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.
Category: Analysis
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.’”
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?
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.
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.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Essay about nuclear energy versus renewables omits crucial fundamentals
AMORY B. LOVINS – In her March 13 Bulletin article (“The war on Iran will speed the transition away from fossil fuels and toward nuclear energy, creating strategic challenges for the United States”), the distinguished Rachel Bronson’s equivocal but emphatic ode to nuclear power disappoints by omitting fundamentals.
No, Mr. Secretary, America doesn’t need an actual patriotic press
JARED O. BELL – Without a truly independent press, the United States risks drifting toward the very model of information control practiced by the despotic regimes it criticizes, a bleak reality no American should wish to contemplate. Now more than ever, defending press freedom requires vigilance, solidarity, and an unwavering commitment to truth.
Missiles, memes, and masculinity: When the White House turns war into entertainment
ROB OKUN – If we want a safer, more humane world, boys must learn that real courage isn’t measured by explosions or victory screens. It’s measured by the ability to protect life, show compassion, and reject violence—even in a culture that socializes you to believe violence is what makes you a man.
International law needs international enforcement
LAWRENCE WITTNER – Donald Trump’s war of choice in the Middle East is but the latest indication that the system of international law―which provides guidelines for the behavior of nations in world affairs―is crumbling.
AI: Where is it taking us?
BOB TOPPER – In the last century people marveled at the Wright brothers’ success. Just 66 years later, an awestruck world watched American astronauts walk on the moon. Technical advances became prosaic. But we should be paying more attention to Artificial Intelligence. For this revolution we will not be casual observers. It will change our lives in fundamental ways. We are not prepared and our government is sleeping.
No rationale for presidential war on Iran
By John LaForge The president says Iran must not be allowed to possess nuclear weapons. In his February 24 speech to Congress, he said of Iran’s leaders, “They want to make a deal, but we haven’t heard those secret words: ‘We will…
Will Mamdani Abolish Police, or Simply Make Them Obsolete?
SONALI KOLHATKAR – What sets Mamdani apart from other progressive mayors who promised to be tough on police is a democratic socialist vision of a society that meets people’s needs.
Nonviolence vs. the Hydra of authoritarian violence
ANDREW MOSS – The myth of the Hydra offers a vivid image of how different forms of violence can be traced to a single, lethal source. But its utility ends there. No Heracles will come to slay this beast. A single “heroic” figure, or figures, isn’t even desirable. A complex history must first be accounted for: how the current authoritarian regime emerged from decades of festering inequalities of wealth and power, from long-standing precedents of scapegoating, racism, and xenophobia..
America’s “Pretti-Good” 250th Birthday
KARY LOVE – For America to deserve a 250th Birthday Pretti and Good must not have died in vain. The original American Patriots taught how to use “good trouble” to depose a rotten king. The people of Minnesota and others under attack are rallying, building community, supporting each other in peace and decency. Now, it is up to you. Save the elections, save the vote. Volunteer to be a poll worker, a poll watcher, a right to vote defender. Ask what you can do for your neighbor, your country despite its government. Volunteer to help America live up to its genius and its promise.
On the road to nuclear war
LAWRENCE WITTNER – Lunatics, of course, exist, and some of them, unfortunately, govern modern nations and ignore international law. Even so, although we are on the road to nuclear war, there is still time to take a deep breath, think about where we are going, and turn around.
I Am Somebody Because He Was Somebody
JAMIE HARRISON – Today we mark the passing of Reverend Jesse Louis Jackson Sr. — a towering figure in American life, a giant in the Civil Rights Movement, and one of the most consequential architects of modern Democratic Party politics.
The Actual Gavin Newsom Is Much Worse Than You Think
NORMAN SOLOMON – For anyone who wants a truly progressive Democratic Party, Gavin Newsom is bad news.
Gen Z Divorces Maga
ETHAN LIEBERMAN – Gen Z males elected Trump. He swept the group by 14 percentage points. This was just four years after Biden won that demographic by 25 points, an unheard-of swing. And now, says Lieberman, they are swinging away from Trump in huge numbers. But that’s not, explains our mole in Gen Z world, a swing to Democrats.
Where Is Your Line? Which Side Are You On? (Hint: Silence Is a Decision)
ROB OKUN – What has to happen before you actively push back at a government transforming into authoritarian state before our eyes? Will you show up? Will you raise your voice? Will you find a place in the growing resistance movement?
The Last Bilateral Nuclear Weapons Agreement Has Expired. What Now?
By Winslow Myers In his dense and challenging lectures gathered into a book called “The Courage To Be,” the late theologian Paul Tillich sorted our modern anxieties into three existential buckets: first, the anxiety of fate and death, experienced as dread; second,…
Arresting the witness – Don Lemon, the DOJ, and the chilling of press freedom
GEORGE CASSIDY PAYNE – If journalists can be arrested for documenting protest inside a church, the precedent will not remain confined to sacred spaces. It will travel—to campuses, courtrooms, town halls, and streets—wherever institutions demand insulation from scrutiny. A democracy that punishes witnessing does not preserve order. It preserves power, by erasing those who dare to look.
The Second American Declaration
MEL GURTOV – For the support of a “Second American Declaration,” with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
Ending Republican Control Will Require Overcoming the Democratic Leadership
NORMAN SOLOMON – The Democratic establishment shuns the progressive populism that’s vital to effectively counter bogus right-wing populism. And so, the fight to defeat the fascistic GOP and the fight to overcome the power of corporate Democrats are largely the same fight.
It Could Be a Wonderful World
LAWRENCE WITTNER – Although it’s tragic that powerful forces seem intent on building an unjust, lawless, and violent planet, let’s not forget that another world remains possible. Indeed, with an organized international effort, evidence shows that it could be a wonderful world.
From Minarets to City Hall: Zohran Mamdani, Islam, and the American Conscience Against War
GEORGE CASSIDY PAYNE – America likes to tell its story as a procession of wars won and enemies defeated. But its deeper moral history, the one that actually bends toward justice, has been written by those who resisted domination: slavery, empire, and the dangerous fiction that violence is the engine of progress. On a cold January afternoon outside City Hall, Zohran Mamdani stepped into that unfinished struggle. As he raised his right hand and took the oath of office as mayor of New York City—the first Muslim ever to do so—he embodied a quieter American tradition: the insistence that conscience belongs in public life.
Whatever Happened to Trump’s ‘Golden Age’ for American Workers?
LAWRENCE S. WITTNER – Although Trump’s second term in office might have provided a “Golden Age” for the President and his fellow billionaires, it has produced harsh and challenging times for American workers.
Another Trump Bribe: 1776 Tax Dollars to Each Soldier
KARY LOVE – An optimist would look to see a rising tsunami of true American patriots refusing the bribe and donating the money to pay off the national debt or to charity, saying, “No Kings, No Caesars,” I am an American. I stand with the Founders, I support the Republic.
When dehumanization becomes policy: Ableist language and the quiet violence of power
GEORGE CASSIDY PAYNE – A president’s words teach a nation who it is permitted to abandon. When we accept language that renders some lives expendable, we set in motion a politics that eventually consumes its own moral center.