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.
Category: Archive
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.
Why People Demonstrate
ANDREW MOSS – Sustained civic engagement offers, as Anna Sach perceives it, “not only a tool for political change, it is a deeply human experience that fulfills emotional and social needs. It creates community, restores a sense of agency, and offers hope in the face of uncertainty.”
How Democrats could hand the California Governor’s race to the Republicans–lessons from Washington State
PAUL ROGAT LOEB – In California, there’s a serious risk that the Democratic candidates will split the vote sufficiently to leave only the two Republicans on the November ballot. Something similar happened in Washington State a few years ago.
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.
Safety meltdown: Trump’s weakening of nuclear reactor regulations sparks opposition
CHAUNCEY K. ROBINSON – Nuclear safety experts warn that sweeping cuts to oversight rules could undermine environmental safeguards as the White House races to bring new reactors online in 2026.
What a recent court win reveals about the Trump administration’s unlawful attacks on climate science
RACHEL CLEETUS – Try as it might, this administration cannot bury the evidence of climate harms so readily apparent to communities across the nation. The American people deserve genuine solutions to the climate crisis, not more self-serving lies.
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.
Where’s the resistance to the Iran war?
MEHRAN KHALILI – A majority of Americans already oppose the war in Iran, but the bombs won’t stop until public opinion is converted into real pressure.
15 years after Fukushima meltdown, an innkeeper makes radiation surveys to revitalize her hometown
MARI YAMAGUCHI – The government pushes Fukushima’s safety and recovery, Yukio Shirahige says, but “we are under growing pressure to be silent.” This despite radiation surveys aimed at revitalizing Odaka.
It’s time to oust Stephen Miller
DANIEL HUNTER – Miller thrives in the shadows of bureaucratic power. He is combative, ideological and relentlessly focused on pushing a vision of the country rooted in exclusion. But that can also lead to his downfall. The more the country sees him, the clearer the stakes of the election and the future of our democracy. So as we move toward bigger demands, one clear next step presents itself: Let’s oust Stephen Miller.
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.
A successful general strike requires trauma-informed mutual aid
SAHAJA SERPENT – To strike at scale and over the long-term, we need to build real trust so that we can lean on each other when the paychecks stop.
Subway Graffiti vs AI, Snow Plow Named Abolish ICE, Censorship Backfires & Brazil Reverses Dredging
RIVERA SUN – Beyond these stories, check out the rest of this week’s collection in the Nonviolence News Research Archive. There are some great pieces, including a modern resistance song playlist, two fascinating articles on solidarity infrastructure and community care systems, and three essays about fiction and social change.
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.
Daniel Ellsberg Speaks to Us as the War on Iran Continues
NORMAN SOLOMON – The war on Iran is enabled by remaining silent and just following orders. Ellsbarg wrote in his journal at the time of the Gulf War, “There is a time when silence is a lie, when silence is complicity, and when silence betrays our troops, our country, and ourselves. We owe it to our troops, as well as to other potential victims of this war, to speak the truth about ourselves: what we believe, what we reject, and what we want.”
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.