TOM HASTINGS – In 1815, John Adams noted, “The Revolution was in the Minds and Hearts of the People, and in the Union of the Colonies, both of which were Substantially effected before Hostilities commenced.”
Author: Oregon PeaceWorks
What Will It Take to Move Beyond National Independence to Global Interdependence
LAWRENCE S. WITTNER – Independence helped dismantle empires, but no nation can solve nuclear war, climate collapse, pandemics, or technological threats alone. As Americans and people of other former colonies recognize, there’s a great deal to be said for national independence. But, at times, we might also wonder: is it sufficient?
The US at 250: What Should We Be Paying Attention To?
RIVERA SUN – The United States at 250 – A Fourth of July Special.
There IS a Way to Reform the United Nations
JUSTIN HANEER – Thunderous applause echoed through the San Francisco Opera House on June 26th, 1945, as diplomats signed the United Nations Charter. It was hailed as a victory over war itself. Eighty-one years later, the UN has many accomplishments to celebrate. But the Charter’s opening pledge to save “succeeding generations from the scourge of war” remains painfully unfulfilled.
Finding real national pride on America’s 250th birthday
SARAH VAN GELDER – Our history has been one of atrocities — and extraordinary courage. An honest accounting of our nation’s founding injustices gives us the opportunity to make them right. When we do, we won’t need the swagger anymore, because we’ll have something sturdier: the real thing. We can be unified in pride for this country, and unstoppable in coming together to build what could truly be a more perfect union.
Unchecked billionaire oligarchs, not “godless communists,” are undermining American democracy
JARED O. BELL – The real threat to American democracy was never a democratic socialist winning a city primary. It is a system in which a handful of billionaires can reshape public institutions overnight, enrich themselves through the levers of government, and leave the rest of us to argue about labels while we live with the damage.
Trump’s Nuclear Weapons Policies Make the Whole World Less Safe
TOM H. HASTINGS – The sum total of Trump’s erosion of nuclear safeguards belie his rhetoric about nuclear safety; he has done more to make Americans and the world less safe from nuclear annihilation than any US leader ever.
Why Biden’s Debate Disaster Two Years Ago Matters for the Future
NORMAN SOLOMON – Looking ahead, a great need will be to overcome the ongoing culture of conformity that so badly damaged the Democratic Party in 2024 and helped Trump get back into the White House.
Really – How is Our Resistance Doing?
DANIEL HUNTER – Each of us has a choice right now — do we get smaller, or bigger? More bold or less? I think we follow the folks in Ohio, in Minneapolis, in Georgia, in the streets and the jails and the capitol buildings and the Signal group chats. My encouragement: keep getting bigger.
Trump Is Already Telling Us He Will Steal the Midterms (If We Let Him)
THOM HARTMANN – Donald Trump is already telling us he’s going to try to steal the 2026 election, and the fact that he’s saying it now, months in advance, is the whole tell.
Being honest with ourselves 250 years after July 4, 1776
KARY LOVE – America must be vigilant against encroaching erosions of its great principles. Every generation must renew their commitment to defending and expanding those human rights, not only in rhetoric, but in the halls of Congress, the White House, and the courts, and the streets, until “liberty and justice for all” is the lived reality of “we the people.” Only then will the right to celebration of the Declaration be earned. And every generation must earn that right by carrying forward the struggle for the “inalienable” rights of all.
Data Centers Threaten the Health of the Columbia River
KRISTEEN BARCLAY – The Columbia River is being re-engineered into a cooling system. Cooling system for industrial-scale computers. This shift is fundamentally changing the capacity of our river to function. The Snake and Yakima Rivers are at risk as well.
The U.S. Labor Movement as a force for peace and international cooperation
LAWRENCE WITTNER – This June’s AFL-CIO call for a just and peaceful world is in line with much of labor’s past. And the labor movement shouldn’t be written off as a force for peace and international cooperation in the future.
10 reasons to resist AI
JOSEPH MOGUL – To counter Big Tech’s narrative of AI inevitability, movements are beginning to resist on many fronts where this dangerous tech is being deployed.
The New Documentary “An Ordinary Insanity”
ROBERT ELLSBERG – “An Ordinary Insanity” may alert the public to the dangers we are facing from “The Doomsday Machine.” But it will also require widespread conscientious action, a kind of pandemic of courage, wisdom, enlightenment, and dedication to the survival of our planet.
Why Trump blinked on Iran
SOPHIA GONZALEZ – Trump stepped back because the next step looked less like victory than attrition. He should keep stepping back. The United States does not need another demonstration of airpower. It needs an exit from the logic that made airpower seem like a substitute for policy. Diplomacy is not a gift to Tehran. It is a rescue operation for Washington’s own overstretched strategy.
Investing in Care: A Public-Private Model for Youth Opportunity
COLIN GREER and REYNARD LOKI – A scalable model that combines education, paid work, mentorship, and healthcare to support vulnerable youth.
Around the world, global solidarity and cooperation are remarkably popular
LAWRENCE WITTNER – In most countries, including the United States, support for international solidarity and cooperation is very substantial, and growing. Consequently, political activists and politicians shouldn’t be reluctant to speak out for them. Indeed, given the popularity of this internationalist approach to global affairs, it might even prove a winning political issue.
Two visions of the US will compete at the World Cup
MARIA J. STEPHAN – A big tent coalition is harnessing the energy surrounding the World Cup to imagine a more free and democratic United States.
Best possible Iran agreement will leave everyone worse off than they started
MEL GURTOV – We’ve seen this movie several times already: Trump issues threats, Iran refuses to kneel, negotiators rush to Qatar, Trump or Rubio announces an imminent deal, and then optimism evaporates as it becomes clear that the two sides are miles apart.
The American epoch of oil is collapsing. What comes next could be ugly
JONATHON WATTS – China is dominating the energy transition with astonishing results, while fossil fuel fascists in the US try to turn back the clock.
Breaking Nuclear Law. The Risks Are Immeasurable
LINDA PENTZ GUNTER – The NRC has at times performed poorly as a diligent safety regulator, routinely serving more as lapdog than watchdog and putting industry profit motives ahead of public protection. But even a weak regulator is better than none at all. Nuclear power is simply too inherently dangerous a technology to operate outside the law. Ignoring those dangers will put millions of Americans at risk of another catastrophic nuclear accident.
Climate Change and the Decline of the American Empire
COVERING CLIMATE NOW – “One of the cornerstones of geostrategic thinking since the start of the Industrial Revolution, 250 years ago, is that the country that controls energy supply controls the world,” Jonathan Watts points out. “For most of the past century, that has centered on oil.” But the era of oil is ending, Watts contends, as the global economy “shifts from molecules to electrons” — or from burning oil, gas, and coal to generating solar, wind, and other forms of renewable energy. The implications are profound, not least for the chances of limiting global temperature rise to a survivable level.
Trump won big in Republican primaries, but then actually lost clout in Congress
CHRIS BOWERS – Trump’s victories against Rebellious GOP Incumbents may have scratched his itch for revenge, but they did not get him increased clout in Congress. In fact, Trump’s victories over Rebellious GOP Incumbents actually seems to have reduced his clout in Congress, and done so by quite a lot.
America’s 250th: Celebration or Wake?
KARY LOVE – Dethrone and declaw any pretend King of America. Take away his Nuclear Football; war is not a game. If accomplished, America can celebrate its 250th birthday. If not done, America is dead and July 4 nothing but a wake, held in memory of a dream denied. America will have been Made English Empire Again (MEEA). The people did it once before, they can do it again. Long live the genius of America. Government by the people and No Kings.
Remember the Department of Peace? Good idea then. Even better now.
ROBERT C. KOEHLER – Scott Paul writes, “This budget (proposed military budget upgrade) to $1.5 trillion annually is certainly not business as usual. It is a dramatic reordering of national priorities. Trump has made this shift explicit, arguing that the U.S. cannot afford childcare, Medicaid or Medicare because, as he put it, ‘we’re fighting wars.’”
Why power analysis is key to fighting ICE
JAMES L. VANHISE – Deep research is key to identifying ICE’s pillars of support and building the power necessary to topple them. No matter how formidable an opponent appears on the surface, chances are they have social, political or economic connections that render them vulnerable. Power research can help campaigns identify pillars of support, and finding the right target can be the difference between success and failure.
Trump’s Quest for World Domination is Destroying the UN
LAWRENCE WITTNER – How long will it take to recognize that international security requires the sharing of power by all people and nations in the human community?
Will the Trump administration’s ‘nuclear campus’ plan break the US nuclear waste gridlock?
VINCENT IAIENTI – If the nuclear campus plan becomes a quiet pathway for states to advance communities as hosts for nuclear waste repositories—without the level of geological prescreening, institutional trust, and durable local consent that underpinned progress in Finland, Sweden, and Canada—the United States risks reintroducing volatility into nuclear waste siting while allowing federal officials to claim premature progress on a problem that remains politically unresolved.
Is the DNC Giving Kamala Harris a Boost for 2028?
NORMAN SOLOMON – DNC Chair Ken Martin’s concealment of the autopsy report on the 2024 election puts a thumb on the scale for one candidate: Kamala Harris.
May Day was even more important than you think
DANIEL HUNTER – May Day 2026 wasn’t perfect — but it was a real exercise of power. We learned where we stand, not in theory but in motion. The muscles are there — maybe stiff, maybe uneven — but real, alive and ready to grow for more escalation, more economic disruption, more clarification of the billionaire opponents who are threatening the existence of all of us. That matters. Now we just have to keep building on it.
Medical Experts Declare President Trump Too Unstable to Remain in Office, Cite Nuclear Weapons Risks
International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) – On April 30, 2026, a group of 36 leading physicians and other doctors with expertise in mental health issued a statement calling for President Donald J. Trump’s immediate, lawful removal from office for medical reasons. His mental instability, coupled with his sole, unchecked authority to launch nuclear weapons, makes him a clear and present danger to the safety of all Americans, they declared. The U.S. Senate offices of Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Jack Reed (D-RI) entered the experts’ statement into the Congressional Record, Vol. 172, No. 76. The 36 signatories are listed alphabetically after the statement.
To Solve Homelessness, Fix the Economy
SOMALI KOLHATKAR – “We know the solution to homelessness is housing and supports,” says Jesse Rabinowitz. “At the same time, since at least the ’80s, the federal government has abandoned its responsibility to ensure that everyone has a safe place to live. So, cities and states across the country are left carrying the water for decades of failed federal housing policy.”
The Blessing of an Open Mind on Religion
GEORGE CASSIDY PAYNE – If there is a path toward peace in our time, it will not be paved by the erasure of difference, but by the cultivation of understanding across it. Interfaith is not the enemy of orthodoxy. It is its testing ground, its expansion, its flowering. To some, that will always feel like a loss of control. To others, it is the beginning of wisdom, seeing the whole pattern without losing the thread that is one’s own.
‘Only the Beginning’: Santa Marta Summit Heralded as New Dawn in Fight to End Fossil Fuel Era
STEPHEN PRAGER – “Amid a tense geopolitical context and worsening climate extremes, Santa Marta helped spark a feeling of renewed energy, but delegates must now follow through to deliver action, not just words,” said a senior climate adviser at Greenpeace.
“Us and them” is obsolete
WINSLOW MYERS – What is true for any intractable quarrel on our small planet is just as true for all the others. Peacebuilding has a chance when people recognize their own role in the conflict. We venerate Nelson Mandela because he sought reconciliation rather than victory. Just as Netanyahu might look into the face of the late Hamas leader Yahyah Sinwar and see his own ruthlessness, so could Secretary Hegseth look at his counterpart in the Iran Revolutionary Guards and see a fanaticism resembling his own. The face of “them” is a mirror.
Replace NATO with Cooperative Foreign Policy and Depend on Nonviolent Civil Resistance
TOM H. HASTINGS – Mass nonviolent resistance can stop Trump and others. If we are willing, we can win. War profiteering, NATO, and other militarized fossils can mercifully become even more patently obsolete. The future is exactly what Dr. King said, nonviolence or nonexistence.
What the historically low snowpack in the American West means for water and wildfire this summer
ANNA MARIJA HELT – El Nino may bring lots of rain to Colorado, for instance, and forecasters expect it to develop in early fall. “Still, rain tends to do much less for our water supply than snow,” Allie Mazurek said. And snow is a resource that will likely be in shorter and shorter supply in the years to come in the West,
Where We Are and Where We Need to Be on Iran
MEL GURTOV – If an agreement with Iran were to take place, we would be back to the status quo before the US attacks with a few improvements that stabilize US-Iran relations. The nuclear issue would be put to rest for the moment, the Strait would reopen, sanctions on Iran would gradually end, and US forces would leave the Gulf area. All of which would point to one conclusion: that Trump’s war on Iran was needless, a terrible sacrifice of lives and economy.
Blowin’ in the Wind: How Nordic Countries Made Electricity Free
OLIVER MILMAN – Years of investment in green infrastructure have driven electricity prices down across countries like Sweden and Finland—sometimes below zero. Could the United States do the same?
The deception behind Trump’s war on Iran
SOPHIA GONZALEZ – Americans have seen this pattern before. A president moves toward war. Intelligence is stretched. Foreign allies make the hardest push. Friendly media turn selective images into political permission. Then ordinary people pay the price.
Democracy Depends on Broad-Based Taxation—History Is Clear About That
GARY M. FEINMAN – If democracies today are to restore trust, widen participation, and check concentrated power, the historical lesson is unambiguous: they need to rebuild and evenly implement inclusive tax systems. That means not only who pays but also how revenues are collected, how transparently they are managed, and how visibly they return to the public in the form of shared opportunities, services, and goods.
How organizers are addressing sexual violence in movement spaces
VICTORIA VALENZUELA – Within movements, there is sub-movement to address sexual harm in organizing spaces. Many people who have done this work say a culture of putting the cause above oneself, or not wanting to make the movement look bad, results in movements becoming spaces rife with abuse. However, there are people who are working to empower survivors, keep organizers safe and hold perpetrators accountable.
Which Way to National Security?
LAWRENCE S. WITTNER – Arguing that both nationalist and alliance strategies for coping with international affairs have failed to safeguard national security, the article calls for strengthening international organizations.
What Does a Win Look Like? Plus Other Nonviolence News
RIVERA SUN – While the stories of nonviolence news are often plentiful (see the Nonviolence News Research Archive for 73 articles), several of them are also an invitation to reflect in greater depth than nonviolence news usually does. This week Rivera Sun takes some time to reflect thoughtfully with readers and followers about a few themes of accountability and integrity.
America has one birthday, the USA was born on another
KARY LOVE – A schizoid values division continues to this day. Human rights America was born July 4, 1776. Money and power USA was born September 17, 1787. A balance was sought in the Bill of Rights adopted December 15, 1791. But the division remains to be manipulated and used by factions favoring one value side or the other, dividing the people into camps to be exploited for political power gain and loss.
Pete Hegseth’s Crusade Against the First Amendment
MEL GURTOV – Invoking God and country in American interventions abroad is nothing new. But Pete Hegseth has taken that message a step farther by intertwining his religion with the nation’s military establishment. He should be next in line to be dismissed from the cabinet.
The Minneapolis protests recall a long lineage of women’s peace movements
JODI VANDENBERG-DAVES – The Minneapolis protests recall a long lineage of women’s peace movements: Women bringing innovation, moral clarity, caregiving and an insistence on justice.
It’s time to tax the rich
LAWRENCE WITTNER – Most Americans support proposals to raise taxes on the rich. According to a March 2025 Pew Research Center poll, large majorities of Americans surveyed favored increasing taxes on the wealthy and corporations. In January 2026, an Economist/YouGov poll reported that 80 percent of American respondents viewed wealth inequality as a problem, 80 percent said the rich had too much political power, and 78 percent said taxes on billionaires were too low.
Climate Change Goes to Washington – How It Happened
CHELSEA HENDERSON – Decades of political battles, shifting public opinion, and evolving advocacy strategies shaped the path of U.S. climate policy from early scientific warnings to major federal investment.