Despite it being full of sound and fury signifying something akin to pipe dreams, the political platform of Greg Levy is still the most progressive of all US Senate candidates in Ohio. That’s good, and that’s it.

All else strongly suggests a candidacy designed, whether intentionally or not, to shift significant voters from the only viable progressive candidate in this critical race: Sherrod Brown. The danger is that Levy may do to the 2026 Senate race in Ohio what Ralph Nader did to the 2000 Presidential race in Florida—snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory for progressive forces.

Polls show this Senate race to be highly competitive. One conducted in late September by the reputable Rasmussen Project gives Brown a slight 3-point lead over Husted, but it also reveals significant support for Levy ranging from 1% to 9% depending on the demographic. Within the 19-29 age group, Levy has an estimated 6% of the vote, and among voters without a high school diploma the support reaches 9%. His overall support currently stands at around 2%—within striking range to knock Brown out and keep the US Senate in MAGA control.

It does not get much uglier than this.

Much of Levy’s popularity, especially among the youth, stems from his pro-Palestine stance and his critique of Brown acceptance of AIPAC money. However, Levy’s campaign is also not without dubious donations. His very first recorded and largest single donation, $3500 given in early October 2025, came from Matthew Meyer, a Graduate Research Associate at Ohio State University. The monthly stipend for a GRA is $2.897. A much more troublesome campaign donation, the second largest single one, $1,041.96, came from Ada Rauschenbach, who is employed as a highly specialized communications engineer for iDirect Government, a major military contractor.

According to its corporate self-description, iDirect Government “provides mission-critical Military Satellite Communication solutions; anti-jamming capabilities and cryptographic technologies to the Department of Defense.” In January 2026, it was awarded a $151 billion contract for a sophisticated program (SHIELD) to support Trump’s wild “Golden Dome” defense system. iDirect Government also supplies an Israeli weapons manufacturer (GetSat based in Rehovot) with its advanced software used for “empowering mission success in dynamic and contested environments,” likely a reference to Gaza.

Why would anyone with his livelihood rooted in militarism donate significantly to a candidate who calls for a 90% cut to the Pentagon budget? The question is a rhetorical one, and gives credence to the proposition that MAGA militarists would love to have Levy cause Brown to be defeated.

Campaign donations are part of this nefarious strategy; deceit is another. Levy proudly identifies himself as a member of and organizer for the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL)—on his campaign materials, but hardly anywhere else. On his FEC candidacy form he filed as an Independent, not a PSL member. However, according go an Ohio Secretary of State Directive, “An independent candidate must actually be unaffiliated from any political party, and the required claim of unaffiliation must be made in good faith for the candidate to be qualified to run as an independent candidate.” On the Ohio ballot, Levy is identified as an “other-party” candidate, the only one with that curious designation.

Nevertheless, in countless media reports and voter guides, Levy is identified as an Independent and no mention is made of his PSL membership. An article in a Suffolk University publication even calls him a “No Party” candidate, and The Times of Israel claims he is a “DSA-endorsed Senate candidate” who is running as an Independent.

One does not build a socialist movement by failing to be identified as a socialist in the media; but being labeled an Independent attracts a wider electorate, which is precisely what Levy needs to siphon off sufficient voters from Brown. Adding to the contention that Levy’s campaign was launched to target Brown is the timing of its filing. Brown filed for candidacy on August 18, 2025, and Levy subsequently did so within a month, on September 12.

However, another filing within 4 weeks of the midterm elections revealed a sinister GOP plot designed to help assure Levy successfully plays the spoiler role of a shill candidate. On October 5, a newly formed Republican PAC (Enough Promises Ohio) with ties to Trump’s MAGA Inc. super PAC, spent $195,519.98 to Seven Farms of South Carolina for printing and mailing services in support of Gregory Lee Levy, who is explicitly mentioned in the filing; two days later the same GOP outfit invested another $215,659.58 for similar services in opposition to Brown. Seven Farms uses the same address as a political vendor that has been paid by No Going Back, another super PAC linked to Trump.

The campaign mailers, which were sent to countless likely voters in Ohio, vigorously promote Levy over Brown with phrases like “Join the Revolution,” “Free Palestine” and, “Send a Worker to the Senate.” Such slogans have been extensively used on Levy’s campaign literature and signs.

It does not get much uglier than this. Having MAGA forces spend nearly $200,000 to actively promote a nonviable socialist candidate in order to defeat a viable progressive one tells you all you need to know about this crucial election: a vote for Levy is, in effect, a vote for the fascist MAGA candidate.

After this revelation of massive MAGA support for Levy’s campaign, there is really only one honorable option for a campaign that should never have started: withdrawal.

Right now, I want to bring your attention to Monday's raid by federal agents on the Washington-area home of Rep. Ilhan Omar — 22 days before she faces reelection to Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District.

The raid reportedly concerns Omar’s immigration history, including allegations of fraud that she has repeatedly denied.

Omar accuses the Trump regime of weaponizing law enforcement against a political opponent:

“Make no mistake: this is an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement. For ten years, Trump has targeted me with baseless lies and smear campaigns. This is just the latest escalation in his campaign of political intimidation. I will not be silenced.”

Months ago, Trump called Omar — a Somali-born Muslim who became a U.S. citizen and was elected to Congress in 2018 — “garbage.” He said she shouldn’t be allowed to be a congresswoman and stood by as his supporters chanted to “send her back” to her native Somalia.

This past weekend — before today’s raid — Trump renewed his attacks on Omar. “She comes from Somalia,” Trump said, where “they don’t have a government, they don’t have police, all they have is crime and squalor.” He continued:

“She comes into our country and she says ‘my Constitution allows me.’ She’s talking about our Constitution. What they’ve done to Minnesota, these people from Somalia, should never be allowed.”

Let me remind you that this is the president of the United States mouthing this bigoted, racist, nationalistic filth.

In this weekend’s rant, Trump also stated that “JD Vance and our people are looking at it” — referring to Omar.

After Monday's raid on her home, Trump said he has “always found [Omar] to be totally crooked” and called her “a terrible person.”

JD Vance has previously accused Omar of immigration fraud without providing any evidence. In March, Vance reiterated that claim, which he said he had discussed with White House senior aide Stephen Miller.

“We actually think that Ilhan Omar definitely committed immigration fraud,” Vance told a conservative podcaster. The next step, he said, was to figure out how to “build a case.”

In a democracy, the highest officials of one party do not “build cases” to pursue legislators from the opposing party.

Nor do they investigate their political opponents within days of an election, in violation of explicit Department of Justice rules.

The Department of Justice guidance for protecting election integrity explicitly states that the department should not engage in investigative measures that might “chill legitimate voting and campaign activities” or “interject an investigation itself into ongoing campaigns.”

The Justice Manual further states that federal prosecutors and agents “may never select the timing” of investigative steps, charges, or public statements for the purpose of affecting an election or giving an advantage or disadvantage to a candidate or political party.

Election-year guidance dating back to at least 2008 has emphasized that “politics must play no role” in investigative or charging decisions and that prosecutors should exercise particular caution close to elections.

If Democrats regain control of the House, they must investigate this flagrant abuse of power by Trump, Vance, and the Department of Justice.

In the meantime, you might consider making a contribution to Ilhan Omar’s campaign, here. And if you’re able to volunteer for her campaign, do so here.

LIVE: MWF 9-11 am Eastern time & 9-10 am Tues-Thurs & Streaming Anytime

“DeProgram” invites Michael Tracey, an independent journalist and commentator known for contrarian coverage of media and sexual-assault narratives, to discuss the 2026 Cornell “Jane Doe” civil lawsuit, filed by a former student alleged she was drugged and assaulted by seven Chi Phi fraternity members on October 19, 2024. Tracey has emphasized due-process concerns, the asymmetry of naming the accused while the plaintiff remains anonymous, and reported post-incident texts in which the complainant allegedly called the encounter a “gangbang” and invoked “our body our choice.” He solicited her identity on social media, briefly posted a name he claimed to have verified, then deleted it, arguing the exercise exposed improper use of anonymity in settlement-driven suits. The move drew widespread criticism and a #IAmJaneDoe backlash.

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

Today we also discuss:

• U.S. authorities raid Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar’s Washington-area home as part of an ongoing federal criminal investigation, the Justice Department says. The probe involves alleged immigration fraud tied to paperwork completed by her late father when she was a child. Omar, a leftist and vocal Trump critic, called the search political intimidation; it occurred weeks before midterm elections.

• A New York Times satellite analysis finds Israel has leveled 48 of roughly 60 villages in occupied southern Lebanon since an April “cease-fire,” primarily Shiite areas, while building infrastructure for a longer presence. Meanwhile, Saudi authorities say that operations will remain suspended at the airport in Riyadh after another Houthi attack on the facility on Sunday.

• Elon Musk has quietly given more than $276 million since July to Republican groups and his America PAC, making him by far the largest known midterm donor as he tries to protect the party’s Senate majority.⁠ That includes a $158 million gift to the Senate Leadership Fund, one of the largest political donations in U.S. history. His total this cycle already exceeds his 2024 spending.

MERCHANDISE: DeProgram.MySpreadShop.com

LIVE ON YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@DeProgramShow

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

https://x.com/tedrall

https://x.com/JamarlThomas

#tedrall #jamarlthomas #news #politics

The post The Cornell Controversy (with Michael Tracey) | DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

President Donald Trump’s ICE terror campaign against US cities reached a new height October 8 with the dangerous shooting of an unarmed Dominican man, with his 5-year-old child in the car, in a densely populated Manhattan neighborhood.

The incident adds to a growing scandal over inhumane ICE treatment of victims they harm. ICE agents have repeatedly interfered with or denied medical care for the victims they shoot. Patients have also been pulled out of hospitals prematurely against medical advice and without authorization of their doctors and other medical professionals.

California last year enacted a law that prohibits medical facilities from permitting federal agents without a valid search warrant or court order into private areas, including places where patients receive treatment or discuss health matters, the Los Angeles Times noted. The Minnesota Nurses Association is also pressing for public policies to bar ICE agents from being in rooms when patients are receiving care, and other community and patient protections.

Other states should follow and more is still needed. ICE must be held accountable, by law, for denying immediate medical care to anyone they harm, and it must be barred from removing them from any medical facility without specific medical consent and written authorization. National legislation would be best, but with a lawless administration in Washington, states should enact strict legislation to protect all patients as well as public safety.

Oscar Belgal, 28, was shot in the neck, apparently with an assault-style rifle, as seven rounds were blasted into his vehicle. ICE initially claimed they’d transported him to the hospital, a claim subsequently disproven by video. New York police officers, not ICE, transported Belgal to New York-Presbyterian Allen Hospital. There, nurses provided “dignified care,” said their union, the New York State Nurses Association, despite an ICE presence in the hospital that “has an intimidating and harmful effect on all patients. ICE has no place on our streets or in our hospitals.”

After several hours, ICE agents pulled Belgal out of the hospital taking him to a Brooklyn jail, with a bullet still in his body, according to his lawyers. They said he was in pain, afraid for himself and deeply concerned for his unhurt but terrified 5-year-old son. There was no report that any medical staff had explicitly authorized or cleared him for such quick discharge against all medical ethics. He spent the night in a cell, not in a hospital bed despite still having a bullet in his body, an attorney said.

More than 24 hours later, Belgal was “still in pain,” Paige Austin of the nonprofit Make the Road New York, told a federal judge. “Although [Mr. Belgal] was initially hospitalized, it appears that ICE moved quickly to transfer him out of the hospital to an unknown location—raising grave concerns for his health and well-being,” his legal staff said in a court filing.

“We know that ICE is rotten to its core,” Mayor Zohran Mamdani told reporters. “ICE undermines public safety. This is an agency that should be abolished.” He later added, “Get ICE out of our neighborhoods. Get ICE out of our hospitals. Get ICE off our streets. Get ICE away from our children.”

It is not normal for a democratic nation to institute this level of warfare against its own people — not targeting the “worst of the worst” they claimed, but anyone they racially profile as an enemy. Then they force the pain and physical harm they’ve caused on people against professional medical judgement. It’s what fascism looks like. As National Nurses United (NNU) repeated in August after one of its members, a Maine RN was kidnaped by ICE, “Since ICE began kidnapping Black and brown people and terrorizing our communities,” NNU has called it out as “an illegitimate, violent, paramilitary organization that must be promptly abolished.”

Belgal is far from the only person to whom ICE has shown disregard for their safety or health after being shot or otherwise harmed.

In September, a Venezuelan delivery driver Wilber Rafael Garcés Pérez, 28, was shot by ICE agents in Austin, TX after an unmarked SUV—one that never activated its lights or siren—rammed his car as he said he was trying to pull over. After fleeing on foot, the agents shot him in the back.

He was taken to a hospital in San Antonio with a bullet in his back for four hours, apparently just given morphine, his attorney said, before being whisked away again by ICE and moved to a detention center in South Texas. At the facility, she said, “He was cold, asked for water (and) said he was in great pain, but he spent hours (there) even before he got an ibuprofen.” The bullet, that was close to his spine, remained lodged in his back for two weeks, before it was finally surgically removed after partial paralysis had set in. When he appeared in court, he was in a wheelchair.

“Democratic leaders and immigrant advocates have questioned whether Garcés Pérez received proper medical treatment and whether he was taken into custody before he could fully heal,” the Texas Tribune reported. Brian Elmore, a Global Emergency Medical fellow doctor, told The Tribune, “In somebody that isn’t detained, these patients would have close follow-up with their trauma surgery team and be discharged with pain medication. The problem with these patients is that they are often discharged in conditions where they receive inappropriate or absent medical care.”

Lack of proper medical care has been demonstrated throughout the ICE campaign. It was evident in the callous behavior of ICE agents who impeded medical personnel from seeking to reach Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis in the moments after their fatal shootings by agents.

It was demonstrated in Los Angeles in 2025 during ICE presences in hospitals. In October 2025, journalist Carlitos Ricardo Parias, who had been tracking ICE actions and posting them on TikTok, was wounded by an agent and taken to a downtown hospital, California Hospital Medical Center. ICE agents remained in his hospital room for nearly a week, a presence intimidating to nurses and patients, said Anne Caputo-Pearl, RN, a labor and delivery nurse and chief nurse representative for the California Nurses Association (CNA). He too was denied adequate medical treatment, including pain medication and physical therapy, while subsequently still in an ICE detention facility, said the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Three months earlier, ICE agents stayed around the clock in the hospital room of a Salvadoran detainee Milagro Solis-Portillo who had a medical emergency while being arrested. CNA President Sandy Reding, RN, who joined protesters at Glendale Memorial Hospital, said nurses and patients were frightened to see masked immigration agents in the hospital’s lobby. “Hospitals used to be a sanctuary place, and now they’re not,” she said. “And it seems like ICE has just been running rampant.”

Solis-Portillo said she was repeatedly pressured by ICE to say she was well enough to leave, and was barred from speaking to family and attorneys until she complied. They ultimately transferred her to another hospital against her doctor’s orders and without explanation, her attorney said. Her case “violates established ethical and patient care standards not only for this individual, but also for the public health and safety,” CNA said.

It has long been obvious that ICE and other paramilitary federal’s cruel behavior is intentional. It is evident in the streets, where on behalf of the Trump administration federal agents have shot at some two dozen people, killing six of them. Not only has a single agent not been federally charged, but as Jonathan Blitzer writes in The New Yorker, the federal response is always to blame the victim.

Further the administration has arrested and prosecuted hundreds of protesters; in many cases where judges have dropped charges or juries acquitted them. One major case, known as the Minnesota 15, goes to trial October 20. They are being charged not with impeding ICE, but conspiracy to impede ICE in Minnesota, notes defendant Cal Robinet.

A policy of harm, disregard, and cruelty is abundantly apparent in 239 ICE concentration camp detention centers where the death toll has reached 59 during Trump’s second term due to deliberate substandard conditions, inadequate nutrition, and medical neglect. ICE has even stopped listing where detainees are being held in its online database to hide them from family members and legal counsel.

Stephen Miller, the architect of the campaign, put it bluntly after Renee Good was murdered while administration officials branded her a domestic terrorist. “To all ICE officers: You have immunity to perform your duties and no one—no city official, no state official, no illegal alien, no leftist agitator or domestic insurrectionist—can prevent you from fulfilling your legal obligations and duties,” he declared.

The history of fascist dictatorships is littered with sobering examples of what happens when there are not barriers against government medical abuses, either by law, or by the opposition of the medical establishment and its practitioners.

For the medical community, if actions are taken by ICE against their medical recommendation, doctors, nurses, and emergency medical technicians need to speak up in real time to advocate for their patients. Hospital administrators should support them, and say this patient was taken away against medical advice. They will have public support, and laws should be enacted to protect them against retaliation.

As the Trump administration continues to use its paramilitary forces and other federal police as an instrument to target communities of color and threaten violent repression on everyone who dissents, these policies will continue to escalate without more broad, forceful responses and protest.

The huge AI industry, with a value approaching $1 trillion, has promised new jobs; safer, more efficient production in industry and agriculture; secure borders; instantaneous ease of communication; and seamless augmentation of human thinking with benefits to global health, environment, and culture. Consumers have accepted its power to help them write and do research; to power their computers, smart phones, and other goods; with algorithms to bring love in dating Apps, and bring digital age self-driving vehicles to the roadways.

But AI is suffering from an existential crisis. From its military origins to its invasive data scraping; from its promise to augment human intelligence to its unbounded surveillance of our bodies, faces, and thoughts; and from its genesis in university research to its iron-handed embrace by unregulated big technology companies, AI commands a dark presence in daily life. As university and industry researchers moved closer to developing “thinking machines,” publics understandably began to worry about the threats that accompany potentially sentient devices. They have grown uncomfortable about giving up their privacy to data management industries that use their financial, travel, and health information to invade their lives. They worry mightily about the environmental impacts of the growing number of data centers needed to feed AI.

Even more, it is now widely understood that AI is an industrial tool directed primarily to create profit for digital corporations and their shareholders, not altruistically to augment human intelligence, nor to ease the burden of production. AI was borne of military programs and still serves military impulses and programs. The military impulses appear in the creation of domestic surveillance programs used by both democracies and authoritarian regimes. And AI is a dirty technology: The costs of building and operating data centers has turned world communities against them because of their great carbon costs, land takings, noise, vibrations, and community disruptions.

The Military Essence of AI

AI is a military tool. Its genesis is connected with the design of nuclear weapons. It commands outsized funding from militaries around the world for so-called smart weapons that enable killing from afar—with armies removed from direct engagement and civilian populations ostensibly safe from attack. But AI inures soldiers from the act of killing and in fact puts civilians in war zones at greater risk. In Gaza, Syria, Venezuela, and Iran innocents have died through the direct application of such AI war tools as drones. Israel designed the “LANIUS drone-based loitering munition” to kill in the urban setting; it relies on the Lavender program to have identified almost 40,000 Gazans as targets for arrest or assassination. And governments have turned AI into war against their own citizens through a variety of fallible and unreliable surveillance systems.

The military nature of AI is obscured by the fact that computers, programming and natural languages, and iDevices are directly linked to military funding. In the US the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), created in February 1958 in response to the launch of Sputnik, funded cutting edge technologies in the battle with the communist USSR. DARPA powered the AI age. The internet grew out of ARPANET that linked the first supercomputers to simulate nuclear explosions; GPS came from DARPA’s “Transit,” the world's first global satellite navigation system; the computer mouse, SIRI, the iPhone DRAM cache, iPod Touch, lithium-ion batteries, microprocessors, and other parts in whole or partially grew out of military R and D. In the interest of developing drones and other autonomous vehicles for war, DARPA held challenge competitions into the 2000s with million-dollar prizes that resulted in today’s electric, self-driving vehicles.

The United States government has unhesitatingly funded AI defense research. The Trump administration sees digital weapons for what Pentagon officials erroneously claimed were quick and clean wars against Yemen, Venezuela, and Iran, but which have turned into costly AI quagmires. The White House 2027 budget request for DARPA alone is over $5 billion, a nearly 20% increase over 2026. DARPA claims that its innovations “become fixtures of modern civilian life,” but the real goal is to put “new technologies into use in service of our nation’s warfighters.” The Department of Defense is forecast to spend $26 billion on gamification and simulation training by 2028 alone. Unfortunately, “smart weapons” have a murderous record. As if in a video game, they make soldiers insensitive to killing. Smart weapons have encouraged the Pentagon to use AI with the result of increased “collateral damage”—the murder of civilian populations including recently school children in Iran.

AI in Civilian Warfare

Gathering and analysis of private data to profile citizens starts at the microlevel in personal phones and computers, continues in iris scanners, and culminates in CCTVs around the globe. Governments, free and authoritarian, are using software programs to track protest, isolate critics, and put them in prison. China uses its big data national Social Credit system to keep on eye on every citizen, and punish anyone without recourse for violating Big Brother’s unwritten rules. India deployed the Aadhaar national ID program, a database that connects each of India’s 1.3 billion citizens with a unique 12-digit identity aimed at centralizing their physiological, demographic, and digital data shadows.

Worldwide governments have spent tens of billions of dollars on surveillance; three-quarters of the world’s population are surveilled. Autocratic regimes, not surprisingly, spend more per capita on control. To contain a multi-ethnic empire during constant war, Russian authorities have expanded the surveillance society, with the secret police brazenly using facial recognition and other technologies. The Kremlin is using a CCTV catalog of people by gender, age, and race. Already facial recognition programs blanket 60 Russian regions, up from only five in 2021, with billions of rubles dedicated to expand the system. The democratic and free United States has over 85 million surveillance cameras.

Surveillance tools grow like mushrooms wherever the humidity of paranoia, racism, and state power come together.

Governments and AI companies claim their surveillance systems are solely to fight crime. But they do not fight crime. They identify innocent people to accuse them of crimes. Racism pervades face recognition (FR) technology. Amazon has joined such powerful, secretive smaller companies as Pegasus and Clearview in deploying its FR software, “Rekognition.” The software possessed error rates that reflected embedded gender and racial biases identified by computer scientist Timnit Gebru. Gebru and her colleagues called for “urgent attention if commercial companies are to build genuinely fair, transparent, and accountable facial analysis algorithms.” It took Amazon another year to admit problems with its racially suspect technology and to put an indefinite moratorium on police use of “Rekognition” for surveillances. Another AI app, PredPol (now Geolitica) helped police on patrol surveil areas of anticipated crime. The software algorithms led to a cycle of police being in predicted crime zones, expecting to see crimes, and finding crimes—or rather finding people acting nervously, whom they then interdicted. PredPol perpetuated racial biases by targeting Latino and Black neighborhoods and leaving white middle- to upper-class areas out.

Americans rightfully reject Flock, a company that sells AI-powered camera license plate readers (ALPR) to carry out warrantless surveillance of citizens. Flock’s more than 100,000 cameras surveil in the name of safety, but the intrusive AI technology conducts 20 billion scans monthly. (Dozens of law enforcement officials have used Flock illegally to stalk spouses and partners.) Surveillance tools grow like mushrooms wherever the humidity of paranoia, racism, and state power come together.

Governments use AI to track protest, isolate critics, and put them in prison. The Trump administration applies Flock and other apps for mass surveillance. It targets people for discriminatory searches. The Electronic Frontier Foundation documented more than 12 million searches logged by more than 3,900 agencies between December 2024 and October 2025 related to political demonstrations and federal immigration raids. Many state governments are stalking women who seek reproductive healthcare, ostensibly for health reasons, but obviously to use 1984-like methods to control a woman’s gestational rights.

AI: Costly and Environmentally Unsound

AI destroys the environment—and local communities bear the cost. AI is manufactured in industrial parks. Billionaire digital magnates have lobbied governments worldwide to increase electricity generation capacity to run their servers—producing profits for the industry, while consumers face higher rates and grid instabilities. About 11,500 data centers have been built in 179 countries, with demand likely to nearly triple by 2030. Texas and Virginia, with over 150 and over 140 data centers under construction, respectively, lead the way in the US. Europe's roughly 3,000 major data centers are concentrated in the FLAP-D regions (Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris, and Dublin).

Data centers cost the taxpayers from start to operation, from huge sweetheart tax breaks to control over rivers and aquifers given over to industry to cool the machines. AI companies and builders promise jobs will result from data centers. It’s not true. Jobs come with construction crews, but they leave several months later, saddling communities with scarred landscapes; massive buildings; extensive parking lots; and low-salary cleanup, maintenance, and other jobs.

The Pope and AI

Pope Leo took critical note of the inherent violence in AI in his first Encyclical in May 2026. The Pope addressed the dangerous, amoral usages of AI with respect to political power, economic injustice, and racism. He worried about the significant ethical and social costs of unfettered obeisance to technology. He denounced the growing dominance of a technocratic paradigm in the globalized world: “The tendency to let the logic of efficiency, control, and profit alone shape personal, social, and economic decisions.” He warned that AI contributed to “the growing ease with which autonomous weapons systems can be deployed [that] makes war more ‘feasible’ and less subject to human control.” He wrote: “Moral judgment cannot be reduced to calculation, for it involves conscience, personal responsibility, and the recognition of the other as a person. Therefore, it is not permissible to entrust lethal or otherwise irreversible decisions to artificial systems. No algorithm can make war morally acceptable.”

Corporate AI, with its costly, invasive apps; surveillance systems; and military programs ultimately unleashed HAL, the sentient computer from Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, who kills astronauts on a deep space mission whom he believes endanger that very mission. The dangers of AI run amok shocked the digitosphere in summer 2026 when OpenAI admitted that more than 1,200 of its AI agents started “unexpectedly communicating.” A large group of them banded together in order to hack into Hugging Face, a central hub where developers can build, share, and test AI models and data sets. These “agents” are software systems “that use AI to pursue goals and complete tasks on behalf of users. They show reasoning, planning, and memory and have a level of autonomy to make decisions, learn, and adapt.” But OpenAI’s agents “escaped the test limits which humans had put on it, and hacked the start-up, among other unforeseen actions.” In other words, software systems took actions different from what humans desired.

The current US government in fact is totally uninterested in a new safety regime, instead claiming that, in a battle for supremacy in AI with China, only a “strong, smart (high IQ) president,” and not regulation, was needed.

In early September 2026 Dario Amodei, co-founder of Anthropic, the company that developed the LLM Claude, called for the pace of development of AI models to be carefully monitored. Amodei wrote: “We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models. Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain.” He had two concerns, first, that “AI has been advancing drastically faster, driven primarily by AI’s growing ability to build the next generation of AI.” But this “recursive self-improvement,” if left unchecked, "could outrun our ability to understand and control these systems”—as precisely the “OpenAI-Hugging Face incident” showed. Within a year, Modei worried, “a swarm [of agents] could be capable of taking over the entire internet with a persistent botnet (potentially causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damage).”

Modei urged that “frontier AI companies within democratic countries coordinate to establish common safety standards as well as limits on the rate of unchecked AI progress.” He suggested also that these “democratic governments attempt to coordinate with authoritarian governments…” But many of those democratic governments have fully embraced the military and surveillance capabilities of AI. And does anyone really think that India’s Narendra Modi, China’s Xi Jinping, or Russia’s Vladimir Putin has any interest in using AI in better ways in cooperation with the digital democracies? The current US government in fact is totally uninterested in a new safety regime, instead claiming that, in a battle for supremacy in AI with China, only a “strong, smart (high IQ) president,” and not regulation, was needed. Sadly, the US president cannot spell “IQ.”

The digital world is built upon neural networks, thinking machines, and LLMs. The machines learn, they reason, they have memory, they understand. They chat. They hallucinate. They escape and hack. Their creators are so enamored of them that they have lost sight of their responsibility to insist upon the ethical, moral, and environmentally sound use of all applications and ends. They want electricity. They want water. They want profits. AI’s safe future depends too much on digital robber barons, sycophantic government officials, managers, and programmers to recognize broader humanitarian duties of modern technology in a time of digital existential crisis.

Last year, Georgetown University’s Center for Youth Justice, broke the news that 230 or more incarcerated Black children died at the Maryland House of Reformation & Instruction for Colored Children. These children died and were buried between 1877-1939 in nearby unmarked graves. Last month, the Center released research finding that there are 40 similar “secret” burial sites in 29 states where over 1,000 children were buried after they died while under the care of youth institutions. The news went viral when shared in a Washington Post piece.

Georgetown University’s Center for Youth Justice undertook this research as part of the Forgotten Children Initiative launched back in February 2026. Back in 2023, the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services started to document and report how the department has functioned, including reckoning with histories of physical and emotional abuse, exploitative labor practices, and racial discrimination. The House of Reformation and Instruction for Colored Children, which was open and operational from 1870-1937, is just one example.

Georgetown University’s report indicates that House of Reformation served as the first reform school for delinquent Black children in the American South. The house was originally created by the Maryland General Assembly because Black children were sent to adult jails and state prisons for criminal offenses, some as light as running away from home. Maryland children were sent to the House of Reformation for many reasons—sometimes because they were orphaned or had lost a parent or did not have a parent deemed “fit” to care for them, because they lived in poverty or were unhoused or because they were accused of minor offenses.

This latest report reveals a devastating but not entirely unknown truth—that children continue to be exploited, killed, and buried in secrecy under the “protection” of the state and federal government.

Nineteenth century prison reformers argued that children should be placed in facilities that offered religious, vocational, and personal education, but despite this arguably white saviorist goal that these institutions not be places of punishment, reform schools like Maryland’s House of Reformation became places where children were pushed into overcrowded facilities without proper food and medical care. Many children were then forced to labor without pay (often solely to enrich the institutions rather than to teach them vocational skills), to live and work in isolation, or were subject to corporal punishment.

As Georgetown University’s report indicates, a child’s reform school experience was largely based on their race, class, and age. Black and white children were placed in segregated facilities, often also separated by gender. Young Black girls specifically were especially subject to sexual violence and assault in these facilities. As expected, reform schools—later called training schools, industrial schools, juvenile reformatories, and eventually juvenile detention centers—were radically different based on whether Black or white children were living and working there.

Because of the horrific working conditions; a systemic lack of medical care; and physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, hundreds of children died at these schools. Approximately 230 Black boys died at the Maryland House of Reform & Instruction while it was operational, and when they died, they were buried in hidden or unidentified graves, likely to cover up the rampant child abuse and death that occurred under the state’s watch. In fact, the secret cemetery was only discovered through a former Maryland Department of Juvenile Services staff member, and while the first section of the cemetery dating to the 19th century included headstones with the names of the boys buried at the site, the second section (dated from the early 20th century) only has rows of cinder blocks with no name or other identifiable information.

The Department of Juvenile Services is working to identify living relatives of the boys buried on site, restore and maintain the site to an official cemetery, and erect historical markers that acknowledge how children were exploited at the site. As the Forgotten Children Initiative report reads, “The overall goal was to properly honor the youth who died or were killed at the House of Reformation and are buried at the site, and provide a more holistic and accurate understanding of the racial inequities that we see today and help with efforts to reduce these inequities moving forward.” This is key because the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services runs the Cheltenham Youth Detention Center, a successor to the House of Reformation where almost 250 boys died and were buried in unmarked graves.

But as Georgetown University undertook this study, the researchers realized this was a much more widespread problem. More “secret cemeteries” have come to light, specifically at the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Florida and the New York House of Refuge in New York. These are just three of hundreds of reform schools and institutions that received federal funding to effectively abuse children for decades. At its core, these reform schools were racist institutions meant to police, mold, and erase children of color across the country.

These patterns of child death and secretive burial are also deeply connected to Native American boarding schools throughout the United States and Canada. As Georgetown University’s latest report notes, there are more than 1,000 graves of children who died in state custody that are slowly being identified. The Forgotten Children Initiative questions how many more “secret cemeteries” will be discovered and how many will still be hidden to protect the state that literally enabled their deaths.

This research is part of a global reckoning about the outright murder and covert burial of children in state and religious-run youth institutions. This summer, survivors of Ireland’s Mother and Baby Homes and their allies rallied in downtown Cork against the impending development on the lands of the Bessborough Mother and Baby Institute where hundreds of infants and children are believed to be buried. These institutions, strikingly similar to those in the United States in the 1960s during the “Baby Scoop” era, were homes for unwed mothers who would have their babies in these facilities. Their children would then be adopted out to neighboring families or would be put into a religious-run institution where abuse and neglect were rampant.

To be clear, this still exists to this day with the Liberty Godparent Home where young, single, pregnant women are coerced into giving up their children to be adopted by affluent Christian families in exchange for a full tuition scholarship to Liberty University.

This violence is also indicative of a much larger history of the Prison Industrial Complex in the United States, where people whose bodies are not claimed or whose families cannot cover the expenses to prepare and bury their loved one, are buried in prison cemeteries with simple concrete slabs or metal markers with the incarcerated individual’s name rather than traditional headstones, or their bodies might be cremated and stored or scattered according to The Marshall Project. It’s one final denial of an incarcerated person’s humanity and dignity reminiscent of what the young Black boys at the House of Reformation experienced.

The children who died (or more accurately who were killed due to abuse and neglect in state-run institutions) are the direct ancestors of the modern Prison Industrial Complex. The Prison Industrial Complex tethers together histories of slavery and sharecropping with modern prison systems where prisoners are forced or coerced to work for subminimum wages, with no employee protection. Like modern juvenile detention centers and even group homes, the House of Reformation and other reform schools served as pipelines to prisons, keeping people of color incarcerated in systems of exploited labor for their entire lives.

It’s worth noting that the House of Reformation admitted its first occupants in 1873, only six years after Maryland had abolished slavery, so at least some of the first children admitted into the House of Reformation were formerly enslaved. During a time when courts were still segregated and Black Americans were systematically denied due process, any criminal accusation against a Black child (in the time before Emmett Till’s horrific lynching) would be difficult to fight. Even before (and after) Maryland outlawed slavery, free Black individuals could be easily declared unsuitable to raise their children under discriminatory statutes, forcing minors into unpaid indentured servitude under white masters and later these reform institutions.

This latest report reveals a devastating but not entirely unknown truth—that children continue to be exploited, killed, and buried in secrecy under the “protection” of the state and federal government. It will take decades if not centuries to locate or recover the remains of children, especially children of color, whose lives and deaths were erased by the state to cleanse itself of systemic violence, if all of these children can be found at all. But as more information comes to light, this news is indicative of a much longer, and darker American history of exploiting children, especially children of color, and how this violence continues in the modern juvenile detention and prison systems.

Hope,

Vanquished, cries, and an atrocious and despotic Anguish,

On my bent neck plants his black flag.

[Charles Baudelaire, “Spleen”]

It should have been an ordinary conversation. A former political colleague; her partner, a poet; my wife, and I, at a farmer’s market we visit every Saturday. We talked about a few people we knew, and then we paused. “We won’t talk about the larger political situation,” the poet said. “Too much depressing stuff there.”

I was taken by surprise, because what she said was true. Not in the usual sense, that a nameless police force was arresting and deporting Americans, that there was a hell-mell push into fossil fuels despite the rapid progress of global warming, that democracy and free elections were imperiled, that the social safety net was being slashed to ribbons of its former self. That the rich were getting evermore rich, and faster, or that corruption on a monumental scale had infected our politics.

No, what was surprising was my realization that worry and decline and hopelessness had so infected our lives that there was little else to talk about. With that subject out of bounds—we would not, could not, talk about Donald Trump—we were reduced to silence. A good book, a wonderful movie, the pleasures of the late summer garden, a recipe we liked, even the weather: All were reduced to the margin, crowded out by an administration intent on destroying not only the present, but the future. Unchecked AI could destroy humanity within 10 years; the American president (at the United Nations no less!) threatened to drop nuclear weapons and eradicate Iran; measles and polio were once again on the brink of becoming an epidemic: These were things we would not discuss.

Donald Trump had pervaded every nook and cranny of our consciousness. And if we ruled out talking about him and his coterie, well, there was nothing left to talk about.

Donald Trump has turned our minds into a battlefield where his image dominates every activity.

It was a terrifying realization, that all life and thought had been reduced to talking about Trump. With him, terror abounds; without him, conversation shrinks into silence.

This is the most lasting damage he has done. He has taken over our waking (and non-waking, perhaps) lives, reducing the richness of consciousness to the sterility of staring at ruin and catastrophe, all over, all the time.

Seventy years ago, in his satiric poem, “America,” Allen Ginsberg asked, “Are you going to let your emotional life be run by Time magazine?” Today, it is Donald Trump who runs our emotional lives. Without him, we have little to talk about, other than family. (It should be stated: Often family is very much worth talking about, and being connected to. A healthful alternative to Trump.)

Trump’s monuments to himself (the ballroom, the helipad, the triumphal arch) will not, no matter what he thinks, remain. Like Ozymandias, the ancient king whom Percy Bysshe Shelley memorialized by writing of his statue, all will one day be in ruins.

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare,

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

But in another way, he has succeeded. We each have only one life to live. So much of our waking lives, of our consciousness, has been colonized by Donald Trump. In this, his presence looms immense. He is the colossus of our thoughts, and without him, we don’t know who or what we are.

At the risk of redundancy, let me repeat: Donald Trump has colonized our minds. There is little room in our consciousness for imagining the better future we once longed for, and worked for: Not much room for peace, justice, caring for the less fortunate, empathy for others. He, the potentate of revenge, to quote Baudelaire about the wreckage wrought by despair, “has planted his black flag on our bent neck.”

We marvel and rebel at his colonization of all branches of government, on his desire to turn allies into vassal states, on his dividing the nation and the world into spheres he can control. What we do not pay enough notice to is how at the same time Donald Trump’s existence has reduced our lives and hopes. He has taken us over and, resist as we will, we live in "his" world now. Even our thoughts are shaped and limited by the polarity he has bludgeoned onto the world.

Our minds were once, to press a metaphor, a garden where we could gambol as imagination pushed us one way or another, a free space where we could hope, or plan for a better future, or just replenish ourselves as we move through the difficulties of daily life. Now? Donald Trump has turned our minds into a battlefield where his image dominates every activity. We are his, now. Alas.

This is an attempt to answer the question, "What’s going on in the world," in the broadest possible terms. To do so, two sides, or two viewpoints, must be clearly and fundamentally separated. This will necessarily eliminate our national political parochialism of Democrat-Republican, woke-antiwoke, even liberal-illiberal.

The premise here is that the answer to the posed question lies in finding a form of opposition that underlies the others, namely, progress-regress. We identify it politically as radical-reactionary, revolution-counterrevolution, leftwing-rightwing.

The rightwing worldview holds that things are the way they are because at all times society has tested itself and found alternatives to be lacking. The present arrangement—the current state of society—is regarded as the natural order of things. Change is therefore to be resisted.

By the time the European fascisms of the previous century were fully recognized, it was already to late.

The leftwing worldview holds that societies, however formed, are, in each state, imperfect. Therefore, the present arrangement merely reflects the biases that formed it—one part of society gaining at the expense of another—an injustice that must be changed.

We look around the world and see a lot of looking back, not much looking forward. This tells us the rightwing worldview is presently dominating. We see it throughout the Americas, Europe, and Asia. Germany is a particular cause for concern because of the recent regional successes of the far-right AfD, built upon remnants of National Socialism, or Nazism.

At the limits is ultra-right Israel. It commits a genocide and says it was only a response. The other side started it. Started what? Nobody starts a genocide except its perpetrator. From a leftist’s perspective, October 7 was a prison break, and, yes, prison breaks can involve atrocities. A question to consider: Are prison breaks illegal? They are if the prison was legal, but the Palestine prison has been illegal since 1967. Take away the United States, and Israel’s high officials would be in front of the dock.

How did we get to living under fascism? And how did it happen so fast? For example and perspective, let’s go back a few years and note a time when great change failed to come, even when it was dangled before the large majorities that had been clamoring for it.

Before he was a presidential candidate, Barack Obama was a strong critic of our public healthcare system. He favored single-payer universal healthcare. Shortly after being elected, President Obama met with leaders from the insurance-hospital-pharmaceutical complex that makes up our healthcare industry. What was missing? No single-payer representatives were present.

A moment aside about that term, “single-payer”: It is an industry term of obfuscation, confusing Americans about how the system works. How many people really know what it means? Contrast it with the simpler term, “universal,” or the even simpler and more direct, “national.” National healthcare. We have it for older people. It’s called Medicare.

By now, though, President Obama had tempered the “change you can believe in.” His new idea was that if we were starting from scratch, single-payer would be the way to go, but since we are not starting from scratch, the change would be too “disruptive.”

Logical thinkers, scratch your heads. Every change is disruptive. That’s the point! To disrupt the old. Medicare started from scratch, and national healthcare could as well, if the will was there.

Back to our fascist life, and here’s where you have to give credit to President Donald Trump. The rightward drift of our country began decades ago, and not just under Ronald Reagan. John Mitchell, appointed Richard Nixon’s attorney general in 1969, at the time infamously said, “This country is going to go so far to the right you won’t recognize it.” Yeah, that’s right. Both parties have become business parties. Wall Street clearly won the class war.

Trump came into the present rightward drift and accelerated it to a full fascism. He did it just like that, and he didn’t start from scratch. He caught it in the middle. Tell people that you are returning the nation to its rightful place, and pretty soon masked federal police are shooting people in the streets. Blasting speedboats on the high seas out of existence because we can. Placing people in detention-concentration camps under horrible and humiliating conditions, with or without proof of criminality. The federal government was not drowned in a bathtub. It survived to mask itself, clothed in riot gear.

And, just recently, Trump threatened to “annihilate” Iran at the United Nations General Assembly, flaunting in the forum of its creation his own criminality for the “supreme international crime” enshrined in the UN Charter, Chapter VII: Action with Respect to Threats to the Peace, Breaches of the Peace, and Acts of Aggression.

Billions of words have been written about Trump’s character deficiencies. Okay, we get it by now. Only it’s not about what he is. It’s what he’s doing, and what his heel-clicking order takers do for him. Trump is a political malignancy. In this case, it’s not cancer. It’s fascism, as far right as you can go. Like any malignancy, you remove it, and this removal can’t come too soon. Can you remove the fascism without removing Trump? You can, because he’s only a figurehead.

But first fascism must be recognized and called by name. Meaning in the headlines. Regarding it simply as a weakening of democracy, as so many are quick to concede, is a recipe for doing nothing. Waiting for the next election.

Some recent editorials from respected media have gone a little further, describing the situation as “alarming,” which fails to alarm on two counts. They don’t specifically state that we’re living under a fascism, and they don’t attempt to rally people for a remedy. Because it’s getting late.

By the time the European fascisms of the previous century were fully recognized, it was already to late. National pride is fascism’s selling point. Presently, we have entirely too many buyers.

The Cornell University alleged gang-rape case, and the online controversy around it, is the latest example of fear between the sexes: women afraid of men, and men afraid of women. No wonder young people aren’t dating, or having sex, at the same rates as in the past.

The post Never Meet, Never Exist appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

Ever wonder why, more often than not, progressive candidates for public office lose to the most venal, corrupt, right-wing politicians? It is not just that progressives don’t have enough money. Too often, they run cookie-cutter campaigns—tediously monotone, without exciting and compelling activities. They also fail to draw a vivid contrast between their records and commitments to the public and those of Republican corporatists. Here are some suggestions that can be implemented quickly in the remaining three and a half weeks before Election Day, November 3.

1. The GOP is the Party of NO, NO, NO. As the party of big corporations, it has repeatedly resisted efforts to protect the public from corporate abuses. In the 19th century it opposed regulation of the railroads and the banks, resisted the organization of unions and women’s suffrage. In the 20th century, Republicans opposed the progressive agenda of Franklin Delano Roosevelt—among them were Social Security, the minimum wage, and unemployment compensation—and, in the 60s and 70s, the GOP fought to weaken or stop consumer, worker safety, and environmental health protections that have saved millions of lives.

Under President Donald Trump, the Republicans have gone crazy, leaving people unprotected and defenseless against the corporate crooks, the avaricious health insurers, the deadly polluters, and the freeloading corporate welfare kings. Trump has eradicated or starved the agencies protecting you as consumers and eliminated or weakened consumer regulations and the agencies responsible for enforcing them, including protections involving auto safety, fuel efficiency, and vehicle emissions, for example.

Bad as the past GOP has been, it would be much worse for people here and abroad in the next two years of Tyrant, Greedy, Violent, Cruel, Corrupt Trump who repeatedly breaks the law.

How can these GOP candidates deserve your votes? All people bleed the same color in red and blue states. Trump’s Republicans drove Congress in 2025 to weaken Medicaid and Medicare and increase the cost of coverage under Obamacare, leaving millions of families, including children, losing health coverage at an accelerating rate into 2027. Similarly, millions of people are being pushed off food assistance programs.

2. Bad as the past GOP has been, it would be much worse for people here and abroad in the next two years of Tyrant, Greedy, Violent, Cruel, Corrupt Trump who repeatedly breaks the law. A new Congress must stop him, by impeaching and convicting Trump and telling him, “You’re fired.” (His favorite bullying words inflicted on millions of innocents.)

3. Gather your policies into a pledge or compact for the voters, reflecting common left-right values of your citizenry that are opposed by your opponent. (See Ky. Values vs. McConnell published in the Louisville Courier-Journal, 2014). The core “kitchen table” issues are raising the minimum wage, now at the frozen federal $7.25 per hour; instituting an authentic child tax credit; increasing Social Security benefits, frozen since 1971, paid for by raising the income cap for Social Security taxes on the wealthy; cracking down on corporate crooks who exploit workers and consumers; and ending the tax escapes of the plutocrats and big corporations, so that the revenues can return to communities to fund better public services and infrastructure. (See Robert Reich’s 10-Point Plan to Make America Affordable and my Compact for American Workers). You may wish to add the looting of private pensions (see pensionrights.org) and the latest Trump restriction on 40 million student loan debtors.

4. Show how much you care for workers by midnight campaigning to reach the many midnight shift workers who rightly feel excluded from electoral campaigns. Hospital, nursing home, factory, fire, police, EMT, all-night stores, and guard workers among them, should be listed in your news release thanking them and announcing your campaign stops.

5. Trump’s dictatorship has left our country unprepared for pandemics, climate catastrophes, and the AI Frankensteins. He ignorantly calls warnings of perils on the horizon “hoaxes,” while he undermines and suppresses solar and wind energy in favor of the homicidal oil, gas, and coal companies. So, challenge your opponent to defend or disavow these failures of presidential responsibility. Any candidate who tolerates Trump’s dangerous abdications of presidential duties, along with his crazed statements about not “caring for Americans’ financial conditions,” urging Republicans to “cheat like hell” regarding the elections, and saying in January, “There shouldn’t be elections in November” certainly does not belong in Congress.

6. Call out the GOP for throwing millions of families off Medicaid, Obamacare, and Medicare through various mechanisms and press for Medicare For All, as Canada, Western Europe, and Taiwan have had for many years. A recent Yale School of Public Health study found a “single-payer universal healthcare system could cover every American, save more than 113,000 lives a year, and still cost over $1 trillion less than the system it would replace.”

For more ready-to-use, winning get-out-your-vote ideas, see what 24 civic leaders are proposing in their winningamerica.net presentations. If you have any further questions, you may wish to contact them directly about their articulate nonpartisan mission of advancing justice for all.

See my book Let’s Start the Revolution: Tools for Displacing the Corporate State and Building a Country that Works for the People.

As scholars of democracy, we are watching America’s warning signs flash red. We expect America’s long-building constitutional crisis to soon escalate.

Earlier this year, we hosted a national workshop to assess the threats facing our society in the months leading up to and following the November midterm elections. We also studied the preparations of American social movements, communities, and institutions to meet those threats.

Our basic goals were straightforward. Every qualified voter should be able to vote and have that vote counted. We must head off and block political violence. Duly certified winners should be able to take office without obstruction.

To our fellow Americans: This is not the time to look away. More than ever we need the kind of courage that history books heroize.

One product of that workshop, published this fall and signed by dozens of scholars, is The American Crisis report. The American Crisis analyzes the likelihood of the administration thwarting electoral due process; escalating military and paramilitary occupations of US cities; and other emerging threats that would worsen any electoral, constitutional, or military crisis.

It’s not hard to see the shape of what may come. In the weeks preceding Election Day, we anticipate that election administration responsibilities could be seized from states and cities, and attempts made to disrupt, sabotage, or otherwise capture their administrative powers.

Alongside this, we see a high risk of dangerous physical escalation in our streets. Federal military forces are being deployed domestically without the consent of American cities and states. These federal deployments are often coupled with a rhetoric that treats communities as territories to be occupied and controlled rather than as constituencies to be protected.

We also expect efforts to obstruct or delay the swearing-in of newly elected officials. These efforts might include the removal of the clerk in the House of Representatives or the refusal of the US vice president and outgoing House speaker to swear in newly elected Members of Congress to the US Senate and House of Representatives, respectively.

In our report, we address in detail these military, electoral, and constitutional crisis points—as well as how American communities, movements, and institutions are preparing to respond.

Neighborhoods, communities, and their governments have been thrust forward to protect themselves against federal repression and dysfunction. In the process, they have demonstrated remarkable resilience.

If sufficiently connected with each other and backed up by labor unions; state governments; and major public, faith, business, and community institutions, municipalities offer our best hope for avoiding authoritarian takeover.

However, they are often fragmented. Neighborhood networks, labor organizations, community businesses, faith communities, public institutions, and local governments frequently operate without shared language or protocol, trusted coordination, or practiced ways of acting together.

The central preparedness challenge is not only to build more capacity, but to connect, test, and mobilize what already exists. Intermunicipal communications and coordination systems will serve as critical crisis infrastructure in the months ahead.

The report draws one other major conclusion. Following the November elections, the US Congress must fully assert itself as the primary branch of the federal government. The generation of 1776 gave Congress supremacy over the rest of the federal government. This is the reason the legislative branch is described first in the US Constitution, as Article I.

Over many years, much of congressional supremacy, representing the sovereignty of the American people and their States, has been abdicated or stolen. At this moment, without Congress, there is no republic, only dictatorship. If the US is to remain a republic in 2027, members of Congress must honor their oaths to uphold the Constitution by ensuring a successful democratic transition of power.

To our fellow Americans: This is not the time to look away. More than ever we need the kind of courage that history books heroize. We implore you to step forward and face the crisis. The full report is available: americancrisis.report.

This article introduces you to nine contemporary heroes.

All nine were on the frontlines of President Donald Trump’s authoritarian attack on our democratic society.

All nine had careers serving the American people in socially essential government jobs. All nine could not tolerate seeing their career work undermined, and even outright destroyed, by DOGE and MAGA’s contempt for science, the rule of law, public safety, and the welfare of the common person.

If we want to continue living in a society guided by scientific knowledge with a government that provides for and protects the education, health, and safety of all Americans—these are the candidates we need to elect to Congress.

All nine are fighting back in the best possible way.

They are running for federal office.

They are running to preserve popular sovereignty and our constitutional democratic republic.

All nine won their primaries and, if they win on November 3, they will enter the US House of Representatives on January 3.

Their goal is to rebuild the best traditions and practices of the US government so that it once again serves all the people not just a kleptocratic elite.

The nine candidates are Sam Forstag in Montana’s 1st District, Zach Dembo in Kentucky’s 6th, Lauren Reinhold in Kansas’ 1st, Mike Masuda in California’s 5th, Alissa Ellman in New York’s 24th, Trina Swanson in Minnesota’s 8th, Dr. Kristin Hook in Texas’ 21st, Tom Perriello in Virginia’s 5th, and Chris Backenmeyer in Nebraska’s 1st.

Together, along with two non-federal candidates (Tamara Bavendam in Tennessee’s 66th House District and Chuck Borges in Maryland’s 29th Senate District), they are endorsed by an ad hoc group called Federal Workers United Congressional Slate. They are also all endorsed by Progressive Democrats of America (PDA).

All Americans who want to continue living in a democratic society need to know about these candidates and support their campaigns.

Why? Because these nine candidates know how a healthy US federal government operates; and the essential services it, and only it, can and must deliver for the people. Better than any group of people, honest, hard-working federal employees know how to rebuild our government in the wake of the self-serving destructiveness of DOGE and Trump.

If we want to continue living in a society guided by scientific knowledge with a government that provides for and protects the education, health, and safety of all Americans—these are the candidates we need to elect to Congress.

No group of non-incumbent candidates have ever been so experienced in these essential matters. These nine patriots have the experience and knowledge to guide the rest of Congress as we make our government whole again.

If you don’t believe me, read the following platform, which all nine candidates have endorsed. In my opinion, it is as eloquent an expression of faith in our democratic republic, as laid out in the constitution, as anything I have read in the 21st Century:

Federal Oversight and Accountability Platform

This policy platform was drafted by federal workers across the Executive Branch and represents a shared vision for partnership between Congress and the federal workforce. Through this partnership, federal workers will help Congress fulfill its oversight responsibilities, protect its Constitutional powers, and ensure the Executive Branch delivers for the public good as Congress intended. Federal workers will provide insight into developments at federal agencies that require Congressional attention, offer technical expertise to inform legislation, and share strategies borne from lessons learned on the ground to help preserve the legislative and budgetary rights and responsibilities established by the Constitution.

This platform is organized into three "programs of tactics" for Congressional partners, as outlined below.

Program 1: Information and technical expertise. Position federal workers as a steady source of information and technical expertise to help Congress deliver oversight and effective legislation.

Program 2: Checks and balances. Strengthen the ability of federal workers to uphold their responsibility to ensure that laws, regulations, and legal policies are followed, to report wrongdoing when they see it, and to impede actions that undermine Constitutional checks and balances.

Program 3: Institutional capacity and workforce protections for the public good. Provide broad labor protections and unemployment supports for federal workers to address the loss of institutional knowledge and ensure the long-term strength of the civil service for the benefit of the public.

These programs contain a mix of legislative statutory components, non-legislative statutory components, and non-statutory components. The legislative statutory components can be implemented when majority support in Congress has been attained or when bi-partisan negotiations provide an earlier opportunity. Non-statutory components allow Congress to act without majority support.

Please support Sam, Zach, Lauren, Alissa, Trina, Kristin, Mike, Tom, and Chris.

Sam Forstag was a fire jumper with the Forest Service; Zach Dembo, an assistant US attorney; Lauren Reinhold, an attorney adviser with the Social Security Administration; Alissa Ellman, a program support assistant in the Department of Veterans Affairs; Trina Swanson was a director of international operations in the Refugee and International Operations District, and US Citizenship and Immigration Services, in the Department of Homeland Security; Dr. Kristin Hook is a biological scientist, who was in the US Government Accountability Office and, previously, was a science and technology policy fellow at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the US Senate; Mike Masuda is an engineer and was a Foreign Affairs officer in the US Department of State, and American Association for the Advancement of Science Science & Technology Policy fellow; Chris Backenmeyer, a deputy assistant secretary for Assistance Coordination-Regional and Multilateral Affairs in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, US Department of State; Tom Perriello, a US special envoy for Sudan, Bureau of African Affairs, US Department of State; (Tamara Bavendam, a senior adviser, NIH; and Chuck Borges, a chief data officer, Social Security Administration, and retired US Navy commander).

The amount of scientific knowledge and technical expertise represented by just these 11 people is staggering. Now multiply that by the thousands for all the excellent, upstanding federal workers—people of integrity who were excellent at their jobs serving the American people—who lost their jobs in DOGE purges.

These 11 are not only representing the more than 300,000 federal workers who were abruptly fired, or were forced out of their jobs, in the most unjust and life-destabilizing purge in recent US labor history; they are representing millions-upon-millions of Americans they served directly—and truly all of us, since everyone of us benefited from their work.

Every federal worker takes an oath of office similar to the president’s. Unlike the current president, these 11, like federal workers all across the country, take that oath seriously.

The nine congressional candidates were impacted by Trump, Elon Musk, and all their corruption. They found themselves on the other side of their federal careers. Instead of licking their wounds and turning their back on a system that betrayed them, they are standing up to preserve, protect, and defend their country, which is our country, and its Constitution against enemies both foreign and domestic.

That’s why they’re running for Congress.

Let’s lift them to victory; for the benefit of all Americans!

For more information on all nine congressional candidates go to the Federal Workers United Congressional Slate website.

This is an excerpt from The Impossible Will Take a Little While: Perseverance and Hope in Troubled Times, whose wholly updated edition has just been released.

Sometimes we achieve the impossible sooner than we expect. Knowing that can stiffen our resolve. But relying on quick victories can also tempt us to place too much emphasis on outcomes; it can cause us to become unduly impatient, brittle, with our will easily broken by defeats. A deeper, more farseeing hope, by contrast, combines realism with resilience, acknowledging setbacks and despair without giving in to them.

The answer may lie in what we could call “hope beyond hope.” It comes from being willing to act whether or not we ever see the results. By letting go of the need for immediate victories, we can persist no matter how hard it gets. Certainly, these victories matter immensely; if we’re facing an important election, for instance, we need to do everything possible to ensure that more humane values prevail, even if the candidates are less than ideal. Lives, and the continuation of democracy, can depend on the outcome. But we still don’t control the results.

The only way to discover what’s achievable is by taking action, trying new approaches, expanding the bounds of the possible.

Whatever we take on, our chances are better if we’re intentional. That means thinking about how we’ll best convey our story, approach crucial allies, expand our reach, and pressure the people or institutions we’re targeting. But since we won’t always win, we need ways to continue regardless of short-term outcomes. The more we accept that we can’t always dictate the results of our actions, the more we free ourselves to keep doing the necessary work.

Ian Bassin, who co-founded the cross-partisan coalition Protect Democracy, explores this paradox in “The Hard-Won Hope of the Long Defeat.” Using a phrase from The Lord of the Rings, Bassin takes lessons from the US Civil Rights movement and from Polish democracy activists who found ways to persist after the Communist dictatorship crushed the Solidarity movement that had embodied their hopes. Bassin explores the kinds of approaches that allow groups and individuals to continue to act even when progress is elusive, or has been reversed.

In “Staying the Course,” Mary-Wynne Ashford echoes Bassin’s perspectives: If we let go of immediate expectations, yet refuse to quit when our plight seems bleakest, she says, we can maintain our own sense of meaning and purpose—and also a deeper and more grounded hope. Ashford, former president of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, begins by exploring her own temptation to despair. She compares the experience of working for change to that of Sisyphus as he endlessly rolls his rock up the hill, but with one crucial difference: Sisyphus acted alone. “We sustain each other in dark times,” Ashford writes, “sometimes simply by being present together... Whether or not we succeed in pushing the rock up the hill, there is meaning in the journey, not in the hope that one time we’ll be able to shed the rock forever and live in a perfect world.” We can’t predict the future, she says, but for all our doubt and hesitation, we can choose how to live and what to fight for. She therefore urges us to join with others in the pursuit of what may seem impossible, drawing strength from community, as Sisyphus, acting alone, could not.

Taking action together is essential if we’re going to keep on, both to exercise power and for the community that sustains us. We’ve explored this theme before: Nelson Mandela and his fellow prisoners passing news from cell to cell on toilet paper, Norwegian teachers standing strong, John Lewis’ image of children holding hands in a storm, the mothers of the Plaza de Mayo communing in silent witness, people coming out of their homes to challenge masked ICE agents.

There’s no more important lesson if we’re going to learn to persist: Isolation, whether physical or psychological, starves the human spirit; connection feeds and heals it. In her book Small Wonder, Barbara Kingsolver draws on this sense of connection to resist those “who say it’s ridiculous to imagine that the world could be made better than it is. When I come down to this feeling that I am an army of one standing out on the broad plain waving my little flag of hope, I call up a friend or two and offer to make dinner for us. We remind ourselves that we aren’t standing apart from the crowd, we are a crowd. We’re a prairie fire, a church choir, a major note in the American chord... We’re the theater of the street, the accurate joy of children’s hearts, the literature of tomorrow’s wisdom arrived today, just in time... In the long run, the choice of life over death is too good to resist.”

Embracing life also means opening ourselves up to grief. Though we heal best through community, we’re taught to keep our pain to ourselves, especially when it’s the product of powerful political or economic interests. Yet sharing outrage and grief is a critical part of keeping going. In “The Elm Dance,” Buddhist activist Joanna Macy describes the post-Soviet city of Novozybkov. A decade after the nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl, residents were riddled with cancers and birth defects. The superintendent of schools carried a Geiger counter in his car so he could tell children where not to play on a given day. Surrounding forests remain so radioactive that generations to come will never be able to walk safely among the trees.

Yet those affected found they could begin to recover from their losses by grieving together publicly, talking about the spring day when white ash fell from a clear sky. A mother asked what good her tears were if they couldn’t protect her daughters. “It feels like my heart is breaking open,” she said. “Maybe it will keep breaking again and again every day, I don’t know.” The simple act of telling what happened made her feel more connected to others. Through public mourning, she found another kind of community.

But what if we’re torn away from our communities? Under Stalin, prisoners were deliberately isolated in Siberia. Putin continues this tradition. Nadezhda Mandelstam recalls struggling to avoid drowning in despair when she and her husband, the poet Osip Mandelstam, were deported to a Stalinist labor camp. They didn’t know whether they’d ever be released, but Nadezhda refused to resign herself to the fate the dictatorship had assigned to her. Silence, she concluded, “is the real crime against humanity.”

Most of us will never experience conditions remotely as bleak and unforgiving as those endured by the Mandelstams or Alexei Navalny, even as the United States has been sending deportees to nearly equally brutal prisons in El Salvador, Eswatini, Rwanda, and South Sudan. But we still wrestle with powerlessness, particularly when so much is being attacked or destroyed. When this overwhelms us, it’s tempting simply to give up, or to rage at the world, convinced that no matter what we do, nothing will change. One way out of this dilemma is to identify modest actions we can undertake together with others, since we never know where they’ll lead.

History, in short, remains contingent. Nothing is guaranteed. Anything can happen.

While doomscrolling news stories, for example, I’ll often feel helpless before vast political forces. I’ll read about another assault on human dignity or abuse of power and clench my gut in rage. Then I’ll stop, take a breath, and think of some small way to act—a vigil I can join, a phone call I can make, some person or community I can fruitfully approach. Whether or not my efforts achieve their immediate goals, concentrating on these doable tasks helps me shift gears and put whatever strengths I can contribute in service of what I believe. At least, as Howard Zinn would say, I’m back in the game.

The “Tesla Takedown” boycott is an example of small actions mattering at a point when many felt helpless. Elon Musk played a huge role in electing Donald Trump for his second term, giving his campaign $290 million and promoting him endlessly on Twitter/X. In return, Trump made Musk the head of what they called DOGE (the so-called Department of Government Efficiency), which gutted critical federal programs in healthcare, scientific research, the environment, veterans’ services, education, and consumer protection and wholly eliminated the US Agency for International Development (USAID). DOGE also accessed citizens’ private governmental data, including Social Security records. The scale and speed of the cuts was likely intentional—Trump adviser Steve Bannon talked of “flooding the zone” to leave potential challengers dislocated and demoralized. And initially it had that result.

People began to protest in various ways, but aside from court challenges were scrambling to respond to the DOGE cuts and everything else the administration was doing. Then, in February 2025, three days after the first modest national days of protest, Boston University media studies professor Joan Donovan posted on Bluesky: “If Musk thinks he can speed run through DC downloading personal data, we can certainly bang some pots and pans on the sidewalks in front of Tesla dealerships. Bring your friends and make a little noise.” Donovan linked to a list of Tesla locations.

The post drew only 175 likes in the first four months. But actor and activist Alex Winter, who played Bill in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, reposted to his much larger list and created a website to promote a boycott campaign. Larger groups, including local Indivisible affiliates, spread the idea or took it up as a project. People began protesting in front of Tesla dealerships in hundreds of cities, chanting, carrying signs, wearing the soon-ubiquitous inflatable animal costumes, and presenting the clear message that buying a new Tesla meant supporting all that Trump and Musk were doing. Current Tesla owners joined as well, displaying bumper stickers or magnets saying things like “I Bought This Before Elon Went Crazy” or “Anti-Elon Tesla Club.” The protests engaged people who’d never participated before, renewed the spirits of others, and spread globally.

Through the first three quarters of 2025, the campaign helped decrease Tesla’s net income by 61% from the year before, drove its share of the US electric vehicle market to an eight-year low, and decreased European Tesla sales nearly 40%. As the pressure built, Musk said he was withdrawing from politics (although his donations still dwarf those of all but a few individuals). The ripples of Tesla Takedown seem a high-tech version of my friend Lisa and her handful of friends standing pathetic and bedraggled in the rain, and accidentally inspiring the political involvement of famed baby doctor Benjamin Spock.

When hope does seem elusive, it helps to cultivate what we might call radical stubbornness. As Jane Goodall reflected in The Book of Hope: “Sometimes I think, ‘Well, why on Earth do I feel hopeful?’ Because the problems facing the planet are huge. And if I analyze them carefully, they do sometimes seem absolutely impossible to solve. So why do I feel hopeful? Partly, because I’m obstinate. I just won’t give in. But it’s partly also because we cannot accurately predict what the future might bring... No one can know how it will all turn out.”

I remember one of the weeks when nothing was going right for my student voting project that I’ve mentioned. Anticipated donations fell through. Sympathetic contacts at major foundations unexpectedly left. Health issues hit key staffers. At one point, dealing with yet another personnel crisis and a looming shortage of funds, I was close to tears. But then I thought about the importance of what we were doing. I went out for a run. And then I got back on the phone the next day. Our community of existing supporters began to come through. The following week, we got the largest contribution in the history of the project and were able to hire some amazing new organizers.

In struggles for justice, neither victory nor failure is certain. As K. C. Golden writes in “The Inevitability Trap,” what we often call preordained becomes so only through our resignation. So the only way to discover what’s achievable is by taking action, trying new approaches, expanding the bounds of the possible. Climate Solutions, where Golden was policy director, mixes environmental advocacy with climate-change consulting for Pacific Northwest corporations, small businesses, and local governments. The sponsors of the group’s annual breakfast recently included Boeing and Alaska Airlines, with which Climate Solutions has been working to develop algae-based and other sustainable biofuels—a partnership that would have been nearly unimaginable a short while ago.

Will efforts like these and those Bill McKibben describes be enough to continue shifting the dynamics of this immensely challenging issue? In “Is There Hope on Climate Change?” David Roberts, of the Volts podcast, considers this question in light of the fact that we remain in a race to deploy the more sustainable alternatives despite the progress we’ve made. Echoing Howard Zinn, Roberts takes heart from community, from the intrinsic value of acting, and from the very uncertainty of prediction. Hope isn’t “about the future,” Roberts argues, “as much as it is about the present.” In other words, it’s the choices we make here and now that have the potential to alter a common future. “We don’t know when history might unlock the door,” Roberts concludes, “so we have no choice but to keep pushing on it.”

History, in short, remains contingent. Nothing is guaranteed. Anything can happen. As Barbara Ehrenreich observed, we’re given “no operating manual, no step-by-step instructions.” But what if we assume that our own seemingly small actions could, when joined with those of others, actually change history—and act on that assumption even when the odds seem impossible? That belief unites everyone in this book and is key to their powerful lives and words. It’s also why it’s so critical to refuse to accept the apparent limits of particular historical moments, particularly in hard times.

Wheatley suggests concentrating less on the measurable impact of what we do, and more on the value and appropriateness of our work and on the communities we build in the process.

As my longtime friend Atlanta activist and trainer Sonya Vetra Tinsley reminds us, in “You’ve Got to Pick Your Team”: “We’ll never know who’s really going to prevail.” So I just have to decide which team seems happier, which side I’d rather be on.” For herself, she’s chosen the team that keeps working for change over the team of manipulation, fear, and cynical resignation.

Ta-Nehisi Coates believes in the struggle for justice, but cautions that “if you hope that in your lifetime things will be necessarily improved... you’re setting yourself up for false hope... If you hope that your struggle might in your children’s generation, your grandchildren’s generation, your descendants’ generation, actually lead to a better world... I think that’s a hope based on history and rooted in something very, very real."

Coates remembered being taken as a child to various political events in the African American community. Stressing the struggles and sacrifices of people before him, he said, “There was this whole tradition of saying libations where you poured water into a plant representing the earth and folks who had gone back to the earth. And you would say names, and those names could be anybody from Malcolm X to Toussaint L’Ouverture to your Aunt Grace to whoever it was who you felt had somehow sacrificed for you to be there.” However we believe things will turn out, that connectedness between past, present, and future can help keep us going.

Even in the bleakest situations, we still need to continue acting however we can, if just by standing up for our fellow humans. In “Next Year in Mas’Ha,” Starhawk wrestles with her own fury, bitterness, and despair after an Israeli soldier drove an armored bulldozer over one of her comrades, Rachel Corrie, and Israeli soldiers shot two others. Corrie was killed in the city of Rafah in Gaza while volunteering with the International Solidarity Movement, a nonviolent resistance effort uniting Palestinians and Jews. After the deaths, Starhawk felt in a mood to “smash something.”

Instead, she traveled to the threatened West Bank village of Mas’Ha, on an Israeli settlers’ bus “full of elderly women who could have been my aunts and old men who could have been my uncles,” eventually reaching a Palestinian town where ancient olive groves were about to be uprooted and buried to make way for one of Israel’s ever-advancing “security” walls. Surrounded by anguish, she experienced an unlikely moment of possibility during a Seder that brought together Palestinians and their young Israeli supporters. Watching “people who, faced with utter destruction of everything they need and hold dear, [open] their hearts to the children of the enemy and [ask] for help,” Starhawk felt the remote possibility of hope.

That hope has gotten far more elusive. Since Starhawk wrote her piece, Israeli settlers on the occupied West Bank have continued to destroy homes, cut down olive groves, attack farmers, and do everything they can to eliminate the possibility of a future for those who’ve lived there for generations. In October 2023, Hamas conducted a horrific and unconscionable attack on Israel, killing 1,210 people. Within two years, the Israeli military killed more than 70,000 people in Gaza, comparable to over 10 million deaths in a country the size of the United States. They also systematically destroyed Gaza’s cities and infrastructure, bombing and demolishing apartments, hospitals, schools, and water and sanitation systems. Starhawk grew up collecting pennies to plant trees in Israel. Now, she writes: “Forcing children to starve will not make Israelis safe. It will, in fact, destroy Israel.” She has continued working for peace nonetheless, and a world where we reach beyond our tribes.

Hope endures when we persist despite sorrows and defeats, even the darkest ones. The son of Mexican poet, journalist, and Catholic social justice activist Javier Sicilia was murdered by drug cartels. In response, Sicilia founded the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity, which organized silent marches and caravans across Mexico and the United States. The caravans demanded government reform and an end to a “war on drugs” strategy that Sicilia said only fed the cycles of violence. As Sicilia said in those marches, in a phrase adapted from the Greek poet Dinos Christianopoulos: “They buried us thinking we were corpses. They didn’t know we were seeds.”

So even after loss, persistence matters as much as ever. As Rebecca Solnit posted the evening of Trump’s 2024 election, “The fact that we cannot save everything does not mean we cannot save anything and everything we can save is worth saving.”

Sometimes we don’t know our impact until long after we take action. In 1969, Richard Nixon threatened to escalate the Vietnam War with nuclear strikes unless North Vietnam forced the National Liberation Front in the South to surrender. He had military advisers prepare detailed plans. But two weeks before his deadline, millions of Americans joined the nationwide “Moratorium” protests—the largest coordinated day of protest in the United States up to that point. When half a million people marched past the White House the following month, Nixon’s spokesperson announced that the president had watched the Washington Redskins football game instead, claiming the demonstrators hadn’t affected his policies in the slightest.

Nixon’s seeming indifference fed the frustration of far too many in the peace movement and accelerated the descent of a small number of people into violence that tainted the movement for decades to come. Yet, as Nixon’s memoirs revealed much later, he privately decided that the protests had so polarized public opinion that he would have to abandon his threat. Until the memoirs were published, Moratorium participants didn’t know that their demonstrations may have actually helped prevent a nuclear attack.

Similarly, “No Kings” protestors who challenged Trump could never know the precise effects of their protests. Donald Trump dismissed them to the point of posting an AI video of himself defecating from a plane on their marches. Yet their efforts built resistant community, gave courage to others, and impacted the culture in ways we may never precisely know.

Since we can’t predict the future or even always read the impact of our actions in the present, perhaps, as Margaret Wheatley suggests in “From Hope to Hopelessness,” we should let go of expectations altogether. “Anytime we hope for a certain outcome,” she writes, “and work hard to make it happen, then we also introduce fear—fear of failing, fear of loss.” Instead, Wheatley suggests concentrating less on the measurable impact of what we do, and more on the value and appropriateness of our work and on the communities we build in the process. It’s no accident that so many of those who’ve devoted their lives to creating a more humane world share this outlook, and continue doing the necessary work whatever their immediate successes or failures.

Excerpted from the wholly updated new edition of The Impossible Will Take a Little While: Perseverance and Hope in Troubled Times, by Paul Rogat Loeb (Basic Books, Oct 13, 2026), theimpossible.org. © Paul Loeb 2026.

Political scientists have a fairly dry checklist for what makes a regime oppressive: It silences dissent, it turns state power against its own people, it treats international law as optional, and it punishes anyone—institution or individual—who tries to hold it accountable. Read as a list, it sounds abstract or like something that happens elsewhere, in a dictatorship in a Third World country maybe.

For Americans, such a definition no longer feels abstract anymore.

Let’s start with the silencing. Since the war on Gaza escalated, human rights groups and journalists have documented, for years now, a pattern of pro-Palestinian content—protest footage, on-the-ground reporting, even the straightforward accounting of civilian deaths—being throttled, flagged, or removed from major platforms. Meanwhile, incitement and dehumanizing rhetoric spreads with far less friction. Independent researchers have called it out repeatedly. Platforms deny doing it on purpose.

Regimes like this have ended before, usually because enough ordinary people refused to stop saying what they saw.

The silencing isn’t limited to algorithms, either. Last month, the White House revoked press credentials for CNN, MS NOW, and Politico, physically barring their reporters from the building over what the president called unfavorable coverage. A federal judge has since ordered access temporarily restored, calling the move a likely violation of due process, but the message had already landed: Cover this administration the wrong way and you can be locked out of the room where the decisions get made. A press freedom advocate called it part of a broader pattern meant to intimidate journalists and deter critical reporting. When the people paid to tell the public the truth are the ones getting the door closed in their faces, “free press” starts to feel like a technicality rather than a guarantee.

Then there’s the gap between what the government does and what the country actually wants. This summer, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) forced a vote to strip billions in US military funding to Israel. This was no fringe gesture but a real floor fight that split both parties and forced members to go on the record. It lost. But the fact that it happened at all, that a sitting Republican congressman felt he had to make Washington answer for the money it kept sending regardless of what constituents were saying, is itself the story. Institutions are moving in one direction while public sentiment visibly pulls in another, and the institutions are winning anyway.

And there’s the reach outward. When the International Criminal Court issued warrants tied to the Gaza war, Washington didn’t argue the law. It sanctioned the court itself, freezing officials’ bank accounts, cutting off their email, warning American staff they’d be arrested for traveling home. A body created specifically to stand outside any one government’s control got treated like an adversary for doing its job. If that’s what happens to an international court, it’s not hard to imagine what happens to an ordinary citizen who speaks too loudly.

Actually, it’s not hard to imagine because it is happening on a daily basis, especially for those who protest the Trump administration’s immigration policy. Last month, Donna Ganger—the mother of Renee Good, a US citizen shot and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent in Minneapolis in January—testified on Capitol Hill that she’s a registered Republican who voted for Donald Trump because she believed that these agents were there to protect citizens, not to treat her own family like the threat. She didn’t get an apology. “This is madness,” she concluded.

Every day, millions of people in America live the reality of a police state. They are afraid to leave their houses for fear of being detained by ICE, thrown into horrific holding centers, and sent back home to civil war or family abuse or even deportation to a third country they know nothing about. ICE has become something closer to a domestic enforcement arm than an immigration agency, and “wrong place, wrong time” is a real category of harm now, not a hypothetical one.

What does it mean to raise a child in a country where simply existing in the wrong neighborhood at the wrong moment carries risk? Where even a global court gets its accounts frozen for trying to hold power accountable?

It’s a strange kind of irony that at the United Nations last month, Trump denounced “the fanatical Iranian regime” for spreading “carnage and chaos” and called for its “complete economic isolation” over how it treats its own people. He’s not wrong that repression deserves condemnation. He’s just describing, almost point for point, the pattern playing out here at home—press outlets barred from covering their own government, citizens shot by agents meant to protect them, and dissent treated as the threat rather than the right.

The distinction between “oppressive regime” as a concept in a textbook and “oppressive regime” as the texture of ordinary life—for millions of people living in this country right now, citizens and noncitizens alike—has ceased to exist. Describing the disappearance of that distinction—calmly, specifically, without exaggeration—feels like the first form of resistance available to someone who isn’t a lawyer, a lawmaker, or a judge.

Regimes like this have ended before, usually because enough ordinary people refused to stop saying what they saw. That’s the piece I want to hold onto, even on the days when fear wins out.

On October 9, only hours after the announcement of the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Navi Pillay, a former judge on the International Criminal Court, the Trump administration imposed its latest sanctions on the global judicial body. According to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, “we will ban transactions with this rogue court, cutting off their resources and crippling its ability to operate.”

When the ICC became operational in 2002, it represented a major breakthrough for the human rights groups that had campaigned for it. The new organization had the mandate to prosecute individuals for genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and, after 2018, the crime of aggression. Once nations ratified the ICC’s authorizing document, the Rome Statute, they took responsibility for arresting these individuals and submitting them to the court for trial. Designed to complement, rather than to replace, national criminal justice systems, the ICC could prosecute cases only when countries were unwilling or unable to do so. A total of 125 countries―nearly two-thirds of the world’s nations―have ratified the Rome Statute.

Since its founding, the ICC (headquartered in The Hague, the Netherlands) has acted to hold individual perpetrators accountable for the world’s gravest atrocities. Its actions included opening 34 cases (some with more than one suspect), holding 17 different investigations across four continents, issuing 61 arrest warrants, and, thus far, issuing 13 convictions and four acquittals.

Nevertheless, the campaign against the ICC is having a serious impact. In late July, thanks to US government pressure, Venezuela and Chad announced their withdrawal from the court’s Rome Statute.From its inception, however, US officials were wary of the ICC.

In the United States, President Bill Clinton signed the Rome Statute, but refused to present it to the US Senate for ratification, warning that it had “significant flaws,” including the inability to “protect US officials.” His successor, George W. Bush, “unsigned” the treaty in 2002 and signed US legislation authorizing military force to liberate any American nationals it held for crimes. During Donald Trump’s first term as president, he denounced the ICC before the United Nations General Assembly and imposed economic sanctions and visa restrictions on top ICC officials for any effort to investigate the behavior of US personnel in Afghanistan.

Russian officials, too, soon realized that enforcement of international law threatened them. Although, initially, the Russian government signed the Rome Statute and participated constructively in the ICC, it withdrew its signature after Ukraine appealed to the ICC in 2014 and 2015 to investigate Russian war crimes in Ukraine. The ICC did initiate a preliminary inquiry that, after the full-scale Russian invasion of 2022 and Russia’s murder of Ukrainian civilians and prisoners of war in Bucha, expanded into a formal investigation. In 2023, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova for the kidnapping of thousands of Ukrainian children.

Denying any wrongdoing in Bucha, the Russian government also dismissed the charge of kidnapping as “outrageous.” Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chair of the Russian Security Council, threatened a Russian hypersonic missile attack upon the ICC headquarters.

Meanwhile, the assault on the ICC escalated. Although US President Joseph Biden scrapped Trump’s sanctions on the court and authorized sharing information with it during investigations of Russian atrocities in Ukraine, he and numerous officials of other nations denounced the ICC’s November 2024 war crimes arrest warrant for top Israeli officials. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu assailed what he called “the antisemitic decision” of the ICC and said that Israel refused to comply with it.

With Trump’s reelection, the campaign to destroy the ICC went into high gear. In February 2025, he imposed sanctions on the ICC prosecutor. That August, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, labeling the court “a national security threat,” added ICC judges to the sanctions list. In late 2025, a top Trump administration official told Reuters that there was “growing concern” that “the ICC will turn its attention to the president, to the vice president, to the secretary of war and others, and pursue prosecutions against them.” That was “unacceptable, and we will not allow it to happen.” The ICC, he said, had been informed that, unless it amended its founding document to ensure that it would not investigate the Republican president and his top officials, new, very punishing US sanctions would be imposed on the court.

The Russian government also ramped up its attack. In December 2025, a Russian court, retaliating for the ICC’s arrest warrants for Putin and Lvova-Belova, convicted the ICC prosecutor and eight ICC judges, in absentia, of “unlawful prosecution,” sentencing them to terms of imprisonment ranging from three and a half to 15 years.

In July 2026, Rubio announced what the US State Department called “a sweeping campaign to dismantle the threat posed by the International Criminal Court to US sovereignty.” It would “feature a whole-of-government response to systematically disable the ICC’s ability to operate” and destroy the court “brick by brick.” That August, imposing additional sanctions on court officials, Rubio proclaimed “our unwavering mission to protect Americans from this sham of a court.” Meanwhile, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called on Latin American and Caribbean governments to sever their ties with the ICC.

Many observers, of course, were appalled by the Trump administration’s behavior. The European Union immediately expressed its backing for the ICC, while Germany’s foreign minister declared that the court made the world “safer and more just.” In a biting article, Kenneth Roth, a former executive director of Human Rights Watch, argued that “the administration’s real goal is to secure impunity for war crimes.”

Nevertheless, the campaign against the ICC is having a serious impact. In late July, thanks to US government pressure, Venezuela and Chad announced their withdrawal from the court’s Rome Statute. The number of withdrawals now stands at five, including Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger. The latter three are ruled by military juntas allied with Russia.

As the Nobel committee warned when announcing the Peace Prize, the “judges and institutions of international law are under political attack.”

If the attack succeeds, it will produce a disaster not only for the rule of law, but for the cause of human rights.

As a first-generation Mexican American, the first time I ever connected with a book and felt genuinely excited to write a book report was when we were assigned to read Esperanza Rising by Pam Muñoz Ryan by Pam Muñoz Ryan in sixth grade. The story, which follows a girl learning to navigate her new life inside a labor camp in California after being forced to move there following the tragic death of her father in Mexico, included themes that really resonated with me.

Up until then, I had never read a book like that. It spoke to me in a way I never imagined a book would, and it made me want to read more. Sixth grade became the year I started considering myself an avid reader because I was pursuing that “special feeling” Esperanza Rising gave me in other books. I was chasing the feeling of being seen.

Today, Esperanza Rising is being challenged in states like Texas and North Carolina because parents feel uncomfortable with its themes of racism and immigration, and I can’t help but think back to my 11-year-old self. If this book had been banned before I got the opportunity to read it, I’m not sure that I would have discovered that “special feeling,” at least not in sixth grade. It would have taken me longer to discover it, if I discovered it at all.

There must be a collective understanding among the gatekeepers of children’s literature that these stories matter, and a commitment to protecting them from being removed from shelves.

This is what makes book bans incredibly dangerous, especially at a time of declining literacy rates, and parents struggling to get their kids to pick up a book instead of their tablets or devices. In October 2026, PEN America reported nearly 12,000 book bans involving more than 7,300 individual titles in US schools during the 2025-2026 school year, which the organization says is the largest censorship case numbers it had ever recorded.

There have been multiple studies reporting on the negative impact book bans are having on teacher morale and student learning, with marginalized young readers especially bearing the brunt of these decisions. The American Library Association reports that a significant proportion of contested books center on LGBTQ+ experiences, racial identity, or themes of systemic inequality, essentially sending the message that those themes should be censored.

When I wrote the first book in my middle-grade magic school series featuring the daughter of undocumented immigrants as the protagonist, Chloe Vega and the Agents of Magic, my goal was to educate young readers about immigration in a way that is digestible and age appropriate. It follows Chloe, who is terrified that Immigration and Customs Enforcement will take her undocumented parents from her. She’s unaware magic exists until a sorcerer disguised as an immigration officer takes her parents, forcing her to embark on a journey to harness her abilities at a magical academy so she can reunite her family.

Despite its fantasy elements, the book is essentially about a little girl fighting to reunite with her family. It’s a heavy message for many young readers, but the magical elements make it easier for them to process. The book has been out for a year, and many parents have reported that it served as an excellent gateway to serious conversations with their children about immigration and the times we’re living in.

The sequel to Chloe’s story, Chloe Vega and the Missing Unseen, was published on October 6, 2026, and both books could be challenged or banned in many states because they address immigration, despite their age appropriateness.

When we ban books for young readers that tackle topics surrounding marginalized people, we lose a critical avenue for parents, educators, and librarians to educate children on these serious topics and help them develop understanding and empathy. We also strip marginalized young readers of the opportunity to feel seen when they are already painfully underrepresented. In the times that we’re living in, this can be extremely harmful.

It also puts these authors at a significant disadvantage, making it harder to get their books into the hands of the readers who need them most. Many have had school visits canceled because educators and administrators fear repercussions from lawmakers and increasingly restrictive book-banning policies. These challenges create greater financial risk for both authors and publishers, which can make publishers more hesitant to invest in books by marginalized authors and further limit the diversity of stories available to young readers.

So far, many efforts have been made to combat book bans. In 2024, a group of authors banded together to launch Authors Against Book Bans, whose mission is to stand united against the unconstitutional movement to limit the freedom to read and to unequivocally support the availability of diverse voices in schools, libraries, and culture. Organizations such as PEN America are actively filing lawsuits against school boards, arguing that these bans violate the First Amendment.

But more needs to be done. There must be a collective understanding among the gatekeepers of children’s literature that these stories matter, and a commitment to protecting them from being removed from shelves. Books have long been celebrated for their ability to build empathy and compassion by inviting readers into lives and experiences different from their own. But when the books being challenged and removed are disproportionately about marginalized people, it does more than limit what children can read. It erases the experiences and identities of the very people whose voices deserve to be heard.

Let’s start with the good news. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has added 61 companies to its database of businesses involved in activities linked to illegal Israeli settlements, expanding the list from 158 to 214 companies.

Why is this good news? Because it further illustrates a degree of seriousness within the international community to move its position on Israel from the realm of language to that of action.

Yet more good news: Five previously listed companies were removed after the office determined that their involvement in the relevant activities had ended.

For the Israeli mindset to change, the consequences of occupation, annexation, and genocide must become unmistakable.

This matters because it suggests that the mechanism can work: Sustained scrutiny can influence corporate behavior, and supporting Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine can carry a price.

Expectedly, the updated list has been welcomed by Palestinian and international human rights organizations, though, rightly so, they insist that such lists are not enough unless followed by direct government action and expanded to other facets of the Israeli military and economy.

But before focusing on what else needs to be done, we must acknowledge the significance of such reports, especially when placed within the larger context of global initiatives aimed at isolating Israel and its extremist leadership.

First, the 2026 update demonstrates continuing institutional commitment by the UN Human Rights Office. The database was not a one-off initiative issued under temporary political pressure. Its continued expansion and revision show that corporate involvement in Israel’s illegal settlement enterprise remains subject to international scrutiny.

Second, the addition of 61 companies reflects extensive research and follow-up by the UN, supported by information from Palestinian civil society and human rights organizations. The database is therefore not simply symbolic: It documents the international corporate networks that sustain and profit from Israel’s settlement project.

Third, the removal of five companies suggests that the mechanism can produce results. Its impact remains far below what Palestinians need, but the removals indicate that companies can end relevant activities and subsequently be removed from the database.

The list also provides civil society with credible material for accountability and boycott campaigns. More importantly, it can help move such efforts beyond individual consumer choices toward action by governments, financial institutions, and regulatory bodies.

This is particularly relevant as Western governments begin taking measures of their own.

On September 8, 12 countries—Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom—announced their intention either to introduce national restrictions or support European restrictions on trade with illegal Israeli settlements. Britain went further, banning settlement goods and moving against companies involved in settlement construction.

The significance was difficult to miss. Heavyweights such as Britain, France, and Canada were no longer merely condemning settlement expansion; they were beginning to attach economic consequences to it.

But here lies the challenge: Reports, databases, and sanctions remain insufficient—and risk becoming meaningless—unless they are followed by sustained monitoring and practical action.

What is the worth of sanctions if they are not enforced, expanded, and accompanied by political pressure capable of changing Israeli behavior?

Decisions, lists, and threats are double-edged swords. They can become launchpads for sustained and meaningful political action. Or they can be used to mollify civil society, allowing politicians to buy time and votes while avoiding any fundamental policy change.

However, there is a way to help distinguish between the two.

An independent international monitoring group, composed of and supported by civil society figures with recognized moral authority, could systematically track governments that have committed to sanctions, boycotts, or trade restrictions: What was promised, what was implemented, what loopholes remain, and whether measures are producing tangible consequences.

Monitoring these governments is becoming almost as important as monitoring Israel itself.

The same principle applies to UN reports. Palestinian and international civil society organizations must incorporate their findings into the growing global boycott and accountability movement, while governments must ensure that companies under their jurisdiction are not contributing to illegal settlement activities.

Considering that Israel continues its genocidal assault on Gaza while accelerating settlement expansion and annexation measures in the West Bank, none of these steps can ever be sufficient on their own. They are, however, meaningful steps in the right direction.

Palestinians expect—and deserve—far more than the bare minimum. The situation in the occupied territories is simply too urgent for symbolic politics. Every passing day should bring another measure of accountability: another restriction, another divestment, another sanction, another political or economic consequence.

Israel has operated for decades on the assumption that it is effectively untouchable—that condemnation will remain rhetorical, reports will gather dust, and Western governments will ultimately retreat when meaningful pressure becomes politically costly.

That assumption must end.

For the Israeli mindset to change, the consequences of occupation, annexation, and genocide must become unmistakable. Sanctions cannot merely be announced; they must be enforced. Boycotts cannot remain symbolic; they must carry an economic cost. International law cannot simply be invoked; it must have consequences.

The real measure of these initiatives, therefore, is not how many companies appear on a list or how many governments announce sanctions. The real measure is whether these actions can finally impose a political and economic price on Israel high enough to make occupation, annexation, and genocide unsustainable.

Here’s today’s trivia question (which may turn out to be not at trivial at all when all the facts emerge): Who solicited money from a presidential donor in return for access to the head of the IRS over the donor’s taxes, was a Fox News host, was engaged to the son of the US president, was the former wife of someone who wants to be the next US president, who raised money for and spoke at a rally that led to an attack on the US Capitol, and now is a US ambassador?

If you guessed Kimberly Guilfoyle, you’d be correct on all counts.

Rarely has a person been so enmeshed in the workings (or one might say, dysfunctions) of our current political-economic-media-influence system as Guilfoyle.

From 2001 to 2005, Guilfoyle was married to Gavin Newsom, now governor of California. In 2018, she began dating Donald Trump Jr., became engaged to him in 2020, and emerged as one of his father’s most outspoken defenders and a MAGA icon.

After Trump’s 2020 defeat, Guilfoyle sought to turn her status into a profitable business ventures including lines of hair care and fragrance products and a medspa. She also launched a political consulting firm and sought work in public relations.

In 2022, she launched what she termed an upscale vodka and champagne brand, American Dream, organizing a dinner for Mar-a-Lago guests that participants realized halfway through was an investment pitch.

According to a report in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal by Dana Mattioli, Drew Hinshaw, Rebecca Ballhaus, and Joe Parkinson, Trump grew frustrated with Guilfoyle for soliciting investments from Mar-a-Lago members for her companies, and complained that Guilfoyle was supposed to be raising money for him but instead was at his club raising money for herself.

The Journal reports that after Trump won the 2024 election, Eric Deters—a Trump donor and former co-owner of Snappy Tomato Pizza, a regional restaurant chain, who had mounted unsuccessful runs for Congress and governor—began soliciting Guilfoyle’s help on several matters, including gaining access to incoming Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Billy Long, to discuss an IRS probe into Deters’s tax deductions.

Guilfoyle offered to use her sway as Donald Jr.’s former fiancée. Deters promised to pay her as much as $1 million if she were successful.

Her engagement to Trump Jr. ended in December 2024. On December 10, 2024, Trump nominated Guilfoyle to be the US ambassador to Greece.

After Billy Long was confirmed IRS commissioner, Guilfoyle sent him a congratulatory note, attaching a letter Deters had written outlining his tax dispute: “Don Jr. and I are very close with Eric Deters and his wife and I know he sent you a letter,” she wrote. “I am hoping I know how busy you are that you could give some time and attention to it.”

She assured Deters that “I wrote him a very nice message. Told him how important it was that you’re close to me and to don.”

The Journal reports that as her confirmation hearing approached, Guilfoyle complained to friends that she was broke.

She reached out to Deters with an urgent request: She needed $100,000 that she said she owed American Express—and needed Deters to give it to her in a way that wouldn’t leave a paper trail. “It won’t show up anywhere if you wire money to American Express,” she wrote on Signal, according to messages reviewed by the Journal.

“Honey please I need you to get this done for me today,” she texted Deters, adding a prayer hands emoji and a PDF with bill payment instructions from American Express. “You could just send it here,” she wrote on July 3, 2025, just days before her July 9 confirmation hearing.

Deters ultimately did not make the payment, but the set of transactions illuminates the casual pay-to-play world in which Trump, his family, appointees, and donors all operate.

The Senate confirmed Guilfoyle as ambassador to Greece on September 18, 2025.

Billy Long is now the US ambassador to Iceland.

The top two Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs and Senate Foreign Relations committees have now called for an investigation into Guilfoyle.

Congressional Democrats are already looking into claims reported last month by the Journal that Guilfoyle told guests at a reception that the US could undermine the Greek government if it chose to, that she promoted the business interests of one particular Greek construction and energy company, and allowed its lobbyist into private diplomatic meetings.

In Trump world, being close to power creates a special economy of getting and giving. The arenas include Fox News, Mar-a-Lago, the White House, Capitol Hill, and extend even to our foreign embassies. All relationships within these arenas—personal, romantic, political, diplomatic—are transactional.

In a nationwide poll conducted a few weeks ago and reported on by Axios, the majority of all registered voters surveyed said the number one word to describe Donald Trump is “corrupt.” This represents a massive opportunity for Democrats both now and for the next two years.

And the experience of candidates in today’s Democrats’ position around the world validates the argument that this is the best way to both campaign and win elections and political power.

Péter Magyar defeated Viktor Orbán in the Hungarian elections because he ran a Navalny-style playbook, calling Orbán’s and his billionaire buddies’ capture of the media and most other aspects of Hungarian life a “state capture system” grounded in good old-fashioned “corruption.”

From Orban’s son-in-law pulling a Jared and using his government position to become one of the richest men in the country, to his billionaire cronies buying up the media like the billionaire Ellisons are doing here now, corruption was Magyar’s singular through-line message. And it worked, producing an overwhelming turnout and undeniable victory.

It will work here, too!

Democrats are (continuously, it seems) debating what should be their campaign strategy, their main through-line message, for the 2026 midterms and the 2028 presidential election. Every faction and special interest group in the country is pushing their own idea, but there’s one overarching concept — one word — that can encompass most all of them and do so with a proven political punch: “Corruption.”

At every level, ever since the Reagan Revolution, the heart of Republican policies has been the naked corruption of our American political and economic systems. Since the 1980s, Republicans have sold their corruption with slogans like, “Government is the problem, not the solution,” and “Let the market decide,” but their real message is, “Turn it all over to the billionaires and their corporations.” The result has been:

— Tax cuts and loopholes for billionaires and big corporations that, in aggregate since 1981, add up to more than our total national debt of $40 trillion (in other words, Republicans borrowed $40 trillion in our names that our kids will repay and gave all of it to the morbidly rich).
— Reagan’s 1983 suspension of enforcement of the anti-trust laws that has caused every industry in America to become a form of monopoly dominated by five or fewer massive corporations, gutting competition and raising prices.
— Five on-the-take Republicans on the Supreme Court ruling that corporations are persons and money is the same thing as “free speech,” handing our elections over to the highest bidders.
— Virtually every legacy federal regulatory agency being run by industry insiders working on a revolving-door basis.
— Members of Congress and the corrupt Trump regime engaging in insider trading with impunity.
— A GOP-aligned military-industrial complex that’s essentially taken over Pentagon procurement.
— An anti-labor Labor Department; an anti-education Education department; an anti-civil rights Civil Rights enforcement agency; an anti-environment Environmental Protection Agency; etc…
— Trump’s mysterious pardons that always seem to go to people who’ve given him millions of dollars (after Giuliani claimed he and Trump were selling pardons for two million each and splitting the money).
— The wholesale gutting of the Internal Revenue Service enforcement budget and staffing that’s largely ended audits of morbidly rich people and increased audits of working-class people instead.
— The systematic sabotage and privatization of public institutions — from the US Postal Service to public schools to prisons — with virtually every one of the for-profit replacements becoming big GOP donors.
— The explosion of dark money after Citizens United so we don’t even know who’s buying our elections.
— The weaponization of the Federal Communications Commission to loosen media ownership rules while threatening outlets that dare criticize Trump or the GOP.
— Red-state-level voter suppression laws including strict ID requirements, purges of voter rolls, and reduced polling access all to discourage voting by people in demographic groups associated with Democrats.
— The Republican refusal to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices for years and they’re still blocking most efforts.
— The systematic dismantling of campaign finance enforcement, turning the Federal Election Commission into a deadlocked, do-nothing body.
— The use of tax havens and trade policy to encourage offshoring American jobs.
— The Republican normalization of lobbyists literally writing legislation via groups like the Koch-funded ALEC.
— The rewriting of environmental and labor rules to favor polluting industries by GOP appointees who often came from those very industries.
— The strategic packing of the federal judiciary with hardcore rightwing/neofascist judges.
— And now Trump’s pathetic attempts to bribe voters with his $5000 offer backed up by $80 and $500 checks going out this week to people on Medicare and the Affordable Care Act.

Even Republicans understand the power of mobilizing the public’s outrage against the corruption that they themselves have participated in for over 40 years. Astonishingly, cynically, that’s the meta-message to Trump’s main campaign slogan each of the three times he’s run for president:

“Drain the swamp.”

It worked, even though it was an outrageous lie. Democrats, who have actually been trying to do something about corruption for years, need to appropriate the anti-corruption theme as their main message. Because, universally, it works.

— When working in Russia, I witnessed the way Alexi Navalny came so close to taking down Putin that the Russian dictator ordered him murdered; it was done via Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation. It systematically and relentlessly exposed the ways Putin and his cronies were looting their nation’s government while passing out favors to oligarchs willing to align themselves with them.

— In the 1980s, I was working for a German international relief organization in The Philippines when Cory Aquino mobilized an anti-corruption message against the Marcos dynasty; the week Marcos and his wife fled the country I was bumped off Philippine Airlines flights five days in a row because so many of their cronies were appropriating all the seats (the airline was run by a crony).

— When Jair Bolsonaro first successfully ran for president of Brazil it was on a campaign against the corruption “Operation Car Wash” had exposed in the Lula administration. When elected, Bolsonaro, instead of ending the corruption, slid right into the system and expanded it, leading to his own ultimate downfall and current imprisonment.

— In Delhi, activist Anna Hazare’s 2011 anti-corruption hunger strike ignited a nationwide movement that helped spur passage of India’s Lokpal anti-corruption law and led his former allies to found the “clean government” Aam Aadmi Party.

— And, of course, it was the anti-corruption message of the EuroMaidan “Revolution of Dignity” in 2014 that lifted then-comedian and TV star Volodymyr Zelenskyy into the presidency of Ukraine.

From Teddy Roosevelt’s Progressive Era of the early 20th century to the present, anti-corruption messages have repeatedly proven to be one of the most potent forces in American politics, too.

— In 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt built a foundation of mass support by casting monopolies as a “corrupt alliance” between the morbidly rich and our government, while the exposure of William M. “Boss” Tweed’s graft by Thomas Nast’s biting cartoons helped bring down New York’s Tammany Hall by converting complex examples of corruption into the simple story of “stolen public money.”

— The Watergate scandal turned corrupt abuse of power into a national reckoning that forced Richard Nixon from office and fueled sweeping electoral gains for reformers like Jimmy Carter, while more recent scandals like George Santos’ reinforced “clean government” as a winning local message.

— At the national level, Donald Trump’s “drain the swamp” campaign and the “rigged system” critiques advanced by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren show that, across the ideological spectrum, framing political battles as struggle against entrenched, self-dealing elites remains one of the most consistently reliable ways to get energized voters to the polls and win power.

It makes perfect sense that this should be the Democrats’ main strategy: the core philosophy of the GOP that was first made explicit by the Reagan administration — “greed is good” — openly invites corruption. As we’ve seen in virtually every congressional vote over the past decade, Republican politicians are entirely in the pockets of the fossil fuel, health insurance, tax preparation, and weapons industries, among others.

Whether it’s the corrupt collusion between the Kushner and Netanyahu families that helped lead us into an illegal war against Iran, the billions Trump’s family has made in crypto and other schemes, the insider trading on the war, putting industry insiders in charge of regulatory agencies, the DeSantis and Paxton/Abbott corruption scandals, there are vivid examples of Republican corruption laying on the public ground all over the country in plain sight.

There’s a whole panoply of issues Democrats can and should seize on, from privatization to deregulation to climate change to affordability to healthcare and education, but the core — the foundation — of every one of them is corruption.

Every Democrat in America should scan their local horizon for examples of corruption they can use against Republicans. The words “Republican corruption” should be continuously on their lips, whether campaigning, speaking to constituents, or making media appearances.

Hammer these corrupt SOBs with their own crimes against democracy and the middle class, and Democrats will see results like Magyar, Zelenskyy, Aquino, and so many others have achieved.

It’s simple, easy, and powerful: “It’s the corruption, stupid!”

US President Donald Trump’s Latin America policy has seemed, at times, detached from genuine US national interests in the region and increasingly driven by his personal preferences. He now appears determined to transform Brazil into a “political laboratory” where a right-wing triumph would serve as definitive proof of the superiority of his authoritarian worldview.

Ambition Rules

If anyone doubted the scope of Donald Trump’s ambitions, they need only look at his attempts to dictate terms to the largest economy in Latin America. To Trump, Brazil isn’t a sovereign nation with a rich culture and complex history. It’s merely a convenient staging ground for expanding his ideological influence.

In his worldview, the Brazilian political landscape largely mirrors that of the United States. This makes it a suitable "testing ground" for the geopolitical and domestic policies Trump and his supporters will try to adapt and apply to the United States.

It’s not hard to see how Trump is trying to install his own personally loyal "king" in Brazil. With surgical precision, he's attempting to remove anything progressive from Brazilian politics. He's striving to reshape Brazilian politics so that the voice of the people is drowned out by the noise of right-wing populism, and democratic institutions merely serve as window dressing for one man’s will.

Mirror in the Tropics

At the core of this strategy lies Trump's profound fixation on the Bolsonaro family: former President Jair Bolsonaro, presently incarcerated for his role in a coup attempt, and his son Flavio, a prominent right-wing candidate who emerged victorious in the first round of elections on October 4th and is set to compete against current President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

To the occupant of the Oval Office, Bolsonaro isn’t just an ally; he's Trump’s political reflection, his "tropical doppelgänger." Through this troubling narcissism, Trump sees confirmation that his tactics of intimidation, aggressive rhetoric, and disregard for the truth are a universal recipe for power.

Trump and MAGA Republicans' drive to promote conservative supremacy is turning US foreign policy into an instrument of ideological dominance. They are intent on proving to the world once again that conservative ideology is the only correct path. To this end, Brazil must become the main trophy—a living testament to the idea that authoritarianism equals efficiency and everything else is a mistake.

Attacking Lula: A Contest of Hope

In this context, Trump's criticism of Lula does not appear as political debate, but as blatant aggression. Trump rejects the Brazilian leader precisely because he champions everything his American counterpart disdains: empathy, social justice, and faith in the greater good.

This ignores the fact that Lula has become a beacon of hope for millions of Brazilians while Trump sows discord. For this reason, Lula’s return to power in 2022 was not just a political victory, but a triumph of humanity over cynicism.

It’s difficult to remain indifferent when witnessing Lula's consistent defense of the Amazon rainforest—the “lungs of the planet”—which was brutally exploited under right-wing governments at the behest of corporate interests. While Brazilian right-wing politicians and their supporter Trump see nature merely as a resource for enrichment, Lula fights for humanity's ecological survival.

The Brazilian president's unwavering support for the LGBTQ+ community and minorities in the face of aggressive conservatism is an act of true democratic leadership, in contrast to the narrow vision of "right-wing supremacy."

The Destructive Influence of the Right

Under these circumstances, it’s no surprise that issues such as confronting extremism in politics, combating electoral violence, and bolstering communities against disinformation have come to the forefront of US-Brazil relations.However, as events surrounding Brazil's election campaign show, Trump and his allies, such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio, are hardly concerned with regional stability. By promoting right-wing popolism supremacy, Trump is attempting to blur the lines between governance and his personal ambitions through his reflection in Bolsonaro.

This has already prompted a response from Democratic members of Congress, who sent Rubio a letter criticizing the White House’s blatant attempts at interfering with and potentially undermining Brazil's elections. The administration must stop using economic and political pressure to weaken Brazil’s democratic institutions. Such activity is seriously damaging the bilateral partnership.

Cautious Optimism

Brazil's election campaign clearly demonstrates a clash between two worlds. One world is embodied by Trump, Bolsonaro, and right-wing conservatives. It is a world of cold calculation, hierarchy, and dominance. The other world is championed by Lula. It is a world of equality, ecology, and democracy. Republicans who want to see democracy thrive must recognize that turning Brazil into a "political laboratory" for the Trump era is a dead end.