cis Americans, but to trans Americans as well. It is indeed somewhat astonishing that the Democrats failed to consistently articulate as simple a concept as: our platform of freedom and bodily autonomy also applies to trans people.

Of course, Harris was not the only high-ranking Democrat to weaken their own political position by failing to stand up for trans rights. Senate candidates Colin Allred and Sherrod Brown both ran television ads legitimizing Republican fearmongering about trans kids playing in school sports. After the election, Representative Seth Moulton went farther, portraying trans children as a physical danger to cis children, saying he didn't want his daughters to be "run over on a playing field" by trans students. Trans kids already suffer from bullying, abuse, and depression at significantly higher rates than their cis counterparts, and it's not hard to see why, when even Democratic lawmakers are demonizing them.

Democrats... appear to implicitly accept the premise of the supposed 'problem,' but do not offer a solution. Again, how is a rational but uninformed voter supposed to respond?

Again, let us try to dispassionately consider the potential political effect of such messaging (absurd as it is to set aside the ethical aspects of politicians attacking already marginalized children). The Republicans claim that trans kids are some sort of malign threat, and advertise policies to neutralize this 'threat' by denying them legal protections, further isolating them, and trying to erase the very existence of their identities. In other words, Republicans have presented a (manufactured) 'problem' and a (monstrous) 'solution.' Democrats, meanwhile, appear to implicitly accept the premise of the supposed 'problem,' but do not offer a solution. Again, how is a rational but uninformed voter supposed to respond?

The only logical path forward is for Democrats to explicitly renounce the Republicans' false premises. Trans children are not a threat to cis children, whether on the playground or in the bathroom, and bullying of trans kids not only by other students but by adult politicians is an outrage. Democrats must make clear to the public that while Republicans cynically claim to be "protecting children," they are in fact doing the opposite.

Unfortunately, there is no time to lose. Trump has announced a stream of extremist anti-trans appointees to key administration roles, including Secretary of Education (Linda McMahon), Secretary of Health and Human Services (Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.), Secretary of Defense (Pete Hegseth), and Secretary of State (Marco Rubio), among many others, who will enable the Republicans to make good on their promises to destroy protections for trans students, prevent access to healthcare and housing, purge transgender servicepeople from the military, promote anti-trans bigotry abroad, and deny transgender people the ability to openly exist in society. Not to mention the possibility of using the military to go after Trump's "enemy from within," which presumably includes trans people and their allies, whom Trump described as representing "a great evil."

The Democrats must unify to counter the Republicans' anti-trans propaganda and impending anti-trans agenda, not only to prevent the further oppression of millions of transgender Americans, but also to maintain credibility as a political movement.

Global expectations for sustainable development took another hit in 2024. Carbon emissions reacheda new high, world leaders settled on an underwhelming climate finance goal, and countries failed to sign the global plastic treaty.

There was, however, one major accomplishment. In September, at the United Nations (UN) Summit of the Future, Member States adopted the Pact for the Future reconfirming their commitments to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The Pact underscores the critical role of science, technology, and innovation (STI) and outlines several key action items — from increasing the use of science in policy making, to promoting interdisciplinary collaboration to tackle complex global challenges, to supporting developing countries in harnessing STI for sustainable development.

If implemented, these measures will transform the global scientific community and science systems worldwide, requiring fundamental shifts in the organization, practice, and funding of science.

As the landscape of actors working towards the SDGs continues to grow, complexity and fragmentation are likely, which could undermine the effectiveness of individual SDG-related efforts. As such, global research efforts and research funding require strategic coordination and prioritization. In recent years, the scientific community has developed a number of research priority frameworks, including the Six Transformations, Unleashing Science, and Towards Sustainable Transformation, that can help steer global collective efforts and accelerate progress towards SDGs.

The Pact also emphasizes the need to increase the use of science in policy making. Although there is significant research on the SDGs, it is often ignored in public debates on societal transformations and rarely used in policy processes. While resolving this challenge is a complex matter, creating practical interfaces between science and policy could certainly help.

A recent initiative of the World Bank, the Coalition for Capacity on Climate Action (C3A), seeks to bridge the gap between science and Ministries of Finance. It is a prime example of how to better integrate climate science considerations in economic and financial decision-making processes. The SDSN SDG Transformation Center is also working directly with governments, including in Benin and Uzbekistan, to support efforts in developing science-based pathways for SDG implementation, identifying SDG priorities and context-specific solutions, and aligning policies and financial flows with such priorities. Initiatives like these hold great potential to be scaled and replicated across countries.

As the Pact stresses, responding effectively to current and future challenges requires the engagement of all relevant stakeholders. At the recent Annual C3A Symposium, participating Ministries of Finance emphasized the critical importance of engaging diverse dimensions of expertise to better understand the complexity and dynamic processes of global challenges and changes. Transdisciplinary research can be an effective tool, as it embraces diverse scientific and societal views and helps to identify common context-specific solutions. By providing space for dialogue, learning, and trust building, transdisciplinary research also helps break down the silo mentality that still persists across many institutional structures. But, for this approach to become common practice, both funders and research institutions must introduce incentives and innovative funding models to reduce the structural barriers to transdisciplinarity.

As it stands, engaging in transdisciplinarity can be risky for scientists, especially for early-career researchers. Stakeholder engagement efforts are rarely recognized, and opportunities for transdisciplinary career development within disciplinary institutions are limited and not oftenrewarded. For several years, the International Science Council (ISC) has promoted the creation of environments and reward systems conducive to transdisciplinary research. While transdisciplinarity has become a more frequent requirement in research calls, much remains to be done to fully harness the benefits of knowledge co-production across disciplines and societal actors.

The design of research funding programmes also plays a critical role. Beyond basic research-linked activities, funding mechanisms should support public engagement, science–policy interfaces, capacity development, community-building, and peer learning. Research funding needs to also enable the accumulation, application, and deployment of knowledge. Longer-term funding is especially needed for international research collaboration on societal transformations towards sustainability.

While no single country can address complex sustainability challenges, the scale of current support for global multilateral scientific collaboration on pressing global challenges still remains marginal. Despite a few examples of global sustainability research collaborative funding efforts, including the ISC Science Missions for Sustainability and the Belmont Forum, research funding mostly prioritizes national scientific efforts over international research collaboration, with only 5% of research projects dedicated to multilateral collaboration.

Ongoing public science funding cuts and rising geopolitical tensions — which have become particularly apparent over the past years — are not conducive to cross-border scientific initiatives. But in times of insecurity and conflicts, it is important to remember that international research collaboration on global sustainability challenges provides a common language and critical mechanism that helps bridge the divide between nations. Strengthening international research collaboration and implementing the STI actions outlined in the Pact for the Future is, therefore, a necessity for ensuring a more peaceful, sustainable, and resilient future for all.

Before he allegedly killed United healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, Luigi Mangione was considered intelligent, thoughtful, kind, funny, and well-adjusted in every way. Now, because he killed someone, probably for political reasons, he’s considered insane. But what does that say about all the other people who kill for political reasons, like the President? Or Thompson himself?

The post Capitalism At a Glance first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

The post Capitalism At a Glance appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

Earlier this month, the company that brings us ChatGPT announced its partnership with California-based weapons company, Anduril, to produce AI weapons. The OpenAI-Anduril system, which was tested in California at the end of November, permits the sharing of data between external parties for decision making on the battlefield. This fits squarely within the US military and OpenAI’s plans to normalize the use of AI on the battlefield.

Anduril, based in Costa Mesa, makes AI-powered drones, missiles, and radar systems, including surveillance towers, Sentry systems, currently used at US military bases worldwide as well as the US-Mexico border and on the British coastline to detect migrants on boats. On December 3rd, they received a three-year contract with the Pentagon for a system that gives soldiers AI solutions during attacks.

In January, OpenAI deleted a direct ban in their usage policy on “activity that has high risk of physical harm” which specifically included “military and warfare” and “weapons development.” Less than one week after doing so, the company announced a partnership with the Pentagon in cybersecurity.

While they might have removed a ban on making weapons, OpenAI’s lurch into the war industry is in total antithesis to its own charter. Their own proclamation to build “safe and beneficial AGI [Artificial Generative Intelligence]” that does not “harm humanity” is laughable when they are using technology to kill. ChatGPT could feasibly, and probably soon will, write code for an automated weapon, analyze information for bombings, or assist invasions and occupations.

OpenAI’s lurch into the war industry is in total antithesis to its own charter.

We should all be frightened by this use of AI for death and destruction. But this is not new. Israel and the US have been testing and using AI in Palestine for years. In fact, Hebron has been dubbed a “smart city” as the occupation enforces its tyranny through a perforation of motion and heat sensors, facial recognition technologies, and CCTV surveillance. At the center of this oppressive surveillance is the Blue Wolf System, an AI tool that scans the faces of Palestinians, when they are photographed by Israeli occupation soldiers, and refers to a biometric database in which information about them is stored. Upon inputting the photo into the system, each person is classified by a color-coded rating based on their perceived ‘threat level’ to dictate whether the soldier should allow them to pass or arrest them. The IOF soldiers are rewarded with prizes for taking the most photographs, which they have termed “Facebook for Palestinians”, according to revelations from the Washington Post in 2021.

OpenAI’s war technology comes as the Biden administration is pushing for the US to use the technology to “fulfill national security objectives.” This was in fact part of the title of a White House memorandum released in October this year calling for rapid development of artificial intelligence “especially in the context of national security systems.” While not explicitly naming China, it is clear that a perceived ‘AI arms race’ with China is also a central motivation of the Biden administration for such a call. Not solely is this for weapons for war, but also racing for the development of technology writ large. Earlier this month, the US banned the export of HBM chips to China, a critical component of AI and high-level graphics processing units (GPU). Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt warned that China is two to three years ahead of the US when it comes to AI, a major change from his statements earlier this year where he remarked that the US is ahead of China. When he says there is a “threat escalation matrix” when there are developments in AI, he reveals that the US sees the technology only as a tool of war and a way to assert hegemony. AI is the latest in the US’ unrelenting - and dangerous - provocation and fear mongering with China, who they cannot bear to see advance them.In response to the White House memorandum, OpenAI released a statement of its own where it re-asserted many of the White House’s lines about “democratic values” and “national security.” But what is democratic about a company developing technology to better target and bomb people? Who is made secure by the collection of information to better determine war technology? This surely reveals the alignment of the company with the Biden administration’s anti-China rhetoric and imperialist justifications. As the company that has surely pushed AGI systems within general society, it is deeply alarming that they have ditched all codes and jumped right in with the Pentagon. While it’s not surprising that companies like Palantir or even Anduril itself are using AI for war, from companies like OpenAI - a supposedly mission-driven nonprofit - we should expect better.

AI is being used to streamline killing. At the US-Mexico border, in Palestine, and in US imperial outposts across the globe. While AI systems seem innocently embedded within our daily lives, from search engines to music streaming sites, we must forget these same companies are using the same technology lethally. While ChatGPT might give you ten ways to protest, it is likely being trained to kill, better and faster.

From the war machine to our planet, AI in the hands of US imperialists means only more profits for them and more devastation and destruction for us all.

Nature is loud. Unknown animal sounds resound from the darkness as I work on the veranda in the evening. Everything seems so peaceful while the Comunidad de Paz reports the presence of armed people near their private properties La Roncona and La Holandecita. This is exactly where our small women's delegation from Europe is staying—Sabine Lichtenfels, Andrea Phoebe Regelmann, Katharina Müller and I—in the first house after the entrance gate.

Outside our terrace, the lavish abundance of nature. Lush greenery, with the occasional free-roaming horse or chicken on the lawn. There is a latent threat in the air, but not to our lives. The threatened people of the community have learned to live with the daily danger. They occasionally come to visit us, still have a sense of humor, and radiate from within. They have been friends with my fellow travelers from the partner community Tamera in southern Portugal for 19 years. Our presence and reporting on them gives them protection, because the murderers cover up their crimes and attack when no international witness is looking.

Colombia is in utter chaos. The more I hear and read about what is happening here, the more I immerse myself in books about the country, the more perplexed, confused, and disillusioned I remain. According to The System of the Bird: Colombia, a Laboratory of Barbarity by Guido Piccoli, "Violence has not left Colombia since the war of independence against the Spanish." In Colombia, "there is always room for everyone, but equally the possibility of killing each other to no end."

Piccoli writes:

Don Gonzalo was not only a good person, he was also a hard worker. He got up at dawn and went to the mountains of Norcasia to cut down trees. One morning, his sister did not bring him his lunch, as she did every day. When Gonzalo came home, he found her dead, tied to a post. They had raped her. In the courtyard lay the decapitated bodies of his two brothers, while the bodies of their parents were lying in the hallway of the house. The only one still alive was the youngest brother. Before he died in his arms, he was able to tell him that the bandits were responsible for the massacre. From that day on, Don Gonzales decided to cut off the heads of bandits.

I can't say who the bandits are here. Paramilitaries, military, guerrillas. The state, the police, the public prosecutor's office. According to the law and the Constitution, the country is a democracy. In practice, hardly anyone understands how it works, and criminals enjoy complete impunity. During a riot in 1948 in the capital Bogotá, after the socialist politician and lawyer Jorge Eliécer Gaitán was murdered, "in one neighborhood in the center of the city, police distributed weapons to the demonstrators. In other neighbourhoods, they shot at them with rifles"

Initially, both the Colombians and American diplomats believed that Gaitán was assassinated by the Conservative Party, but after a few years, the opinion emerged that this was the first plot organized by the CIA, which had only been founded seven months earlier, to curb the spread of communism in the U.S. sphere of influence. Even the world-famous author Gabriel García Márquez supported this theory, because he was in the area on the day of the assassination and saw a conspicuous, unusual man, but no authority investigated this murder further and the FBI refused to open its archives "for security reasons."

Violence in Colombia only got worse from there. People were being sawed in half, had their eyes gouged out, had body parts cut off—all while they were still alive. Then the bodies were dumped in some villages. The terror was intended to force entire communities to leave their land.

The beneficiaries were the country's oligarchs, large landowners, and North American corporations:

The paramilitaries in Colombia are the armed wing of the elites, supported by or interwoven with all state authorities, at all levels of government and in all social classes. They were formed with the help of the Colombian army, several Colombian and U.S. intelligence services, and mercenaries. Paramilitarism is a strategic project and an integral part of the state. The paramilitaries play a central role in enforcing a capitalist neoliberal economic and social model with enormous profit margins.

All of this happened a long time ago. A peace agreement was signed in 2016, and a truth commission was set up as a result. The current left-wing government of Gustavo Petro is working to implement these milestones in Colombian history and is committed to the vision of "total peace." And here I am, surrounded by tropical abundance, struggling against a feeling of hopelessness as I realize how deeply violence and murder have shaped the lives of every person I talk to, and especially how murder and torture are still widespread. Most of the guerrillas have been demobilised, while the paramilitaries are stronger than before.

On March 18, 2024, President Petro visited the nearby town of "Apartadó and spoke—for the first time for a president—words of recognition and reparation for the Comunidad de Paz. The next day, the paramilitary responded—at least that is how the Comunidad De Paz understands it: 30-year-old Nalleley, mother of three, and 14-year-old Edinson were brutally murdered." The Urabá region, where the peace community is located, is under the control of the Gulf Clan, the most powerful criminal syndicate in Colombia. It emerged from right-wing paramilitaries and now, perfidiously, has renamed itself the Autodefensas Gaitanistas de Colombia after Gaitán in order to give itself a political coloring.

On our porch, over coffee and buñuelos, various members of the Peace Village describe how it felt when they lost family members in massacres by paramilitaries. They take an empty bowl in their hands to illustrate the inner emptiness that this leaves in them. And now comes the part that makes this place so special: They do not react like Don Gonzales and want revenge, and they no longer allow themselves to be driven out, uprooted in dignity, to beg for work in the cities. Since 1997, they have declared their neutrality, practiced organic farming for their own sustenance, exemplified nonviolence, and thus practiced the only possible form of resistance, namely collective resistance against war, expulsion, and exploitation. The integrity of these people is incredible.

"Their profound and courageous stance of nonviolence, ethical integrity, reconciliation, and community building, despite suffering unending attacks and massacres, has turned them into an important reference and role model for many other resisting grassroots communities in Colombia," writes Martin Winiecki from Tamera, who has also visited them several times.

I am learning a lot here. Above all, about the great fight against the system of exploitation, which always takes place on a small scale, especially in our minds. And the people here, with all the threats and the very simple life on the brink of poverty, seem more alive and, paradoxically, more radiant than my European friends. An excess of prosperity and the lack of a purpose in life seem to me more and more like enemies of vitality. On the outside, neoliberalism is destroying the Earth and on the inside, it is destroying our souls.

Amid the huge plants, the free-roaming animals, the women, men, and children who move around on foot or by horse and mule to reach their lands up in the mountains, where there is still no civilization, I feel closer to life than ever. My soul, buried by our consumer world, suddenly breathes life here, as if a layer of dust has been blown away. And it is precisely from this "civilization" that the Comunidad de Paz protects its land, protecting it and itself from the grip of the mega-machine.

"What's happening in Colombia of course isn't an isolated phenomenon," Winiecki writes. "It's part of an intensifying global clash: empire versus communities, capitalism versus Earth, patriarchy versus Life. This clash plays out in the ever more heartbreaking genocide in Gaza, the accelerating climate breakdown, the rise of far-right authoritarianism and fascism, and more. For life to succeed, we need unbreakable solidarity, recognizing that all struggles are connected, and we also need the power of vision that enables us to create living alternatives."

Throughout his 2024 campaign, Donald Trump promised mass deportations of the more than 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the United States. Those of us on the ground who work with immigrants are apprehensive about what that will look like and how we can respond.

During the first Trump administration, I was part of local organizations working on issues of migrant detention and deportation defense in Washington state and writing my dissertation on interior immigration enforcement. I was also active with migrant justice efforts during the Obama presidency.

Some of what happened during these periods involved large-scale raids that made national news. Such operations are expensive to plan and orchestrate, are highly disruptive to the communities where they occur, and provoke opposition. This can happen again. However, much more immigration enforcement took place quietly, through the intensive targeting of specific locations such as workplaces, highway stretches, bus stations, and apartment complexes where Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents believed there may be undocumented people.

Most sanctuary ordinances remain in place, but locals need to organize to make sure these ordinances have popular support and are upheld.

At any point, ICE could round up those immigrants under remote surveillance, through GPS devices and mobile phone apps, who now number 181,000 people. ICE agents also capture people as they are being transferred from police custody, jail, or prison. Traffic stops, domestic disputes, and altercations with neighbors lead to deportation. This kind of enforcement is the most efficient for ICE; it has made up more than 90% of ICE arrests under President Joe Biden and will likely happen even more aggressively under Trump.

The Trump campaign drummed up support through scapegoating “migrant crime.” This is a pretext for mass deportations. There is no evidence of a crime wave related to immigration, but tying together the criminal justice system and immigration system becomes a way to ensnare people in the deportation dragnet.

The best way to resist these kinds of enforcement activities, we learned under the first Trump administration, is for citizens and noncitizens to claim one another as fellow community members, and then work together. Much of this work happens at the local level.

For example, Pacific County Immigrant Support was formed in 2018 in a rural county in Washington state that has voted for Trump for the past three election cycles. Citizen and noncitizen community members tracked ICE arrests and organized community protection.

Group members accompanied immigrants to ICE appointments and court dates, raised funds for immigration attorneys and bonds, and provided know-your-rights training to immigrants and employers of immigrants. They also sat down with the local sheriff to ensure that he wasn’t collaborating with ICE.

What is needed now is a blossoming of local-level efforts to defend immigrants. In Washington state this includes the Washington Immigration Solidarity Network hotline for reporting deportation events and connecting people who are facing enforcement with resources. The Fair Fight Bond Fund provides bonds to immigrants in detention while going through their proceedings in Washington, as does the National Detention Bond Fund at the national level.

Washington’s Shut Down the NWDC (Northwest Detention Center) campaign in Tacoma, and other campaigns nationwide coordinated through the Detention Watch Network, have exposed deadly and inhumane conditions in migrant detention centers, gathered support for people to survive detention, and strategized to shut down the detention infrastructure.

There is evidence that shutting down detention centers is an effective strategy for restraining immigration enforcement. There is also evidence that ICE enforcement was not able to function as smoothly in jurisdictions regulated by sanctuary ordinances. Most sanctuary ordinances remain in place, but locals need to organize to make sure these ordinances have popular support and are upheld.

The first Trump administration was vengeful towards those who thwarted its restrictionist agenda. Trump revoked some federal funding to sanctuary cities. As I have documented in my scholarship, ICE agents also targeted activists, community organizers, journalists, and artists who spoke out against them.

The Biden administration refused to place restraints on ICE’s capacity to repress activist immigrants. Also during the Biden administration, the revanchist mantle was passed to state governments, like Texas, which bused asylum seekers to sanctuary cities, prosecuted immigrants for trespassing, and punished border humanitarian organizations. We can expect more of this kind of thing.

That is why it is crucial that we build solidarity within our local communities and get ready to defend against the coming attacks.

Post-election America finds itself in a panic. Voices from across a wide political spectrum warn that the country stands on the precipice of a potentially unprecedented and chaotic disregard for the laws, norms, and policies upon which its stability and security have traditionally relied. Some fear that the “new” president, Donald Trump, is likely to declare a national emergency and invoke the Insurrection Act, unleashing the U.S. military for mass deportations of undocumented immigrants and for “retribution against” the “enemy from within” as well as “radical left lunatics.” As the New Republic‘s editor Michael Tomasky notes, writing about the nomination of Kash Patel for the post of director of the FBI, “We’re entering a world where the rule of law is turned inside out.”

The blame game for such doomsday fears ranges far and wide. Many pinpoint the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision to grant immunity to presidents for their core official acts, essentially removing any restraints on Trump’s agenda of retribution and revenge. Some, like Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal, see loopholes in the law as the basis for their concern about the future and are urging Congress to pass legislation that will place additional constraints on the deployment of the military on American soil. Others argue that the Constitution itself is the problem. In his new book, No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States, Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky even suggests that it may be time for a new constitution.

If only, as a nation, we could look beyond the tumultuous context of the current moment and imagine how to make our way to a safer, more sustainable future.

But those involved in the fear and blame game might do well to take a step back and reflect for a moment on how we got here. Today’s crisis has been evolving for so many years now. In fact, much (though admittedly, not all) of what we’re witnessing today might simply be considered an escalation of the dire turn that this country took after the attacks of September 11, 2001, nearly a quarter of a century ago.

“Quaint” and “Obsolete”

It was January 2002 when White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales used the two words “quaint and obsolete,” whose echoes remain eerily with us to this very day (and seemingly beyond). The occasion was a debate taking place at the highest levels of the administration of President George W. Bush in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. By then, this country had invaded Afghanistan and authorized the opening of a new detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, ominously offshore of American justice, for captives of what already was being called the Global War on Terror. Two weeks after the first prisoners arrived at that prison camp on January 11, administration officials were already wondering which, if any, laws should apply when it came to the treatment of such prisoners.

Gonzales, who was to become the attorney general in Bush’s second term, laid out the options for the president. At issue was whether the Geneva Conventions—a set of treaties established in the wake of the atrocities of the Second World War—applied to the United States in its treatment of any prisoners from its war on terror.

In a memo to President Bush, Gonzales noted that Department of Justice lawyers had already concluded, when it came to al Qaeda and Taliban (Afghan insurgents in 2001, now in charge of the country) captives, the answer was no. Gonzales agreed, stating that “the war against terrorism is a new kind of war.” The laws of war, he told the president, were “obsolete” in the current context, and the laws and norms requiring humane treatment for enemy prisoners had been “render[ed] quaint,” given this new kind of war. Accordingly, the Bush administration took the position that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to the prisoners they had already captured. As a result, in the years to come, the indefinite and arbitrary detention of about 780 men would be institutionalized and disregard for the law would become a regular, if secret, part of the war on terror—an approach that would lead to the practice of torture at what came to be known as CIA “black sites” globally.

Nor would that be the only situation in which old laws were deemed outdated on national security grounds.

The Wider Framework

At the heart of such a rejection of the law was the determination that the president had primary, if not ultimate, authority when it came to national security. As Princeton historian Julian Zelizer has put it, top Bush administration officials “claimed that executive power was essential to fighting the war.” Members of Congress generally agreed and facilitated the shift to ever more solitary executive power in the name of war, setting a template for yielding some of its constitutional and statutory powers in matters of war to the president. One week after 9/11, Congress passed an Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) that granted the president the power “to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons.”

Subsequently, other laws were bent, bypassed, or even broken in the name of keeping the nation safe. Congress also further enhanced the powers of the executive by passing the USA Patriot Act which, among other things, weakened the Fourth Amendment’s protections against the surveillance of American citizens. Prior to 9/11, such protections had remained strong. After 9/11, as Brown’s Costs of War Project reports, “These mass surveillance programs allow[ed] the U.S. government to warrantlessly and ‘incidentally’ vacuum up Americans’ communications, metadata and content, and store their information in data centers and repositories,” sacrificing standing protections in the name of greater security.

Nor would that be the end of the matter. In the name of national security, the country’s law enforcement entities would also turn their backs on prohibitions against discrimination based on race, religion, or national origin as laid out, for example, in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. As a Costs of War Project report summed it up, the “Special Registration” requirement “announced in 2002 required all males from a list of Arab and Muslim countries [to] report to the government to register and be fingerprinted.” According to the ACLU, that program (known as NSEERS) would end up affecting foreign nationals from 25 countries.

While the war on terror has receded into the background of our lives, its premises and tactics remain all too readily available.

Worse yet, such deviations from constitutional protections and the law did not come to an end with the Bush administration. Although President Barack Obama would issue an executive order restoring adherence to the laws banning torture and end the NSEERS program (which, the ACLU noted, “did not achieve a single terrorism-related conviction” despite “tens of thousands of people having been forced to register”), there were other key areas in which his administration did not reverse past policy—anything but, in fact. “Early in [President Obama’s] administration,” as historian Kathryn Olmstead notes, “the new president signaled his intention to continue Bush’s surveillance policies.” Though “surprised by the extent of the spying” in the domestic intelligence program, Obama’s team nonetheless “quickly agreed to continue Bush’s mass surveillance program.”

In addition, by escalating a global drone program of “targeted killings,” the Obama administration would forge its own path toward weakening legal protections in the name of national security. During the Obama years, on what came to be known as “Terror Tuesdays,” national security officials presented the president with a list of names, all potential targets to be captured or killed. (It would come to be known in the media as “the kill list.”) As NPR summed it up, Obama, “wishing to be seen as a restraining influence,” would weigh in on the final list of names. According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, “A total of 563 strikes, largely by drones, targeted Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen during Obama’s two terms, compared to 57 strikes under Bush.”

Leaving those programs on the table for the next president would be—and remains—a prescription for disaster.

Trump and the Tactics of the War on Terror

Trump’s first presidency combined the strategies of Bush and Obama when it came to the war on terror. Though it was little noted then, he launched an unprecedented number of drone strikes, tripling Obama’s numbers by 2022, including the targeted assassination of a high-ranking Iranian official, Revolutionary Guard leader Qassim Soleimani. Political scientist Micah Zenko noted that, despite his claims of being non-interventionist, Trump proved to be “more interventionist than Obama: in authorizing drone strikes and special operations raids in non-battlefield settings (namely, in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia).”

The 45th president’s disregard for legal restraints took other war-on-terror policies to a new level. Within a week of his inauguration, President Trump had issued an executive order that came to be known as “the Muslim Ban,” forbidding citizens from seven predominantly Muslim countries entry to the United States. And like his predecessor, he showed little interest in sunsetting the expansive surveillance authority he had inherited.

In fact, Trump brought the tools and tactics designed for the war on terror to the “home front,” notably in his approach to dissent. He attacked Black Lives Matter protesters as enemies, labeling them “terrorists.” He made discrimination against foreigners a national policy at the onset of his first presidency, announcing his plans to detain and deport millions of undocumented immigrants and promising to institute policies that intentionally separated migrant children from their families. He even threatened to widen the uses of Guantánamo: “…[W]e are keeping [Guantanamo] open… and we’re gonna load it up with some bad dudes, believe me, we’re gonna load it up.” Wondering who those “bad dudes” would be, NPR noted that captives in the war on terror were mostly a thing of the past and reminded listeners of an interview in which Trump had said such suspects should be tried by military commissions, the fraught trial system already in place there.

When Joe Biden became president, he curtailed a number of the excesses of the war on terror from the Trump years, even issuing a proclamation revoking the Muslim ban. When it came to drone strikes, he lessened them substantially, leaving them “far from their peaks under the Obama and Trump administrations.” In addition, he put new limits on their use going forward. In a striking gesture, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines pledged to “promote transparency” in place of the excessive secrecy that had underpinned the torture program, surveillance abuses, and the targeted-killing program. Still, all too much remained ongoing or fully capable of being revived in the new Trump years.

Bringing It All Back Home

Which brings us to expectations—or fears—of what will happen in a second Trump presidency. When it comes to the use of force, detention, discrimination, and the erasure of constitutional protections, Trump has already promised to bring the broad counterterrorism authority of earlier in this century to bear on the home front.

Let’s begin with his promises to institute discriminatory policies based on race and national origin. As of today, the incoming administration has pledged to round up, put in camps, and oversee the mass detention and deportation of undocumented immigrants from Latin America in particular, potentially combining a detention nightmare (lacking due process and underpinned by massive discrimination) with suspicion often based on national origin rather than specific evidence of criminal behavior—an echo of the war on terror’s early years.

In place of national security, Trump has promised to substitute, in the words of the 2024 Republican platform, the “threat to our very way of life,” a term that expands the vagueness encapsulated in “terror” and “terrorism” to a new level. Notably, in the run-up to the 2024 election he had already made it crystal clear that the path from the war on terror abroad to his internal policy plans would be important to his administration. When candidate Trump promised to use the military to counter “the enemy from within,” a spokesperson clarified the meaning for the press. As The Washington Post reported at the time, Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung acknowledged the way the candidate was linking his political enemies to terrorists. Trump, he explained, was “equat[ing] the prospect of unspecified efforts by the left during the elections with the recent arrest of an Afghan man in Oklahoma, who is accused of plotting an Election Day attack in the United States in the name of the Islamic State group.” Cheung then furthered the analogy by adding, “President Trump is 100% correct—those who seek to undermine democracy by sowing chaos in our elections are a direct threat, just like the terrorist from Afghanistan that was arrested for plotting multiple attacks on Election Day within the United States.”

Where Are We Today?

While the war on terror has receded into the background of our lives, its premises and tactics remain all too readily available. Its expansion of presidential powers, coupled with the Supreme Court’s recent immunity decision when it comes to more or less anything a president does in office, leaves the country in a state of imminent peril. Surveillance powers remain remarkably broad. Drone-strike authorities remain in place, even if, in the wake of the Biden years, curtailed for now. And the prospect of indefinite detention as a codified element of American policy remains possible not only at Guantanamo but for migrants across the United States. And to top it all off, Congress continues to be unwilling to restrict a president’s war powers in any significant way, having repeatedly refused to repeal or replace that original 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force in which neither time, nor geographical limits, nor even precise limits on the definition of the enemy exist.

If only, as a nation, we could look beyond the tumultuous context of the current moment and imagine how to make our way to a safer, more sustainable future. Sadly, despite the dangers that may lie ahead, it’s not just partisan politics, or economic disarray, or the fragile state of the world that has brought us to this point. It’s our own negligence in accepting the dismantling of the laws and norms that had guided us prior to 9/11 and refusing ever since to restore our once-upon-a-time respect for the rule of law and for one another.

Forty years ago this month, a Union Carbide pesticide factory in Bhopal, India sprung a toxic gas leak, exposing half a million people to toxic fumes. Thousands of people lost their lives in the immediate aftermath, with the death toll climbing to more than 20,000 over the next two decades. Countless others, including children of survivors, continue to endure chronic health issues.

In the United States, the events in Bhopal ignited a grassroots movement to expose and address the toxic chemicals in our water, air, and neighborhoods. In 1986, just two years after the disaster, this growing awareness led Congress to pass the first National Right to Know Act, which requires companies to publicly disclose their use of many toxic chemicals.

In India, Bhopal victims have had a long struggle for justice. In 1989, survivors flew to a Union Carbide shareholders meeting in Houston to protest the inadequate compensation for the trauma they’d suffered. The settlement awarded each Bhopal victim was a mere $500—which a spokesperson for Dow Chemical, Union Carbide’s parent company, called “plenty good for an Indian.”

We can take inspiration from the people of Bhopal, whose fierce commitment to health and justice sparked a global movement.

Union Carbide had the survivors arrested before they could enter the meeting. Meanwhile, their abandoned chemical factory was still leaking toxic chemicals into the surrounding neighborhoods and drinking water.

Nevertheless, Bhopal survivors never stopped fighting. They opened a free clinic to treat the intergenerational health effects caused by the disaster. They marched 500 miles between Bhopal and New Delhi. They staged hunger strikes. They created memorials to the disaster and established a museum to ensure that the horrors of their collective past are not forgotten.

The survivors even obtained an extradition order for Union Carbide’s former CEO, Warren Anderson, but the U.S. government never acted on that request. Forty years later, the factory in Bhopal has never been properly cleaned and is still leaking poison.

Unfortunately, the kinds of chemicals that flow through the veins of Bhopal survivors also flow through ours. The petrochemical industry has brought us together in a perverse solidarity, having chemically trespassed into places all over the world.

According to one figure, Americans are exposed to dangerous chemical fires, leaks, and explosions about once every two days. In one dramatic example in early 2023, a rail tanker filled with vinyl chloride derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, forcing the evacuation of 2,000 residents.

Nearly all Americans now carry toxic substances known as PFAS in our bodies. These have been linked to cancer, liver and kidney disease, and immune dysfunction. And the continued burning of fossil fuels is killing millions of people each year around the world through air pollution.

Petrochemical and fossil fuel companies know they can only survive if they avoid liability for the damage they are doing to our health and the planet’s ecosystems. That’s why they are heavily invested in lobbying to prevent any such accountability.

Polluting industries are certain to have strong allies in the coming Trump administration, which plans to open even more land to fossil fuel production and, under the blueprint for conservative governance known as Project 2025, to slash environmental and public health regulations. But we can take inspiration from the people of Bhopal, whose fierce commitment to health and justice sparked a global movement.

Earlier this month, on the 40th anniversary of the Bhopal disaster, congressional allies of this movement including U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and U.S. Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), introduced a resolution designating December 3 as National Chemical Disaster Awareness Day.

“Chemical disasters are often the result of corporations cutting corners and prioritizing profits over safety,” said Merkley, who chairs the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works subcommittee. “These catastrophes cloud communities with toxic fumes, upending lives and threatening the health and property of those living and working close by.” He called for “stronger laws to prevent chemical disasters and keep our communities and workers safe.”

This growing global alliance, which has been called the largest movement for environmental health and justice in history, is fighting for a future in which everyone has the right to live in a healthy environment. It’s a movement that unites us all. Because in many ways, we all live in Bhopal now.

No one can predict which team will win the Men’s World Cup soccer championship in 2034. But based on current conditions, we know the biggest losers will be the millions of migrant workers subject to egregious abuses while building stadiums, transit, infrastructure, and other facilities for host country Saudi Arabia over the next decade.

On December 11, the 211 national members of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) will hold a vote in an “Extraordinary Congress” to decide who will host the 2034 tournament. The conclusion is already known because Saudi Arabia is the only bidder and has received a glowing score from FIFA in the evaluation of its bid.

FIFA doesn’t disclose how much it profits from granting its flagship tournament to countries with dismal human rights records. Those most affected by this decision— Saudi Arabia’s 13.4 million migrant workers, Saudi citizens, players, fans and journalists—have no vote.

FIFA and its Saudi government partners boasted recently that Saudi Arabia’s evaluation score of 419.8 out of 500 is “the highest ever score in FIFA World Cup history.” The deeply flawed FIFA evaluation process further downplayed systemic human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia with a “medium risk” rating.

FIFA gave this “highest ever score” to a country with no labor unions, no press freedom, and a government that is deeply repressive and punishes any dissent.

“We cannot say that Saudi Arabia is a ‘medium risk’ country, given that it has become a pure police state,” said Lina al-Hathloul, Head of Monitoring and Advocacy at ALQST For Human Rights, whose sister Loujain was jailed and tortured for advocating for women’s right to drive.

This month FIFA leaders also rejected the organization’s own independent report that confirms FIFA “has a responsibility” to compensate families of thousands of migrant workers who died building FIFA’s last World Cup, in Qatar in 2022.

Like Qatar, Saudi Arabia operates under the abusive labor sponsorship system known as kafala, where migrant workers pay large recruitment fees, often have passports taken and wages stolen by employers, and cannot change jobs or leave the country freely. Labor unions, strikes and protests are banned. Saudi authorities do not adequately protect migrant workers from dangerous conditions such as extreme heat.

The unprecedented scale of Saudi World Cup plans makes the potential for labor rights catastrophes greater even than for the Qatar World Cup. The Saudi hosting documents promise to construct—in the deadly desert heat, as in Qatar—11 new and 4 refurbished stadiums,185,000 new hotel rooms, and to carry out airport, road and rail construction. This infrastructure deficit will rest entirely on the backs of migrant workers to build. Many of these World Cup projects will be accomplished with funding from the Saudi state-run $925 billion Public Investment Fund and from oil and gas behemoth Aramco, FIFA’s new major worldwide partner.

The hundreds of billions of dollars in construction come with a high human cost. A new Human Rights Watch report found that 884 migrant workers from Bangladesh died in Saudi Arabia between January and July 2024—a six month period. Eighty percent of these deaths were un-investigated, attributed to “natural causes,” and not eligible for compensation. Human Rights Watch wrote to FIFA President Gianni Infantino on November 4, 2024, documenting widespread labor abuses on giga-projects in Saudi Arabia that will be part of the World Cup infrastructure. FIFA has not responded.

Winning the right to host is an effort championed by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has made clear that the FIFA World Cup is a centerpiece of the Saudi national sportswashing strategy to project a reformist image of the country, while covering up its human rights abuses. “If sportswashing is going to increase my GDP by 1 percent, then we will continue doing sportswashing,” the de-facto Saudi leader said in an interview with Fox News last year. “I don’t care.”

But FIFA should care. Awarding Saudi Arabia the World Cup violates FIFA’s own human rights rules. In 2016, facing a corruption crisis, FIFA put in place specific human rights standards for itself and countries hosting the games—including protections against forced labor. These reforms were supposed to keep the tournament away from the worst human-rights violators. FIFA also pledged “an ongoing due diligence process to identify, address, evaluate and communicate the risks of involvement with adverse human rights impacts,” promising to “make every effort to uphold its international human rights responsibilities.”

Yet not a single migrant worker, victim of human rights crimes, torture survivor, jailed women’s rights defender, or Saudi civil society member was consulted for FIFA’s supposedly independent human rights assessment. FIFA’s “Bid Evaluation Report” doesn’t even mention the historic forced labor complaint against the Saudi government filed by the trade union BWI at the International Labour Organization (ILO) in June of this year. A similar complaint about Qatar in 2014 spurred labor reforms in the country, although too late to help thousands of migrant workers who died.

In 2023, FIFA was forced to cancel the sponsorship it sold to the Saudi state-run tourism company “Visit Saudi,” after protests by women players. In October, more than 100 top women players published an open letter protesting FIFA’s lucrative sponsorship deal with the Saudi state oil giant Aramco. Already, two United States senators have called for FIFA to pick a different host for the 2034 World Cup.

FIFA needs to cancel the vote and back athletes and human rights over profiteering from Saudi sportswashing. Every sponsor, business, broadcaster, and national team associated with the Saudi World Cup will be tainted by widespread labor and other abuses unless wholesale, urgent human rights reforms are implemented. FIFA’s decision to award Saudi Arabia the 2034 World Cup is an unforgivable betrayal of basic human rights that risks migrant workers’ lives. It deserves a red card.

While analyzing the tailspin of the Biden presidency and the failed campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris, few pundits have questioned that militarism is a political necessity as well as a vital tool of U.S. foreign policy.

Harris checked a standard box at the Democratic National Convention when she pledged to maintain “the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.” Yet the erosion of the Democratic Party’s base is partly due to the alienation of voters who don’t want to cast their ballot for what they see as a war party.

That perception is especially acute among the young, and notable among African Americans. Many have viewed President Joe Biden’s resolute support for the Israeli war in Gaza as a moral collapse. When Harris remained loyal to it during the fall campaign, her credibility sank.

Conditions may soon shift for the Democratic Party to start moving beyond its war culture.

Events in recent weeks have done nothing to reassure those repelled by the Democratic administration’s approach. Biden’s purported 30-day deadline for Israel to start allowing adequate food into Gaza expired shortly after the election—without Israeli compliance—while the humanitarian disaster in Gaza actually became worse than ever. Biden’s White House pretended otherwise.

The ongoing hellish realities for Palestinian civilians in Gaza caused 40% of Senate Democrats to vote for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) post-election resolution to block $20 billion worth of military aid to Israel. But near the end of November, Biden followed up by greenlighting an additional $680 million in arms sales to Israel. While Republicans remained in lockstep for arming Israel, the budding dissent from congressional Democrats remained ineffectual.

On Ukraine war policy, dissent has been rare from Democratic lawmakers. Two years ago, 30 progressive House Democrats sent a letter to Biden that suggested “a proactive diplomatic push” could be useful for achieving a cease-fire—but they quickly withdrew the letter after an angry backlash from hawkish leaders in their own party. (Republican lawmakers are split on Ukraine policy—many want the U.S. to recklessly confront China instead of Russia.)

Few Democrats have mustered more than feeble caveats about open-ended military aid to the Kyiv government, merely watching as the Biden administration repeatedly crosses its own red lines on such matters as approval of longer-range Ukrainian missile strikes into Russia. For the Ukraine war, in the lexicon of high-ranking Democrats, “diplomacy” has been a dirty word.

Overall, the president has accelerated the war train (sometimes hailing more war production as good for the U.S. economy), with party leaders providing fuel and Democratic constituents confined to the caboose. The opinions of the party faithful count for little.

Polling has made clear that an overwhelming majority of Democrats want a U.S. arms embargo against Israel. On Ukraine, a poll early this year found that while less than one-fifth of Democrats wanted to end all military aid to Ukraine, upwards of half wanted to make it conditional on diplomatic talks, a stance firmly rejected by the administration.

Fond of telling the world about the imperative of a “rules-based order” to stop cross-border aggression, Biden and his secretary of State, Antony Blinken, rationalize breaking the rules at will. This year, in the Middle East, the U.S. launched bombing attacks on Yemen, Syria, and Iraq. Objections from leaders of the president’s party have not been audible.

The Democratic Party deserves its image as a party of war. To explore possibilities for how that might change will require a candid assessment of how that image came into focus in the 21st century.

Soon after Barack Obama became president in 2009, he made the “war on terror” explicitly bipartisan. With the Democratic Party in tow, he tripled the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, peaking at 100,000 in 2010—swiftly escalating a war inflicting widespread carnage in rural areas out of media sight.

In Iraq, the war effort persisted as the number of U.S. boots on the ground slowly declined. Meanwhile, Obama stepped up drone attacks in Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia. And with disastrous consequences for Libya, Obama had the United States lead NATO’s seven-month bombing onslaught of that country in 2011, incubating terrorism that expanded far beyond its borders.

Today, the most powerful Democrats are well attuned to the dominant media messaging and the agendas of megadonors, establishment “think tanks,” Pentagon contractors, and their lobbyists swarming Capitol Hill. With the military budget approaching $1 trillion, along with multibillion-dollar weapons shipments to allied nations, corporations of varied sizes make huge profits from war. And revolving doors between arms sellers and government arms buyers never stop spinning.

Conditions may soon shift for the Democratic Party to start moving beyond its war culture. But that will require a willingness to challenge the assumptions of elected Democrats who are in sync with what Martin Luther King Jr. called “the madness of militarism.”

Virtually everyone, except Elon Musk, agrees that the rich have too much political power these days. When a single individual can put tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars behind their favored candidate, it seriously distorts democracy. Unfortunately, there are few serious strategies for addressing this problem.

Given the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United, as well as prior rulings saying effectively that money is speech, there is little prospect for any sort of limits on campaign spending, at least until we have a very different Supreme Court. While this is bad news for fans of democracy, the problem is even worse.

People have generally viewed the media and political campaigns as two distinct buckets. Most attention has been focused on the second bucket. But the first bucket (including social media), is at least as important in determining political attitudes.

If progressives are going to have the ability to challenge the political power of the billionaire MAGA gang, we need another mechanism for supporting media.

While this should be obvious in the age of Fox News, for some reason many people seem to be under the impression that we will have limited the political power of the rich if we restrict their campaign spending. This is a bizarre view when the rich would still have the option to buy every major media outlet and social media platform and turn them all into Fox News. Given Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, and Donald Trump’s very explicit threats against critical media, this story should not seem far-fetched.

To be clear, there is still much useful reporting done by leading media outlets like the New York Times and CNN. But these outlets will likely take threats of major lawsuits and other reprisals seriously. And recalcitrant outlets can always be taken over by Elon Musk.

If progressives are going to have the ability to challenge the political power of the billionaire MAGA gang, we need another mechanism for supporting media. And this has to go well beyond urging people to support progressive outlets and their local newspapers. Such individual efforts are great, but we need a public channel of funding to supplement current sources.

Public Funding Through Individual Tax Credits

To my mind, the best way to set up a new channel to support the media is with public funding through a modest-sized individual tax credit of say $100. This tax credit would be fully refundable and available to every adult to support the news outlet of their choice.

There are two reasons for making it an individual tax credit, rather than just a direct subsidy of existing newspapers and other media. The first is that traditional media is viewed with enormous suspicion by much of the public. It would likely be far more difficult to gain political support for subsidies designated for the media that currently exists.

The second and more important reason is that people should be able to decide what newspapers or news outlets they want to support. If they make this choice themselves, they will be more invested in it and will be more likely to appreciate the outlets they choose to support.

Also, it is likely that many new outlets will spring up to take advantage of this new source of support. Some of these will undoubtedly be low quality and provide little real news, but this is true of many news outlets currently. If people choose to use their tax credit on them, that would be their choice, as it now when they opt to buy a supermarket tabloid or to watch Fox News. But there would also be a substantial pot of money available to support serious news outlets that provide real information about what is going on in the city, state, or country.

Another benefit of going this route is that it can be done at the state or even local level. There is little prospect that a MAGA Congress would pass legislation that could challenge billionaire power, but there are a number of states — including large states like California, New York, and Illinois — where Democrats have a trifecta. It would be possible in principle to pass a journalism or media tax credit in these states. And if it proved successful, the idea would likely spread.

The Charitable Contribution Tax Deduction: A Model for the Journalism Tax Credit

The tax deduction for charitable contributions provides a good model for how a journalism tax credit could work. With the charitable contribution tax deduction, organizations file with the I.R.S. to be eligible for tax-exempt status. To get eligibility an organization just has to tell the I.R.S. what it does — for example, it’s an educational institution or a church. The I.R.S. doesn’t try to determine whether the organization does a good job as an educational institution or a church, that’s for individual donors to do. The I.R.S. just ensures that the organization does what it claims to do.

It would be the same story with an organization applying to be eligible to get a journalism tax credit. They just have to say what type of reporting they are doing and where their work is available. The oversight agency will not try to determine the quality of the journalism, that decision is for the individual contributors.

Also, a requirement of getting the funding is that all the supported work be freely available on the web with no paywall. The logic is that the public paid for the work, it should be able to benefit from it. This would not prevent a newspaper from having some material behind a paywall, if it supported the work from other sources, such as subscriptions or advertising.

A major difference with the tax deduction is that it would be equally available to everyone. Only around 10 percent of the public takes the charitable deduction tax credit. The vast majority of taxpayers take the standard deduction, which means they can’t write off charitable deductions against their taxable income. Also, the deduction is worth much more to a high-income person in the 35 percent bracket than to a middle-income person in the 12 percent tax bracket. This credit would be $100 for everyone, or whatever sum is agreed upon.

Will This Tax Credit Challenge Elon Musk’s Money?

The short answer to that is not right away. Even if we could get one or two progressive cities or states to create this sort of tax credit in the near future, it will take some years to get it up and running. And even then, the size of the credits in a small number of states or cities will be a drop in the bucket compared to the money at the disposal of Musk and his billionaire buddies.

But if a journalism tax credit proves popular, it can expand over time with more states and cities adopting it. If we got to the point where most of the blue states had this sort of credit in place, we could perhaps see 60 or 70 million people kicking in $100 a head to support media they liked. That would come to $6-$7 billion a year.

While much of this journalism would not be especially political (papers report on sports, weather, and civic events) if just a third went to progressive reporting, or just solid investigative reporting, it could make a huge difference in the public’s awareness. And remember, even if the news outlets are only in blue states, everything is going up on the web, where everyone in the country and world can see it. If a newspaper in Minnesota reports that Donald Trump Jr. is selling off the Grand Canyon to buy himself another mansion, even people in Florida and Texas will be able to read the stories.

It is still not fair that the Elon Musks of the world have such an outsize voice in political debates, but as a practical matter we have no way to limit their political spending in the foreseeable future. The best we can hope to do is to build up alternative voices so we don’t just hear from the billionaires and their lackeys.

We also should do something to downsize the huge social media platforms that give their owners so much power. This was a noticeable problem to anyone paying attention even before Elon Musk bought Twitter.

This story may not be satisfying to people seeing billionaires openly flaunting their money to make politicians grant their wishes, but we don’t have a better alternative. It’s great to say that we shouldn’t have billionaires or that we need a big wealth tax, but those statements have as much political impact as watching kids cartoons. We have to start building an institutional structure that can support long-term progressive opposition, and a big part of that is having media outlets that the billionaires can’t buy or intimidate into acquiescence.

More than 15 years after the “kids for cash” scandal shocked the nation, it’s back, stirring not just public incredulity but, for some, soul-slicing memories of hell on Earth.

This is thanks to U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision to grant clemency to Michel Conahan, one of two juvenile-court judges in Luzerne County. Pennsylvania, convicted of accepting cash from private detention centers—as much as $2.8 million over a period of about six years—in exchange for sending them children (my God, as young as eight years-old) convicted of petty offenses, such as fighting, shoplifting, underage drinking, to serve prolonged sentences in prison.

Conahan, along with Mark Ciavarella, had collected cash for sending more than 2,300 children to prison. Many of them were scarred for life by this experience. Some committed suicide.

This is the us-vs.-them mentality, a quick-grab governing concept that has given us both the military-industrial complex and the prison-industrial complex: two looming cash cows that define far too much of who we are as a nation.

“My son did nothing more than anything that most of us as kids did, you know, experimenting and living his life and making mistakes, that we usually all get to just learn and evolve and grow from. He did nothing more than be at an underaged drinking party with tons of other kids, but he was caught.”

This is Sandy Fonzo, speaking recently with Amy Goodman in a highly emotional interview on Democracy Now!, in the wake of the news of Conahan’s clemency. Her son, a senior in high school, a star wrestler, spent a month in the juvenile detention center just as his senior year was beginning. He came out lost, emotionally shattered, wound up getting into a fight and had to stand before Judge Ciavarella again. This time he was walloped with an eight-month sentence.

“He lost his senior year.” Sandy said. “He never had the chance to wrestle again, any chance that he had for a scholarship. He came out of there very bitter, very angry, pent up with anger. He couldn’t look you in the eye. I don’t know what happened in that facility. My son was a very big, strong, proud boy, and he came out broken.”

“ ...It changed him. It broke him. It stole his youth, his childhood. He would never, ever recover. And it just became too much, and he shot himself in the heart.”

Kids for cash! Her son wound up killing himself—and that’s just one story out of, presumably, thousands. A kid does a “bad” thing and, whoops, off to prison with you! At the time, I wrote in a column:

Many of these kids had never been in trouble before, and many of the offenses that netted jail time were trivial in the extreme. Sixteen-year-old Hillary T., for instance, who lampooned her assistant principal on MySpace, was given a three-month sentence. (With a lawyer’s help, she got out after one.) Kurt K. was in the company of someone who was caught shoplifting at Wal-Mart; accused of being a “lookout,” he wound up doing almost a year of jail time. Jamie Q. exchanged slaps with a friend during an argument; she also was sent away for almost a year. She was 14.

While the judicial corruption of “kids for cash” is glaring, that’s hardly the entirety of the issue. As I read and remember the details, I see something far larger quietly looming in the background, behind the judges’ criminality—behind what I called at the time “the blurring of the line between profit and state.” It’s the system itself: structured on the value and, indeed, the necessity, of punishment, of “war” on all that is evil, from a kid stealing a candy bar to terrorists attacking America.

Here’s how Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) put it the other day, addressing his congressional colleagues as they were considering the passage of 2025’s National Defense Authorization, which allots $895 billion—two-thirds of the federal budget, for defense spending.

“When we talk about increasing Social Security benefits,” Sanders said, “well, ‘we just can’t afford to do that. We just can’t afford to expand Medicare to cover dental, hearing, or vision. We just cannot afford to make higher education in America affordable.’ That’s what I hear every single day. When there’s an effort to improve life for the working class of this country, I hear, ‘No, no, no, we can’t afford it.’ But when it comes to the military-industrial complex and their needs, what we hear is ‘yes, yes, yes’ with almost no debate.”

Understanding and transcending our troubles, our conflicts, is complex—way too complex, apparently, for so many of those in power to have the patience to try to comprehend, especially when they also have the far simpler option available of simply eliminating those troubles (no matter that it never works).

In a justice system immersed in such complexity—focused on understanding a lawbreaker rather than simply, and coldly, enforcing rules—corruption of various sorts would no doubt still be possible, but not at the simplistic, easily justified level of “kids for cash.”

This is the us-vs.-them mentality, a quick-grab governing concept that has given us both the military-industrial complex and the prison-industrial complex: two looming cash cows that define far too much of who we are as a nation. As the National Priorities Project noted in a 2023 report:

In (fiscal year) 2023, out of a $1.8 trillion federal discretionary budget, $1.1 trillion—or 62%—was for militarized programs. That includes war and weapons, law enforcement and mass incarceration, and detention and deportation.

I can only hope that the reawakened “kids for cash” outrage shines a light on more than just two convicted judges, one of whom received clemency after a dozen years of imprisonment. I certainly can understand the anguish and anger this could cause for anyone—parent or child—wounded by their corrupt actions. But maybe it’s also time for a collective reassessment of our criminal-“justice” system as a whole and, indeed, our moral certainty that punishment and war keep us safe.

The United Nations Climate Summit (COP29), held in Baku, Azerbaijan last month, apparently lived up to its moniker: “The Finance COP.” Two weeks of semantic quibbling finally yielded an agreement that would triple climate finance to $300 billion a year by 2035. Developing countries were calling for $1.3 trillion instead, which would have been more than four times the amount agreed. Many pooh-poohed the promised $300 billion as “too little, too distant.” Even if one ignores “the too little part,” it is hard to overlook the redeeming of the pledge way off into the future, a fact that was obscured due to the linguistic jumble of U.N.-speak, legalese, and bureaucratese in the document.

Given that it won’t be realized for 11 years, the agreement raises a number of rhetorical questions. Will nature and its fury be put on pause till 2035? Will climate action (emissions reduction) and adaptation (to climate change) continue at no cost or on the cheap? Will the climate stop changing? Despite its appearance to the contrary, the tripling of climate finance was a pretend effort to leave Baku with a semblance of seriousness. Yet the U.N. Executive Secretary for Climate Change was unsure if the agreed finance would be delivered as promised. He grandly hailed the agreement as an “insurance policy for humanity,” but equally skeptically cautioned that an “insurance policy only works if premiums are paid in full and on time.”

In reality, agreements like climate finance or Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) are no different than New Year Resolutions that are only honored in intended or unintended breaches. What make the climate finance agreement even less resolute are three aspects.

The world’s largest and wealthiest nations seem to have concluded that they don’t need the rest of the world or their NDCs to reduce emissions.

First, it is neither obligatory nor enforceable. Pledges have been made on the part of developed countries like the European Union, the United States, and Japan—whose respective leaders ironically chose to abstain from the summit—that “agreed to help raise $300 billion a year by 2035.” They didn’t take it upon themselves to pay the promised amount but rather pledged to “help raise $300 billion,” which is akin to crowdfunding the whole effort.

Second, COP29 cast its central objective as the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG), i.e., each developed country will pledge a specific amount of contribution to climate finance. No such quantification was agreed. All that was agreed was that developed countries would “help raise $300 billion a year by 2035.” Fundraising is not a quantified financial commitment.

Third, and above all, there was no agreement on what will count as climate finance: public finance, private finance, bank loans, philanthropy, investment, or all of it? These lacunae leave so big a hole in the climate finance agreement that it can let through even a Category-5 storm. Some delegates call the agreement a bad deal. Others cry foul that the only deal worse than no deal is a bad deal.

All parties to the agreement, thus, returned home unhappy. Developed countries were sticking together to keep their current commitment of $100 billion unchanged. Developing countries insisted on raising it to $1.3 trillion effective now. Hosts of COP29 were overrunning the conference schedule to get a deal acceptable to both developed and developing countries. Civil society organizations were dismissing the agreement as “a bad deal,” even a “joke.” As a result, everyone left the conference dejected.

Developed countries intentionally or unintentionally let this dejection work its way through the conference for several reasons, the most obvious being that their home constituencies are turning against climate and environmental justice. Western societies’ rightward lurch has left their governments unwilling and unable to make any commitment to finance climate action. It is no coincidence that leaders of major European nations such as Germany and France and even that of the European Union chose to sit out the Conference.

The leaders of the five-member BRICS were also no shows. Leaders of five of the G7 countries opted out of the Conference. Canada’s leader flew instead to Florida to spend a day with the U.S. president-elect to discuss reviving suspended oil and gas pipeline projects. Leaders of 13 of the G20 countries, a cluster of the world’s largest and wealthiest economies, too, voted with feet. The abstaining leaders’ nations represent “the World’s 13 Top Polluters.” For these reasons, the prime minister of Papua New Guinea called COP29 a “total waste of time” and pulled out of the conference. The president of Argentina, who called the climate crisis a “socialist lie,” pulled his country out of the conference altogether, a move that many fear threatens the viability of the Paris climate pact. The science-denying Argentine leader might have withdrawn from the summit in what historian Timothy Snyder calls “anticipatory obedience” to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump. Trump stands by his commitment to pull the United States out of the Paris climate pact and stop contributing to climate finance, just as he did during his first term.

The Paris climate pact is even more threatened by the G20 nations’ aversion to the U.N. process on climate change. The G20 held a pow-wow of its own in Brazil at the same time as the U.N. climate summit. The Brazilian leader, who is an ardent champion of climate justice, skipped COP29 “due to head injury,” but he happily made himself available to host and fete leaders of the world’s 20 largest economies at exactly the same time as the Baku summit was underway. The agenda at the G20 summit was dominated by economic growth that to most scientists and environmentalists is at the heart of climate change. In fact, the G20 summit stole the march on COP29. Even the U.N. secretary general, who was the official host of the Baku summit, left in the middle of the proceedings to fly to Brazil to attend the G20 summit instead.

The world’s largest and wealthiest nations seem to have concluded that they don’t need the rest of the world or their NDCs to reduce emissions. G20 countries account for 80% of the world’s emissions, while the least developed countries just 4% of them. If G20 nations decide to transition away from fossil fuel energy, it will dramatically reduce atmospheric carbon’s impact on soaring temperatures. In this picture, the rest of the 180 countries and their emissions hardly matter. It’s what environmental sociologist William Freudenburg called disproportionality: A handful of powerful actors account for the disproportionate amount of industrial pollution. The world’s largest and wealthiest economies have the financial means, technological resources, and alternative paths away from fossilized fuels.

The Club of Rome, a business group that jolted the world with its classic report on Limits to Growth in 1972, wrote an open letter expressing its dismay at what it calls the failed process of COPs and voiced a call for urgent reforms. Among the signatories were such luminaries as the former President of Ireland Mary Robinson, former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, and former U.N. Executive Secretary for Climate Change Christiana Figueres. This lack of confidence in U.N. processes is another bad omen for future U.N. climate summits and more importantly the Paris climate pact, especially once the Trump administration is seated in Washington early next year.

This summer, the Supreme Court’s Grants Pass ruling made it much easier for local governments to criminalize homelessness. Since then, cities and states across the country have stepped up their harassment of people for the “crime” of not having a place to live.

Penalizing homelessness has increasingly taken the form of crackdowns on encampments — also known as “sweeps,” which have received bipartisan support. California Governor Gavin Newsom has ordered state agencies to ramp up encampment sweeps, while President-elect Donald Trump has also pledged to ban encampments and move people to “tent cities” far from public view.

Evidence shows that these sweeps are harmful and unproductive — and not to mention dehumanizing.

Housing justice advocates caution that sweeps disrupt peoples’ lives by severing their ties to case workers, medical care, and other vital services. Many unhoused people also have their personal documents and other critical belongings seized or tossed, which makes it even harder to find housing and work.

Sweeps, like punitive fines and arrests, don’t address the root of the problem — they just trap people in cycles of poverty and homelessness.

According to a ProPublica investigation, authorities in multiple cities have confiscated basic survival items like tents and blankets, as well as medical supplies like CPAP machines and insulin. Other people lost items like phones and tools that impacted their ability to work.

Teresa Stratton from Portland told ProPublica that her husband’s ashes were even taken in a sweep. “I wonder where he is,” she said. “I hope he’s not in the dump.”

Over the summer, the city of Sacramento, California forcefully evicted 48 residents — mostly women over 55 with disabilities — from a self-governed encampment known as Camp Resolution. The camp was located at a vacant lot and had been authorized by the city, which also owned the trailers where residents lived.

One of the residents who’d been at the hospital during the sweep was assured that her belongings would be kept safe. However, she told me she lost everything she’d worked so hard to acquire, including her car.

The loss of her home and community of two years, along with her possessions, was already traumatizing. But now, like most of the camp residents, she was forced back onto the streets — even though the city had promised not to sweep the lot until every resident had been placed in permanent housing.

Aside from being inhumane, the seizure of personal belongings raises serious constitutional questions — especially since sweeps often take place with little to no warning and authorities often fail to properly store belongings. Six unhoused New Yorkers recently sued the city on Fourth Amendment grounds, citing these practices.

Sweeps, like punitive fines and arrests, don’t address the root of the problem — they just trap people in cycles of poverty and homelessness. Encampments can pose challenges to local communities, but their prevalence stems from our nation’s failure to ensure the fundamental human right to housing.

People experiencing homelessness are often derided as an “eyesore” and blamed for their plight. However, government policies have allowed housing, a basic necessity for survival, to become commodified and controlled by corporations and billionaire investors for profit.

Meanwhile, the federal minimum wage has remained stagnant at $7.25 since 2009 and rent is now unaffordable for half of all tenants. Alongside eroding social safety nets, these policies have resulted in a housing affordability crisis that’s left at least 653,000 people without housing nationwide.

While shelters can help some people move indoors temporarily, they aren’t a real housing solution, either.

Human rights groups report that shelters often don’t meet adequate standards of housing or accommodate people with disabilities. Many treat people like they’re incarcerated by imposing curfews and other restrictions, such as not allowing pets. Safety and privacy at shelters are also growing concerns.

Officials justify sweeps for safety and sanitation reasons, but in the end they harm and displace people who have nowhere else to go. Instead, governments should prioritize safe, affordable, dignified, and permanent housing for all, coupled with supportive services.

Anything else is sweeping the problem under the rug.

As Republicans at the federal level prepare to take over majorities in both the House and Senate, some have proposed deeply damaging cuts to Medicaid, including taking health coverage away from people who don’t meet unnecessary and burdensome work requirements. Some state policymakers are interested in pursuing Medicaid work requirements as well. But a Georgia Medicaid program provides the latest evidence that work requirements are the worst sort of red tape — blocking health coverage for working people, people with serious health conditions, and people with disabilities.

Georgia is one of ten states that has not adopted the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion provision, instead applying for a waiver to provide Medicaid to certain low-income adults, conditioned on meeting work requirements. This waiver program, called Pathways to Coverage, requires adults with low incomes to report at least 80 hours of work or volunteer activities each month as a condition of getting and keeping their coverage. It is available to adults up to 100 percent of poverty, or $15,060 annually for an individual.

The results from over one year of Pathways to Coverage are in:

• About 5,500 people were covered as of November 2024, far less than the 110,000 who initially expressed interest, and well under the about 240,000 uninsured people estimated to potentially be eligible for Pathways.
• Application backlogs, excessive paperwork, and complex rules have left people waiting for coverage after they’ve applied and kept many other people from even applying for the program.
• Spending on administrative changes, such as systems updates, eclipsed spending on health care services and offered little return on investment in facilitating enrollment.

Work requirements prevent people from accessing health care for reasons that are outside their control. For example, many people working low-paying jobs are at the mercy of employers who can reduce their hours without notice. Family emergencies, inconsistent childcare, or sudden illnesses can also disrupt a person’s ability to work. Furthermore, people with disabilities and chronic illnesses are not exempt from the Pathways reporting requirements. They could face challenges finding enough hours to work because employers will not provide reasonable accommodations or their health conditions restrict the amount of time they can work. As a result, people are at risk of not receiving often life-saving health coverage.

Previous work requirement proposals conditioned continuing Medicaid coverage on reporting enough eligible work, or other qualifying activity, hours. Georgia’s Pathways program adds an additional hurdle: requiring work reporting at the time of application, which creates a complex process that deters eligible people from even applying. In June 2024, 42 percent of the people who expressed interest in applying for Pathways were not considered to have a complete application because they did not complete a report showing any number of qualifying activity hours. And among those who did have complete applications, 19 percent were denied due to reporting fewer than the required 80 hours per month or insufficient verification of hours.

Focus groups conducted by Georgia Budget and Policy Institute and Creative Research Solutions back up this data. Pathways applicants pointed to challenges getting support during the enrollment process, technology issues with the enrollment system, or frustrations with getting denied due to paperwork issues and having to wait to have the application checked again.

Georgia is among the slowest states to process Medicaid applications due to excessive bureaucratic strain. Others didn’t feel comfortable applying because they were concerned they would not get approved, likely due to the complex process and the high denial rate in the first year. The frustration with paperwork issues and the stress from not having health coverage are similar to findings from focus groups in Arkansas, the first state to implement a Medicaid work requirement temporarily in 2018.

And although only a small fraction of eligible people have enrolled, the program has cost about $13,360 per enrollee in combined state and federal Medicaid spending through the end of the first year. That’s significantly more than the about $2,490 per enrollee Pathways was initially estimated to cost in the first year. About 35 percent of spending went toward covering care, but most went to systems modifications to implement work reporting. And in August 2024, the state separately spent $10.7 million on an outreach campaign, directing millions to consultants while hundreds of thousands of people are still without insurance.

From the standpoint of ensuring access to health care and improving efficiency, it is clear from Georgia that work requirements do neither. Once again, the Pathways program shows us that work requirements are simply a way to keep people from getting health care by requiring them to navigate a complicated system to report work hours or claim exemptions. This is especially cruel because the few people who made it through the process and secured Medicaid coverage through Pathways reported being able to get lifesaving care, medications, and other health tools to manage or prevent long-term illnesses.

Even though Georgia sought to use this program as an alternative to expanding Medicaid, the same lessons would apply in states that already expanded coverage. Policymakers should reject work requirements, which leave people with higher health care costs and state agencies with increased burden.

Holiday greetings. Time for special generosity. These are the very worthy, effective, honest groups–all 501(c)(3)s–that I have contributed to over the years. You may wish to do the same to those that you think are of particular interest for your sense of justice, health and safety.  You can check out their websites. Alternative Radio: alternativeradio.org…

It's no secret to progressives that authoritarian agendas thrive when working-class voters feel abandoned. Trump’s success in weaponizing economic pain while wrapping it in faux populism has delivered devastating results for the Democratic Party. While we know Trump’s record is one of serving the ultra-wealthy, his recent signals that he is paying attention to the working class—like his backing of the International Longshoremen’s Association in their fight against automation—should not be underestimated.

Trump is not dumb. By publicly siding with union leaders, amplifying their fight against automation, and nominating pro-labor Republican Lori Chavez-DeRemer to lead the Department of Labor, he is deliberately positioning himself as a fighter for workers. This calculated maneuvering speaks to his understanding that working-class voters hold the key to electoral power. Yet, behind the scenes, Trump’s cabinet of billionaires—individuals who have profited off the backs of working people—tells the real story of his agenda.

The Democratic Party, meanwhile, stands at a dangerous crossroads. The MAGA strategy exposes a hard truth: the Democratic Party cannot afford to continue losing its connection to the working class. Failing to respond with bold action, clear reforms, and a commitment to the priorities of working families will all but guarantee further electoral losses.

Reform Is the Path Back to the Working Class

The Democratic Party cannot win back the working class without first addressing its own structural decay. The party has grown too reliant on corporate donors, consultants, and top-down strategies that ignore the real needs of working people. A winning path requires revitalizing the party infrastructure and a strategy geared toward building winning coalitions that counters Trump’s faux populism with authentic, solutions rooted in economic populism. In order for that to happen, the Democratic party must address the root causes of its decline.

This is not just a fight for the soul of the Democratic Party—it’s a fight for the future of our democracy. Viewing the task as merely an exercise in rebranding won’t do enough to fix a broken party.

It’s unlikely that the insiders who built a system that enriches themselves—guaranteeing profits whether the party wins or loses—will willingly dismantle it. Yet that is exactly what is required: cutting off their reliance on corporate donors, abandoning the consultant-driven strategies that fail working people, and rebuilding a Party that serves its grassroots base. This is why progressives are calling for a reform agenda that puts working-class voters first.

With the elections for new DNC leadership rapidly approaching, it’s imperative that new leadership adopts a Reform Agenda to signal it is serious about restoring trust and rebuilding the party as a force for working people.

The core of that reform message needs to start with the following:

• Banning Dark Money in Primaries: Working-class voters have no reason to trust a party whose primaries are shaped by billionaire-funded super PACs. Eliminating dark money ensures that our candidates win based on voter support, not corporate influence. We’ve seen too many examples where races are flooded with big money to crush popular (progressive) candidates.
• Investing in State Parties and Grassroots Organizing: The first step to rebuilding working-class coalitions is investing in organizing infrastructure—direct voter outreach based on authentic solutions and supporting grassroots leadership in every state. A 50-state strategy means strengthening state parties and empowering organizers, not handing millions to out-of-touch consultants.
• Committing to a Progressive Platform: To win back working families, Democrats must champion and deliver on the issues that impact their lives—Medicare expansion, living wages, affordable housing, union rights, and climate justice, to name a few. These policies are not only popular; they are essential to solving the economic pain fueling Trump’s appeal.
• Increasing Transparency and Accountability: For too long, DNC resources have been squandered on expensive media buys and elite political insiders. A reformed DNC must be accountable to its base and transparent about how it spends its resources—resources that belong to grassroots Democrats.

Taking On Trump Faux Populism Starts With Reforming The Party

Progressives have called for these institutional changes for years. With the stinging loss in November, the urgency is undeniable. Trump’s success doesn’t stem from his policies, but from his ability to exploit economic pain and present himself as an anti-establishment alternative. Progressives have been sounding the alarm since 2016 and have been consistent on the path required to counter the working class realignment.

The Democratic Party cannot win back the working class without first addressing its own structural decay.

This is not just a fight for the soul of the Democratic Party—it’s a fight for the future of our democracy. Viewing the task as merely an exercise in rebranding won’t do enough to fix a broken party. That’s why progressives need to be at the helm of rebuilding the infrastructure needed to counter Trump’s faux populism. While Trump makes calculated plays for union voters and working families, Democrats cannot afford to wait for his hypocrisy to reveal itself. They must offer a clear, authentic alternative rooted in economic justice.

The February DNC leadership elections are a pivotal moment to choose leaders who will champion these reforms. A reform-minded DNC that invests in organizers, not consultants, will signal a commitment to rebuilding the party from the ground up. It will amplify working-class struggles, not corporate talking points, and prioritize policies that directly address the economic pain faced by Americans. By focusing on grassroots power and rejecting corporate influence, the DNC can deliver the solutions necessary to earn back trust, form durable coalitions, and win elections against Trump’s GOP.

This is a moment of change that must not be squandered, and mainstream Democrats cannot afford to view progressives as adversaries or dismiss us as a thorn in their side. Instead, progressives must be recognized as the driving force capable of reconnecting the party with the voters who have felt ignored or gaslit. Unfortunately, one of the first major tests of whether the Democratic Party was prepared to take progressives seriously—the vote on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s bid to be the ranking member of the Oversight Committee—revealed troubling signs of continued resistance to the grassroots wing of the party. Electing Rep. Gerry Connolly over AOC is not just a missed opportunity, it’s a glaring example of the establishment actively blocking the most impactful avenue for exposing Trump’s faux populism for the harm it truly brings to working-class Americans.

The Democratic Party’s only path forward is to offer a real, working-class alternative—one rooted in bold economic policies, grassroots organizing, and a rejection of corporate influence.

That’s why, over the next few weeks, progressives should intensify the pressure and hold every candidate for DNC leadership accountable. We must remind DNC members that Democrats didn’t lose because of progressive or working-class values—we lost because the party ran a "Republican-lite" campaign. By embracing figures like Liz Cheney and billionaires like Mark Cuban, the party watered down its message of economic populism, which is not only popular but desperately needed.

The conversations over the next few weeks about the leadership election aren’t just about fixing what’s broken in the Democratic Party’s structure—they’re about something much bigger. This is about laying a foundation rooted in bold, authentic solutions that actually resonate with the people. It’s about rebuilding trust, energizing our base, and forming coalitions that can win. The stakes couldn’t be higher. Progressives have the vision, the policies, and the grit to lead this transformation. Now is the time to seize this moment, stand together, and rebuild a Democratic Party that serves the people, not the powerful. This is about fighting for our democracy and the working-class Americans who’ve been left behind for far too long. Let’s get to work.

Trump 2.0 is still a month away and he’s causing chaos in Washington. After negotiating a budget deal with the Democrats, DOGE master Elon Musk (either acting alone or with Donald Trump’s backing) spazz-tweeted the deal away, spooking frightened House Republicans into reneging. Then, with Speaker Mike Johnson’s head on the chopping block, Republicans attempted to cut a new deal but Democrats refused to renegotiate. In the end, deficit hawk Republicans voted with Democrats to turn down the Trump deal because it would have abolished the debt limit for at least two years. Another government shutdown looms, mainly because there are two Republican Parties.

The TMI Show’s Ted Rall and Robby West (filling in for Manila Chan) are joined by Chicago Tribune cartoonist Scott Stantis to unravel the madness.

The post TMI Show Ep 43: “Trump vs. Fiscal Hawks” first appeared on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

The post TMI Show Ep 43: “Trump vs. Fiscal Hawks” appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

Ten years ago, the Kurdish struggleagainst Da'esh's genocidal onslaught on Kobane became a global symbol for the defense of humanity and the resistance against fascism. The world held its breath as Kurdish women militias belonging to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in this small town next to the Turkish border heroically defied a hitherto unstoppable terrorist group. However unlikely it may have seemed, the Kurds ultimately succeeded to push back the jihadists — a crucial turning point that would turn out to be the beginning of Da'esh's end.

Right now, history repeats itself but this time, the world isn't paying much attention. Once again, Kobane finds itself besieged by hostile military forces about to assault. The attackers may carry a different flag but have similar mentalities. Turkey and its jihadist mercenaries of the so-called “Syrian National Army” (SNA) are exploiting the collapse of the Assad regime trying to achieve what Da'esh couldn't: to eradicate Rojava, the internationally under-reported democratic, feminist and ecological revolution in Syria's north-east.

Turkey's illegal assault on north-east Syria

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham's (HTS) lightening offensive and overthrow of 54 years of ruthless dictatorial Assad rule have opened a new chapter for Syria. As Syrians celebrate in the streets, as families reunite with political prisoners freed from Assad's notorious torture chambers, as exiled Syrians start their way home and as we face the grueling extent of the old regime's state terrorism, there's hope to finally end one of this century's most atrocious wars.

But much is yet uncertain. The HTS, an Al-Qaeda overshoot with links to Da'esh and a terrorism classification in the West, has made efforts to rebrand itself as “freedom fighters” committed to human rights, civilian freedom and international cooperation. But how credible this is will need to be seen. Some of HTS's leaders are talking about imposing Sharia law with Iran-style morality police, fueling worries they plan to turn the country into another Afghanistan. Much will depend on whether HTS is open and able to bring Syria's different political, ethnic and religious groups around the same table and find a political solution together.

It's probably no exaggeration to claim that the Rojava revolution is one of the planet's most significant current experiments in building a post-capitalist society. And this is exactly what makes it so dangerous in the eyes of all groups with totalitarian or colonial ambitions.

Yet, whether this is possible depends not only on HTS's willingness but also on whether the foreign powers meddling in Syria will allow the war to end. Whereas Assad's departure has put Iran out of the game in Syria and immensely weakened Russia's position, Israel and Turkey have each in their own way benefited from and opportunistically exploited this period of transition and instability.

And both have done so in disregard of international law.

While many Western progressives have rightly blasted Israel's rogue bombing campaign of Syrian military bases as a bizarre and unacceptable violation of international law, there's more silence towards Turkish attacks on north-east Syria and confusion about the role of the Kurds.

Turkey has illegally interfered in and occupied parts of sSyria for years. Back in 2018, Turkey and its Jihadist SNA allies attacked the SDF just briefly after they'd defeated Da'esh.Turkey invaded and effectively annexed themajority Kurdish areas of Afrin and,in 2019, of Serekaniye and Gire Spi. Amnesty InternationalaccusesTurkey of war crimes, including forcing hundreds of thousands to flee their homes. In the occupied areas, the inhabitants sufferfrom what the United Nations calls a "grim" human rights situation, rife with ethnic cleansing, forced displacements and seizures of land and properties. Despite a ceasefire agreement, Turkey has perpetually continued its warfare with consistent drone attacks and regular intensive assaults. Last winter, Turkish airstrikes destroyed 80% of north-east Syria's civil infrastructure through surgical targeting of electricity and water plants, food storages, medical infrastructure, etc.

Since November 27, with the world's attention on HTS and Damascus, Turkey and the SNA escalated aggressions against north-east Syria. Aided by heavy Turkish airstrikes, the SNA quickly conquered the Shebha, Tall Rafaat and Manbij regions around Aleppo. 170,000 families were forcibly displaced, creating a new refugee crisis. SNA mercenaries have been denounced for serious human rights violations and war crimes in the newly occupied areas including summary executions, forced displacement, and the looting of civilian properties, torture and abduction of women, sparking protests and strikes in Manbij.

There have been heavy clashes at the Tishreen dam, a major hydroelectric power plant in the Euphrates River, near Manbij, causing serious damage. A break of the dam would likely provoke further humanitarian disaster, an energy blackout and water shortage for much of north-east Syria.

SNA troops have also attacked SDF units at the Qerekozak bridge at the border between Turkish-occupied Afrin and the Kobani region under SDF control. The US negotiated a ceasefire in Manbij but the SNA and Turkey didn't abide by the agreement.

Reports from within north-east Syria speak of widespread fears of massacres and a resurgence of Da'esh. With tens of thousands of Da'esh fighters still held in north-east Syrian prisons and sleeper cells operating, the Turkish attacks over the years have already jeopardized the SDF's efforts to monitor and contain Da'esh. Many of the imprisoned jihadists are Western citizens whose home countries refuse to repatriate and prosecute. The heavier the Turkish/SNA onslaughts, the greater the risk of a full-blown Da'esh resurgence, as the SDF is forced to defend its against Turkish attacks.

But many Kurds don't even see much difference between the SNA mercenaries and the Da'esh. As Foza Yusuf, a Kurdish political leader, warns, “What Da'esh did to the Ezidi women in 2014 will happen to the women of north-east Syria if we don't resist. Da'esh, however, didn't have the support which the SNA enjoys. We know that extremist forces always begin by targeting women and minorities but we also know that they won't stop there; they become a threat to the self-determination and dignity of others.”

To accommodate Turkish security concerns, the SDF offered Turkey to turn Kobane into a demilitarized zone. So far, US attempts at brokering a diplomatic solution haven't born fruits. To the contrary, the Turkish military has amassed ground troops opposite the border at Kobane, leading US government officials on Tuesday to warn that a Turkish ground invasion of Rojava might be imminent.

What does Turkey want in Syria?

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s explicit plan is for Turkey to permanently occupy a 30 kilometer-wide strip along the 600km border between Turkey and Syria and to carry out large-scale population engineering: displacing native populations and forcibly moving (up to one million) mostly Arab Syrian refugees, into the area, as Turkey has already done in Afrin.

The reason for these unremitting aggressions, however, isn’t “Kurdish terrorism,” as the Turkish state, NATO and their allies continually claim. What is usually omitted from reports about north-east Syria is the fact that it's been home to a remarkable experiment of democratic autonomous self-governance.

Since 2012, around 5 million people — Kurds, Arabs, Assyrians, Turkmen, Ezidis and others — have been organized within the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (DAANES), commonly known as Rojava (Kurmanyi for “west” Kurdistan), demonstrating how a multi-ethnic society can peacefully coexist.

The DAANES functions on the basis of “democratic confederalism,” a radical model of grassroots decision-making, in which people self-organize in popular assemblies at the local, regional, canton and overall levels to address needs as closely to where they occur as possible. Workers and farmers produce through self-directed and co-owned cooperatives. The revolution is striving for food sovereignty through regenerative methods. Their governance system is oriented towards equity among different ethnicities and genders — minorities are entitled to speak first in assemblies and women make up at least half of the leadership. Practices of restorative justice and women councils are trying to transform social conflicts through inclusion and reconciliation, rather than punishment and force. As award-winning journalist Debbie Bookchin says, “The Rojava revolution at its core really is a women's revolution. The fact that women's liberation is key to every aspect of society there isn't just unique to the Middle East but the whole world.” The Kurdish women's movement goes beyond Western mainstream feminism in that it doesn't just aim for uplifting women into seats of power but overthrowing the entire patriarchal power structure and restoring community as a social basis of human coexistence.

It's probably no exaggeration to claim that the Rojava revolution is one of the planet's most significant current experiments in building a post-capitalist society. And this is exactly what makes it so dangerous in the eyes of all groups with totalitarian or colonial ambitions. As the imprisoned Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan writes: “The real power of capitalist modernity isn’t its money and its weapons, [but] its ability to suffocate all utopias […] with its liberalism.”

The oppression of the Kurds goes back well over a century. With a population of roughly 40 to 45 million, the Kurdish people the world’s largest ethnic group without its own state.

In the Lausanne Treaty of 1923, when European colonial powers drew the map of a post-Ottoman Middle East, they divided the Kurds among four ethnocentric nation-states: Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq. Subsequently, Kurdish people suffered 100 years of continuous and ongoing genocidal colonial erasure to assimilate them and other minorities into respective Turkish, Arab and Persian culture with no right to speak their language, practice their culture and to have political self-determination.

As is true for other liberation struggles from Mexico to Palestine, the colonial powers framed the Kurds' anti-colonial resistance as “terrorism” worthy of ruthless elimination and collective punishment. The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) raised arms against the Turkish state in 1984 aiming to break out of oppression and to establish an independent socialist Kurdish homeland, but after significant setbacks and many lives lost the movement changed its strategy. Nine times, the PKK offered the Turkish state a peace process to politically end the armed conflict.

It also changed its vision of collective liberation. As Nilüfer Koç of the Kurdistan National Congress explains, “The Kurdish Freedom Movement realized that being stateless can actually be an opportunity to establish structures of democratic autonomy that allow different ethnic groups to live together peacefully beyond the constraints of nation-state, patriarchy and capitalism. When we look at the current dramatic events in the Middle East, including in Palestine, we see that we urgently need an alternative to the violence of ethnocentric nation-states and the Kurdish Freedom Movement offers such a model.”

With the implosion of Assad's control over north-east Syria in 2012, the Kurdish Freedom Movement stood ready to put these ideas into practice.

By now, Rojava's governance model has spread beyond Syria's Kurds to other ethnic and religious groups in Syria and Iraq and reinvigorated Kurdish political and cultural organization within Iran and Turkey — posing a serious threat to Erdoğan’s ever more dictatorial domestic rule. The rise of fascism requires the eradication of utopian imagination.

The revolution won't be televised

The Turkish state couldn't wage its colonial war against the Kurds without the active support of NATO and regular weapons deliveries by the United States, Germany, the UK, Spain and other countries.

But when Da'esh, a decade ago, rapidly grew its terrorizing rule, the US found themselves in the awkward position of having to support Turkey's arch enemy — and on top of it, an army of anarchists! — simultaneously.

Because of its military cooperation with the US, many progressives and anti-imperialists are reluctant to stand with or even touch Rojava. In reality, the US plays an opportunistic Machiavellian double game with the Kurds, which misleading international media reporting has largely concealed.

Yes, the United States lends the SDF military assistance in its fight against Da'esh. But the usual framing of the SDF as “US backed Kurdish fighters” hides a number of simultaneous truths: The United States uses its leverage over the SDF to undermine Rojava's grassroots democratic structures. The US neither supports the DAANES diplomatically nor works for their inclusion in a political solution for Syria's future. They're also Turkey's largest arms supplier, delivering the very weapons with which Turkey assaults the SDF and populations in north-east Syria, and thus unsurprisingly, the US usually fails to hold Turkey accountable for its war crimes.

When international media portrays current hostilities in north-east Syria as “territorial disputes between Turkish-backed rebels and US backed Kurdish fighters,” it suggests an equivalence of power that simply doesn't exist. SNA fighters are advancing onto Rojava with the help of relentless airstrikes by NATO's second largest army, while the United States — the SDF's supposed patron — controls much of north-east Syria's airspace, letting Turkey bomb the Kurds with impunity, and while American ground troops stand by watching.

Furthermore, portraying the SDF as US proxies perpetuates an old racist trope of Kurds being agents of foreign imperialist interests, with no political agency of their own. But make no mistake: The SDF and DAANES have a very strong, outspoken anti-imperialist, anarchist agenda which the US opposes to its bones. It's no coincidence that very few international media outlets will be ready to openly acknowledge the revolutionary politics of north-east Syria.

We mustn't fall for a lazy and purist anti-imperialism that refuses to engage with the complexities of building and maintaining actual alternatives on the ground.

The people of north-east Syria have been able to maintain their unlikely revolution for over 12 years because of their own struggle and self-defense, not because of any imperial patron.

Nevertheless, Western politicians are starting to realize that the current Turkish onslaught on north-east Syria threatens to bring Da'esh back to life. On Tuesday, United States Senators Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) threatened to impose sanctions against the Turkish state should Ankara fail to reach a ceasefire with the SDF and ensure the creation of a demilitarized zone in north-east Syria.

Kurdistan concerns us all

Syria, and Rojava in particular, are at critical crossroads. This is the perhaps most dangerous moment of Rojava's tumultuous history, but after Assad's fall there's also a historic chance to end the cruel Syrian war and enable a democratic peaceful future for all groups of the country. Immediately after HTS's takeover of Damascus, the DAANES reached out to them proposing an intra-Syrian dialogue to worktowards a shared political solution.

With all the different foreign influences meddling in Syria, what will happen there also depends on the voices of the international communities. The Turkish state, so much is certain, is wielding its growing influence over HTS to prevent any cooperation with DAANES that could lead to a future for an autonomous Rojava.

At this crucial moment, progressives and all those committed to collective liberationneed to make their voices heard, loud and clear. Those of us in NATO member countries particularlyhave a responsibility to stand up against the Turkey's illegal military actions which we co-sponsor with our taxpayer money. The silence towards Turkish war crimes and the regular omission of both the colonial root causes of this conflict and the radical political vision of the Kurdish Freedom Movement enable Turkey's oppressive actions to continue.

We need to use our platforms to amplify the messages from within Rojava. Radicals around the world need to learn about democratic confederalism and the Kurdish women's paradigm. And while you might be as skeptical towards electoral politics as I am, we need to talk to our elected representatives to pressure them to push Turkey for an immediate cessation of hostilities in Syria, to stop sending arms to Ankara, impose sanctions and to politically recognize the DAANES.

What is at stake in north-east Syria is more than just the fate of the Kurdish people and the future of Syria, but whether humanity is able to break out of the patriarchal, capitalist, colonialdead-endand build effective alternatives before it's too late. When we recognize that no struggle can be isolated so long as all struggles run up against the same global system of power, shared struggle and the construction of grounded living alternativesare the natural expressions of our will for life.

Or as the Kurdish women's movement says, “Jin jiyan azadi” — we're rising for “life, woman, freedom.”

           As is typically the case after a high-profile murder, people are speculating about suspect Luigi Mangione’s state of mind when he allegedly killed United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside a Hilton hotel in Manhattan.

            We have a likely (political) motive in the form of a handwritten statement Pennsylvania police say they found on Mangione when they arrested him. “Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming,” it reads. “A reminder: the US has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy. United is the fourth largest company in the US by market cap, behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but as our life expectancy? No, the reality is, these [indecipherable] have simply gotten too powerful, and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allowed them to get away with it…It is not an issue of awareness at this point, but clearly power games at play. Evidently I am the first to face it with such brutal honesty.”

            Thompson’s death immediately prompted the widespread assumption that his killer had to have been motivated by something personal. The CEO must have been the victim of a vengeful patient, or someone who loved and lost a person to an insurance denial. There are, after all, numerous Americans whom United Healthcare refuses to cover for medical treatment. Some die. But the man they arrested doesn’t fit the bill. Though Mangione’s social media feeds indicate that he had major back surgery following an injury, the operation appears to have been successful. There is no evidence that an insurance company denied his claim. United Healthcare says Mangione has never been their customer.

This looks like a case of self-radicalization.

Mangione was privileged and high-functioning. If he can become a one-man terrorist group, anyone can.

The establishment press can’t wrap its collective head around it.

Writing in The New York Times, David Wallace-Wells is among the many journalists who wondered aloud: “We’ve seen the video of him shouting at the press as he’s pulled into the courthouse, which suggests perhaps some disquiet. But we also haven’t heard from anybody who interacted with him at any point in his life who found him anything but levelheaded, cleareyed, calm and even kind.” Why might someone with Mangione’s background (white, well-off, Ivy-educated), looks (women have been swooning over him online) and social currency (he was friendly and popular) stalk a business executive he’d never met and gun him down?

            Perhaps, some reports suggested, back pain from spondylolisthesis drove him insane. Or that pain made it impossible for him to have sex and that made him nuts. Or his turn to violence was inspired by Ted Kaczynski’s Unabomber manifesto. He was 26, the average age when schizophrenia first manifests—maybe a mental time bomb was behind his psychotic break. One of these explanations may prove true. Or none. Luigi Mangione may be sane. He may simply be a class traitor.

            Wallace-Wells continued: “In many ways, the obvious explanation is that the attack was the result of some kind of breakdown. But aside from the shooting itself, we haven’t seen any real signs of a breakdown.” (Except for shouting at the press. Wallace-Wells thinks that makes you unwell.)

            Interesting questions arise from the assumption that mental illness is “the obvious explanation” for why people kill. We are going to have to radically rethink our society if that’s true.

Are prison employees who administer capital punishment insane? What about combat troops who kill enemy soldiers whom they have nothing against personally, simply because they’re given an order? Are members of the military lunatics? Must one be crazy to serve as President, a job that involves ordering men and women to shoot and bomb other people—sometimes en masse—and signing off on extrajudicial assassinations, as with drones? Harry Truman dropped The Bomb. Was he psycho? What of a police officer who shoots a suspect? If a health insurance company unfairly denies life-saving medical care to a patient and the patient dies, which one can argue is tantamount to murder, does that make a CEO like Thompson a murderer too—and therefore insane?

            If everyone who kills a human being is psychotic, shouldn’t every killer be granted an insanity defense and automatically be sent to a psychiatric facility rather than prison?

            What about farmers who kill animals? Vets who euthanize them?

            When Marianne Bachmeier entered a German courtroom in 1996 and shot to death the man who raped and murdered her seven-year-old daughter, there was no confusion. Everyone understood her motivation. It was personal, relatable and therefore there was no talk that she might be bonkers.

Should it turn out that Mangione’s motive was personal, and that he or someone he cared about suffered pain at the hands of the health insurance industry, the discomfort of the chattering classes would be mitigated. Oh. That makes sense.

            It is possible, though—likelier, really—that Mangione engaged with the question of America’s for-profit healthcare system impersonally and intellectually, yet passionately. Like those who marched against the Vietnam and Gaza wars despite having no personal stake in the conflict, it is hard not to feel disgust and outrage when one hears horrific accounts of insurance companies denying and delaying valid claims as they rake in billions. Mangione had to have known, as everyone does, that there is no prospect of healthcare reform coming out of a Washington in which neither political party wants to fix the system.

People kill other people in service to far more abstract concepts than affordable healthcare. Political leaders kill over such dubious controversies as arbitrary borders and the Domino Theory and NATO Expansion and the Shia-Sunni Schism, yet nobody thinks they’re insane.

Murder, all societies agree, is wrong—unless it’s committed by someone officially authorized to take life. Vigilantism is problematic because, taken to its logical extreme, the rule of law would collapse.

Dismissing a vigilante’s actions as the product of an unsound mind, however, thoughtlessly brushes off the question of why he feels compelled to resort to an act so drastic that it will probably end his own life as well. When one is confronted with massive suffering and heinous injustice, when society doesn’t offer a legal mechanism to stop these horrors, is it inherently insane to say to yourself: someone should do something? Or to conclude: if the answer is yes, why not me?

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

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

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