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

Today we discuss:

• China, long highly vulnerable to oil supply shocks, has transformed that weakness into a source of geopolitical power, by stockpiling huge amounts of oil, building extra oil refining capacity and investing in coal and other alternatives. And it flexed that power by cutting off supplies of jet fuel, gasoline and diesel to neighboring countries. Already dominant in solar panels, batteries and electric vehicles, China now has an unparalleled position across the energy landscape.

• Under pressure, the Democratic Senate nominee in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed, rejected Hasan Piker’s argument that the U.S. has caused more terror than Al Qaeda. Can he/should he be cowed by the corporatists?

• Washington and Florida insiders – from billionaire Trump allies and Rubio-linked lobbyists to Cuban exiles – are jockeying for control of the communist-ruled island-nation’s assets, charging to help clients navigate sanctions, and positioning themselves to loot Cuba in case of regime collapse.

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Editor’s Note: The following is the fifth and final excerpt from Nancy J. Altman’s new book, The Road to Medicare for All: A Call to Action (Routledge, 2026), now available for purchase wherever quality books are sold. Read the previous excerpts published by Common Dreams here, here, here, and here. As the United States continues to spend substantially more on health care than other wealthy nations but with poorer health outcomes, Altman’s book analyzes the dysfunction of the current system and sets forth the solution. “Medicare for All won’t happen without a fight,” she argues, “but it is a fight we can win.”

Reaching our destination won’t be easy. Americans have been fighting for universal, government-sponsored national health insurance for over 100 years. Progress was made in 1965 and 1972, when Medicare was enacted and expanded. Since, then, though, not only was Medicare not expanded; frustratingly, its opposition has succeeded in partially privatizing it.

The moment in which the nation finds itself does not appear particularly hopeful even for the country to remain the United States. Not since the Civil War has the nation been so divided.

Past Threats to Democracy

Almost 100 years ago, the Great Depression brought economic collapse and with it, a serious threat to democracy. Like today, there was hostility to those perceived to be elites. The economic turmoil opened the door to widespread radical movements and demagogues.

Like today, “others” were scapegoated, along with the “elites.” Jews were a particular target. One extremely powerful, influential anti-Semite was radio preacher Father Charles E. Coughlin. At the height of his popularity, his Sunday radio show, Golden Hour of the Little Flower, which was broadcast over dozens of radio stations around the country, was heard by nearly one in four Americans and had a larger share of the listening audience than the more recent broadcasters Howard Stern, Rush Limbaugh, Paul Harvey, and Larry King put together. Before the 1936 Presidential election, he asserted. “This is our last election. It is fascism or communism. We are at the crossroads. I take the road to fascism.”

Another leader of the time seeking radical change was Louisiana Governor and then Senator Huey Long, who targeted the extreme income and wealth inequality which exploded during the so-called Roaring Twenties. His Share Our Wealth plan proposed confiscatory income, wealth, and inheritance taxes on the wealthiest and generous federal benefits for working and middle-income families. Just one year after announcing the plan, there were 27,000 Share Our Wealth local clubs, mainly in the South, with over 7.5 million members.

Long planned to run for president as a third-party candidate, even setting out his plans and strategy in his 1935 novel, My First Days in the White House. His plans came to an abrupt end, though, in September, 1935, when he was assassinated by the son-in-law of a political opponent whom Long had targeted and slandered.

Another radical leader of the time was socialist author and journalist, Upton Sinclair, who sought to expose corruption in business and government, while shining a spotlight on the horrendous working conditions at the time. In 1934, he ran for Governor of California on his “End Poverty in California” (EPIC) plan, which, like Long, he set out in a novel, the 1933 I, Governor of California, and How I Ended Poverty: A True Story of the Future. His plan called for the state to seize idle factories, farms, movie studios, and other businesses and convert them to worker-run co-ops, financed with progressive revenue. Two dozen candidates who ran on the EPIC plan won seats in the state legislature, including lawyer and journalist Culbert Colson, who successfully ran for Governor four years later, becoming the first Democrat in 40 years to win the office.

The Perfect Person for the Moment

At base, people were suffering and open to radical solutions to address their misery. Franklin Roosevelt was undoubtedly the right person to meet that moment. He was extremely politically savvy, pragmatic, and smart. His speeches were inspiring and visionary. His famed fireside chats, named to convey a sense of cozy familiarity, established a strong personal connection between the president and the American people. He radiated optimism. Perhaps most importantly, he exuded compassion and empathy.

Though he enjoyed extraordinary wealth and privilege, his paralysis, resulting from contracting polio at age 39, was apparently transformative. His close colleague Frances Perkins, who became the first woman to serve as a Cabinet secretary to a president, described his transformation in her book, The Roosevelt I Knew. She witnessed Roosevelt undergo, she wrote:

“a spiritual transformation during the years of his illness….The man emerged completely warmhearted, with humility of spirit and with a deeper philosophy. Having been in the depths of trouble, he understood the problems of people in trouble.”

The brilliant achievements of the charismatic Roosevelt can continue to be felt today. His Social Security program was carefully crafted to embody basic American values, containing both progressive and conservative elements that continue to appeal to Americans across the ideological divide. Roosevelt’s legacy provides good news in today’s troubling time. As polarized and hostile as Americans are in general, we are overwhelmingly united in our support for Social Security and Medicare, which grows out of Roosevelt’s legacy. A 2025 Bipartisan Policy Center poll, for example, found that 91 percent of Americans believe that Medicare is valuable. That same poll found that 93 percent believe Social Security is valuable. Numerous other polls, taken over many years by groups across the ideological spectrum, have found similar results of unanimity of support.

Despite how divided and combative the American people are generally, these numbers provide a ray of hope. Supporters of Improved Medicare for All must build on this support systematically. The cause and its success may have the byproduct of helping to bring the country back to more normal, less fractured, and hostile times.

Today’s Missing Leader

Notwithstanding Joe Biden’s 2020 victory, none of the Democratic presidential nominees in the last few election cycles nor the mainstream leaders of today’s Democratic Party appear to match Roosevelt’s political insights or capabilities. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) showed that he can garner enthusiastic support, as has New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, but the Democratic leadership has not embraced them or similar charismatic progressive leaders. Consequently, the Democratic Party has not spoken with one single clear voice and capitalized effectively on the broad support for Medicare and Social Security.

Unfortunately, unlike Roosevelt, the current politicians who appear most likely to win the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination do not appear to have the vision or charisma to capitalize on the popularity of Medicare and Social Security. There is no candidate with Franklin Roosevelt’s many gifts who is in a position to fully embrace Improved Medicare for All and ride it to victory, together with an expanded Social Security program. At this moment, the Democratic Party does not seem united in a path forward, certainly not one that would embrace as bold a vision as Improved Medicare for All.

Nevertheless, the political movements of the 1930s provide evidence that those policy goals can be achieved without a political leader. While the Share the Wealth and End Poverty in California grassroots movements had high-profile personalities leading the efforts, another astoundingly successful grassroots movement did not.

A Grassroots Movement to Emulate

While policymakers in Washington were primarily focused on unemployment in the early years of the Great Depression, they apparently did not fully appreciate that hidden in the shadows of the unemployment numbers were impoverished, aged parents reluctantly dependent on their adult children for support. When Social Security became law in 1935, every state but New Mexico had poorhouses (sometimes called almshouses or poor farms). The vast majority of the residents were elderly. Most of the “inmates,” as they were often labeled, entered the poorhouse late in life, having been independent wage earners until they were no longer able to work.

Although official Washington was not focused on the plight of the elderly, ordinary people were. In September 1933, a Long Beach, California doctor, Francis E. Townsend, found himself at age 66 unemployed with no savings. He was gazing out his window when he spotted two elderly women, dressed in rags, rummaging through his garbage, searching for anything edible. It so upset Dr. Townsend that he sent a letter to the Long Beach Press-Telegram, his local newspaper.

His letter, published on September 30, proposed a plan. He proposed that the federal government provide every person aged 60 or older a pension of $200 per month, a princely sum in the 1930s. The only requirement, in addition to being retired and not a criminal, was that the recipient had to spend every penny within 30 days of receipt. He claimed that his plan would not only eradicate old-age poverty; it would so stimulate the economy that it would create jobs and end the Depression.

The idea spread around the country at a rate astonishing to believe in that pre-Internet, pre-social media world. A year after Townsend wrote his letter to the newspaper, Time magazine reported in its October 15, 1934, issue:

By last week the flow of money…was enough to pay the wages of 50 people….There were Townsend Clubs in every State except Delaware…. Between 2,000,000 and 5,000,000 people had put their names to petitions begging their Congressmen to vote the Plan into effect at once.

Even in the short time between the publication of Townsend’s letter and the establishment of Roosevelt’s Committee on Economic Security (CES), his interagency task force to develop the Social Security Act, supporters of the Townsend proposal were exerting considerable pressure on the Administration and Congress. At the height of CES’s work, mail from Townsendites averaged about 1,500 letters a day. In some congressional districts, a candidate’s position on the Townsend plan determined the outcome of the election.

By mid-October 1934, Townsend had acquired two million signatures on petitions urging congressional action on his plan. Just three months later, he was claiming to have 25 million signatures. The number of Townsend clubs had climbed to 25,000 across the country. The plan’s popularity was not hard to fathom. As political columnist, Mark Sullivan with The New York Herald Tribune explained: “The zeal of those promoting the plan is evangelical, almost fanatic.”

A Time magazine piece explained the political climate surrounding the plan:

The good doctor’s Old Age Revolving Pensions scheme, better known as the Townsend Plan, had by last week become one of the biggest political facts in the US. The early California groundswell of sentiment in its favor had grown to a tidal wave, battering at nearly every door in House and Senate Office Buildings.

In the end, the Townsend plan, which policy experts understood to be unworkable—benefits would have cost half the income of the United States, for example—was instrumental in enacting Social Security, because it provided the widespread pressure to address old age insecurity. That is the kind of pressure that today could get Improved Medicare for All enacted, as well.

A New Movement: Improved Medicare for All Clubs All across the Nation

To build such a movement is both easier and harder than it was almost 100 years ago. While American news consumption is much more siloed, social media, email chains, and the internet generally allow people to connect much more easily and effectively. Of course, people are drawn to a variety of important issues, including climate change, gun violence, and immigration. Nevertheless, similar to the 1930s with respect to old age insecurity, Americans appear to be reaching the end of their rope with respect to the nation’s health insurance companies, as was demonstrated by the strong, instantaneous outpouring of frustration with commercial health insurance in response to the murder of the UnitedHealthcare executive.

The movement for Improved Medicare for All already has powerful, effective, knowledgeable and resourceful leaders. They are members of a far-reaching, forceful coalition, the National Coalition for Medicare for All. The coalition meets regularly to strategize and advance the issue. They are doing a spectacular job in championing and pushing forward Improved Medicare for All. To help them succeed in its enactment, the rest of us should provide them with an overwhelming army of passionate, dedicated grassroots supporters.

The goal, as impossible as it might seem, is to build a broad-based, energized, and determined Townsend-like grassroots movement. Everyone who wants Improved Medicare for All to become law should reach out to friends, family, and neighbors and urge them to get involved. In addition to joining already-existing groups, such as MoveOn, Public Citizen, and Indivisible, supporters should create Improved Medicare for All clubs.

Those clubs should play a number of roles. First, the clubs could educate members and others about why Improved Medicare for All is so important. They could discuss at club meetings how health care is a right, not a privilege and how Improved Medicare for All is the only realistic way to get us there. Just as the Townsend clubs hounded their elected representatives, supporters should flood offices with phone calls, keep track of when their Senators and representatives are home from Washington, DD, and attend their town halls if they host them. If they don’t, the clubs can seek meetings with their members and staff. If their members won’t commit to cosponsoring Improved Medicare for All legislation, they should put pressure on them, including picketing their offices.

Other Steps Individuals Can and Should Take

With or without membership in an Improved Medicare for All club, those wanting to help the effort have many other steps they can take. On this and many other issues, there are a multitude of effective civic and social organizations active on political issues, such as Indivisible, MoveOn, Public Citizen, and many more. If you have access to a union, they remain extremely important and effective actors with which to engage. With or without engagement with these organizations, it is perhaps most important to educate family, friends, and neighbors. Writing letters to the editor and posting on social media are helpful actions. If possible, there may be an opportunity to hold an event at a school, perhaps through the PTA, as well as at assisted care facilities, libraries, and other spaces. If you want to organize an event but want experts to be the speakers and/or panelists, that is relatively easy these days, particularly, if the speakers can appear virtually.

Moreover, because healthcare costs affect everyone, the issue of Improved Medicare for All can be tailored to a variety of organizations and groups. School groups may be concerned about the impact of healthcare costs on their budget. Women’s groups may be concerned about reproductive rights. Again, the point is to make the movement for Improved Medicare for All as large a mass movement as possible.

This moment in history may make enactment of Improved Medicare for All appear as far away as it possibly could be. However, the mythological phoenix should be the symbol of the effort. The phoenix, an immortal bird that continually arose from the ashes of its predecessor, symbolizes renewal after a period of hardship.

The Friday before Labor Day saw news break that OpenAI was beefing up its political influence staff, notably nabbing Jessica Schumer from Amazon to lead the firm’s “policy and partnerships” operations in the Northeast.

Schumer is the daughter of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and has been a longtime corporate politicker for Big Tech. Naturally, OpenAI was conscious of the potential ethical issues and clarified in a statement to the New York Post that “Jessica will focus on state and local public policy efforts and not federal policy or engagement with Congress. She will not be involved in any advocacy before the Minority Leader or his office related to OpenAI business.”

While superficially reassuring, OpenAI’s supposed commitment to ethics does little to actually address the underlying issue that Democratic leadership, and Chuck Schumer specifically, have been extremely tepid and lethargic, despite the rapid pace of AI industrial buildout and grassroots politics surrounding data centers. Jessica Schumer’s new gig puts an uncomfortable reality front and center: Democrats’ floundering is happening simultaneously to the party’s own political elites reaping financial and professional rewards from the continued strength of AI firms.

The senator played a major role in blocking oversight of the industry behind both his children’s paychecks.

At a time when the lane for an anti-corruption politics is wide open, with more than 90% of Americans believing corruption is a major issue in every branch of our government, Schumer’s hiring is a reminder that powerful people and families of both parties are deeply intertwined with the corporate behemoths that people are organizing against.

People simply do not trust the crop of AI executives to develop the technology responsibly in a way that serves the public interest.

They similarly have little faith in the children of powerful politicians abstaining from leveraging their parents’ status for personal gain. In a 2023 YouGov poll, 85% of respondents believed that children of presidents “always or sometimes profit off of their parents' positions in government;” it seems inconceivable that those numbers would have decreased in the intervening years. It’s hard not to see Jessica Schumer’s case that way; she has built a career around helping advance Big Tech’s legislative agenda in New York, a state her father has held elected office in for literally half a century. As a famously local-focused politician, the idea that the Schumer name would not carry weight in New York politics would be astonishingly naive. The younger Schumer was raised rubbing shoulders with a veritable who’s who of the state political class, creating in-built relationships to local politicos. And those people would have every incentive to try and build relationships with her to keep from risking running afoul of one of the most dominant (perhaps the most, given the righteous electoral defenestration of Andrew Cuomo) political figures in New York politics, and the newly ascendant company that employs her.

All of this would be one thing if it were an aside in an otherwise laudable track record on Sen. Schumer’s part of holding Big Tech to account. But we are quite clearly living on the other hand, where the senator played a major role in blocking oversight of the industry behind both his children’s paychecks (his other daughter, Alison, works for Facebook parent company Meta). He killed the oversight legislation "feared most" by Big Tech while his daughters were employed in marketing at Meta and as a lobbyist for Amazon. Even if Schumer reached that decision without personal bias, reasonable observers cannot help but question the integrity of the policymaking process.

The strongest winds in politics right now are outrage at Trumpian corruption, largely driven by the AI and crypto industries, and aversion to data centers and their impacts on local communities. Opting not to tack into them looks foolish on its own. Paired with leaders’ kids cashing checks from the very firms seeking to influence the government, it looks like dropping anchor in troubled waters.

September 11, 2026, was the 25th anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center by hijackers who were part of al Qaeda and followers of Saudi religious fundamentalist Osama bin Laden who had sworn revenge against the United States because of its actions in the Middle East.

Twenty-five years ago, less than a week after the attack, in the midst of national mourning, President George W. Bush visited the Islamic Center of Washington, DC, where he explained: “These acts of violence against innocents violate the fundamental tenets of the Islamic faith. And it's important for my fellow Americans to understand that... The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That's not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace. These terrorists don't represent peace. They represent evil and war... America counts millions of Muslims amongst our citizens, and Muslims make an incredibly valuable contribution to our country. Muslims are doctors, lawyers, law professors, members of the military, entrepreneurs, shopkeepers, moms, and dads. And they need to be treated with respect. In our anger and emotion, our fellow Americans must treat each other with respect.”

Sadly, leading members of the Republican Party have especially short memories as their party has morphed into what has become an Un-American party. President Donald Trump has repeatedly demonized Muslims in the United States and around the world. As recently as July the president shared a social media post mocking Muslim children in Minnesota for wearing hijabs to their kindergarten graduation ceremony.

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Gov. George Pataki, both Republicans, joined two Republican members of the New York City Council demanding that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani not participate in the 25th-anniversary September 11 memorial ceremony. Giuliani said that participation by Mamdani, who is Muslim, “Offends him.” Zohran Mamdani ignored their demands and attended with dignity.

Other leading Republicans, including Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, the Republican Party candidate for governor of New York, have joined the attacks on Mamdani because of his religious identification. During Ramadan in March, Sen. Tommy Tuberville, Republican from Alabama, recirculated an image of Mayor Mamdani paired with an image of the attack on the Twin Towers with the caption, “The enemy is inside the gates.” Blakeman called Mamdani “un-American” because “He shares the philosophy of the people that murdered my nephew and all those other people.” But as George W. Bush would have explained to Blakeman, he is the one who is being un-American.

Today’s Republican Party betrays the vision of the United States held by the nation’s founders. In 1790, President George Washington wrote a letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island. In the letter, the president explained:

The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.

Washington told the Newport Congregation, “If we have wisdom to make the best use of the advantages with which we are now favored, we cannot fail, under the just administration of a good Government, to become a great and a happy people.” These are sentiments that need to be reborn in this country.

At any other time in American history, it would end the career of somebody like Scott Bessent, our limited-intelligence Treasury Secretary. It came out yesterday when Illinois Congressman Sean Casten was questioning him about the “billions of dollars” that Trump keeps claiming America is “getting” from selling Venezuelan oil.

Bessent agreed with Trump, saying the oil and oil money we’ve seized from that country is “one of the largest assets to ever go on the U.S. balance sheet.” Billions and billions of dollars.

So Casten asked him a simple question: Can you tell us who controls that money and where it is? Can you confirm “whether or not those [funds] are flowing to U.S. persons?”

Bessent’s answer was a shocking single word: “No.” He ain’t talkin…

Did Trump take the oil and the money from the oil? Bessent refuses to say. Trump refuses to say. Nobody, in fact, in the Trump regime will tell us where that money is or who controls it or even who’s making the money accrued on its interest.

Here’s what we do know:

Three days after Trump kidnapped President Maduro and his wife, he went on his Nazi-infested social media site and wrote that Venezuela’s oil revenues would be controlled by him personally “as President of the United States.”

Three days after that, he signed an executive order declaring a “national emergency” involving that oil so no court or creditor could touch the money, screwing the bondholders and oil companies to which Venezuela owed roughly $150 billion.

Then Trump started selling the oil we’d seized from Venezuela. The first load, according to Reuters and Semafor, went to commodity trading companies Vitol and Trafigura for about $500 million, groups that the Washington Post said both carry histories of bribery schemes tied to oil sales.

And that money didn’t go to the Treasury account that was described in Trump’s own executive order. Instead, it went to a bank account in Qatar, right after that country’s leaders gave him a $400 million jet. A senior official explained to Semafor that Qatar was chosen as a “neutral location” where money “can flow freely” without risk of seizure.

Senator Elizabeth Warren was outraged, and told the world what most of us were thinking at the time:

“There is no basis in law for a president to set up an offshore account that he controls so that he can sell assets seized by the American military. That is precisely a move that a corrupt politician would be attracted to.”

In January, Secretary of State Marco Rubio testified to the Senate that $300 million had been sent to Venezuela to cover government payroll needs and another $200 million was “still sitting” in Doha. He referred to the entire operation as “novel” and “a short-term mechanism.”

But a month later, Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on CNBC that the account had been closed and no more money would be flowing to or through Qatar…and nobody has identified where it went, or where it is, since then.

Where’s the money?

House Foreign Affairs committee ranking member Gregory Meeks called it “an offshore slush fund.” Bessent, questioned by Casten back in February refused to say which accounts the Treasury Department was even using, even though Trump’s executive order had named him/Treasury as the custodian for the funds. Casten and Senator Chris Van Hollen again demanded to know where the money was in March, and were again stonewalled. And then again this week.

Meanwhile, the pile of money is growing, particularly given the oil crisis provoked by Trump’s idiotic war against Iran. Using Bloomberg tanker-tracking data, the Council on Foreign Relations published an April estimate that:

“In the first four months of the United States exerting control over Venezuela’s oil exports, almost one hundred million barrels of oil worth an estimated $8 billion have flowed through a process marked by no transparency and minimal oversight.”

A State Department official testified to Congress back in April that around $3 billion had gone back to Venezuela, but Trump boasted in July that the US had sold more than $13 billion in stolen Venezuelan oil and suggested he could divert those funds to the American military or anywhere else he wanted.

Back in June, Marco Rubio tried to assuage Congress’ concerns by saying that accounting firm KPMG “audits every disbursement.” But when the libertarian Reason Magazine dug into it in August they found that neither the agreements nor the audits have been published.

And the so-called “Transparent Sovereignty” website the Venezuelan government set up to show the world its oil transactions only lists one single sale. Apparently, Trump is not even telling them what he’s done with their oil, or where their money went.

And it’s not just oil. In March, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum flew a planeload of American mining executives to Caracas and came home bragging about having made off with over $100 million in gold. He set up a deal to sell it to reportedly bribe-friendly Trafigura with the proceeds going into, well, nobody knows where.

This is an old script that Trump appears to be following here, one many corrupt petrostates pioneered long ago.

For example, in 2014 Nigeria’s central bank governor, Lamido Sanusi, accidentally revealed to his Senate that roughly $20 billion in oil revenue had never made it into the national treasury. President Goodluck Jonathan’s response was to fire him and call the money a “phantom.” When PriceWaterhouseCoopers finally audited the books, it found at least $1.48 billion was simply gone.

I’ve done international relief work in some of the most corrupt nations in the world, been offered bribes and threatened for not taking them, and the pattern I’m seeing here is eerily familiar. They never announce the looting; they just stop letting you know where anything went or who ended up with it. Most people figure that it must be okay since it’s not being reported or discussed, and the conversation dies away.

So, here we are. Trump:

— announced that he’d taken the oil,
— then that he’d taken the money from the sale of the oil and put it in a bank with the country that had given him a free 747 jet,
— hired traders with bribery records,
— refused to publish the contracts,
— put his own hand-picked cabinet members in charge of both the disbursements and oversight, and
— then sent Bessent to Congress to say, “No” when asked if we could please, please know where it’s all gone.

Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress seem to have developed a sudden case of lockjaw.

Congressmen Casten and Joaquin Castro have introduced into the House the Venezuela Oil Proceeds Transparency Act to force the GAO to audit the Qatar account and whatever’s followed it. Republicans refuse to let it out of committee, and Mike Johnson won’t give it a chance on the floor.

I have spent my life watching men in suits sign away things that were never theirs to sell. The North American Free Trade Agreement. Article 27 of Mexico’s Constitution. The land beneath the feet of the people who work it. Trade deals get written in rooms none of us are allowed into, then handed to us as done—take it, live with it, and don't ask who profited. That was the old playbook: theft dressed up as a benevolent "all boats rising" policy.

What's happening in 2026 is not quiet. Donald Trump is doing it all out loud, in broad daylight, on camera, daring anyone to stop him. And he's doing it right here in the USA.

Washington has long muted its professions of democratic faith whenever a compliant government was needed in Mexico or elsewhere around the world. Now, that corrosive indifference to core values is at work at home in the United States, with a terrifying array of targeted attacks on immigrant communities; judges stripped of the power to enforce basic civil procedure and defend what little protection people still have under this economic order; and the Orwellian vaporization of extensive scientific databases tracking climate change and other inconvenient truths.

The Trinational Peace Summit—The People Against Authoritarianism—it’s a regional gathering, but it isn't a rally. It's a rehearsal for the countries and regions we're trying to become.

And that's before we even consider this administration's aggressive support for unchecked AI dominance with no regard for what it costs humanity, or the foolishly criminal forever war he started with Iran last February.

In the USA, the machinery of electoral democracy is itself under direct assault: career officials who once safeguarded elections purged and replaced with loyalists who deny elections happen fairly at all; Immigration and Customs Enforcement turned into something even The Washington Post now calls a paramilitary force; and a Pentagon chain of command purged of those considered most likely to obey their oath to the US Constitution at a time of shameless presidential power grab.

The shamelessness makes clear what used to be hidden. In Mexico, NAFTA was imposed with a rewritten constitutional article here, a side agreement there, with no teeth—so boring that no one ever looked into it too closely. Today’s openly hostile power grab made it impossible to keep pretending the arrangement could ever be fair..

What kind of future can we build together now that the neoliberal architecture of unfair trade that got us to this bitter crossroads is visibly cracking up?

It is precisely this vital conversation about our future—between people from Canada, USA, and Mexico—that the US administration is trying to shatter. We intend to have it anyway.

To create peace among our people we must work on removing the causes of conflict. We see the contradictions: inequality versus greed, misery versus excess, haves versus have nots. These are the contradictions democracy is supposed to be able to overcome by dictating that majorities rule policy and that there are constitutional protections for all. These principles have never worked as well as promised, but they have endured. Now they are under unprecedented attack.

For too long history has underlined the difference between our countries, and politicians have benefited from promoting rivalry and inequality. But today, it is clear that we are a cross-border majority suffering the consequences of a handful of billionaires.

Peace power requires a refreshed regional majority with new voices and decision-makers. A big tent where Black communities, Indigenous peoples, gun violence survivors, workers, and migrants from the three countries are treated as the pillars of democracy they already are. All represent communities who've never had the luxury of walking away from struggle, which is exactly why their vision and strength are vital to uniting our majority in the pursuit of peace and freedom.

The power of the people is still the most important power, and the billionaires know it. That's why they invested so much in turning news and information into a circus of conflict for a doomscrolling public. They need our attention even more than they need our votes. Let's give them neither. Every hour they capture is an hour we don't spend building the unity that can defeat them. Our power relies on our strength of community and thrives in places where people can put the phone down and just make common cause with their fellow humans.

That's why people across Minnesota, California, Mexico City, Toronto, and New York are organizing from the neighborhood to the state: to resist authoritarianism and reclaim power back to the people. And that’s why, this September, we're throwing up a big tent in two cities that share two countries and one river. El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua. The Trinational Peace Summit—The People Against Authoritarianism—it’s a regional gathering, but it isn't a rally. It's a rehearsal for the countries and regions we're trying to become: one where the future isn't handed down from a boardroom or negotiated in a room we're not allowed into, but built, plainly and stubbornly, by the people who actually have to live it. One where democratic dialogue and a radical democracy is protected as a sacred value.

The future is in our hands.

Gen Z young people, especially men, have their parents deeply concerned because they are not having sex or partying the way young people used to. This may be the first time in history that an older generation has screamed at their kids to turn that damn music up.

The post Gen X Parent, Gen Z Kid appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

Politics is war. In war, capturing and replacing a rival head of state does not constitute victory. Looking into the future, policies and practices have to change.

But you also have to look back into the past. Statues of the old leader must be demolished. The people he appointed must be fired and replaced with new personnel. His institutions must be dismantled. If you fail to abolish their legacy, everything that mattered about them lives on. You may not know it—but you have lost.

Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation blueprint written as a governing plan for a conservative administration, understood that. It treated rolling back rolling back the prior Democratic agenda—especially Biden’s—as a central task. Trump spent much of his first year focused on that rollback, and Republican voters loved it.

As the 2028 campaign begins in earnest next summer, however, Democratic voters have little reason to believe the next Democratic president would erase Trump’s legacy with anything close to the same scale or energy. That is the Ratchet Theory, as former Reagan-Bush official Bruce Bartlett explained: “Republicans are extreme radicals; when in power they do extreme stuff. Democrats are moderates; in power they do moderate stuff. This means they never undo all the bad radical stuff Republicans do, so there is a steady ratchet toward Republican priorities over time.”

Bernie Sanders and the populist-progressive wing he leads have watched that ratchet work for decades. They want Democrats who fight for their own ideas and reverse conservative policies whenever they can. Trump is increasingly unpopular, and anti-Trump sentiment is at a fever pitch. Democratic messaging will still be incomplete without sweeping pledges to make it look as if no one named Donald J. Trump had ever lived in Washington.

Part of that is symbolism. Any 2028 Democratic nominee should promise to tear down however much of Trump’s White House ballroom gets built, restore the East Wing and Jackie Kennedy’s Rose Garden, and rip out that horrid helicopter pad on the South Lawn. Palm Beach International Airport should get its name back. Restore the bordello-ized Oval Office to its pre-Trump state. The Kennedy Center should get its name back, plus a new charter that guarantees its financial solvency and blocks future politicization. No more Gulf of America, no more Lake America—and blow up the Arch too.

I’d leave the Department of War. It’s a rare case of Trump telling the truth.

If history is any guide, far too much of Trump’s legacy will outlast both his presidency and his body. When Biden confided to wealthy donors in 2019 that “nothing would fundamentally change” if he won, he meant it.

Obama kept Bush’s wars and started new ones.

Biden kept Trump’s tax cuts for the rich and his Space Force. Rather than return to Obama’s status quo, he maintained Trump’s sanctions on Cuba and Venezuela. He endorsed and tried to expand Trump’s Abraham Accords, refused to move the U.S. embassy out of Jerusalem, accepted Trump’s recognition of the occupied Golan Heights as Israeli, and continued a pro-fracking energy stance. He did reverse the Muslim travel ban and rejoin the World Health Organization. On two of the biggest issues, though—Israel’s war in Gaza and human-caused climate change—the two old white guys were hard to tell apart.

Approval of Trump’s tariffs regime is in the toilet: 30% in the latest polls. His Canada-specific tariffs are even less popular, at 20%. Yet California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a leading 2028 hopeful, will not promise to mend fences with our northern neighbor and closest ally. “I can’t guarantee that,” he says. Is making nice with Canada really such a heavy lift?

Similarly, only 5% of registered Democrats support Trump’s partnership with Israel in attacking Iran, a war that has become an economic disaster with no end in sight. Yet no major Democratic prospect has promised to withdraw U.S. forces from that war of aggression on day one. Newsom, who governs a state with a large Iranian exile community, echoes Trump-era talking points: the “corrupt and repressive Iranian regime must never have nuclear weapons,” and Iran’s leadership “must go.” Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro criticizes Trump for sidestepping Congress, then recites the same brief against the “Iranian regime”—the target of Trump’s war—as a repressive state and “the leading state sponsor of terrorism.” On this latest forever war, it is reasonable to expect the 2028 nominee to land, as Kamala Harris did in 2024, on Team Israel.

The party may be splitting, but its voters agree on this: they hate Trump, want his presidency behind them and want what he did undone. A pivot to the center for swing voters will not save a nominee who cannot close the enthusiasm gap. That requires a clear list of promises to unwind the last 8 to 12 years.

That means not only leaving the Iran war but moving fast toward begging forgiveness, diplomatic normalization and paying restitution. It means cutting off U.S. military and financial aid to Israel and redirecting those funds to Palestinians. Nicolás Maduro and his wife should be returned to Venezuela and allowed to resume the presidency; tear up the attempt to seize the country’s oil. Everyone fired by DOGE should be offered their job back, with back pay and restitution. People who entered the country with permission—including under Biden—should be allowed to return, with a path to permanent residency and citizenship.

With a presidency this extreme, it is not enough to promise to govern differently or better. You have to scrap what they built. Annul every executive order, reverse every law, fire every appointee. If you can’t promise that, why should anyone vote for you?

(Ted Rall, the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, is the author of “Never Mind the Democrats. Here’s What’s Left.” Subscribe: tedrall.Substack.com. He is co-host of the podcast “DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas.”)

 

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LIVE 9:00 am Eastern time, Streaming Anytime:

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

Today we discuss:

• The Wall Street Journal reports that dapper Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth only wants attractive, masculine, troops who meet waist-to-height requirements and have “impeccable” grooming to attend his speeches. This comes after he encouraged troops to inject testosterone and Hegseth’s speech at Quantico Base, where he declared “no more beardos” or “fat generals.” A scantily-clad Hegseth likes to work out with ripped, buff, totally 100% straight soldiers on base.

Hegseth, in Democratic crosshairs for investigations next year, ordered two US Air Force crewmen whose F-15E was shot down over Iran in April to take part in an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes” about their experience.

• Trump set out to make it the 51st state. Instead, he has driven Canada into the arms of the European Union as an Associate Member, after antagonizing the Canadians for months, taunting the country’s prime minister and waging a relentless trade war. Trump threatened to respond with “serious tariffs” against Europe.

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In May 2024, a New York City jury convicted Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump of 34 felonies of falsifying business records with an intent to defraud, including an intent to “commit, aid, or conceal another crime.” Days earlier, Justice Juan Merchan had convened counsel for a pre-charge conference to discuss their recommendations for jury instructions. There, Trump’s defense team, led by Todd Blanche, failed to propose a key legal requirement for what the prosecution called the “most obvious” other crime—conspiracy to promote an election through the “unlawful means” of violating Federal Election Campaign Act contribution limits. Under reigning federal precedents, there could be no criminal violation of FECA unless the conduct was “willful,” defined as knowing it was unlawful. Yet the defense put forth the term “willfully” without saying what it meant!

Had the defense presented the correct language, it is possible that Trump would have escaped conviction. With his recent elevation to attorney general, Blanche’s defective lawyering raises the question of whether he may make further mistakes that threaten his patron’s interests.

To understand the importance of this and other defense errors, a brief recap of the trial is necessary. Testimony by David Pecker, chairman of American Media Inc. (AMI), publisher of the National Inquirer and other tabloids, and Trump attorney Michael Cohen, described a 15-month Trump-AMI conspiracy to suppress media stories, especially from women, that could damage Trump’s campaign. They aimed to spot prospective pieces and purchase them to prevent publication. Michael Cohen, known as Trump’s “fixer,” was AMI’s contact point with Trump.

The liberal-progressive media rap on Todd Blanche has been that, under his leadership, the Justice Department... has been too subservient to Trump’s undemocratic, illegal, and unconstitutional tendencies. That’s true.

In early August 2016, AMI paid Karen McDougal $150,000 for her story of a past affair with Trump, which it did not plan to publish, and collateral services. There was an understanding that Trump would reimburse the company. In late October, AMI declined a similar deal with adult film star Stormy Daniels, passing the transaction to Cohen. He paid Daniels $130,000, expecting to be reimbursed by “The Boss.” These transactions violated FECA. They were expenditures coordinated with a political campaign, which are considered “in kind” contributions, and they either exceeded the contribution limit of $2,700 or were illegal corporate donations.

In cross-examinations, Blanche’s team sought to shake jurors’ confidence in the witnesses’ credibility. They suggested that Pecker’s damning account, reflecting a previous non-prosecution agreement with a US attorney, might have been motivated by his eagerness to complete his company’s sale of two tabloids. They brought out Cohen’s long history of lying and fraud, which resulted in his prosecution for multiple offenses under Trump’s administration.

But prosecutors offered compelling documentary evidence to corroborate their witnesses’ accounts. Pecker’s testimony was supported by his non-prosecution agreement. A Cohen-recorded September 6, 2016 phone call between Pecker and Trump revealed them discussing Trump’s projected reimbursement of AMI for McDougal’s story. “What do we have to pay? $150 [thousand]?” Trump inquired. (AMI later dropped its insistence that Trump repay it}. On October 26 Cohen wired funds transferred from his private bank account through his shell company, separate from the Trump Organization, to Daniels’ representative, Keith Davidson. In a recorded December 9 phone call, he complained to Davidson that Trump “was not even paying me the $130,000 back” (Pecker recalled Cohen speaking similarly to him in the November-December time frame). In a later call, Cohen told Davidson, “I can’t even tell you how many times [Trump] said to me I hate the fact that we did it [paid Daniels].”

Other documents were smoking guns for the base falsification of business records charges. They showed that Trump’s payments reimbursing Cohen for his 2016 payoff were purposely mischaracterized by the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer and controller as “retainers” for 2017 legal services. Trump himself signed nine checks with stubs reading “retainer.” And In a note to his 2018 financial disclosure report to the Office of Government Ethics, President Trump acknowledged that he reimbursed Cohen between $100,00 and $250,000 during 2017.

Facing strong headwinds, Blanche’s team headed to the charging conference. The first item on the agenda was the defense’s proposed jury instruction that Trump could be found guilty only if the violations of FECA in question were “willful.” “This is a big one for us,” Blanche co-counsel Emil Bove pleaded to the judge. Justice Merchan upheld his request.

But the defense had asked for too little. It had failed to put forth the legal definition of willfulness in FECA—acting with knowledge the conduct was unlawful—to guide the jury. According to virtually unreported defense documents posted on two legal websites, it initially requested such a definition in a written submission to the judge. But it inexplicably dropped it in a subsequent joint written submission with the prosecution. This was a serious, possibly fatal, error. Blanche was fully aware of the importance of properly defined willfulness in campaign finance law. Three years earlier, in defending Igor Fruman, a Trump supporter who was charged with soliciting foreign campaign contributions, he had negotiated a plea agreement under which the defendant admitted he “generally understood” foreign nationals were not allowed to make political donations.

Why did the defense drop the crucial definition? Was it overconfidence in its case, or a misplaced expectation that the judge would supply the missing language in his charge? Bove, co-counsel Susan Necheles, and Maxwell Gottschall, who is handling Trump’s appeal, all declined to respond to my inquiries about the proposed instructions.

As the Supreme Court has pointed out, “The word ‘willfully’ is sometimes said to be a word of many meanings, whose construction is often dependent on the context in which it appears.” According to legal scholars, in some statutory contexts it may merely “denote an act which is intentional, knowing or voluntary, as distinguished from accidental.” But in highly technical federal statutes where there is a “danger of ensnaring individuals in apparently innocent conduct,” courts have recognized that “proof that the defendant knew of the specific law prohibiting the conduct” is required. Such has been the case with campaign finance law according to the Justice Department, Federal Election Commission, and federal courts.

In a famous case bearing many similarities to Trump’s, former Senator and Democratic Vice-Presidential nominee John Edwards was charged with violating FECA by accepting excessive contributions through intermediaries to meet his secret pregnant mistress’ expenses during his 2008 presidential primary campaign. The judge instructed jurors that “willfulness” meant “Mr. Edwards acted with knowledge that his course of conduct was unlawful and with the intent to do something the law forbids.” Indeed, his lawyer led off his summation by suggesting that while Edwards might be presumed to know the figure for the FECA contribution limit, that was not true for “knowing that a third party paying for a mistress could be a campaign contribution.” The trial ended with a hung jury.

If Justice Merchan’s willfulness instruction was wanting, there was still a way for the defense to get the jury to consider Trump did not know he was breaking the law. In his summation, Blanche could have emphasized that the prosecution had failed to offer any specific evidence that Trump knew paying off alleged sexual partners for their silence was illegal (It had tried unsuccessfully to introduce an old 1999 media interview in which Trump commented that he was very experienced with campaign finance laws). Yet, rather than attempting to subtly influence jurors’ understanding of “willfully,” Blanche offered only the naked assertion, “There was no evidence of a willful violation of FECA.” He also clung to the thoroughly debunked retainer cover story, which may have damaged the credibility of his entire final argument.

None of this is to say that with a proper judicial definition of willfulness or better defense summation, Trump would have necessarily fared as well as Edwards. Even without specific evidence of Trump’s knowledge, jurors might possibly have inferred that his efforts to conceal his actions reflected not only his desire to protect his political reputation but also his consciousness of breaking the law. We’ll never know.

The liberal-progressive media rap on Todd Blanche has been that, under his leadership, the Justice Department (he has been deputy and acting attorney-general) has been too subservient to Trump’s undemocratic, illegal, and unconstitutional tendencies. That’s true. But the record of the hush money trial suggests Blanche exercised some agency in serving Trump, and sometimes behaved incompetently, jeopardizing Trump’s interests. And as a top Justice official, he continued to do so as in his error-ridden release of the Epstein files and public disrespect for the concerns of Epstein survivors, which generated bipartisan blowback against the Trump administration. Caveat emptor, Mr. President.

After spending millions of dollars redecorating the White House and transforming DC monuments, President Donald Trump approved, on September 15, 2026, an additional $2.8 billion sale of heavy bombs to Israel, including 40,000 one-ton bombs, 20,000 of the 2,000-pound bombs, and 20,000 bunker-busting penetrator warheads. Israel has used these bombs to destroy homes, families, and crucial infrastructure in Gaza, the West Bank, and Lebanon.

This latest US weapons package will replenish Israel’s stockpile of bombs that human rights groups have condemned after documenting their use over the past two and a half years to kill, maim, bereave, and forcibly displace Palestinians. Survivors whose homes have been reduced to rubble now live in makeshift shelters, including flimsy tents, while Israel continues to restrict deliveries of supplies that could protect Gazans from harsh weather, disease, rodent and insect infestations, and other hardships of displacement.

In June of 2026, the Norwegian Refugee Council estimated that 170,000 households in Gaza, equivalent to nearly 1 million people, were living in tents. “Another 5,000 households sleep outdoors,” they reported, “while 52,000 households live in overcrowded shelters.” As Gazans enter the rainy and cold months of winter, they still lack emergency shelter items. They need plastic sheeting, plywood, and rope. Genocidal war and siege drive the crisis they face as the Israelis continue destroying Gazan homes and shelters and imposing restrictions which block desperately needed relief.

President Trump who is undertaking expensive and unnecessary renovations, they longed to rebuild homes which Israelis decimated, using US manufactured bombs.

Over the past two years, members of the Global Solidarity for Peace in Palestine coalition have held weekly online meetings with Palestinians living in the West Bank. They update our coordinating committee about their experiences amid ongoing US provisioned Israeli genocide against Palestinians. They speak with anguish about people in the West Bank and Gaza enduring persecution, travel restrictions, hunger, inadequate medical care, land theft, contamination, and an alarming rise in pogrom-style attacks by illegal settlers who are often assisted by Israeli military and police forces.

Our Palestinian coalition members living in the West Bank long to extend a helping hand to people trapped in Gaza. They recently raised the dilemma of Gazan children who have already lost years of education. Many live in wretched tent encampments, lack adequate food and medicine, and struggle with psychosocial traumas because of having lost their loved ones.

A Palestinian NGO, PYALARA, (Palestinian Youth Association for Leadership and Rights) suggested that our coalition could help with practical measures to assist Gazan children who are eager to learn but who lack basic school supplies. The children are bereft of paper, pencils, pens, books, desks, and book bags.

Recently, for UN News, an interviewer spoke with Julia Dicon, the director of education for UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Association for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East). Dicon described what education means for Palestine refugee children and why sustained support is critical. She expressed deep respect for the many ways that Palestinians maintain capacities to educate their children, even in these dire times.

The interviewer asked her to tell a story about Palestinian young people who represent courage in the face of unspeakable adversity as they continue efforts to learn and teach.

Dicon talked about two Gazan sisters, 17-year-old Tala Mousa and her 15-year-old sister, Farah Mousa, who were recently named winners of the 2026 Middle East Earth Prize. The young women regularly looked at rubble surrounding their home, which Israel had bombed. Unlike President Trump who is undertaking expensive and unnecessary renovations, they longed to rebuild homes which Israelis decimated, using US manufactured bombs. Fala and Farah puzzled over how they and their neighbors could begin creating the indispensable equipment to reconstruct housing: bricks. Together, using their scientific knowledge, they developed a practical way to transform rubble into reusable blocks for garden beds, pavement, and partitions.

Tala and Farah represent the potential of Gazan youth to make a significant difference in their community’s lives and futures. Their energetic, practical, and impassioned approach deserves our respect and support, while at the same time we must find creative ways to resist the merchants of death who benefit from the Trump administration’s purchase of their death-dealing weapons. Boeing, Lockheed Martin, RTX, General Dynamics, and Northrup Grummon are among the US companies whose profits will continue to soar while the US markets their weapons, “showcasing” them in war zones around the world.

We live in harsh, dark times.

The latest US weapon sale to Israel further confirms US complicity with Israel’s genocidal war crimes against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. We must heed an urgent call issued by those most impacted by the war crimes: “Don’t look away.”

Voters had a big win at the Supreme Court this week. What does it all mean?

On Monday, the court refused to allow the Postal Service to implement a new rule that would have curbed mail voting. But the one-paragraph ruling seemed to say more than “not yet.” The Trump administration, the justices ruled, was “unlikely to succeed on the merits.”

This was great news for the millions of citizens who rely on mail voting, the method now used by 1 in 3 voters. It was utterly bonkers that the White House tried to exert control over the election system. That’s illegal, a fact now confirmed over and over. The Brennan Center was proud to be part of the legal team representing voters before the Supreme Court.

We must never, ever get used to the idea that the president of the United States routinely denigrates our democracy. We should not have to wait with bated breath to see whether the Supreme Court will do the right thing.

President Donald Trump’s drive to undermine the election is failing. Time and again, his moves have been parried or blocked.

Voters, the coast is clear. You can vote with confidence. It’s five weeks until Election Day. Make a plan. Vote early in person. Vote as early as possible via the US Postal Service (USPS). Vote via a drop box. Vote on Election Day. Make your voice heard.

Yes, let’s exhale. But also let’s not lose sight of some bigger lessons.

Trump has not given up on trying to mess up and undermine the election. Repeatedly, courts have had to step in to protect the rule of law, blocking the executive order that mandated the USPS rule, the order before that, and very possibly whatever comes next. Whistleblowers keep popping up to reveal new depredations, such as the violations of state law by the Department of Homeland Security that were uncovered this week.

Just know that voting rights groups, state and local governments, election officials, and judges around the country have your back.

Then there’s the Supreme Court. It did the right thing here. But the situation should not have been this hard. This court helped create the chaos and confusion three weeks ago when it allowed Trump’s mail ballot plan to go forward.

And this whole election takes place in a political system transformed by the Roberts Court. A flood of billionaire funding and dark money thanks to Citizens United and other rulings. Frenzied gerrymandering. And, all too often, a green light for voter suppression. It has been two decades since the Supreme Court blocked a state from enacting a restrictive voting law. After the Louisiana v. Callais ruling in April that demolished what was left of the Voting Rights Act, Southern states rapidly redrew congressional maps to eliminate districts where Black voters had a fair chance to elect candidates who represented them. Expect more fights about district maps next year.

As for the states, there is some good news: In the recent mail balloting case, 24 state attorneys general filed litigation. Opposition to USPS’ antics did not fall strictly along party lines, with seven Republican-led states separately telling the court that Trump’s plan to disrupt the existing system was unworkable. That’s all encouraging.

But far too many states are colluding in efforts to take rights from their own citizens. In numerous states, our research shows, voters will go to the polls with restrictions put in place since 2024. Unscrupulous politicians have free rein to concoct new restrictive rules.

All this adds up to an argument for strong new national laws to ensure this doesn’t happen again. I’m done with trench warfare on voting. We can’t let vote deniers trash our elections, in Washington or in state capitols. Squalid moments like this one must be followed by reform and renewal.

On Wednesday the Brennan Center released Eight Solutions to Protect Voting Rights and Improve Representation, the most recent in a series of papers laying out solutions to our most pressing issues. Already we have published proposals on political corruption, Supreme Court reform, and congressional reform. This new raft of proposed actions would respond to the assaults on voting and representation still underway.

Congress can pass a national law, for example, banning partisan gerrymandering and barring mid-decade redistricting. That would significantly bolster competition and representation across the country, applying to red states and blue states alike. And it would eliminate the Supreme Court’s ridiculous rule in Callais that partisanship serves as an excuse for states drawing racially discriminatory maps.

What about the freedom to vote in the wake of the court’s other damaging decisions? Citizens should be able to defend their own voting rights in court when they are impinged upon. Surprisingly, no such law exists assuring access to the courts today. With the Voting Rights Act smashed to bits, an even broader statute would give voters the ability to protect themselves. Voters who have suffered racial discrimination should not face court-imposed barriers to vindicating their rights.

We also need national standards to ensure that citizens everywhere can vote by mail, vote early, be automatically registered, and take advantage of the myriad ways we have improved access. We should expand the size of the House of Representatives, a change conservative scholar Yuval Levin and others have urged, to widen representation. And it’s past time to admit the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico as states, as their citizens have repeatedly supported. And more.

Believe it or not, Congress has the power to do all these things. Yes, gridlocked, polarized, much-maligned Congress. The branch of government closest to the people should take the lead in restoring power to the people.

We must never, ever get used to the idea that the president of the United States routinely denigrates our democracy. We should not have to wait with bated breath to see whether the Supreme Court will do the right thing.

The law is clear: States run elections. But the Constitution gives Congress a role, too: It can pass national legislation. It should use that explicitly granted power to do what it has at other times, to lift the floor under voters and ensure protections. When it comes to voting rights, presidents should stay out. Congress should jump in.

The Trump family has made a fortune from its crypto business. By granting his business a bank charter, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) in the Treasury Department has acted to help him, his family, and possibly one Middle Eastern spymaster make more money.

It is widely recognized that the OCC’s decision is laden with conflicts of interest. But there is more to it than self-dealing and self-enrichment. If implemented, the decision also corrupts the US economy by allowing criminals, terrorists and rogue states access to the payments system—the basic plumbing—used by regulated banks. It also creates conditions for crypto firms to maneuver for a federal bailout should their businesses start to fail.

The Trump family has a significant ownership interest in World Liberty Financial, a company that among other things issues the USD1 “stablecoin.” In 2025 Trump alone reported earning $536.4 million from WLF. Even this sum does not include income that may be going to Trumps’ family, or to the family of his emissary Steve Witkoff, which also have interests in WLF. Nor does it include income which may be going to Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the United Arab Emirates spy chief, whose investment company owns a 49 percent equity share of WLF.

Not satisfied with that haul, WLF has obtained a trust bank charter from the OCC, which will be used to house its stablecoin business.

This will give WLF important new advantages.

First, a trust charter eases the way for the WLF stablecoin business to obtain a “master account” at the Federal Reserve, which are used by banks to hold and transfer dollars electronically. If a master account is granted, dollar payments into and out of USD1 can go through that system. This will lower USD1 costs, since it will not need to use a commercial bank to transfer funds.

Second, it will create a halo effect for USD1, enhancing its legitimacy and perceived safety. A “trust bank” sounds like something that comes with the regulations, supervision, and guarantees that make commercial banks a safe place for retail depositors. But that is not true. Trust banks do not take deposits or make loans, are not federally insured, and are not eligible for lending from the Federal Reserve.

The conflicts of interest in granting a bank charter to WLF are apparent. The OCC—which a Trump executive order claims is completely controlled by him—has granted a bank charter to a firm which makes him money and will act as the supposed supervisor of that bank.

Bad as this seems, there are harms beyond the self-dealing and self-enrichment involved in granting this charter. Giving any stablecoin or crypto currency firm access to a master account invites illicit use of the regulated financial system which we all depend on.

The Tether stablecoin, for example, has featured in international criminal cases, and has frequently been used by financial fraudsters laundering money, by countries such as Iran and Russia evading sanctions, and by terrorist networks. A record $158 billion of crypto tokens were sent to criminal wallets in 2025, a 145% increase from the previous years.

This risk has been recognized by the Federal Reserve in the past. According to guidance released by the Board of Governors in 2022, master accounts should not go to entities that create an undue risk to the economy by “facilitating activities such as money laundering, terrorism financing, fraud, cybercrimes, economic or trade sanctions violations, or other illicit activities”. It is not at all clear why any stablecoin or other crypto currency is not, on the face of it, ineligible under these and other parts of the BOG guidance. In fact, Federal Reserve Governor Michael Barr has objected to the creation of this class of account because it does not provide sufficiently specific and robust safeguards to protect against their being used for money laundering and terrorist financing by institutions the Fed does not supervise.

There is another alarming outcome that may result from giving bank charters to crypto firms. The halo effect—which may lead stablecoin users to believe they have federal protection—could be used by WLF and other crypto firms to provide political cover for a federal bail-out if their businesses were failing.

There would be no legal basis for such a bailout. But would this administration, and the OCC which it claims to control completely, look for a way to provide a bailout that protected their crypto firm wealth? That may seem unlikely, but so did a $1.8 billion fund to benefit January 6 rioters and other political favorites.

The OCC and the Federal Reserve are failing in their duty to protect the public and the economy from potential harm that can flow from crypto firms like WLF. A responsible Congress would intervene to stop it.

Marc Jarsulic and Gerald Epstein are economists and among dozens of expert contributors to Game Changers: Economic Policies for a Working America, a project of the Political Economy Research Institute, UMass Amherst. The ideas in this article are developed in their paper “No More Bailouts,” available on the Game Changers website.

President Donald Trump is losing badly, and he knows it. At the MAGA rally billed as the Republican midterm convention on September 9-10, he mounted yet another brazen attack on the democratic process that threatens to hold him accountable. He tried to buy votes, imbue personal loyalty to him over allegiance to democracy, and encourage voter fraud.

Most of the media dismissed the episode as just another bizarre Trump moment.

A Dubious Promise

Eight minutes into his second keynote speech on Day Two of the rally, the president promised a $5,000 “Trump dividend” to every US adult citizen if Republicans retained control of Congress in November. That would add more than $1 trillion to the burgeoning federal deficit and fuel persistent inflation.

“Outside historical norms”? Trump’s actions are so far beyond the pale that it’s inappropriate to describe them in such sanitized terms.

Some observers dismissed it as a campaign promise. But federal law provides:

Whoever makes or offers to make an expenditure to any person, either to vote or withhold his vote, or to vote for or against any candidate; and

Whoever solicits, accepts, or receives any such expenditure in consideration of his vote or the withholding of his vote—

Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and if the violation was willful, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both. (18 U.S.C. Sec. 597—“Expenditures to Influence Voting”)

Of course, the Trump Justice Department that is prosecuting former FBI Director James Comey for posting a photograph of seashells on a beach will never investigate or prosecute Trump for anything. And Trump’s position will always be that Chief Justice John Roberts’ opinion in Trump v. United States effectively gave him a permanent “get-out-of-jail-free” card for anything he does as president.

Even so, Trump’s promise of money in exchange for Republican votes was blatantly anti-democratic; the loyalty oath that he then asked his audience to take was worse.

A Dangerous Pledge

Ten minutes after his $5,000 promise, Trump asked attendees to raise their right hands and swear—not to defend democracy, but to undermine it as an act of personal loyalty to him: “I pledge to the greatest president in the history of the United States that loves us so much he can’t even breathe.”

The audience repeated his words. Ignoring the evidence that voter fraud is virtually non-existent, Trump continued:

That I will go out with my family, my friends. I’ll do it anyway. I don’t care if I’m registered or not, I’m gonna try and cheat like hell like they do. They never, there’s never been bigger cheaters. They don’t care. I am gonna go out and I'm gonna get my friends, my family, and we are going to vote on November 3 or we are going to vote before that.

Ready? To finish the pledge? So we swear [Audience responded: “We swear.”] on November 3, we are going to go out and vote.

Then Trump added: “And you know what? If you want, you can vote Democrat, but I don't think there's one person in this room that's gonna vote [Democrat]. [Audience responded: "No."]

“I don't think so. So I don't have to preface, I don't wanna waste the words vote Republican, just go out. If you vote, you're voting Republican. Okay.”

Then he concluded the pledge: “So help me God.”

[Audience responded: "So help me God"]

“Swear Your Loyalty to Me”

It’s no secret that Trump values personal loyalty to him above all else. Competence has never been a job requirement in his administration. See, for example, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (Health and Human Services), Pete Hegseth (Defense), Kristi Noem (Department of Homeland Security), Tulsi Gabbard (Director of National Intelligence), Lori Chavez-DeRemer (Labor), and more.

But Trump’s oath is particularly unsettling. A US president asking any audience to swear personal fealty to him should trouble any citizen. When coupled with a pledge to commit voter fraud aimed at preserving that president’s compliant legislative majority for another two years, it’s stunning. And the historical parallels are frightening.

Pundits responded with their usual euphemisms: “Trump acted outside historical norms;” “Don’t take Trump literally;” “Trump is being Trump.”

Then they moved on.

“Outside historical norms”? Trump’s actions are so far beyond the pale that it’s inappropriate to describe them in such sanitized terms. He has already destroyed many of democracy’s guardrails, and he’s not done.

“Don’t take Trump literally”? Maybe pundits don’t, but even with a dismal approval rating in the mid-30s, millions of people will. After all, he concluded his September 10 pledge with a warning:

You know what happens if you don't vote? You go to hell. You know that. Okay? You go to hell. And I don't want that to happen to you, so please go and vote because together we will defeat the communists. We will defeat the communists. We will reject, and that's what they are. They're not socialists. They're not Democrats. They're communists. We will reject these radical left lunatics. We will demolish the extremists, fanatics, lunatics, and criminals who want to destroy our country.

“Trump is being Trump”? That’s true in the sense that he’s saying the quiet part out loud. But the response should be more than a collective shrug. With the help of a complicit Republican majority in Congress, a cooperative US Supreme Court, and Republican controlled-state governments across the country, Trump has amassed unprecedented presidential power—and abused it in unprecedented ways.

The November election must become the reckoning that Trump does not want.

I was almost six years old when the Korean War began and Korea was a mere 7,000 or so miles from Washington, DC. I’m now 82 years old and my country is at war with Iran, whose capital, Tehran, is—phew!—only about 6,300 miles from Washington, DC. What a relief!

By the time I’m 110, there’s a dim possibility that, should that be a pattern (and don’t forget Vietnam, a mere 9,000 miles from Washington; Afghanistan, a mere 7,000 miles away; or Iraq, a mere 6,000-odd miles offshore of the United States, all of which suggest that distance has indeed been a significant—and significantly unnerving—part of American imperial war making since 1945), the US might be warring with a country merely 5,000-odd miles from our capital. And by the time I’m 126, the war of that moment might, for all I know, be right next door. (Of course, if Donald Trump, who would then be 124 years old, is still president, it might even be in Canada, “our cherished 51st State.”)

I should, in truth, be more used to my country’s distant wars by now. After all, I can still remember my opposition to the Vietnam War, a moment when I actually took to the streets and turned in my draft card in public protest—yes, back then, the military wasn’t an all-volunteer outfit—and also learned how to be a draft counselor to help potential draftees like me, who were against that all too literal war from hell.

There are so many things that are truly needed on this overheating planet of ours, how deeply sad (not to say genuinely pathetic) that the best thing the president of the United States and his advisers could find to do this year was launch a war halfway around the world that would kill all too many people.

Almost 60 years later, I find it strange that my country is once again fighting a distant war for reasons that, at best, make no sense whatsoever to me, and at worst are simply horrific and repetitive beyond belief. It’s a war that, as The New York Times reported, was essentially sold to the president by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as a “near-certain victory” against a weak Iranian regime that would prove incapable (no question about it!) of blockading the Strait of Hormuz, could do little harm to America’s allies in the Middle East, and “could foster the conditions for the Iranian opposition to overthrow the regime.”

Yes, it’s true that my country may indeed have been the most imperial—in the sense of influencing so much of the world—country in history with a truly global reach. Of course, there were also the other two great powers of the last half century. There was the Soviet Union—now, Vladimir Putin’s Russia, which, to give him credit of an unnerving sort, is at least fighting his nightmarish war against Ukraine right at or near its own border rather than in Asia, Africa, or Latin America. And then there is China, which has so far proven itself a remarkable imperial force by having but a single military base anywhere else on the planet—unlike the 750 American ones scattered around the globe—and not fighting a war anywhere other than not particularly successfully against Vietnam in 1979 and border skirmishes with India in 2020 and 2021 (which, historically speaking on this planet of ours, is almost the imperial equivalent of pacifism).

No such luck for the United States of Donald J. Trump, of course. “Our” latest president has continued a tradition now more than 75 years old of launching distant wars that simply never succeed. Never.

You would think, of course, that there might be some extremely modest learning curve when it came to such conflicts, but if so, you would think wrong. Logical as that might appear, it’s proven to be anything but the reality of our world. And after so many failed wars globally, that’s once again our reality in relation to Iran, despite the fact that “our” president in his first term in office offered this description of himself: “They said: ‘He will start a war.’ I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.”

And curiously enough, with the exception of an ongoing conflict in Syria, he stuck to his... oh, sorry, but it is the phrase... guns then. No such luck recently, of course. And Iran is turning into a disaster first class, while the harm to that country is, as with all such wars (remember the millions killed in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia), or at least should be considered, unbearable. And mind you, while “our” president was turning our world into an ever greater mess at home and abroad, he was still planning to extend his renaming frenzy from the Gulf of Mexico (oh, sorry, the Gulf of America) and Lake Ontario (oh, sorry, again, Lake America) to the Strait of Hormuz, which he was hoping, believe it or not, could be renamed the “Trump Strait.” As he wrote at his Truth Social account: “Now that we have it under U.S.A. control, should we change the name Hormuz Strait to TRUMP STRAIT??? Like America itself, it would be ‘hotter’ than ever before! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP.”

Imagine that, will you—not that the Strait of Whatever You Want to Call It was, in fact, faintly under American control.

And for what acts might it be renamed? Well, just as I was writing this piece, for instance, accounts appeared indicating that a missile launched by my country reportedly killed at least four people, including a 4-year-old child, and wounded another 68 at a wedding—yes, a wedding!—in Iran.

Oh, and let me at least add that, right here at home, one American was finally brought to justice for his acts—in this case, US Air Force Major Jason Watson, who had stood on the steps of the US Capitol and called for the impeachment of President Trump. As he told CNN: “Not only is [Trump] a failure as president, he is flagrantly violating the Constitution, breaking the law, engaged in rampant corruption, and is killing Americans. And that is unacceptable to me.”

And as it turns out, it’s also unacceptable to the Iranians. Since, despite what Benjamin Netanyahu assured “my” president about, they have indeed been capable both of attacking American allies and a whole string of American military bases in the Middle East with missiles and drones, while indeed largely shutting down traffic through the Strait of Hormuz and so driving up oil prices strikingly on a global level.

There are so many things that are truly needed on this overheating planet of ours, how deeply sad (not to say genuinely pathetic) that the best thing the president of the United States and his advisers could find to do this year was launch a war halfway around the world that would kill all too many people, ruin worlds (and weddings), pour greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and waste enormous amounts of taxpayer dollars thousands of miles from home at a moment when all too many people in this very country still need so much.

Why is it, I wonder, that American presidents of seemingly any stripe simply can’t stop launching distant, disastrous wars with our tax dollars? In some sense, I simply don’t understand. How can there be no learning curve whatsoever when it comes to American wars abroad since 1945? How thickheaded do you truly have to be not to notice an overwhelming pattern of lack of success (not to say outright failure)? It’s so obvious that there should be no way it wouldn’t be a front-and-center phenomenon no one could miss or ignore?

No such luck, of course.

Obviously the story of the moment is the sudden, coordinated bout of cold feet in the AI industry, whose leaders expressed support over the weekend for some kind of effort to slow down the pace of their R&D. This is something that’s never happened in the 40 years of the climate fight, and so it shouldn’t be dismissed; in fact, it could conceivably provide an opening for common sense across the entire apocalypse front. So let’s try to game out how responsible political leaders—which means, I tremble to say, Democrats—might try to talk about it.

First, credit where due. The fact there’s an opening at all is owed to the remarkable citizen resistance to data centers that has sprung up in the last year, and also to the courage of a few kids in the AI industry. At Third Act-GrayPAC we’ve been a part of that resistance in place after place—if you want some insight on its roots and future, join us Wednesday night for a conversation with old friend Justin Pearson, the Tennessee state rep who helped kick it off with the fight against Elon Musk’s super-polluting Memphis facility.

Water wastage, noise, land use—the data center fight has often been routed in deeply local concerns. But it has two other dimensions. The first is about energy, both its costs and its pollution. As I’ve noted, one way to understand a data center is that it’s a device for burning natural gas, the latest excuse (after Ukraine and Iran) for the fuel that Big Oil is counting on to keep its business model afloat even as the world turns away from internal combustion cars and crude demand begins to drop. The degree to which this is becoming a climate disaster can hardly be overstated. Here’s the latest, from Bloomberg on Monday:

Natural gas consumption for electricity generation at data centers is forecast to increase by 15 billion cubic feet per day in the decade ending in 2035, even when accounting for planned projects that may never be completed. This volume exceeds the current gas consumption of all nations except China, Russia, Iran, and the United States, based on data from the US Energy Information Administration. The projection is more than double BloombergNEF's December forecast of 6.9 billion cubic feet per day.

In essence, American data centers are about to become a giant new fossil-fuel burning country, just when we need it least. And if you wonder whether the oil boys have figured this out, don’t. When Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro—long a big backer of AI—proposed some limits last week, the reaction went like this:

“We were disappointed in the announcement in that it sends the wrong message to these incredible economic opportunities that are presented for Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania’s economy,” said James D. Welty, president of the Marcellus Shale Coalition…

Marcellus producers are almost solely dependent on demand growth within their own producing region. Artificial intelligence data centers powered by gas-fired electricity are seen by Marcellus gas producers as a key source of that so-called in-basin demand.

But that data center resistance was driven by something else too, that’s been largely ignored—it was a chance to stand up to the oligarchs and this technology they’ve staked their future on. A few years ago Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg and the rest had a mixed reputation, admired by some and distrusted by others; now the loathing is much more universal, especially since they’ve allied themselves with the most unpopular president in recent history. They marketed their AI tech on the promise that it would destroy jobs; it’s also proven useful for making naked pictures of anyone you could imagine. They stole books to train it; now it produces a commodity universally reviled as slop.

Oh, and it might kill us all, which brings us back to those kids. Jacob Coxon is a 27-year-old former silver medalist at the International Mathematical Olympiad who worked first at Open AI and then Anthropic, and who resigned last week, kicking off this current storm with his tweeted fear that things were getting out of control. A top scientist at the company backed him up, tweeting: “We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10% within the next decade.”

Which seems like kind of a big deal. Perhaps Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was on to something when, many months ago, he called for a moratorium on this kind of work, a call he’s repeated in recent days. But no one takes Bernie seriously (except the American people, for whom he remains the most popular active politician). So it’s a good sign that there seem to be some starting to follow suit. Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) has been nimblest, and not for the first time—he got a start on the messaging by saying

On day one, Donald Trump rescinded the AI safety order meant to guard against catastrophic risks, including the engineering of bioweapons. Meanwhile, Don Jr's 1789 Capital bought big money stakes in data centers and AI labs... President Trump is compromised.

And Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, another 2028 possibility:

It’s becoming more clear the threat AI poses to humanity, so I’m calling for immediate action from the industry and Washington.

But as Greg Sargent points out in a prescient piece today, the Dems are mostly playing small ball here, nibbling around the edges instead of biting. I think someone has the chance for a kind of career-defining stance here, one that builds on the growing sense of unease with the overheating world (an unease which is already quite broad and is going to deepen as the budding El Niño takes us ever deeper into the climate future). As we start to look forward to 2028, even Barack Obama—a cautious man—has called for Democrats to be more aggressive. Here’s a stab at what that might look like:

Elections usually turn on immediate, pocketbook issues—that makes sense, because we all need to eat, and right now the price of groceries is too high, the price of gas is too high, the rent is too high. We know why—tariffs, stupid wars, corruption. We’ve got lots to work on.

But there are also moments when need to think about larger questions, and this is clearly one. AI is not something any of us asked for—just about no one wants a data center in their neighborhood, and no one put up their hand to sacrifice their job to some computer bot. It’s been forced on us by some of the richest people on Earth, and it was obnoxious even before it started going on the attack—now, as even its creators say, it’s out of control and offers a very real risk to our health and safety, and maybe even our existence as a species.

So we need to rein it in, with serious government regulation that dramatically slows the pace of development until we can can understand and control it. And that includes making the companies that produce this, and the hedge funds who invest in them, liable for the havoc they create.

But we need to go beyond that. We need to step back and say: What are we doing here, people? Why are we running risks like this? Our civilization, especially in rich countries like this one, is capable of producing the things we need: We’ve never lived longer or better. If we didn’t concentrate wealth in a few hands, if we spread it our more widely, we could provide healthcare and housing for everyone. Natural human intelligence has produced plenty; the natural human sense of justice can help us figure out how to share it in ways that work for all. Things could be… okay.

So why would we run enormous risks—the ones that come with artificial super intelligence, and the ones that come with rapidly warming the planet? These are the dangers that could attack and impoverish us; no rational society would treat them as casually as the Trump administration has done. Instead we should be hard at work insuring against those risks—by, say, building out cheap and clean renewable energy. And by upgrading the education and the skills of our kids, instead of handing them screens and turning them over to AI teachers.

In some cases this would mean “slowing down progress”; in every case it would mean attacking concentrated wealth and power. But is it really progress? Is there any real reason we need to rush pell-mell into this chaotic and dystopian future? We’re told that medical advances await—but we’ve been making steady progress on this front for decades, with lifespans expanding and more and more diseases becoming manageable. (Or at least we were making progress till this administration decided to upend our scientific research institutions). We’re told that if we don’t rush ahead China will—but that seems more like an argument for negotiating with China about cooperative controls, just as we once negotiated with Russia about the control of nuclear weapons. It’s never easy, it’s always messy, and so far it’s been successful.

If this willingness to stick with the world as we’ve known it—a world where human intelligence prevails, and where we keep some ice near the poles—sounds “conservative” then so be it. There are moments when humans need to say, "Enough," and this is one. We are fools to endanger all that our ancestors have built in search of some new thing that will enrich a few. I know that the Trump administration wants to rush forward, that he has called AI fears a “hoax,” the exact same word he’s used about the climate crisis. But Trump and his colleagues are greed-seeking missiles, always looking for some way to grift, whether its from AI and crypto or from oil companies and Middle East princelings.

We are told that our destiny is constantly to rush forward—to head for Mars. But actually, one unique human gift is the ability to decide not to do things we’re capable of doing—to say Mars isn’t as important as getting things right on Earth. In fact, we’ve never had a better chance of getting things right. All of a sudden solar panels are the cheapest way to make power, for instance. It wasn’t AI that did that—it was smart people, at work in universities and companies around the world. They’ve given us a real gift, even if it’s going to cost Exxon some profits.

Humans don’t get many chances to make momentous decisions like this. Usually they get made for us. But across the country people have stood up to the data centers, and that’s given us the possibility for real change. Let’s take it.

Editor’s Note: The following is part of new series for Common Dreams based on “Game Changers: Economic Policies for a Working America,” a project spearheaded by the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Game Changers is a collaborative initiative bringing together leading economists and policy experts to develop bold, new ideas to build a stronger, fairer, greener, and more inclusive economy for all Americans.

In the following essay, Game Changers takes on corporate-friendly trade deals, including those in North America. And as the US-Canada trade war rages on, beyond the dizzying headlines—including renaming Lake Ontario to Lake America—what does this mean for North American workers, and what is a more sensible trade policy for North America?

This Thursday, Sept. 17th, the Game Changers webinar, Oh Canada: Trump Vs. North American Workers, will dig beyond the headlines to answer these questions, putting focus on the international trade collaboration we need to make the economy work for working America, not just big corporations. Register for the webinar here.

Corporate-dominated trade deals

Corporate-driven free trade agreements have distorted global trade and investment relationships over the past 40 years – including in North America. The power and freedom they grant business has produced deindustrialization, job loss, and inequality for workers in the US, Canada, and Mexico. Donald Trump weaponized this hardship, but his erratic tariffs and other actions are only making things worse for workers in America.

Past Failures to Solve the Problem

NAFTA hurt workers in all three countries; Trump’s policies are making it worse
Starting in the 1980s, global business interests, backed by leaders of both main parties, pushed hard for an ambitious new approach to international trade policy. Instead of straightforward and mutual tariff reduction to promote two-way trade, they pioneered a new generation of trade agreements (bilateral, regional, and global through the World Trade Organization) that entrenched corporate rights, undermined national policy autonomy, and pitted workers in different countries against each other in a race to the bottom. This model was imposed in North America through a Canada-US deal in 1989, followed by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA, including Mexico) in 1994. NAFTA was negotiated by a Republican president, but passed under a Democrat, and it cemented corporate power across the continent, providing a template for future deals. Some changes were made to NAFTA (renamed the USMCA) in Donald Trump’s first term. But they didn’t fix the core threats facing workers in the US Now Trump’s unilateral, erratic, and destructive tariffs and unhinged attacks on our trading partners are causing chaos and uncertainty. US manufacturing employment is falling, while US companies (including the tech oligarchs) continue to profit from preferential rules that protect their profits, but undermine labor, environmental, and democratic standards.

The Game Changer

Democratizing North American trade
Donald Trump claims his tariffs and other threats against trading partners (including challenging their very sovereignty) will help American workers. But the costs, supply bottlenecks and uncertainties he has imposed are damaging the efficiency and competitiveness of key North American industries (like auto manufacturing). US industry and employment are doing worse, not better. Instead of trying to conquer our neighbours through economic or even military force, American workers would do better through a cooperative continent-wide strategy to build a stronger, fairer, more sustainable, and more democratic North American economy.

A new plan for North American economic cooperation, development, and trade would focus on six key themes:

1. Labor rights: Strengthen protections for workers in all three countries, including access to fair and independent union representation, strong minimum wages, and rapid-response enforcement to compel employers in all three countries to comply. US workers would get better access to union protection and minimum labor standards when basic labor standards are embedded in a continental framework.
2. Migration and human rights: Trump’s inhumane scapegoating of migrants for political gain undermines the rights and safety of all in the US, and sets the stage for broader repression. It has also hurt the US economy: damaging critical industries and disrupting normal international exchange. Of course, sovereign countries must retain control over their borders and immigration, and this will continue to be the case within a cooperative North American framework. But stable and well-resourced border infrastructure, and immigration rules that respect international law and human rights, will facilitate sensible travel and migration while ensuring the integrity of national immigration policies.
3. Environmental standards: Trade agreements must not undercut national efforts to regulate pollution, tax polluters, and encourage sustainable industries and technologies. A cooperative continental strategy would raise finance for investments in climate-resilient infrastructure and make a joint commitment to emissions reductions targets consistent with the Paris Agreement. Rapid-response enforcement mechanisms would ensure companies respect environmental rules in each country.
4. Continental industrial strategies: As Trump tries to intimidate automakers and other industrial giants into relocating from Canada and Mexico to the US, the overall competitiveness of North American industry falls further behind global leaders in Asia and Europe. A continental strategy to strengthen the overall capability of key North American industries (including auto, aerospace, food, renewable energy equipment, and technology), making the most of continental linkages rather than disrupting them, offers far more hope to US workers than fighting over the scraps of a shrinking continental industrial base.
5. Limiting corporate and investor ‘rights’: New trade rules would eliminate quasi-judicial kangaroo courts (in which foreign businesses have unique rights to curtail national policy-making). Disputes over trade practices should be managed through traditional mediation and arbitration processes involving national states (not private businesses). The powers of investors and business must be subordinated to democratic processes reflecting the public interest.
6. Regulating digital trade and tech: International commerce is being profoundly impacted by the rise of enormous global high-technology corporations that dominate processors, digital trade, AI, and social media. A few tech giants, all based in the US and owned by mega-billionaires, dominate new technologies, financial markets, and even politics and culture. Residents of all three countries will benefit from regulations to protect data privacy, ensure national digital sovereignty (including the right and capacity to safely store data domestically), limit oligopolistic power in internet and digital markets, and protect domestic media from the cannibalism of the online giants.

In addition to these six priorities, a strategy to democratize North American trade would address other concerns, including the energy transition, sustainable water management, and agriculture and food security. The three countries would also commit to complementary efforts to promote full employment and strong macroeconomic conditions throughout the continental economy. When all economies are growing strongly, each has more opportunity to benefit from expanded trade and mutual specialization. Above all, a vision of North American trade that protects and uplifts the ability of citizens and communities to make their own decisions over matters of economic, social, and environmental well-being, is a continental economy that will be democratic as well as prosperous.

Economic Rationale and Feasibility

Planned, managed, cooperative trade and development works better
Conventional market-oriented economic theories claim that free trade always benefits both sides. But those models are based on utopian assumptions (perfect competition, balanced trade, full employment, income distribution that automatically reflects productivity, no pricing power for large companies, and others) that have no relationship to reality. That’s why trade imbalances, capital flight, and unemployment – all things the neoclassical models rule out by assumption – are the normal state of affairs in modern trade.

In the real world, stronger international economic linkages can be mutually beneficial – but only if managed through sensible rules, macroeconomic planning, and economic democracy. A managed, mutual approach to boosting investment, job-creation, and living standards throughout the continent will benefit US workers far more than Trump’s imperial attacks on other countries. And a joint commitment to improving labor, environmental, and democratic practices across the continent will especially benefit US workers, who continue to suffer from labor laws that are the weakest of any industrial country.

LIVE 9:00 am Eastern time, Streaming Anytime:

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

Today we discuss:

• The Trump administration approves a $2.8 billion sale of heavy bombs to Israel, in what would be among the largest deliveries of U.S. munitions there even as public support for the country declines. The proposed sale would include 40,000 one-ton bombs whose use by Israel in Gaza and Lebanon has drawn international anger because of the civilian harm caused by their wide blast radius.

• ICE went on a hiring binge last year. The agency offered $50,000 signing bonuses. The hiring happened so quickly that many new officers were put on the streets before being adequately vetted. The agency has begun quietly firing some of the recruits—and some are taking their own lives.

• FBI Director Kash Patel defends a new policy at the bureau that does not immediately disqualify potential hires who have engaged in bestiality.

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The post Trump Sends $2.8 Billion More to Israel | DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

“How can I be of service?”

That was the phone message Gloria Steinem kept leaving at the office of the African National Congress Parliamentary Women’s Caucus in Cape Town, South Africa in 1997.

I had arrived in the country a year earlier, working as a young staffer for some of the first women elected to lead South Africa’s new democracy. When they asked if I wanted to call that American woman back, I jumped at the chance.

Soon Gloria was on her way to Cape Town, and I was assigned to pick her up at the airport.

As this global icon—something she hated to be called—stepped into my rusted car, the first thing I remember is asking her to keep her head near the window as exhaust crept in through a hole in the floor. (She didn’t flinch.)

When she turned to me, she was both generous and matter-of-fact: “How can I help?”

The road ahead will not be easy. It will require new leadership and new lessons. But we do know how to begin.

With that, I became one of countless women who would become part of Gloria’s ever-expanding circle. For the next three decades, a group of us would be invited into the colorful living room of her New York brownstone to share updates on our work and to inevitably be asked once again: “How can I help?”

After Gloria’s death, we—and millions of others—are left reflecting on the lessons of her life. How can we make sense of a time when our politics seem to be the very opposite of her life’s work?

She wouldn’t have allowed me to ponder that question for long.

In the dark days following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in 2022, I went to visit her. My group chats with women I’d spent my career working alongside were blowing up. My nieces called me, furious and worried. All of us were terrified and angry.

When I walked into that familiar yellow living room on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, the grief I expected to find was nowhere in sight. “It’s okay, the pendulum is swinging one way now, but it will swing back. We will get through this.”

Along with wit and humor, Gloria’s most defining characteristic was her optimism. She called herself a “hope-a-holic.”

Years of bitter backlash to the feminist movement didn’t make her cynical, it made her hopeful. She had seen the other side of backlash: the progress that suddenly emerges after years where nothing seems easy.

She also understood intuitively that despair was a political weapon, and she refused to supply it.

Adversaries of the feminist movement would change over time. Whether it was Phyllis Schlafly or Jerry Falwell, Rush Limbaugh or that guy at the end of the bar, they still seemed to have something in common. They were counting on us to feel hopeless and helpless. Their power depended on us questioning our own.

With Donald Trump as our bully-in-chief, that’s a lesson we should remember now. We’ve seen him before.

Gloria didn’t believe that history’s pendulum automatically swings back on its own. It swings because people organize, build movements, and refuse to give up.

Perhaps one of her most important lessons was also her most prescient. As we face the most misogynist administration in my lifetime, we also face the most racist, with relentless attacks on civil rights; diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI); and the truth about US history. Gloria understood deeply that there could be no gender justice without racial justice. As she said in 2017, “If it’s White, it’s not feminism—by definition, it includes all women.”

She acted on that commitment by ensuring that Black women and women of color spoke with her side by side, including brilliant activists like Dorothy Pitman Hughes and Florynce “Flo” Kennedy. She was also canny and practical about her power as a white woman. She saw that she could reach other white women, get them into a room, and open a conversation about upending racism and sexism together.

Ever the organizer, Gloria was also deeply practical. Inviting another leader to speak by her side meant you could get twice the audience. Movements are built in crowded rooms.

Donald Trump’s entire project can be summed up in one word: division. He knows that sowing mistrust is key to consolidating power at the top. As long as we are fighting with each other, we won’t see how much we have in common.

It’s the exact opposite of the ethos that came to define Gloria’s worldview, which she often summed up as, “We are linked, not ranked.”

Her death comes just as a multiracial, multigenerational coalition is required to defeat authoritarianism. Gloria’s principled—and practical—approach to movement building is now a road map. The bigger the movement, the further and faster the pendulum will swing.

A decade ago, a reporter asked Gloria if she was ready to pass the torch to the next generation of activists.

“I’m not giving up my torch, thank you very much,” she replied. “I am using it to light other people’s torches.”

As we raise our own torches, we light up a world in immense crisis. The road ahead will not be easy. It will require new leadership and new lessons.

But we do know how to begin. Now it’s our turn to ask: “How can I help?”

The late, great, farmer-essayist, Wendell Berry, wrote critically in Unsettling of America how our “modern” ideal of farming failed to include people. Asking, “Where are the farmers?” back in 1977, he warned how unquestionably embracing machine and chemical technology to “save labor” and control the environment will destroy not only nature, but also our rural relationships and communities.

Prophetic as he was, Berry did not foresee the extent to which our government—the Trump administration particularly—would take advantage of farmers and quicken the pace of rural desolation.

Look no further than the recent executive order, which against farmer protests, allows the import of over 600 million pounds of foreign beef into the US. While it was pitched as a way to lower prices for consumers, in fact, we now know that Brazilian billionaire Joesley Batista, owner of the international agribusiness giant, JBS, lobbied President Donald Trump for this deal. Adding insult to injury, the Iran war’s supply chain disruptions have led to increases in fertilizer and diesel prices, saddling farmers with more costs, while the retaliatory tariffs from the ill-conceived trade war with Canada will cut into US dairy export markets.

More than just numbers, people are relationships, families, and communities. Such recognition should guide our policies, which House Resolution 1286 and its supporters are trying to remind our legislators of.

Far from free, not to mention fair trade, Trump’s maneuvers show how our corporate-dominated supply chains are not only fragile, but prone to corrupt dealings that hurt working people. Demands for trade justice, with some alliances taking shape among farmers, workers, and small-business groups, show an alternative path forward.

Specifically, recently introduced House Resolution 1286 offers something like a blueprint for how working people in the countryside and city can unite around key principles that would reign in corporate abuses of power.

That Trump has such power to manipulate trade is due to how he decided back in July of this year not to renew the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), formerly the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, for another 16 years. This doesn’t mean that there is no regional trade deal, but that every year from now through 2036, our government will have to sit down with Canada and Mexico to negotiate terms.

This yearly schedule of negotiating the terms of the USMCA could be in the interest of working people if we had a government that stood by their side. Unfortunately, that is simply not the case, especially with our current administration.

The economic toll that the NAFTA-turned-USMCA agreement took on working people has been severe. By Trump’s first term, studies showed that over 240,000 farms were lost in the United States thanks to the trade deal, while in Mexico, that number exceeded 2 million. The USMCA update, accomplished in 2019, has not been a boon for US farmers. From 2017 to 2024, we have seen a 8% decline of producers down to 1.88 million. Dairy farmers, who Trump loves to tout in dealing with Canada, have taken it on the chin year after year, with August of this year showing Wisconsin’s dairy herd count falling below 5,000 for the first time.

Let’s be real—Trump has no interest in treating the economic malaise that farmers are experiencing and that he rode twice into the White House. If anything, he’s making their problems worse.

To the contrary, House Resolution 1286 presents worker- and farmer- centered principles for trade in place of the crony capitalism and shady deals that Trump forces on us.

Within the resolution, demands include that trade policies ought to ensure fair wages for workers domestically and abroad, strengthen anti-monopoly policies, promote strong environmental standards, while also featuring data protection policies and regulations for Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Currently with 51 co-sponsors and endorsed by multiple organizations, including Citizens Trade Campaign, the AFL-CIO, United Steelworkers (USW), International Association of Machinists (IAM Union), United Auto Workers (UAW), Communications Workers of America (CWA), Sierra Club, National Family Farm Coalition, Public Citizen, Rethink Trade, and others, the resolution is definitely a wish list. Passing it will not automatically coerce the Trump regime to come to its senses and do right by working people. Still, calling for a set of principles to include in trade agreements is a good first step at much needed policy reform.

Wendell Berry’s work reminds us of the importance of making people central to economic affairs, especially in agriculture. More than just numbers, people are relationships, families, and communities. Such recognition should guide our policies, which House Resolution 1286 and its supporters are trying to remind our legislators of. While doubtful that Trump will listen, what could get his attention are the multiple groups and their members calling for change. And if our message is not heard, we may have to follow Berry in what he also taught us on multiple occasions, from marching against the Vietnam War to protesting mountaintop-removal coal mining, and take it to the streets.