As many of us were showing up this past Saturday for our local No Kings marches, with over 3,000 of them underway, the movement’s organizers suddenly found themselves locked out of their Instagram account for hours.

Meta blames it on a software glitch or something close to that, but that episode illustrates exactly the concern progressives and anti-fascists have been voicing for years: that Big Tech and the billionaires behind it have way too much power, and that they are using it to control public opinion to their own benefit.

Then on Tuesday morning, Christiane Amanpour announced that after reporting for CNN for 43 years she’s leaving the network. While she didn’t mention nepo-baby David Ellison who now owns the network, she didn’t have to: back in May at a journalism summit in London she said she was “concerned” about Ellison ownership and how it might bring about the same kind of “ideological realignment” that he’d already imposed on CBS News.

What we’re seeing here with these two companies in microcosm is that the men who own the social media digital square where a near-majority of people get their news, and the people who own the TV networks and papers like The Washington Post, are the same handful of billionaires with political and financial axes to grind that fit nicely with Trump’s vision of a strongman state run by a ruling elite.

Whether it turns out that Meta did something for politics or it was just an error doesn’t change the fact that one company run by one man can switch off a national movement’s megaphone and doesn’t legally owe anybody an explanation.

(The good folks at Indivisible have a shocking list of egregious political insertions and manipulations by Facebook over the years that you can read here.)

Down in Brazil, Facebook deactivated one of lefty Lula’s Facebook pages just before the election, leading a top judge in that country to rule that Meta can’t throttle political content, restrict searches, or remove posts in ways that create a political imbalance. Meta denies bias, but the AP notes they never explained why Lula’s channels were getting beat down on Facebook’s algorithm.

Here at home, after Trump worked out a TikTok deal with an investor group led by Larry Ellison, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office said it had “independently confirmed instances” of suppressed content there critical of Trump.

TikTok says it’s a glitch, but a study published in Nature in May found TikTok’s algorithm had systematically favored Republican content in three swing states during 2024 when the Chinese—who Trump is courting—still largely owned the platform. Another Nature study this year found X’s feed measurably pushes users to the right so quickly that it just takes a few weeks of exposure to happen.

And this is nothing new. Back in 2017, Google rolled out a change to the news and opinion websites they were pointing people to that caused AlterNet, then one of the biggest progressive sites in the country, to lose 40 percent of its search traffic almost overnight, about 1.2 million readers a month, along with progressive sites Common Dreams, Truthout, and a dozen others.

No announcement, no hearing, no appeal.

After throttling comes self-censorship, which I watched Sunday night on CNN as a host gave a warm, friendly interview to a Republican congressman who told several easily debunked naked lies and she never called him on a single one. No memo from Ellison was necessary; Timothy Snyder calls it “anticipatory obedience.”

I’ve lived through this movie before. In late 2006, as Mitt Romney was leaving the Massachusetts governorship to run for president, his company, Bain Capital co-led a $26.7 billion leveraged buyout of Clear Channel, the radio network that carried Air America programming to around 90% of American households.

I helped start the network, wrote its first business plan, and was on its air, regularly beating Limbaugh in the ratings, and we helped get Obama into the White House. But when Bain took it over they started dropping us off their stations until, in 2010, we couldn’t sell enough advertising to stay in business. I can’t prove this was a sneaky trick by Romney or Bain, but that’s the point; we have virtually no rules or regulations to require disclosure to protect our public square.

Why are billionaires so interested in owning our social, on-air, and online media? Because regulating the conversation Americans can see and hear protects everything else they own.

Lewis Powell laid it out for the Chamber of Commerce in his 1971 memo, telling corporate America that television “plays such a predominant role in shaping the thinking, attitudes and emotions of our people” that business had better take it over.

It took them fifty years, Project 2025, and the internet to finish the job, but here we are.

— Zuckerberg paid Trump $25 million for having suspended his account after the January 6th attempt to end our democracy. Then when Trump came into office again Zuck scrapped fact-checking, and has been a regular visitor to the White House ever since. Common Dreams reports the Justice Department, just by coincidence of course, has since halted a federal probe of Zuck’s company.

— ABC paid Trump $15 million, Paramount paid $16 million over a 60 Minutes edit, and in June Trump approved the Ellisons’ $110 billion merger without demanding a single change. Even Gavin Newsom caved on that one, presumably for fear of offending the billionaires.

— Meanwhile Trump’s FCC chairman, Brendan Carr, has openly threatened broadcasters’ licenses over coverage of Trump scandals that he calls “news distortions.”

This is not only wrong, it’s ahistoric. From the founding of America, we’ve treated information systems as a public trust. George Washington’s administration, via the Postal Service Act of 1792, subsidized American newspapers with a special one-cent charge to deliver anywhere in the country while a letter could cost a quarter.

Washington and Madison understood that a republic can’t survive an ignorant or misinformed citizenry.

The result of that act was that between 1783 and 1820 we went from 73 newspapers in America to over 620.

Telegraph lines, also privately owned, were made “common carriers” by legislation that required them to carry everybody’s messages at the same rate.

Radio and television broadcasters got their licenses in exchange for serving what the Fairness Doctrine called “the public interest, convenience and necessity” which was generally enforced as requiring honest news reporting hourly on radio and during primetime on TV. Reagan killed that in 1987 and fast-tracked Rupert Murdoch’s citizenship, paving the way for Fox “News.”

But then the neoliberals got into their deregulation act. Bill Clinton signed the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which erased the national cap of 40 radio stations per company.

Clear Channel exploded from 40 stations to nearly 1,200. In 2017 Trump’s first FCC chairman, Ajit Pai, repealed the rule that kept one company from owning the newspaper and the TV station in the same town, by coincidence the same year Google buried AlterNet.

And Section 230 of that law made it so that while newspaper publishers can still be held responsible for the content of their publications, owners of social media can’t be. At the time, Nigel Peacock and I were making a good living moderating content for CompuServe; all that went away when they no longer needed to care if there were drug sales or human trafficking on their sites.

What’s truly astonishing is that the internet itself was built by our government (DARPA and the National Science Foundation) with our tax dollars; these oligarchs who lord over our content today didn’t build this public square, they simply appropriated it and now insist it’s their private property.

The internet, in fact, is the first vehicle for the widespread dissemination of information since George Washington’s day that hasn’t been subject to any meaningful form of regulation or blocking of monopolies.

John Sherman, when he wrote the antitrust law that bears his name in 1890, put it in words that could have been found on a No Kings sign this past weekend:

“If we will not endure a king as a political power, we should not endure a king over the production, transportation, and sale of any of the necessaries of life.”

As I laid out in The Hidden History of Monopolies: How Big Business Destroyed the American Dream, Robert Bork and the Reagan Justice Department rewrote that law into meaninglessness.

While pre-Reagan we had enormous diversity in media ownership and every downtown and mall was filled with small local businesses, forty-five years later there’s not a single significant industry in America that’s not dominated by a small handful of companies that typically behave like cartels, our media is in a half-dozen hands, and our downtowns and malls are nothing but big national chains.

Sherman’s law being gutted by Reagan and subsequent neoliberals is the only reason the Ellisons, Zuck, Musk, and Alphabet can own so much of our nation’s information system and exercise such extraordinary power over public opinion and elections.

There are some quick and easy solutions:

• Break up the empires with reinvigorated anti-trust laws.
• End Section 230 so social media owners have responsibility for what’s on their platforms.
• Restore the statutory cap on how many news outlets a single company or family can own.
• Require algorithms that manipulate our feeds to be publicly disclosed, and that people can get a non-algorithmically modified feed if they want.

And then there are some truly transformational bigger solutions that America could consider:

• Create a 21st century Digital Postal Services Act that establishes a publicly-owned, publicly financed, independently governed national social network, with no advertising, no billionaire owners, no political manipulation of feeds, and no selling personal information. Call it the United States Digital Postal Social Service, with constitutional protections against government censorship and surveillance.
• Establish a “right to digital exit” where you own all the information about you that the social media sites have collected (followers, contacts, photographs, posts, and social connections), with the power to edit, remove, or take them to a different site. You can change phone companies and still call your friends; why not the same with social media?
• Prohibit advertising based on sensitive personal information and cross-site behavioral surveillance, while still allowing contextual advertising and subscriptions. This could restrict political microtargeting and secret tailoring of messages to different voters.
• Codify a democratic right to reach your own followers, so your messages (other than spam, fraud, threats, harassment, and illegal material) aren’t limited, shadow-banned, or otherwise manipulated by the social media site’s ownership.
• Outlaw government contractors from owning social media sites that they can use to promote their own interests that are, essentially, being funded by our tax dollars.

We don’t let Elon Musk own the Interstate Highway System, or Mark Zuckerberg own the Postal Service, or Larry Ellison own the streets and sidewalks where Americans gather to protest.

Why, then, do we let them have such extraordinary control over the “digital streets and sidewalks” where Americans increasingly gather, organize, debate, and learn about the world?

Washington Post reporter Heidi Levine traveled to the occupied West Bank to document Palestinians harvesting olives. On Friday, Israeli settlers brutally attacked her, leaving her traumatized and hospitalized.

Despite carrying gear visibly identifying her as a photographer and wearing a protective vest clearly marked “PRESS,” she was surrounded by settlers who shoved her to the ground and relentlessly assaulted her.

According to reports, she suffered four broken vertebrae, a broken rib, severe lacerations across her body, and a finger that was severely split open.

Heidi Levine deserves justice, victims of settler violence deserve accountability, and the evidence warrants action.

In her words: “Luckily I had my flak jacket and helmet, otherwise I probably wouldn’t even be here, because they just kept kicking me and kicking me.”

This assault deserves an investigation and swift prosecution of those responsible.

It also calls on Americans to examine the deeper story she was covering.

If attackers are violently assaulting a photojournalist working for a globally influential publication, what protection can Palestinian farmers expect—especially when the cameras leave?

That question connects olive groves in the occupied West Bank to legislation in the US Senate led by Democratic Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen along with Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

Senate Resolution 852 would require the State Department to provide information and assessments concerning investigations into the killings of Americans by Israeli forces or violent settlers, as well as other human rights abuses in the occupied West Bank.

Last month, although a historic 47 senators voted, largely along party lines, to move the measure forward, the Senate ultimately failed to discharge the resolution from the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee.

The assault on Levine is a wake-up call for the senate to reconsider.

This type of targeted violence extends beyond farmers gathering the harvest.

On October 12, at the beginning of this year’s harvest, Israeli forces uprooted and bulldozed 400 olive trees in Beit Rima, northwest of Ramallah, to make way for a new settlement outpost.

This is far from an isolated incident. So far this year alone, Israeli forces and settlers have uprooted and destroyed around 50,000 olive trees.

For a Palestinian family, olive groves equal years of labor. A family tending its trees is earning income and maintaining its connection to land. Destroying the trees or stealing the crop makes life untenable.

In April, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that at least 45 Palestinian communities had been completely displaced since January 2023 because of settler attacks and related restrictions.

Those figures describe a process often camouflaged behind abstract language.

Journalists documenting the harvest are simultaneously documenting the devastating toll of settler violence on Palestinian lives.

Attacking members of the press threatens individual livelihoods and lives, but also the public’s ability to stay informed and understand what is happening.

Our response must protect the people in the photographs, too. A farmer’s right to safety cannot depend on whether a foreign correspondent is nearby.

Washington has a practical place to begin.

Senate Resolution 852 requests information on Israel’s human rights practices under Section 502B(c) of the Foreign Assistance Act.

The September 29 Senate vote denied American families and victims of settler violence an opportunity to demand accountability for conduct that should inform Congress’ decisions about American security assistance.

The reporting requirement in the resolution is consequential, providing the State Department 30 days to respond.

Lawmakers who believe such a requirement could disrupt an important security relationship must explain why that relationship shouldn’t withstand scrutiny.

Congress should use the findings to pursue credible investigations, examine failures to protect civilians, and enforce applicable human rights conditions.

Levine’s assault has brought renewed focus to the dangerous circumstances Palestinians face daily while tending to their land.
Whether that attention matters will depend on whether a response leads to consequences for perpetrators.

Heidi Levine deserves justice, victims of settler violence deserve accountability, and the evidence warrants action.

The US Senate can begin demanding answers by reviving Senate Resolution 852 and unanimously passing this measure.

Appearing on NBC’s "Meet the Press" on August 16, 2026, Attorney General Todd Blanche admitted that he has abandoned the principle that has guided the Justice Department since Watergate.

Asked if he would pledge to act independently of the White House, he said: “No, I’m not going to pledge that. And no attorney general should make that pledge.”

He is tragically wrong. Blanche has forgotten that he works for all Americans, not the single man he refers to as “the boss.”

Blanche might consider this: Trump is a fickle friend who can quickly become a fierce foe.

In the near term, he’s angling to thwart the midterm elections in which Republicans are poised to lose President Donald Trump’s death grip on Congress. In the long run, the nation will bear the consequences of his weaponization of the Justice Department for years to come.

Blanche’s Pursuit of Trump’s Retribution Agenda

Attorney General Pam Bondi failed in her valiant efforts to satisfy Trump’s obsession to punish all of his perceived enemies. Her most visible failures involved former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Career prosecutors at the Department of Justice (DOJ) found the evidence insufficient to indict Comey for posting a photograph of seashells forming “86 47” on a North Carolina beach. US Attorney Eric Siebert—whom Trump had nominated—recommended against charging him.

Career prosecutors likewise informed Siebert that the evidence was insufficient to indict James, who had won a civil fraud case against Trump and his organization.

Trump didn’t care that experienced prosecutors found the claims against his targets wanting. In a social media post that he intended as a private message to then-Attorney General Bondi, Trump told her to get moving against Comey and James. Trump urged Bondi to give the job to Lindsay Halligan, an unqualified White House staff attorney whose prior experience consisted primarily of defending insurance companies against homeowners and corporate plaintiffs.

Bondi obeyed, and Halligan used dubious tactics to obtain indictments of Comey and James. But a federal court dismissed the indictments, ruling that Halligan’s appointment had been illegal from the outset.

Two weeks after dismissal of James’ indictment, the Justice Department tried again. In a remarkable rebuke, the grand jury refused.

On April 1, 2026, Trump fired Bondi.

With Bondi’s departure, then-Deputy Attorney General Blanche—Trump’s personal defense counsel between his two presidential terms—became acting AG. Before the month ended, Blanche had secured Comey’s re-indictment.

Five weeks later, Trump said that he would nominate Blanche as Bondi’s permanent replacement. On August 8, 2026, he was confirmed on a 50-49 Senate vote.

Long before his confirmation, Blanche had moved quickly to please “his boss.” Here’s a sample:

• In July 2025, Blanche was involved with senior White House staff in the Situation Room to develop strategies minimizing the ongoing damage to Trump personally from the Epstein files.
• In March 2026, he boasted that the Justice Department had rid itself of more than 200 career prosecutors and FBI agents—anyone “who had anything to do with prosecuting Trump.”
• In May 2026, he alone signed the document that—contrary to federal law—gave Trump and his family immunity from Internal Revenue Service investigations in return for settling Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS that a federal judge found to be a sham. Apparently, Blanche ignored his prior pledge to recuse himself from Trump-related matters.

Blanche’s Pursuit of Trump’s Attack on Democracy

Since his August confirmation, Blanche has promoted Trump’s assault on the democratic process:

• Despite the uniform rejection of the DOJ’s position by 26 federal courts—including Trump-appointed judges—he has continued to pursue lawsuits seeking state voter rolls as part of Trump’s effort to subvert the upcoming midterms.
• In September, he asserted without evidence that “common sense” proved what is demonstrably false—that mail-in voting presents a greater risk of fraud than in-person voting with identification. That specious argument is another element of Trump’s crusade to undermine public confidence in the democratic process.
• In October, he relaxed longstanding DOJ rules limiting presidential appointees in the Justice Department from participation in political gatherings. By then, he had already hit the campaign trail for Republicans and spoken at the party’s midterm convention.

And most recently, Blanche has taken the preemptive effort to discredit the results of the upcoming midterms to new levels:

In violation of the Justice Department’s 60-day rule against actions that could affect the outcome of an approaching election, the Justice Department executed a search of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.)’s home only 22 days before the election in which she is on the ballot.

In violation of federal and state law (and probably a prior court order), DOJ sued California after demanding that it use the federal government’s unreliable database to purge 20,000 voters from the state’s rolls. But as California’s secretary of state explained in rejecting DOJ’s pre-suit, 48-hour ultimatum:

To give just one example, in a similar incident in the State of Nevada, DHS initially alleged that Nevada’s voter roll included nearly 16,000 potential non-citizens. However, after working with the State of Nevada, DHS officials failed to establish that a single non-citizen was on the voter rolls.

Blanche’s lawsuit is another Trumpian effort to promote public doubt about the integrity of the midterm elections and lay the groundwork for baseless post-election challenges.

Blanche’s Reckoning Has Only Begun

Blanche’s actions are already costing him:

• He has been the subject of ethics complaints relating to his work at DOJ.
• US District Court Judge Kathleen Williams made a direct judicial referral of Blanche to the New York bar—where he is licensed—based on his “troubling testimony” and the questionable legality of the Trump-IRS immunity agreement that he alone signed.
• Federal courts across the country have blasted Blanche’s Department of Justice as no longer worthy of the “presumption of regularity.” Federal judges no longer trust DOJ attorneys to tell them the truth.

None of this fazes Blanche. Perhaps his ambition was to be Trump’s latest “Roy Cohn”—Trump’s infamous early mentor who rose to notoriety as Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s (R-Wis.) chief legal counsel during the 1950s “Red Scare.” If so, he has succeeded.

But Blanche might consider this: Trump is a fickle friend who can quickly become a fierce foe. And eventually, Cohn was disbarred.

MAGA is an insidious political “movement” that is the inevitable conclusion of the project started with the infamous Powell Memorandum in 1972. Formally titled “Attack on American Free Enterprise System,” the Powell Memo is a call to arms for the oligarchy in the US to push for a set of policies that benefit the wealthy while waging a narrative battle designed to get the working class to support these policies to their own detriment. The Powell Memo is not hypothetical: it is the blueprint that the modern conservative movement has followed, and the result some 50 years later is MAGA.

The central narrative of MAGA is essentially this: Some other group of people is preventing you (typically white, Christian, straight, cisgender men) from having the basic things in life that you deserve. This outside group of oppressors can be whoever the Dear Leader Donald Trump says it is, although it can never be the wealthy elites and Republican lawmakers who are actually leading the oppression of the working class of the country, because the purpose of the narrative is to distract working and poor people away from the true source of their problems by keeping them fixated on a fictional boogeyman.

No group has been more frequently smeared and shoehorned into this narrative role by MAGA than immigrants. Donald Trump has famously said that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the US; that Mexico is sending drugs, crime, and rapists into the US; and spread so many vile lies about Haitian immigrants (who were in the US legally through Temporary Protected Status) that Justice Elena Kagan insightfully pointed out that the conservative majority in Mullin v. Doe (the case that paved the way for the administration to end TPS for Haitians and other groups) couldn’t even stomach putting Trump’s racist statements into their opinion when she wrote, “The evidence they have offered includes statements by the President so repellent and racially infected that the majority declines to put them in print.”

If the MAGA immigration narrative is not defeated, the soil will be fertile for a new right-wing fascist to come to power.

Immigration is therefore the core of the MAGA mythology. MAGA primarily exists under the narrative bargain of protecting white Americans from (Black and brown) immigrants, and in exchange, the base gives Trump power and condones his authoritarianism. It’s important to remember that even though some people are happy to support fascism no matter what, fascism does not get broad support unless people think that they have to support it because it is necessary to prevent some worse or existential harm from happening to them. If the choice is voting for a dictator or allowing the country to be destroyed by whatever the outside threat is, more people will choose the former than they would have otherwise, which can be enough to tip the scales and usher in a fascist regime.

Immigration served as one of the main selling points for Trump in 2024. The allure of this “You need me to protect you from marauding immigrants.” narrative was so powerful, that it even managed to sway members of the Latino community, who have subsequently turned away from him. When the rhetoric of good guys stopping bad guys to make the country better turns into your friends, family, and neighbors being menaced by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) while living under an even worse economic reality where nothing is affordable, the fascism bargain suddenly doesn’t seem so appealing. To be clear, I am not blaming the Latino community for the rise of Trump, as Trump is a creature of the overwhelmingly white male constituency that supports him. I merely point to Trump’s support with Latinos as evidence of the appeal that fascism can have for people and how people will vote against their own interest if they feel like they have to.

Despite the fact that immigration is the rhetorical center of MAGA, the Democrats have consistently failed to come up with a narrative and set of policies to counter it. In her presidential debate with Trump, former Vice President Kamala Harris infamously touted her “tough on border enforcement” credentials, effectively ceding the ground to Trump and adopting his framework that immigrants are dangerous and that immigration is a bad thing. In The Art of War, Sun-Tzu wrote, “Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.” He also wrote, “Sow the seeds of success in fertile ground.” If you are playing by the enemy’s rules and trying to win under their terms, you are destined to lose, which is exactly what happened. If you are telling the public that immigrants are dangerous, then how can you be surprised when the candidate with the most hard-line approach on immigration gets the most support? It is truly political malpractice that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) spent untold millions of dollars on corporate consultants, but they still could not figure out this basic concept.

Even though Trump is now a historically unpopular president, the Democrats continue to largely coast on the issue of immigration. Instead of offering their own narrative framework and policy agenda, they are content to sit back and decry Trump’s immigration policies. This strategy fits perfectly into the DNC’s preferred tactic of having it both ways. They can label Trump’s policies as extreme (which they are), but when they get pressed on immigration issues, they can tack back to the center and try to say that they are actually the real immigration enforcers. It didn’t work for Kamala Harris in 2024, and even though Trump’s time will inevitably come to an end, if the MAGA immigration narrative is not defeated, the soil will be fertile for a new right-wing fascist to come to power.

The Democrats’ strategy of saying no and doing nothing is like trying to chop down a tree by picking off the leaves. As Bruce Lee wrote in the Tao of Jeet Kune Do: “We shall find the truth when we examine the problem. The problem is never apart from the answer. The problem is the answer—understanding the problem dissolves the problem.” The only way to get rid of the poisonous MAGA tree is to chop down its trunk and uproot it. Once you understand that the immigration lie is the core of MAGA’s support, the answer becomes clear: We need Democrats to adopt a new rhetorical and policy framework on immigration. The guiding principles for the pro-immigration rhetorical framework should be:

1. Immigration is a good thing, not a bad thing. The benefits of immigration for our country are substantial, and reducing immigration is counterproductive and harmful to the interests of Americans.
2. Immigrants (both documented and undocumented) commit crime at a lower rate than native born US citizens, and immigrants do not suppress the wages of American workers. Instead, crime and low wages are caused by right-wing policies such as unlimited guns on the streets, the war on drugs, austerity in the social safety net, failure to raise the minimum wage, union prevention and busting laws, failure to tax wealth, etc.
3. Our immigration policy should be to increase the avenues of legal immigration instead of criminalizing and shutting down pathways for immigration. In fact, illegal immigration is largely caused by right-wing policies that: A) make it hard for people to come to the US and stay legally; and B) create disruption and chaos in Latin America and the Caribbean, which leads to people fleeing desperate situations and needing a place to seek refuge.
4. Militarized immigration enforcement inevitably boomerangs back on US citizens and will become a tool used to strip people of their rights and oppress them.

Supporting progressive immigration policies is important, and I will outline a few progressive immigration reforms below, but I think getting the rhetorical framework right first is important for two reasons. First, the “immigrants are dangerous” lie has been pummeled into the minds of Americans for decades, and it absolutely needs to be countered. If people think immigrants are an existential threat, they will continue to be primed to support right-wing policies, even though those policies will make their lives worse. We have been subconsciously duped for generations into thinking that immigrants are dangerous and that taking them into the US is an act of charity. If we continue to think of immigration as a form of charity that requires sacrifice, we will always have right-wing politicians pushing regressive policies under the justification that Democrats are selling out the American population to foreigners, when the reality is that immigration is good for Americans. Immigration is therefore not an act of charity, but it is in our own best interest, and right-wing immigration policies are therefore harmful to America.

Second, immigration law is complex, and the problems with our immigration system are numerous. There is no easy, single policy fix for our immigration system in the same way that Medicare For All would be a single policy that would have a huge, positive impact on healthcare in America. Even though there is inherent complexity to the immigration system, Democrats need to push for progressive immigration policies such as:

1. Abolish ICE and end militarized immigration enforcement. ICE and other immigration enforcement agencies in the Department of Homeland Security have become the personal brown shirt army of Donald Trump, as seen most recently in their raid of Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s (D-Minn.) home and attempt to denaturalize her.
2. Create a humane and fully legal system for people to claim asylum at the border, instead of the quasi-legal kangaroo court system we have now.
3. Codify Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals into law through an act of Congress and give Dreamers a way to become Lawful Permanent Residents (green card holders).
4. Create more visa categories and programs to allow people to come and stay legally more easily.
5. Radically reform and properly fund US Citizenship and Immigration Services in order to make it a properly functioning agency and reduce processing times, which have become even worse under Trump, resulting in family separation, suffering, and depressed economic activity.
6. Create more pathways for people who have status issues to rectify their status without having to leave or go through detention and removal proceedings (Immigration Court).
7. End the outdated country quota system for green cards and greatly expand the number of green cards that can be issued each year.
8. Strip the president of his authority to suspend visa issuance, entry, and TPS arbitrarily.
9. Create a legal pathway for the largely Indian and Chinese H-1B workforce to get green cards without having to wait for decades in H-1B status where they can be exploited by employers and often have to watch their kids “age out” and become ineligible to stay permanently.

Congress has immense power under the Constitution to set immigration laws into place. We need Democratic candidates for Congress to adopt a pro-immigration, progressive narrative, or else we will continue to have MAGA and right-wing candidates win elections and implement regressive, oppressive, and counterproductive immigration policies, that ultimately harm both the American and foreign-born population.

With midterms fast approaching, it seems that all eyes are turned toward what will happen pre- and post-election. There is nonstop coverage of how much money is being spent on local, state, and federal races, as well as the ongoing threats to our democracy.

The political moment is stressful, particularly for working women and nonbinary people of color. Prices are rising, wages are stagnant, and it seems harder than ever to get ahead. Despite the stress of the political moment, there is reason for hope, and we can find those reasons at the polls.

When we vote, we show up for ourselves, our futures, and for collective power. When we show up to the polls, we increase our chances of winning the gains needed for working people to take care of ourselves and our families. That’s what this election is all about.

If collective power was truly meaningless, we wouldn’t see so many attempts to limit it.

We know there are policies that will improve the lives of our communities, and we know they are achievable. We have seen what advancements in equal pay and workplace protections are possible when women organize and policymakers listen.

The power of organizing is why we at 9to5 recently held a fundraiser and rallying point, “Built By Us, For All of Us.” When we raise our own money and move it on our own terms, we can speak truth to power and fight for our communities without compromise. Real power comes from neighbors organizing and showing up for each other, not billionaires and corporate interests spending to divide us and keep money at the top.

If collective power was truly meaningless, we wouldn’t see so many attempts to limit it. If we couldn’t win, we wouldn’t see racial gerrymandering in the wake of Louisiana v. Callais, threats of armed federal agents outside of polls, or the looming specter of legislation like the SAVE Act (which would require documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote, adding even more roadblocks to the process for women, LGBTQ+ folks, and people of color).

We have too much to gain to let efforts aimed at limiting our collective power stop us from being heard. Instead, they further compel us to respond with action. We need elected officials in office who will fight for policies that allow for safe and affordable living and working conditions. It is high time for policies that expand workplace harassment protections, close the gender pay gap for women, and pursue climate and utility justice.

We are long overdue for a national paid leave policy in the US that would expand paid family and medical leave policies at the state and federal level. It is proven that paid family and medical leave improves employee well-being and workplace productivity. Expanding paid family and medical leave policies at the state and federal level could change workers’ lives. They would no longer have to choose between getting paid or taking time to care for themselves and their loved ones.

Childcare affordability is a serious concern for voters across political ideologies, and parents can’t work without childcare. Investing in affordable, accessible, quality childcare supports small businesses and state infrastructure as well as parents, children, and communities. Lawmakers can push through false narratives to give the necessary resources to the workforce behind the workforce.

Housing justice and affordability is another issue at the top of minds; the cost of housing tied for the second most pressing issue for Americans in a recent Gallup poll. Everyone needs a warm, safe, and stable place to live; policies prioritizing safe housing and renters' rights can bring this into reach for families across the country.

These are all issues that can be advanced if we elect leaders who will fight for our interests in office.

Every single voice counts, especially in this political moment. When we come together, speak out, and vote for officials who care about and answer to their constituents, we invite the possibility of true change.

In the highlands of Pernambuco, Brazil, the Xukuru do Ororubá Indigenous people are bringing a damaged landscape back to life.

After generations of colonization, land occupation, deforestation, and intensive agriculture, their ancestral territory had suffered profound ecological damage. Forests had diminished, wildlife had disappeared, and springs had been compromised.

Through the Jupago Kreká Sacred Agriculture Collective, the community is combining ancestral knowledge, traditional agriculture, and forest restoration to regenerate its territory. According to the community, approximately 360 hectares are undergoing restoration, 14 springs are recovering, and wildlife is returning to previously degraded areas. Their work includes recovering ancestral seeds, cultivating medicinal plants, and passing traditional ecological knowledge to younger generations. For the Xukuru, protecting biodiversity is inseparable from protecting culture, livelihoods, and territorial rights.

Communities are already protecting and restoring biodiversity through their traditional knowledge and management practices, yet their contributions are not always formally recognized in conservation policies.

As governments gather in Yerevan, Armenia, from October 19-30 for the 17th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD COP17), their experience offers a reminder that biodiversity depends on the rights of the people who have protected and restored it for generations.

Yet there are growing concerns that hard-won protections for Indigenous peoples, Afro-descendant peoples, and local communities could be weakened during negotiations. Rather than recognizing and strengthening the conservation work these communities are already leading, as demonstrated by the Xukuru's restoration efforts, governments risk undermining the territorial rights and community governance that make these efforts possible.

Conservation Cannot Come at the Expense of Communities

Governments will undertake their first collective review of progress toward implementing the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, adopted in 2022. The framework includes conserving at least 30% of the world's land and waters by 2030. But achieving this target is not simply a matter of expanding protected areas. It also requires addressing who has the authority to govern the lands and ecosystems on which biodiversity depends.

For too long, conservation policies have treated Indigenous peoples and local communities as obstacles rather than rights holders and essential partners. This approach has too often resulted in exclusion, displacement, and restrictions on traditional ways of life.

The Xukuru people's restoration efforts demonstrate why recognizing Indigenous-led conservation matters. Communities are already protecting and restoring biodiversity through their traditional knowledge and management practices, yet their contributions are not always formally recognized in conservation policies. Governments must ensure that Indigenous and Traditional Territories are recognized as conservation areas in their own right, rather than treated as secondary to conventional protected areas.

Hard-Won Rights Are Not Negotiating Chips

The Global Biodiversity Framework includes commitments to respecting the rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities, achieved through years of advocacy by Indigenous leaders, community organizations, and allies.

Yet these protections could be diluted through negotiating language on the voluntary guidelines to achieve the Goal 2 and 3 of the Global Kunming Framework. Replacing a commitment that governments should act with language saying they may act weakens accountability. Treating Indigenous and Traditional Territories as merely complementary to conventional protected areas risks marginalizing community governance. Diluting references to free, prior, and informed consent threatens communities' ability to make decisions about their lands.

That is why the Rights and Resources Initiative and its partners have issued an open letter to CBD negotiators calling on governments to stop the rollback of hard-won rights protections at CBD COP17. Through the #StopTheRollbacks campaign, the coalition has outlined 10 demands, including stronger recognition of Indigenous and Traditional Territories; protection of free, prior, and informed consent; direct access to biodiversity finance; and meaningful recognition and participation of Afro-descendant peoples.

CBD COP17 is an opportunity to move beyond conservation models that separate nature from people.

Furthermore, digital sequence information (DSI) draws on vast amounts of genetic information derived from forests and other ecosystems that have long been protected, managed, and conserved by Indigenous peoples, Afro-descendant peoples, and local communities. Yet the growing use of DSI risks disconnecting genetic information from the traditional knowledge, practices, and stewardship systems that have enabled communities to sustainably use, manage, and conserve these genetic resources.

The fact that the Cali Fund, a fund designed to share the benefits from the use of genetic data, is not yet fully operational, combined with inadequate mechanisms to ensure the traceability of genetic resource data, puts at risk the principles of fairness, equity, and justice that should guide the global use of genetic information. Ultimately, this raises a fundamental question: Will genetic information be governed primarily for profit, or for life?

CBD COP17 must advance the financing arrangements necessary to make the Cali Fund fully operational, while strengthening community governance over data related to genetic resources and respecting collective rights. Governments must also ensure that Indigenous peoples, Afro-descendant peoples, and local communities receive a fair and equitable share of the benefits generated from the use of genetic information derived from biodiversity. The Cali Fund, as a global mechanism for benefit sharing, should recognize and uphold their rights and provide meaningful opportunities for communities to access funding directly.

CBD COP17 must build on commitments to recognize Afro-descendant peoples in global biodiversity governance. Through #StopTheRollbacks, RRI and its partners are calling on governments to uphold CBD Decision 16/6, which recognizes the contributions of people of African descent to biodiversity conservation, and ensure that recognition translates into meaningful participation in decisions affecting their territories and livelihoods.

Governments must also advance the CBD's Gender Plan of Action, ensuring women can participate in biodiversity decision-making and access resources. Women in the Xukuru community play a central role in preserving traditional medicinal knowledge and passing ancestral practices to future generations.

CBD COP17 Must Move Forward, Not Backward

As an environmental lawyer who has worked for more than two decades at the intersection of conservation, public policy, and Indigenous rights, I have seen how easily ambitious environmental commitments lose their meaning when governments fail to translate them into enforceable protections.

Millions of communities are still waiting for their daily efforts to protect ecosystems, water sources, and genetic resources to be fully recognized and respected. In many cases, their stewardship has proven highly effective in conserving biodiversity, including in comparison with nationally designated protected areas managed by governments, with some areas managed by communities proving six times lower deforestation than national protected areas. The lack of recognition impacts lives of communities because of restrictions on the use of natural resources, by generating conflicts for land use, and by reducing the possibility to access to financing.

CBD COP17 is an opportunity to move beyond conservation models that separate nature from people. Governments must defend rights already recognized in international agreements, strengthen community-led governance, and ensure biodiversity finance reaches those doing the work.

There can be no lasting victory for nature if it comes at the expense of the rights of the people who protect it.

At a time of great crisis for American democracy, when oligarchy, authoritarianism and billionaire corruption have run rampant, there are a few signs of hope.

Thousands of business leaders nationwide are signing the Business for Democracy Pledge, calling on our federal government to ensure free and fair elections and seating of newly-elected lawmakers without interference or violence.

Groups like the Center for Popular Democracy and May Day Strong are calling on businesses large and small to sign the pledge.

We will never agree with everything that banks and bankers say and do. But we’ll be in New York City today to demand that they do the right thing...

Renowned economist and educator Gabriel Zucman and his colleagues have issued a groundbreaking call for a worldwide minimum 2% wealth tax on billionaires to address pressing human needs and reduce extreme inequality and oligarchy.

Unions and organizing groups are pushing for state billionaire taxes in California, Illinois and New York, while working to elect members of Congress who will pass a federal law in the United States.

Now it’s time for corporations and billionaires to decide where they stand.

It’s not enough for the ultra-rich to merely fund charitable causes. That doesn't cut it when the political and economic systems they’ve created leave millions of Americans struggling to afford healthcare, put food on the table, and keep their families together.

It’s time for something new.

There’s a real opportunity for these powerful institutions to use their influence differently.

And growing public pressure, all across the country and all around the world, is making it harder for corporations and billionaires to remain on the sidelines.

Will they double down on authoritarianism and runaway inequality?

Or will they recognize that America works best when it works for all of us, when democracy functions fairly, when our voices are heard and counted, when our government builds prosperity for all rather than the fortunes for a few.

Tech billionaires like Elon Musk and hedge fund managers like Ken Griffin have made their positions clear, with hundreds of millions in campaign cash to Trump’s MAGA Republicans and attacks on efforts to fairly tax wealth in California and New York.

In New York City today, JP Morgan Chase and the Robin Hood Foundation are bringing nine billionaires, the head of public policy at Meta, and President Donald Trump’s handpicked Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to their annual “investors conference” —and we will be there to confront them.

We will demand that JPMorganChase CEO Jamie Dimon and the billionaire fund managers associated with the Robin Hood Foundation stand for democracy and fairness.

These leaders should reject the path to more authoritarianism and more government corruption.

They should all sign the Business for Democracy pledge, and they should all agree to support fair and progressive tax policies to reduce extreme inequality and prevent oligarchy.

There’s reason to hope that they will.

Dimon has opposed Trump before, resigning from Trump’s business council after Charlottesville, closing Trump’s accounts after the January 6 coup attempt, and speaking out against Trump on tariffs and on the independence of the Federal Reserve.

And Robin Hood donors have supported poverty-fighting policies and organizations opposed by Trump and MAGA Republicans, demonstrating some understanding of solidarity and the common good.

We will never agree with everything that banks and bankers say and do. Today, we’ll be in New York City to demand that they do the right thing—we call on all New Yorkers to join us.

It’s becoming clear that one of the most potent political issues of this election cycle is the debate over artificial intelligence and the massive data centers powering this rapidly evolving technology. Polling consistently shows that Americans overwhelmingly oppose the rapid buildout of polluting and disruptive AI data centers and are increasingly concerned about AI safety. Despite this, President Donald Trump and national Republicans have embraced Big Tech’s AI agenda, giving Democrats a popular advantage served up on a silver platter. Democrats should seize the opportunity by supporting a moratorium on AI data centers and a ban on AI “superintelligence” across the board.

For the last several years, with little public discussion or debate, AI data centers have invaded communities across the country with devastating consequences. Electricity prices are spiking, water resources are dwindling, the air is being polluted, and lives are being disrupted. In the past year, the backlash has greatly intensified. Since our partner organization Food & Water Watch became the first national group in the country to call for a full national moratorium on data centers, more than 500 organizations have joined the call. Responding to the popular demand, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) recently introduced moratorium legislation.

Public polling shows overwhelming opposition to data centers. According to a September 29 poll from Quinnipiac, 85% of Democrats, 76% of Independents, and even 55% of Republicans oppose new data centers in their communities, and 79% of all voters think safety is more important than innovation when it comes to AI. These staggering numbers reflect a level of consensus almost unheard of in America these days.

Big Tech is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to elect sympathetic members to Congress who will continue to do its bidding, but elections across the country have already shown people are seeing through the propaganda.

Yet Republican leadership shockingly continues to publicly embrace Big Tech and its AI data center push—most recently with Trump’s White House gathering of CEOs that produced nothing more than “promises” of voluntary self-regulation from the profit-blinded industry. Still, the response from national Democrats has been mixed at best. While Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez, Reps. Frank Pallone (D-NJ), Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), and others have called for an AI data center moratorium, most have continued to dither. House Democrats, for example, overwhelmingly supported the so-called Ratepayer Protection Act—more like the Ratepayer Deception Act—which included nothing more than nonbinding suggestions for local and state governments to consider. Meanwhile, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) has yet to organize a caucus position as he continues taking meetings with AI executives.

Similarly, at the state level, several ambitious governors continue to embrace the AI industry, and resist calls for a moratorium. In Pennsylvania, longtime industry supporter Josh Shapiro recently announced a regulatory package that continues to allow data center expansion in the state. In California, Gavin Newsom recently signed regulatory bills that also allow for continued industry buildout—and mostly won’t even kick in until 2028.

Fortunately, there are signs of hope. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) this week blasted the Ratepayer Protection Act as a “fraud” and successfully rallied Democrats to kill it. An increasing number of congressional candidates are now calling for a national AI data center moratorium. In New York, following the passage of legislation earlier this year, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced a one-year moratorium on data centers. Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek recently halted state permits for data centers while calling for a longer-term moratorium. Democratic gubernatorial candidates in Kansas and Michigan have pledged to institute moratoria, and in Texas, Gina Hinojosa has made data centers such an electric issue that it forced industry ally Gov. Greg Abbot to temporarily pause new permits.

Big Tech is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to elect sympathetic members to Congress who will continue to do its bidding, but elections across the country have already shown people are seeing through the propaganda. Throughout the primary season, voters chose to elect anti-data center candidates despite industry spending. Some communities even voted out local officials who allowed data centers in their communities.

Democrats have a golden opportunity to capitalize on this issue, win big in November, and take real action on AI data centers to protect people and the environment. They must stand up to Big Tech, strongly support data center moratoria and a ban on artificial superintelligence, and then work to implement these policies as a top priority in the new year.

I was in the classroom for enough years to spot a bully from a mile away. At first glance, Mike Rogers doesn’t seem too threatening, but as you get closer, you realize that he’s just another Donald Trump wannabe. Rogers has been actively working to disenfranchise and demean Black Detroiters for decades.

Folks across the city are fed up over the conditions of our schools; closures due to excessive heat are now regular. These conditions can be traced back to the mismanagement that unraveled when Mike Rogers served as the state Senate majority floor leader and PA 10 became law, the legislation that allowed the takeover of Detroit schools. He bears responsibility as an architect of this educational breakdown.

I started my career in 1998 teaching second and fifth grades at John Lynch Elementary School on the east side. It was just before the Detroit public school system changed dramatically; the democratically elected school board had their power taken from them while the state installed unaccountable bureaucrats to make decisions on behalf of Detroit families’ futures. The result? Our votes and voices got ignored, while a $100 million operating surplus turned into a $200 million deficit.

We don’t need another leader representing us in Washington who is trying to trample over our rights as Black folks.

Rogers’ disregard for Black Detroiters didn’t stop there. He’s no moderate; he’s a radical whose campaign has numerous ties to Christian Nationalists while parroting Trump’s racist attitudes about our city.

His record is all there. In just the past few years alone, Rogers fundraised with a former state legislator who made racist remarks about African Americans, had someone on his student outreach team who defended a group chat filled with praise of Hitler and slurs, and defended Trump making the city of Detroit a scapegoat. Not to also mention that one of his largest financial backers is a Texas oil tycoon’s PAC associated with white nationalist Nick Fuentes.

They say you are the company you keep. And what does that say about Mike Rogers?

Rogers has long stood in the way of Black Detroiters’ full participation in democracy, and that started when he was first a state legislator in the nineties. Some argue he was just a standard, Bush-era neoconservative back in the day who supported DeVos school voucher schemes, but today he’s transitioned into a full-on MAGA mouthpiece.

Consider how Rogers has changed his tune on the Big Lie. We all remember how in 2020 Trump claimed the election was rigged partly based on conspiracies around ballot counting in Detroit. At the time, Rogers tried to distance himself from the soon-to-be impeached president, so much so that he wrote a Washington Post opinion piece on the eve of the January 6 insurrection urging Republican lawmakers to uphold the will of the people.

Now, Rogers is a full-on election denier. Not only has Rogers claimed that his loss in the 2024 US Senate race was “stolen” despite an audit confirming it was completely fair, he’s now promoting the worst of Trump’s voter intimidation tactics against Black voters.

At an April 17, 2026 Kalamazoo County GOP meeting, Rogers described recruiting off-duty or retired police officers as poll watchers in Detroit, saying, "Try to intimidate them, please," and, "All you got to do is open your jacket and you see the badge on the belt.” Not only is voter intimidation a federal crime, but calling for this in the largest majority-Black city in the country reeks of racism.

Mike Rogers would be a reliable vote for Donald Trump’s agenda if he’s elected. That means Republicans will be closer to passing the SAVE Act, which are plainly Jim Crow-like tactics that disenfranchise voters by requiring people to show documents like a birth certificate or passport to vote that are inaccessible for many.

Mike Rogers was willing to give up any ounce of principles he may once have had to stand up to Trump’s lies just to get cool with the MAGA crowd. If you think he has the best interests of Black Michiganders in mind, I have a bridge to Canada to sell you.

We don’t need another leader representing us in Washington who is trying to trample over our rights as Black folks. Now, it’s on us to show up to the polls on or before November 3 to make our voices heard.

What do you tell a child attending public school when her teacher singles out and disparages her religion?

That is the question parents of Muslim children in Texas schools might soon confront. The Texas State Board of Education has approved new social studies standards taking effect in 2030 that require teachers to denigrate the religion of Islam with biased, ahistorical, and offensive characterizations.

One of the most controversial edits would require students to study "the Prophet Mohammed’s brutal military campaigns against Jewish and Christian tribes, the normalization of slavery, and the taking of female captives as harem slaves.”

All students have a right to attend public school without being singled out, stereotyped, or silenced because of their faith.

None of these claims stand up to a neutral reading of history.

Even prominent secular historians recognize that the Prophet and many of the Muslim leaders who followed him protected Jews, Christians, and other religious minorities under their governance; that Islamic law outright banned most forms of slavery and never permitted the type of race-based enslavement practiced in the West; and the Prophet was a married man who never had a so-called "harem."

The new curriculum’s characterization of warfare in Muslim history as "brutal" is also deeply dishonest.

All wars are inherently brutal, yet the new Texas curriculum does not require teachers to describe wars undertaken by the United States, European powers, Israel, Protestant and Catholic empires, the Greeks, the Romans, the Mongols, ancient Israelites, and other historical actors as “brutal.”

“Brutal” is not a historical fact; it is a judgment. Presenting that judgment as objective history crosses a line that public schools should never cross.

For a Muslim child attending public school, the new curriculum's misleading claims about Muslim history and its negative characterization of the Prophet strike directly at her faith, her identity, and the values she holds dear. It tells her that the historic figure her family reveres as a model of mercy, compassion, justice, and dignity is someone her own government has chosen to portray as “brutal."

That is not neutral instruction, and the harm caused by this biased curriculum can extend far beyond the classroom.

The anti-Muslim sentiment expressed by a teacher can follow a student from the classroom, to the cafeteria table, and into conversations with her classmates in the locker room. Imagine being a Muslim teenager when your teacher introduces a lesson that denigrates Islam. Imagine your classmates looking at you and asking, “But you're Muslim. What do you think about that?”

No child should have to sit at a desk while the adult entrusted with teaching her is required to pass judgment on the religious figure she loves or her faith. Muslim students should not be asked to absorb that message in silence, to manage the discomfort of their classmates, or to wonder whether their teacher sees their faith as something dangerous or inferior.

They should not have to listen politely while their most sacred figure is reduced to a state-mandated mischaracterization, then be expected to return to homework, group projects, and hallway conversations as if nothing happened.

A classroom lesson should not become a moment where a Muslim child feels targeted, isolated, or forced to choose between respecting the classroom environment and honoring her own religious identity.

These new standards do more than shape what students learn. They risk increasing anti-Muslim sentiment among non-Muslim students, silencing Muslim students, placing teachers in an extraordinarily difficult position, and creating classrooms where children may feel that their faith and the people they love are subjects of suspicion or contempt.

Texas teachers should teach historical facts about Islam and all religions accurately, fairly, and in their proper context.

Students can learn about the development of Islam; the civilizations it shaped; its contributions to math, science, art, and culture; and the positive and negative events in Muslim history, without reducing an entire faith to biased, dishonest characterizations.

Texas public school teachers have a responsibility to teach about the religion followed by one-fourth of the world’s population with the same fairness, accuracy, and respect it owes to every other faith discussed in their classrooms. No teachers should institutionalize hate or force students to defend, much less denigrate, their own faith

A Muslim student should be able to sit in a Texas history classroom and learn about the past without being forced to agree with the denigration of Islam, her Prophet, or her family’s beliefs. She should not have to listen to the person standing at the front of the room pass judgment on her faith and then be expected to carry that wound quietly through the rest of the school day. She should not have to prove that her faith is worthy of respect, that her family is good, or that she is American enough to belong.

All students have a right to attend public school without being singled out, stereotyped, or silenced because of their faith. Their faith belongs here. Their dignity belongs here. And their classrooms belong to them, too.

The war in Ukraine can be ended permanently on terms that protect Ukraine's statehood, meet Russia's security concerns, and lay the foundation for a durable European security order. As another round of negotiations gears up in Norway, I propose a settlement concluded as a single package, signed by Ukraine and Russia, adopted by a vote of the United Nations Security Council under Chapter VII of the Charter, and guaranteed jointly by the five permanent members of the Council together with other states that choose to join. The proposal rests on the principle of indivisible security set out in the Helsinki Final Act and the Charter of Paris.

The package would have four core commitments.

The first is Ukraine's permanent neutrality, adopted in a constitutional law on the model of Austria's law of 1955, which would return Ukraine to the founding choice of its Declaration of State Sovereignty of 1990. Ukraine would join no military alliance and host no foreign bases or forces, whether of NATO, the European Union, their member states, or Russia. Neutrality would not mean disarmament, and Ukraine would retain armed forces for its own defense.

The second is that Ukraine would pursue its candidacy for membership in the European Union as a permanently neutral state, with a neutrality protocol in its accession treaty on the model of Ireland's, and Russia would affirm that Ukraine's membership in the EU is consistent with Russia's security.

The third is an armistice line drawn along the line of contact on the date of signature. Each side would exercise de facto jurisdiction on its side of the line, neither would recognize the other's territorial claims, and both would renounce force in any future adjustment. This formula is compatible with both countries' constitutions, which bar or severely restrict the cession of territory.

The fourth is the end of NATO enlargement eastward. At signature the North Atlantic Council would declare that NATO will not admit Ukraine or other new members in Eastern Europe or the South Caucasus, withdrawing the Bucharest pledge of 2008.

The settlement would take effect as a permanent end of hostilities on signature, not as a temporary ceasefire, and its provisions would be implemented in stages under international verification. No element would be negotiated in isolation, and no party would be asked to make a concession in advance of signature.

The territorial arrangements are designed to address the concerns and claims of both sides. Ukrainian forces would withdraw from the part of Donetsk region that Ukraine now controls, which would become a demilitarized special zone. Russian forces would not enter it, the existing local civil administration would continue to function, and its final status would be left to negotiation. Russia would withdraw from the areas it holds in Dnipropetrovsk region and from the Kinburn Spit. A Northern Security Zone would be demilitarized on both sides of the Russian-Ukrainian border, and Russian forces would leave the areas they hold in Kharkiv and Sumy regions as Ukrainian forces withdraw from their side. The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant would remain under Russian control with IAEA safety oversight and would sell an agreed share of its electricity to Ukraine at cost.

A demilitarized belt would run along both sides of the armistice line, with heavy weapons and long-range strike systems withdrawn to agreed distances, and mutual ceilings on forces would apply in the border regions on both sides. In the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, commercial navigation would be free for all Ukrainian and Russian ports, and attacks on shipping and ports would be prohibited.

The settlement in Ukraine should also begin the repair of European security as a whole. NATO and Russia would agree on a moratorium on ground-launched intermediate-range missiles in Europe, refrain from deploying nuclear weapons in any additional state, and restore the NATO-Russia Council. Normal diplomatic relations would be restored on both sides. The parties would convene the first summit of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe since 2010 to entrust the OSCE with monitoring the settlement, verifying arms limits, and overseeing the provisions on rights.

Questions of language, education, culture, and religion would be resolved according to European standards, with the Russian language treated on the same basis as Ukraine's other minority languages, and Russia would accept the same obligations toward Ukrainian speakers and religious communities on its side of the line. All obligations concerning extremism and incitement would be mutual and monitored by the OSCE. Prisoners of war would be exchanged on an all-for-all basis, detained civilians released, and separated children reunited with their families.

Sanctions would be lifted during 2027. Russia's immobilized sovereign assets would also be released, and private property seized or immobilized on both sides would be restored. An international reconstruction fund administered by the European Investment Bank would finance reconstruction on both sides of the line, with contributions from all parties, Russia included, in a common effort rather than as reparations. Gas transit through Ukraine could resume wherever there are willing buyers, without any commitment by the European Union to purchase Russian gas.

A report of serious violation by an OSCE monitoring mission of unarmed observers from states outside NATO would trigger consultations among the guarantors and referral to the Security Council. Ukraine would lift martial law and hold elections under OSCE observation, and the newly elected Verkhovna Rada would ratify the settlement and adopt the constitutional law on neutrality, while the Russian Federal Assembly would ratify it at the same stage.

This proposed settlement addresses the causes of the war rather than only its symptoms. Europe has been largely absent from the design of the peace. By putting forward such a framework, European governments can take the lead in building Europe’s indivisible security and help end a war that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives and carries a continuing risk of confrontation between nuclear powers.

It struck me the other day that ‘peace’ is a word we’re not using much at present. Our war in Iran is unpopular, for sure, but there’s not really a ‘peace movement’ to end it (though the midterm elections are in some measure a proxy for that). When we talk about it, it’s in the context of "forever wars," as in "what a pain for us to have to fight," or it’s about the way that war has raised prices. We seem barely to have noticed that we have attacked another country, killed its leaders, bombed its schools, made life as impossible as we can for its citizens, not to mention billions of other humans who are dealing not with higher prices at the pump but with no access to fertilizer or fuel.

But actually this is the perfect moment for a revival of the peace movement—because it’s easier now than ever before to imagine the rapid transition to a more peaceful world. That’s because all of a sudden we have an alternative to oil, and if you look around us, oil is the cause, the weapon, and the casualty of our current round of conflicts. More than at any point in our past, oil has become inextricably bound up in warfare, which means we could in short order move past it, in ways that I don’t think we’ve focused on clearly enough.

I’m thinking about all this because I’ve taken a day off of the campaign trail to come to Independence, Missouri (just a stone’s throw from the Kansas Senate race!). The town is best known as Harry Truman’s home, but it’s also the headquarters of a denomination, the Community of Christ, that had been unknown to me until they asked me if I’d accept their annual International Peace Award, which had gone in previous years to some of my real heroes: Dolores Huerta, Rev. James Lawson, Terry Tempest Williams, Jane Goodall.

As people in these nations endure horrific lives, and the world edges closer to truly unspeakable catastrophe, the fact that it’s all connected to oil suggests a way out: which is to make oil less important.

As it turns out, the Community of Christ is an interesting group—they’re descended from the Mormons who didn’t follow Brigham Young to Utah but instead stayed in the Midwest with the family of Joseph Smith after he was killed by an armed mob. Over the years they drifted apart from their Utah brethren, until in the last generation they’ve become much closer to the Protestant mainline, indeed an avowedly progressive church, led by a woman, committed to LGBT participation, and very focused on peace. As I write this, I’m looking out on a Japanese garden, planted with a sister community in that country, in recognition of the complicated role that Independence and its most famous son played in the planet’s nuclear history; I’ve just come from a daily Prayer for Peace service. If I had to describe this group, I’d say: Imagine Unitarians, except that they believe in Jesus and are earnestly Midwestern in their manners and customs. I like them very very much; they’ve built something special.

Anyway, the fact that I needed to give a talk as part of this awards ceremony got me more focused than I usually am on questions of peace, and the more I thought, the simpler my task seemed. The world is obviously at war right now; in fact, one Times columnist mused last month that World War III may already be in its early stages. Russian President Vladimir Putin is hammering civilian infrastructure across Ukraine, as his ongoing and unprovoked attack nears the five-year mark. The US, having attacked Venezuela and then Iran, finds itself running short of missiles and interceptors, bad news for the Saudis who are suddenly facing strikes from renegade Yemenis. There are plenty of other conflicts around the world, some military and some for the moment just running on intimidation and coercion—the US siege of Cuba, for instance, which is killing silently. (In 2018, infant mortality on the island was 4 per 1,000 births, lower than in the US. Now, thanks to us, it’s more than double that).

War, of course, has many causes—ethnic and religious supremacy, personal ambition—but it is very simple to see the degree to which oil plays a crucial part in so many of these conflicts, as cause, as weapon, and increasingly as vulnerability.

Consider. We attacked Venezuela, holder of the world’s second-largest oil reserves—as far as I can tell there’s been no effort by our leaders to explain this in terms of human rights or democracy, but only as an effort to secure its oil supplies. Read the “fact sheet” the White House put out this summer about our purposes there:

In the biggest oil deal in world history, President Donald J. Trump has secured US majority control of more than 65 billion barrels of proven oil reserves in Venezuela—vastly expanding our current US territorial proven reserves of roughly 46 billion barrels. This deal secures our energy dominance for the next century—all at zero cost to the United States. The deal, signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, gives the US government powerful governance rights, economic ownership, and guaranteed low-cost off-take from a new private Venezuelan oil champion, which will be the second-largest private oil company by reserves in the world.

Our attack on Iran was somewhat more complex, clearly affected by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s desire to cripple the Tehran regime (and stay out of jail) but also clearly driven by Trump’s fascination with the world’s third-largest oil and gas reserves. In March, for instance, Trump said in a social media post that

the US would hit Iran "VERY HARD TONIGHT" and would "assume total control" of Iran's oil and gas industries, including the key Kharg Island oil terminal, in the "not too distant future."

As he explained to the Financial Times:

To be honest with you, my favorite thing is to take the oil in Iran but some stupid people back in the US say: "Why are you doing that?" But they’re stupid people.

And whatever the cause, oil has clearly become the weapon in this ugly and stupid war, with each side trying to close off the other’s crude traffic, in hopes of forcing economic capitulation. Trump may be in the harder place here, because he’s facing an election soon, and despite his best attempts to render the electorate impotent, it appears we will actually be allowed to vote somewhat freely, and that $6 diesel may be coming close to “mutilization of our children” as a campaign issue.

Trump’s clever response to this dilemma has been to betray the people of Ukraine. Remember, Putin was able to attack them because of his country’s oil wealth (John McCain’s classic line: “a gas station with nukes”), and he used his hydrocarbons to try and win the war early on, cutting off the supply to Western Europe in an effort to get them to abandon the defense of Kyiv. Now he’s using his supply of diesel (and the lure of lots of “deals” with Trump associates) to get America to walk away from its one-time ally; Trump on Saturday suspended the Lindsay Graham Act sanctioning Russian oil, in an act that even at this late date left diplomats speechless.

In particular Putin wants Trump to get Ukraine to stop attacking his oil refineries, the tactic that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has hit on during the past six months, and which is causing endless pain (and spiking EV sales) in Russia. Trump, of course, has obliged, and his main satrap (or is it the other way round?) Elon Musk has apparently literally sabotaged his Starlink system so as to endanger Ukrainians. It is oil top to bottom—cause, effect, weapon. As it is in the Gulf, where the Houthis and the Iranians target pipelines and pumping stations in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, who in turn use their oil wealth to hit back. As it is in Cuba, where our main weapon is an oil blockade.

Here’s how Trump put that one back in January

THERE WILL BE NO MORE OIL OR MONEY GOING TO CUBA—ZERO! I strongly suggest they make a deal, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

And in March:

They have no money, they have no oil, they have no nothing. They have nice land. They have nice landscape.

And Marco Rubio, in June:

For decades, the regime has stolen and hoarded available fuel—using it for the Castros’ private jet, the security services forces used to repress the Cuban people, to keep empty tourist hotels lit up, and to bus people in for fake protests and political stunts.

Mostly, of course, they used it to run hospitals and schools and a power grid for people’s homes. But no more. As The Associated Press reported in August:

A 20-minute burst of electricity is a small miracle in Havana nowadays—a miracle that sometimes comes at 3 am.

That’s when 72-year-old Leidis Rodríguez frantically cooked beans after the lights switched on this week following hours of uninterrupted blackouts.

“The power has come back on, everyone go!” Rodríguez shouted.

Public transportation and cultural events have come to a standstill. So has tourism, the country’s economic engine, especially as tourism companies have withdrawn, leaving 25,000 hospitality jobs vacant. Flights to the island are regularly canceled and workdays have been shortened to adjust to the new reality of a Cuba without power. Medicine shortages have worsened and food rots in fridges without power.

“If there’s no electricity, there’s no water because it doesn’t get pumped to the tank. When there’s water, there’s no electricity,” Rodríguez lamented.

Anyway, as people in these nations endure horrific lives, and the world edges closer to truly unspeakable catastrophe, the fact that it’s all connected to oil suggests a way out: which is to make oil less important.

And there’s really exactly one way to do that, which everyone with a heart or a mind (or a calculator) is edging toward: replacing it with clean, cheap, far-less-vulnerable power from the sun and wind. That’s what Cuba is doing, installing solar panels faster than anyplace else on Earth. It’s what Ukraine is trying to do, with leadership from heroes like Svitlana Romanko and Razom We Stand. (I was unsurprised to see that she’d given up on Trump this week: “Europe must now lead, closing every remaining Russian energy loophole this month, and proving that the democratic world will keep starving Putin's war machine even when the White House will not."). And it’s what all the bystanders to these wars are trying to do, as they move decisively toward clean energy and EVs to cope with the fallout of events they did not initiate.

Since Trump likes plaques, we should give him one as EV salesman of the decade. We will look back on 2026 as the year that it became entirely clear the Internal Combustion Engine was a relic—sales of electric cars are soaring everywhere. Six hundred thousand electrics were sold in Europe in September, up 39% from the year before. As Michelle Lewis reports:

The UK, France, Spain, Portugal, and Finland all posted their highest monthly EV sales ever. France’s sales climbed 78% year over year to almost 80,000, while Germany’s rose 61% to 117,000.

Look: Every EV sold drops the demand for oil. Every heat pump sold cuts the demand for natural gas. Every solar system that goes up on a roof or balcony produces clean energy with no need for hydrocarbons. And all of it not only helps take some pressure off the climate, it helps—really, far more quickly—to rein in the siege of warfare now underway. If we lived on a planet that ran mostly on wind and solar power, war would be less likely. It’s hard to fight over sunshine. I’ve heard often from people over the years, asking if the climate movement and the peace movement could be more united, and it seems to me that this is the key.

The solar panel is the new peace symbol. Pass it on.

I have sat in the room for every congressional hearing on Medicare for All since Congress held its first one in 2019. I am one of very few people, and even fewer healthcare providers, who can say that. I was there at the beginning, alongside representatives from organizations including National Nurses United and Physicians for a National Health Program, invited by Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal to witness and advocate for that historic moment. That first hearing centered on H.R. 1384, the Medicare for All Act of 2019, introduced by Jayapal and championed alongside Congresswoman Debbie Dingell. It was the first time in history that Congress held a hearing specifically on Medicare for All legislation.

I watched Ady Barkan testify through a computerized voice as ALS took away his ability to speak on his own, telling Congress what it costs a family to fight a terminal illness in a country that treats healthcare as a commodity. Then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) appeared at the start of the hearing, a sign of how significant the moment was even to Democratic leaders who were not prepared to embrace the policy. Outside, advocates and reporters crowded the hallways because the room could not hold everyone who wanted to witness what was happening.

That room does not exist anymore. From the unique vantage point of someone who has been present at every congressional hearing on Medicare for All, the shift is impossible to miss.

The Math Has Broken

Employers are projected to face another 9.5% increase in healthcare costs in 2027, pushing average employer-sponsored healthcare costs above $19,000 per employee and marking a fourth consecutive year of near-double-digit increases. Employees are projected to spend about $5,300 themselves in 2026 through payroll contributions and out-of-pocket costs, up 7.9% from the year before.

From where I have sat through every congressional Medicare for All hearing since 2019, the most important change is not that opposition has disappeared. It has not. It is that the old political assumptions no longer fit the evidence.

At some point, the status quo becomes the disruption. A new Yale-led preprint estimates that a national single-payer system modeled on the Medicare for All Act could reduce annual health spending by $1.04 trillion, nearly 20%, while averting roughly 114,000 deaths each year.

Washington Is Underestimating the Support

A national Data for Progress survey found 65% of voters support a Medicare for All system, including 78% of Democrats, 71% of independents, and 49% of Republicans. After voters heard competing arguments both for and against the policy, 58% still supported it. Two-thirds of voters say the government does too little to help Americans afford healthcare, while nearly two-thirds hold unfavorable views of private insurers and pharmaceutical companies.

It is increasingly difficult to describe a policy with numbers like these as politically fringe.

Democrats Are Behind Their Own Voters

For years, Democratic leaders treated Medicare for All as something the party's progressive wing might demand but broader electorates would punish. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) changed that conversation more than perhaps any other national political figure. He made Medicare for All a defining issue in two presidential campaigns and introduced the Senate Medicare for All Act.

One image from the 2020 Democratic presidential primary captures how politically risky support for the policy still seemed. During the first Democratic debates in 2019, candidates were asked whether they were willing to replace private health insurance with a government-run plan. On this night, only Sanders and Kamala Harris raised their hands, and Harris later said she had misunderstood the question. Even on a Democratic debate stage, fully embracing Medicare for All was something most candidates were reluctant to do.

Six years later, Democratic candidates can hardly raise their hands fast enough.

The party's electorate is moving toward, not away from, a policy Washington still too often treats as politically dangerous.

In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed won the Democratic nomination for US Senate while championing Medicare for All. I met El-Sayed at the Senate's first Medicare for All hearing in 2022, where he testified as a physician and public health leader in support of the policy. Sanders chaired that hearing. Four years later, El-Sayed won the Democratic nomination for Senate in Michigan. In Illinois, Juliana Stratton won the Democratic Senate primary while pledging to fight for Medicare for All. In New Jersey, physician and combat surgeon Dr. Adam Hamawy won a crowded congressional primary while campaigning on Medicare for All and rejecting corporate PAC money.

Medicare for All was part of the fundamental economic argument these candidates made about affordability, corporate power, and what Democrats should stand for. Their success is evidence that the party's electorate is moving toward, not away from, a policy Washington still too often treats as politically dangerous.

Democrats should also pay attention to what has happened with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. The Washington Post has documented how AIPAC's brand has become increasingly politically toxic in Democratic primaries. Health insurance and pharmaceutical money could be headed down a similar path. As anger toward the healthcare industry grows, accepting money from companies profiting from the system voters want changed becomes harder to explain. A candidate running on Medicare for All might not need a complicated attack line when an opponent is taking money from the very industry they are promising to confront.

The Tide Has Turned

From where I have sat through every congressional Medicare for All hearing since 2019, the most important change is not that opposition has disappeared. It has not. It is that the old political assumptions no longer fit the evidence. Healthcare costs are rising faster than workers can absorb them. A majority of voters still support Medicare for All after hearing arguments against it. Candidates are winning major Democratic primaries while running openly on the policy.

Democrats have spent years asking whether supporting Medicare for All is too politically risky. They should now be asking whether opposing it is becoming the greater risk.

The tide isn't turning. It has turned. Democrats can recognize it and build around it, or they can be the last ones standing on the beach wondering what happened.

This week, a student—a former US Marine—approached me at the end of a class to ask, "But don’t you think Iran, Russia, or China might invade us?”

“No,” I replied. “That’s another fear instilled by the merchants of death. It is the empires that invade; everyone else must resist them. If China ever invades us, it will be because this country has insisted that it do so: those at the top, because wars and conflicts are their best business and strategy; those at the bottom, because of their vocation as slaves and their lack of class consciousness.”

It is an old superstition, promoted by the mercenary media, that empires fall because an external enemy invades them. “Rome fell due to barbarian invasions,” history textbooks repeat, as if a handful of Germanic tribes could have overcome the military machine that had crushed Carthage and Attila himself in present-day France.

Every time a dumpster burns or a storefront window is smashed on the streets of France, the mercenary media suddenly discover “violence.”

Empires do not fall because they are invaded; they are invaded because they fall. If one day China establishes a military base in the United States, it will be because this society passionately accepted not only 800 bases in other countries but also a collective suicide: obscene inequalities; exploitation and demonization of workers (both its own and others’); marginalization of the dispossessed; racial, religious, and class-based hatreds; divisions instilled by the feudal lords… The perfect formula for large-scale civil conflict. As long as the prosperity born of imperial bloodsucking lasts, patriotic fanaticism masks internal colonization. Then come the demagogues peddling nostalgia and more hatred—not to delay the fall, but to hasten it.

How is this absurdity possible? Through the concentration of power, accelerated according to the formula of compound interest: the legal mafias of sects and lobbies. Resistance lies in the very same thing: in the unity of the peoples.

Around 1830, when its ships dominated the seas, Great Britain produced about 5% of the world’s wealth. China still produced 30%. An island with an economy six times smaller imposed opium, “free trade treaties,” and a campaign of evangelization that left 30 million dead upon the greatest civilization of its time.

It wasn’t GDP, that obsession of modern economists. It was the capacity to concentrate. London concentrated capital, fleets, trading companies, and, above all, an idea of itself. China was rich, but its wealth was scattered, its state worn down, its court divided. When the “civilizing” cannons arrived, the giant was already wounded from within. Later, the Taiping Christian Rebellion would kill more Chinese than all the Opium Wars combined.

Wealth follows empires, but empires rise through fanatical centralization. The first to fragment falls. The discussion must center on the type of union: the union Hitler achieved in Germany, or the union the Iroquois achieved through their radical democracy, which survived for centuries as the Great Law of Peace?

Power has never resided in individuals, no matter how much liberalism has built its mythology around the entrepreneur and the dogma that “my selfishness is good for others.” It has resided in unions: lobbies, sects, corporations, unions, churches. A thousand people organized under a single conviction can accomplish more than a million scattered individuals.

Wages and arguments alone are not enough to mobilize a society. Faith is required. The Puritans who believed themselves to be the chosen people, the settlers of Manifest Destiny, the missionaries who accompanied slave traders with the Bible under their arms—all of them, too. Not to mention the Zionists.

There is nothing more powerful than shared madness. When the fanatic wins, any genocide becomes civilization. Plunder becomes the free market. Attacks are self-defense. Great Britain did not impose opium: It opened markets. The United States did not invade: It liberated. Israel does not massacre children: It defends itself. Narrative is not merely an embellishment of power; it is one of its most effective weapons, because it convinces even its own victims.

But the faith that unites during times of ascent divides during times of decline. When the promise of prosperity ceases to be fulfilled, fanaticism turns inward, and tribes begin to view one another as enemies. This is what we are seeing in the United States. The dollar—Washington’s exorbitant privilege for 80 years—is losing ground in central bank reserves. Gold, the age-old witness to mistrust, is breaking records. The debt exceeds $39 trillion, and interest payments on it drain more resources than the Pentagon’s budget. Half the country views the other half as an existential threat. Militias, walls, distrust of elections and the courts. These are not isolated symptoms. It is the dissolution of that union born to conceal its deep divisions (state-based, racial, class-based) and which functioned as long as the fiction yielded enormous dividends—such as slavery.

Washington needs a new external enemy to continue privatizing fortunes and socializing debts. Now it’s China’s turn, then Iran’s… But neither Iran nor China would even dream of invading the United States. It’s enough for them to wait: If your enemy is making a mistake, don’t interrupt them.

Meanwhile, the new “banana republic” Europe is being militarized under Washington’s orders. To do so, it must defund its socialist institutions. As in Argentina, every time a dumpster burns or a storefront window is smashed on the streets of France, the mercenary media suddenly discover “violence.” They speak of vandalism, of radicals, of a threat to democratic order. They never “discover” it when a government eliminates labor rights won over generations; when a reform, decided in distant offices, forces millions to work longer for less; when the value produced by workers is transferred to VIP shareholders (hedge funds) and creditors; nor when their retirement savings are invested in the death industry. That violence doesn’t shatter windows. It shatters lives, and that’s what they call “liberal democracy,” capitalism’s master scam.

In the last 30 years alone, Western empires have bombed, invaded, and financed massacres that left millions dead, from Iraq to Libya, from the Sahel to Palestine. How many of those responsible have been held accountable in any court? None. The very same people who demand order on the streets of Paris have decreed chaos, slavery (today in Libya and Congo), hunger, and death in dozens of countries. Impunity is not a flaw in the system; it is its raison d’être.

By comparison, the violence of popular protests is minimal. It is the response of those who have exhausted the ballot box, the demands for justice, and the marches against endless wars and genocides. History confirms this with irrefutable regularity: No right was granted out of the generosity of the powerful. All were wrested through the pressure and violence of those below.

As the center fragments, the periphery learns the lesson that empires forget. The scattered peoples, humiliated by the organized force of a few, are beginning to recognize themselves in a common cause. The catalyst has been Gaza. We are on the path to a global intifada. The global power elites are investing fortunes in repression, propaganda, and elections to delay it. They may be able to postpone it for a few years. They will not be able to prevent it. The powder keg will continue to dry out, and a spark will do the rest.

We have all seen the horror movie where the villain or monster seems to be dead but somehow manages to come back to life and terrorizes its potential victims. Well, this is how we felt when we saw the signs “No Tax on Social Security” at President Donald Trump’s campaign rallies in Arizona and Georgia, proudly carried by supporters. This myth has long been discredited.

Back in May, for this publication, we pointed out that contrary to the claims of the Trump administration, the “One Big Beautiful Bill” did not end taxes on Social Security. Instead, what it did was establish a temporary tax break for some senior citizens that expires in 2028.

The Brookings and Urban Institute pointed out back in July 2025 that:

President Trump proposed eliminating taxes on Social Security benefits as part of his 2024 campaign. And one provision of the budget bill does reduce income taxes for older adults on all their income, including their Social Security benefits. But the measure includes no direct tax cut on Social Security. The budget measure includes a temporary $6,000 deduction for taxpayers over age 65, starting this year. But that tax reduction would benefit fewer than half of older adults, the Tax Policy Center estimates.

On October 1 of this year, the PBS News Hour fact-checked the “no tax on Social Security” claim and concluded:

The bill falls short of a full repeal of Social Security taxation. The bill gives an additional $6,000 tax deduction to people ages 65 and older. This does not mean all Social Security beneficiaries receive a tax cut (because some of them are under 65). Some people get the tax break without receiving Social Security (if they are over 65 and not collecting benefits yet). These deductions come on top of existing tax deductions for Americans over 65 years old—$2,000 if married or $1,600 if unmarried and not a surviving spouse.

This is not one of the many times when fact-checking political ads reveals misleading context or exaggeration. The “no tax on Social Security” claim is just factually incorrect or, in plain language, a lie. There is no way around this statement.

In addition to misleading on the Social Security provisions of the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” the Trump administration is hiding the fact that it hurt the solvency of the Social Security Trust fund. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget pointed out in June of 2025:

The Social Security and Medicare Trustees estimated in their 2025 annual reports on the programs that the retirement and hospital trust funds will become insolvent in 2033—only eight years from today. We estimate the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) would accelerate Social Security and Medicare insolvency by a year, to 2032. That’s when today’s 60-year-olds reach the full retirement age and when today’s youngest retirees turn 69.

So, how do we kill the myth that the “One Big Beautiful Bill” ended taxes on Social Security? We are not characters in a horror movie, but we have a sure way of getting rid of the no tax on Social Security monster. On Election Day, vote for candidates who will stand up for the truth about Social Security.

One of the really likeable things about Canada, along with public health care and politeness, is our penchant for reasoned debate as a way to settle our political differences.

So it’s been jarring to see the level of vitriol recently directed toward Avi Lewis, federal leader of the New Democratic Party, who has been an outspoken critic of Israel’s assault on Gaza and Palestinians.

Lewis, who is Jewish, has come under harsh attack from several prominent critics, especially in response to a recent social media post on the eve of Yom Kippur.

Globe and Mail columnist Robyn Urback accused Lewis of engaging in “antisemitism,” and public finance economist Jack Mintz denounced Lewis at an award ceremony, saying that anti-Israel critics “soon turn to antisemitism.”

Most unsettling however was an article in the National Post, written by Yoni Goldstein, former editor of the Canadian Jewish News, which accused Lewis of “endanger(ing) Jews everywhere in Canada,” and insisting that “(w)hen the community is endangered from the inside, reasoned debate and private conversations are no longer options.”

Instead of reasoned debate, Goldstein suggests Biblical law provides guidance for handling the threat allegedly posed by Lewis. Under the headline “Jewish law tells us how to deal with Avi Lewis,” Goldstein’s article recounts the story of God punishing the Biblical dissenter Korach, burning him and his followers alive, after Korach endangered the Jewish community.

While the article doesn’t directly call for violence against Lewis, it certainly hints at it.

Surely, any suggestion that religious law justifies bloodshed against political dissenters — or anyone else — is completely out of sync with Canadian values, no matter what the religion.

Lewis enraged some in the Jewish community by writing on the eve of a Jewish holy day: “For Jewish people, the personal has always been political and the political always personal. This year I’m reflecting on the fact that we failed to do our part to stop an ongoing genocide committed in our name.”

When accused of suggesting some sort of collective responsibility, Lewis clarified: “I spoke as a Jewish Canadian from a place of profound sadness. … Many Jews have said that we have not done enough as Jewish people, among a family of faiths and communities around the world.”

In The Breach, Judy Rebick pointed out that Lewis’ comment was reminiscent of the conscientious men who created the White Ribbon campaign (which opposed violence against women) because they felt a special responsibility as men to address such violence.

Lewis says that, as a Jew, he feels particularly strongly about Israel’s actions against Palestinians, since Israel sometimes claims to act on behalf of the Jewish people.

As a political leader with a megaphone, Lewis really does represent a danger — namely, to the fiercely pro-Israel voices that have long managed to suppress criticism of Israel both inside and outside the community.

The response in some quarters has been extreme, not only smearing Lewis, but even hinting at violence against him.

Lewis comes from an honourable tradition of dissent within the Jewish community. He’s proud that his great-grandfather, Moishe Losz, was a leader of the Jewish Labour Bund, a trade union and political movement that battled antisemitism in Poland, while strongly resisting Zionist calls to solve the problem of Jewish dispossession by taking land from Palestinians.

The struggle between the Bund and the Zionists was bitter, with Zionists ultimately triumphing and managing to establish the state of Israel on land formerly occupied by Palestinians. However, the plight of the Palestinians has remained a central focus for a segment of the Jewish community.

Lewis’s track record of defending Palestinian rights reverberates with this segment of Jewish opinion, and with many other Canadians. His stand for Palestinian justice is a principled one — and all the more laudable given the ferocity — and occasional menace — of his critics.

Donald Trump loves to put his name on things, and when it comes to the recent burst of inflation, it’s totally deserved. Trump and Republican politicians are doing their best to try to make a simple story complicated. But there is no doubt that Trump is the lead and almost sole author of the inflation we are now seeing.

Just to quickly clear away the stupid: We did have a large burst of inflation under Biden, just like the rest of the world. We were hit with a worldwide pandemic in Trump’s first term, which he apparently can’t remember. The pandemic led to a massive fall in output in 2020, while Trump was president.

When Biden took office in January of 2021, we were still down more than 10 million jobs from the pre-pandemic level. Biden’s recovery package quickly got back the lost jobs and got the unemployment rate down to 4.0 percent by the end of the year, far faster than anyone expected.

The reopening of the economy from the pandemic recession led to a burst of inflation in the United States, as it did in Germany, France, and everywhere else. Suddenly people were buying lots of things, and it took a while for businesses to ramp up production.

If Biden had cared less about getting people back to work, the recovery package could have been smaller, and the peak inflation rate might have been 1-2 percentage points lower. But the important part of the story is that inflation quickly came down.

Year-over-year inflation peaked at 9.0 percent in June of 2022. A year later, it was down to 3.1 percent. It was down to 2.6 percent by the election in November of 2024. Inflation was generally expected to continue to fall and to be at or near the Fed’s 2.0 percent target by the end of 2025.

But then Trump turned everything around. Inflation began to rise even before he took office, as households and businesses stocked up on imported goods in anticipation of Trump tariffs. Durable goods prices, which had been falling since early 2023, stopped falling and began to rise. The Consumer Price Index also stopped falling and started to rise. Year-over-year inflation hit 3.0 percent in September 2025 but then slowed to 2.7 percent by the end of the year.

It likely would have continued to slow through 2026. After all, Trump’s tariffs were primarily a one-time event. If he didn’t keep imposing new ones (a big “if”), it was reasonable to think that inflation would settle back down to its pre-tariff pace.

But we never got to test that theory. Trump decided to go to war with Iran at the end of February. As we all know, the stated rationale was crazy. Iran was not close to having nuclear weapons, and Trump himself had boasted about destroying the country’s nuclear program in a bombing strike the prior summer.

Logic doesn’t mean much to Donald Trump. He and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wanted to attack Iran, and whatever story they came up with was secondary.

Anyhow, regardless of their motives, they apparently did not expect that the Iranian government would both survive and retaliate by blocking oil from going through the Strait of Hormuz. This sent oil prices soaring, which is the biggest element in the current burst of inflation. However, since oil is not just gas for our cars, but also diesel, which is needed for transporting just about everything, the price hikes are spreading throughout the economy. Also, since much of the world’s fertilizer production takes place in the Gulf countries, fertilizer prices are also soaring. This had some effect on crops already but will be a much bigger deal next year.

The broad impact of Trump’s war on inflation can be clearly seen in the Producer Price Index. The latest year-over-year figure was 6.3 percent for September. Since this is inflation at the wholesale level, it will be showing up at the consumer level in the next few months. To be clear, the impact is not one-to-one, so this doesn’t mean that consumer inflation will be rising to 6.3 percent, but it means that the direction of change in future months will likely be higher, not lower.

This is very far from a number consistent with the Fed’s 2 percent target. And this is all Trump’s doing. One important difference from the 1970s inflation is that, unlike the 1970s, wages are not rising in step with inflation. The pace of wage growth slowed from 4.0 percent in 2023 and 2024 to 3.0 percent in the most recent data. This means that workers are falling further behind as prices accelerate. The higher prices are going to profits, not covering higher labor costs. That might be good news for Trump’s billionaire donors, but not for the rest of us.

The 17th meeting of the Conference of the Parties, or COP17, to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, or CBD, is a major upcoming international summit focused on global measures to protect, restore, and sustainably manage nature.

It serves as the global review of collective progress on implementing the 2023-2030 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF), adopted at COP15, evaluating whether countries are on track to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030.

This year's official theme is “Taking Action for Nature,” aiming to turn high-level commitments into concrete delivery.

This triple COP year brings together the three UN Rio Conventions for their Conferences of the Parties in quick succession to tackle the interconnected crises in climate (UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC, COP31), biodiversity (CBD COP17), and land (UN Convention to Combat Desertification COP17).

The KMGBF features four 2050 long-term goals and 23 2030 global targets to halt and reverse nature loss.

The four long-term goals are:

1. Protect and Restore: Focus on ecosystem integrity and connectivity, and halt human-induced extinctions of known threatened species.
2. Prosper with Nature: Ensure that biodiversity is sustainably used and managed and nature’s contributions to people, including ecosystem functions and services, are valued, maintained, and enhanced.
3. Share Benefits Fairly: Ensure equitable sharing of benefits from genetic resources and traditional knowledge, especially with Indigenous peoples and local communities.
4. Invest and Collaborate: Close the $700 billion per year biodiversity finance gap and align financial flows.

The State Of Biodiversity

The world is off track to meet most of its 2030 targets under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.

• Although 85% of parties have revised or updated their National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs), delivery on the ground is far too slow.
• We are currently on track to meet only 1 of the framework's 23 global targets for 2030. This is Target 8: Minimising the impacts of climate change and ocean acidification on biodiversity.
• The central goal of protecting at least 30% of global land and sea areas by 2030 requires urgent acceleration.
• A global biodiversity financing gap of an estimated $700 billion per year remains to support the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Financial flows that subsidise or drive nature loss continue to outpace conservation investments.
• In positive news, more than 130 major global businesses and financial institutions have stepped forward to actively lobby governments for subsidy reforms.
• The UN Desertification Summit delivered a milestone $1.2 billion investment for the Rangelands Initiative, which will also benefit biodiversity goals.
• Leading the way, the European Union has remained on track to double its international biodiversity financing. It also became the first official party to submit its comprehensive 7th National Report under the Convention on Biological Diversity, setting a transparent benchmark for other nations.

Biodiversity Is A Planetary Issue: What Must We Do?

(Image by FAO | CC BY-SA 3.0)

Managing the biodiversity crisis within political borders is impossible; we must prioritize a global approach that manages Earth’s interconnected systems.

The health of Earth’s living systems quite literally determines the long-term survival and stability of human civilization.

Biodiversity is the physical fabric that regulates the planet’s biogeochemical cycles (carbon, water, nitrogen). Losing biodiversity degrades the Earth system’s resilience and, with it, its capacity to absorb shocks like climate change, pollution, and extreme weather.

Climate change and biodiversity loss are twin crises driven by the same systemic roots. Healthy ecosystems act as essential carbon sinks and natural buffers, helping stabilize the climate.

We simply must safeguard our planet's natural boundaries. An important consideration is whether national commitments are scaling up fast enough to pull humanity back from irreversible tipping points (such as the destruction of the Amazon rainforest and widespread coral reef collapse).

To maintain a stable, habitable planet, humanity must not cross these thresholds. By shifting from extraction to regeneration, we can reduce humanity’s demands through industrial agriculture, mining, overfishing, and urban expansion. Days like Earth Overshoot Day remind us that humanity consumes more resources than the planet can regenerate annually.

Nature must be treated as a finite resource and respected as such. Harmful subsidies (like those backing fossil fuels or intensive industrial monocultures) must be redirected toward regenerative land and water use.

Youth At COP17

Young people participate in the Global Climate Strike in London on March 15, 2019. (Photo by Garry Knight)

Children and young people are disproportionately affected by climate change and biodiversity loss; therefore, their voices are particularly important at major climate and biodiversity conferences.

Today's decisions have long-term consequences for their health, education, well-being, and future opportunities. Intergenerational justice looks at how present generations affect past and future people. Protecting ecosystems today is seen as a matter of securing a healthy, habitable future.

This COP17 recognizes children and young people as important stakeholders and constituencies. Official mechanisms have been established to support youth participation:

• YOUNGO: The official children and youth constituency of the UNFCCC. It brings together over a million young members worldwide and helps train young advocates to participate in international negotiations, coordinate regional chapters, and ensure youth voices are heard inside the official rooms
• Global Youth Biodiversity Network (GYBN): The official youth coordination platform recognized by the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity. It unites young people and youth organisations from over 170 countries to represent the global youth voice for halting biodiversity loss.

Both groups have access to official COP processes; they monitor government commitments, participate as observers in the diplomatic Blue Zones, and have the opportunity to speak during plenary sessions.

The Green Zone is a public area open to students, activists, and young researchers attending events in Yerevan, Armenia. The COP17 Green Zone will provide open spaces for workshops, cultural events, and collaborative problem-solving.

NGOs At COP17

People demonstrate at COP15 in Montreal, Canada on December 7, 2022. (Photo by UN Biodiversity | CC BY 2.0)

Non-governmental organisations, civil society coalitions, research bodies, and observer groups play a critical role at COP conferences. They serve as watchdogs, technical advisers, and advocates for groups that might not otherwise have a direct seat at the negotiating table.

NGOs bring local, grassroots priorities into global policy spaces, ensuring that community-level perspectives help shape international biodiversity decisions.

They provide scientific data, policy recommendations, and track national progress on targets.

Key non-state and civil society players actively shaping the discourse and engagement at COP17 include the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and Conservation International.

Business for Nature is a major coalition that rallies global companies and commercial organisations to push governments for stronger nature policies, arguing that voluntary corporate action isn’t enough without systemic regulatory backing.

The Finance for Biodiversity Foundation is an accredited observer network representing financial institutions, banks, and investment funds. They focus heavily on resource mobilization, aligning financial flows with global biodiversity goals, and operationalizing funding mechanisms like the UN Cali Fund.

Indigenous Peoples’ and Local Communities’ Caucuses represent Indigenous stewards who work closely with civil society allies to ensure traditional ecological knowledge and land rights are protected in the global review process.

The CBD Women’s Caucus is an active network focused on gender-responsive biodiversity data and ensuring women, major stewards of local agriculture and ecosystems, are fairly represented in monitoring and policy systems.

After years of slow progress, these groups will push for greater accountability and real change. They will also advocate for greater biodiversity financing, ensuring it is mobilized and reaches vulnerable frontline projects where it is needed most.

COP17: Critical Stress Test For Governments

The President-Designate of COP17 is Hambardzum Matevosyan, Armenia's Minister of Environment.

COP17 will be the biggest event the country has ever held. He has already acknowledged the “many challenges and gaps” identified in the draft Global Biodiversity Framework report and even said they had to nudge leaders to submit their reports by the February deadline.

Matevosyan is adamant that “we are not changing the goals,” but rather “we are making a realistic assessment of where we stand and what is needed to achieve them. It is a course correction.”

The minister is also working on introducing environmental protection into the Armenian constitution.

As for the other government delegates, they are responsible for turning international environmental goals into domestic law, national budgets, and enforceable policies.

Key priorities include:

• The Global Stocktake and Accountability: Ministries of Environment must submit national reports and show tangible evidence of how they are working to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030. They must balance strict conservation targets with economic realities.
• Financing and Resource Mobilization: They simply must close the funding gap. Developed nations must track international aid and private-sector investments, and redirect subsidies that unintentionally harm ecosystems toward nature-positive initiatives. Developing nations must push for adequate, predictable financial support from global funds.
• Holistic Government Approach: Biodiversity policy cannot be handled by environmental ministries alone. There must be close coordination across ministries of finance, agriculture, fisheries, urban planning, and foreign affairs. They must ensure that domestic policies on water security, food systems, and climate resilience support biodiversity
• Diplomatic Positioning and Consensus: Delegations work within geopolitical blocs to negotiate final treaty language. Ministers must commit to ambitious global goals while ensuring that the final agreed text does not demand targets that their domestic legislatures or industries cannot practically achieve.

Better World Info provide a valuable platform to help NGOs, young people, and all other participants and observers prepare for the events of COP17. Stay tuned as we follow key developments and report back on whether our hopes for real tangible progress were realized.

As a side note, all UN member states, except the US, have ratified the Convention on Biological Diversity. While this means US funding is absent and the framework may carry less weight, it also means progress is not constrained by its historical blocking of consensus.

As the first official global review of collective progress since the landmark GBF was signed four years ago, hopes are high that this COP will be a COP of implementation in preparation for the 2030 moment of truth.

As Astrid Schomaker, executive secretary of the CBD, said: “Armenia’s vision for COP17 is a beautiful one. It aims to inspire us all to see that transformation is possible, that nature is worth protecting, that implementation is happening and that we all have an important and active role to play."

Before his nitrogen execution last year, Anthony Boyd wanted to figure out a way to help people understand the horror he was about to experience. He told me to watch his legs. When he couldn't go any further, he was going to lift up his legs one final time. Once and for all, he wanted to settle that nitrogen executions were neither quick nor humane.

The State of Alabama controlled the gas, the mask, the restraints, the room. Boyd had nothing left to control but himself... his legs.

At approximately 5:57 p.m., the nitrogen began flowing. Boyd clenched his fist. He raised his head. Then he lifted his legs several inches, exactly as he had promised me. By my watch, he fought for his life for at least sixteen minutes, maybe even closer to nineteen depending on when the gas actually entered the mask. He was not pronounced dead until 6:33 p.m. Afterward, officials had the audacity to call his movements involuntary and insignificant. They all wanted to talk about the justice that was just done. I knew better. The lies and misdirections of government are always endless.

The cameras became the problem... not the killing itself. This should send chills down the spine of our country.

The primary thing that these executions produce is more horror.

As a spiritual advisor to men on death row throughout the nation, I have witnessed fourteen executions in five states, which is more than any other spiritual leader in the nation. Repeatedly, I have watched a condemned man's body tell the witnesses what the official statement would later explain away. I know what the government's descriptions and language of procedure can conceal.

I carry that knowledge into what is coming at Fort Hood. On December 3, the United States Army intends to execute Nidal Hasan by firing squad. President Donald Trump approved the death sentence in early October. It will be the first firing squad carried out under federal authority since the Army shot Private Eddie Slovik for desertion in a French courtyard in January 1945. The country went 81 years without doing this. Of course, it is Trump who is bringing it back.

Don't think for a second I am going to skip the horrors of Nidal Hasan's actions. Indeed, Hasan was convicted of killing 13 people and wounding 32 others in the 2009 Fort Hood shooting. The people he killed had families and futures. The survivors have carried 17 years of consequences. Their suffering must never become an afterthought. Opposing this execution does not require anyone to shrink the horror of what came before it. But those deaths do not make the killing of Hasan an automatic act of justice. They also do not lift the moral responsibility from the president who has authorized the shooting.

Who deserves to die and who deserves to live? The rifles at Fort Hood will not go back to the armory when it is over. They will be cleaned, racked and kept ready for whoever is next.

The Army's own announcement lays out the chain. The president alone can approve a military prisoner's death sentence. Trump exercised that authority. He does not have to pull the trigger to own what happens when the rifles are raised. Other people will fire. The directive to shoot an unarmed paralyzed man will come straight from the Oval Office.

Of course, if the horror wasn't horrific enough. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth proposed livestreaming the execution so the world could watch America kill Hasan. Trump argued that streaming it might be a strong deterrent. On October 15, after widespread criticism from all sides of the political spectrum, Trump backed down. Hasan would be shot to death behind closed doors. He seems to glow each time he makes such a pronouncement.

So, the cameras became the problem... not the killing itself.

This should send chills down the spine of our country. The government considered turning a human death into a demonstration of national power. When the demonstration met resistance, the administration dropped the audience while keeping the shooting. The only difference between a public execution and a private one is the number of witnesses.

Consider whose hand is on the order. This is a president whose own defense secretary, Mark Esper, wrote that during the protests of 2020 Trump asked whether the people in the streets could simply be shot in the legs. This is a president who entertained broadcasting a man's death as a warning to the world. He is now being handed rifles, a chair and a legal pathway to use them against a prisoner who cannot stand.

Anyone who thinks that Trump is going to be comfortable stopping at Hasan, has not listened to those who have worked closest with him.

The only difference between a public execution and a private one is the number of witnesses.

A firing squad is a capability before it is a sentence. Once a government has built the chair, qualified the shooters, written the protocol and fired on one man, it owns that capability for good. It will not retire with Hasan. South Carolina shot three men in 2025. In one of those executions, an outside pathologist who reviewed the state's autopsy found the bullets largely missed the man's heart. Meaning, he bled out for an extended period of time. Idaho spent more than $1.2 million building a firing squad it has not used. Those who think this is an inexpensive, certain, or quick enterprise are sorely mistaken. The federal government is about to join the blunders that have always plagued the firing squad, and human executions in general for that matter. Who deserves to die and who deserves to live? The rifles at Fort Hood will not go back to the armory when it is over. They will be cleaned, racked and kept ready for whoever is next.

Hasan is where that question begins. He is not where it ends.

I do not want this president to have the power to shoot an unarmed person. Not Hasan. Not a drug dealer. Not a protester. Not anyone. Unchecked power does not know the difference between them. It only knows the hand that holds it. A man who once asked about shooting Americans in the legs is about to find out what it feels like to give the command for a volley.

Once a soldier learns to fire on a bound prisoner on command, the distance to the next bound prisoner gets shorter.

I think of the soldiers who may be ordered to take part. They entered an institution that asks them to protect human life, sometimes at terrible cost. They should not have to pretend that shooting a restrained man is another administrative duty. Once a soldier learns to fire on a bound prisoner on command, the distance to the next bound prisoner gets shorter. Once a president learns he can order it, the list of people he might order it for gets longer.

I do not want the families of the Fort Hood victims forgotten. Their loss deserves more than a government telling them that another death settles the account. One murder will never offset another murder.

Besides, isn't Donald Trump the last person on earth you would trust with a rifle?

Journalism is experiencing one of its worst crises when it’s needed the most.

Overall, news consumption is dropping. And it’s worse among young people, who largely get their news through social media, not news outlets. People under 30, more than any other age group, trust social media sources of news.

The problem is that it’s hard to tell if your favorite social media source is a citizen journalist or a paid promoter. In a recent in-depth report, The New York Times revealed that social media platforms are rife with accounts that are paid to promote campaigns parading as personal opinion.

Study after study proves that journalism fuels and promote a strong democracy.

Rather than hire well-known influencers with huge followings, politicians and organizations are now hiring huge numbers of accounts with smaller followings. “Functioning more like birdshot than a single bullet,” the Times explained, “these high-volume social media campaigns represent the new vanguard of modern political influence, saturating the internet with a topic until it is all but unavoidable.”

A perspective that appears popular online may well be the result of this digital “astroturfing.” A decade ago, many Americans blamed the Russian government for insidious meddling in American politics using armies of paid content pushers. Now the same tactic is being deployed by campaigns and nonprofits.

This disturbing trend goes hand-in-hand with a shocking decimation of journalism. A June 2026 study found that the number of journalists per capita in the United States fell by more than 80 percent since 2002, and those jobs that remain are increasingly focused on sports and crime rather than public policy, government, or other issues.

As out-of-work journalists turn to freelancing, the situation for piecemeal work is equally grim. The National Writers Union recently found that freelance pay remains stagnant even as the cost of living has more than doubled.

Desperate to make ends meet, some independent journalists might attempt to garner large enough followings on social media to monetize their work—only to find that they have to play to algorithms designed to lift up rage bait and polarizing content.

If our views are shaped by paid content creators, and there are fewer than ever journalists to investigate issues of concern, we face a future where opinions are bought and paid for by those with the deepest pockets.

We cannot continue this way. Democracy will die if we have no good answer for funding journalism that is hard-hitting and trustworthy.

To address the crisis in journalism, California Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed AB 2222 to strengthen local journalism. Under the law, qualifying news outlets in California will receive $20,000 per journalist, capped at five journalists, plus $15,000 for every additional journalist.

This might cover pay raises in a state where $100,000 a year is considered a “low-income” wage—and where the median salary for journalists is under $53,000. But while the bill’s intentions are laudable, this is too little too late. Thousands of journalists have already left their field.

For decades, the federal government diverted a minuscule sliver of the national budget to publicly fund broadcast media through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. President Donald Trump took a sledgehammer to that modest and very limited source of funding, ending it in July 2025.

What then, is the answer? If New York City Mayor Mamdani can open city-run grocery stores, can localities do something similar for newsrooms, while preserving the critical editorial independence necessary for good journalism?

The answer is “yes.” Media expert Victor Pickard has touted an ambitious and innovative plan for “Public Media Centers” in local communities around the country that are “federally guaranteed but locally owned and controlled.”

Study after study proves that journalism fuels and promote a strong democracy. It’s no wonder that authoritarianism is rising at the same time that journalism is dying. If we want to save our democracy, we must save journalism.