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Opinion
Something Else to Worry About: Biological Weapons
Recent reports that a young woman working in a Russian biolab became ill and died echo Annie Jacobsen’s new book, Biological War: A Scenario. How concerned should we be?
Oct 17, 2026
A few months ago, I ordered a pre-publication copy of Annie Jacobsen’s new non-fiction book, Biological War: A Scenario, which followed on from her excellent book, Nuclear War: A Scenario—not because I enjoy reading about existential risks, but because I’m an information seeker and feel that it’s important to stay informed. But when it arrived a few weeks later, in spite of having written an opinion piece about her nuclear book, entitled, “Why We Avoid Thinking About Nuclear War—and Why We Shouldn’t,” after seeing the frightening cover illustration of men in hazmat suits, I stashed it on the bookshelf of my study rather than reading it—for the same reasons I discussed in my earlier piece: I didn’t want to know!
But after the recent reports of a biolab accident in Russia, I retrieved it from the bookshelf and read it in two days.
The “scenario” in the book is that of a “biological weapons lab accident,” where a scientist working to modify pneumonic plague into a deadly biological weapon experiences remorse and tries to destroy it. But the small fire he lights causes an explosion that propels the Yersinia pestis bacteria (which causes the plague) into the atmosphere. In the process, he becomes infected with his weaponized pneumonic plague, although he doesn’t yet know it.
Although most of us cannot directly influence negotiations about strengthening the BWC, there are things that we can do to support such efforts and to lessen the increasingly grave dangers that confront us.
The next morning, he goes to an Orthodox church to confess where, by coughing in the midst of confession, he infects the priest, as well as the next person in line—a pre-med foreign exchange student, who is back in this small Russian town visiting family—before returning to the US shortly thereafter, where he is studying and doing volunteer work with homeless people. The student subsequently infects scores on Skid Row, who, in turn, infect the first responders who come to help them and, ultimately, the whole city of Los Angeles.
Following his confession, the scientist goes into the woods to shoot himself but collapses from the symptoms of plague. He is found by men on an international hunting trip, who administer mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and carry him back to their hunting lodge, where he is collected by officials. After dining together, using the same sauna and steam bath, and driving to the airport in the same van, seven of the hunters board flights to six of the world’s seven continents, while another goes off on a sea cruise—spreading pneumonic plague on their flights and sea voyage—and ultimately around the world.
In the real-world scenario, reported on October 2, Darya Shipilova, a 28-year old laboratory technician working in an “Anti-Plague Institute” in Irkutsk, Siberia died, according to Russian officials, of “a pneumonia of unknown etiology.” A Russian news agency reported that she had broken a test tube containing live bacteria of the pneumonic plague pathogen, leading to widespread speculation that she had, indeed, died of pneumonic plague.
These concerns were reinforced by reports that Russian health authorities imposed sweeping quarantine restrictions on the lab where she worked, the hospital where she died, and other nearby hospitals. Neighbors also reported that workers in protective suits and gas masks repeatedly disinfected the building where she lived, telling residents that it was “for cockroaches,” although the building has no cockroaches. More recently, Russia’s health agency asserted that the plague was not detected in follow-up tests of “thousands of people in the region.”
The overall opacity (a familiar playbook for crises in Russia) of Russian public health officials in responding to urgent requests for more information from the World Health Organization, the US, and other governments led to considerable disquiet around the world.
When asked if her death was related to a bioweapon, President Donald Trump responded, not very reassuringly, “We don’t think so.” He also acknowledged the similarities in how Chinese officials handled Covid-19 before it became a global pandemic: “China didn’t say much, and Russia is not saying much either.”
The Biological Weapons Convention Was Supposed to Prevent This, Then Came the Secret Soviet Biological Weapons Program
The 1925 Geneva Protocol banned the use of biological weapons, but not their development or possession. Although ratified by a number of countries in the 1920s and 30s, it wasn’t ratified by the US until 1975.
After 27 years of a US biological weapons program, President Richard Nixon unexpectedly announced on November 25, 1969 that the US would unilaterally end its offensive biological weapons program, stating, “The United States shall renounce the use of lethal biological agents and weapons, and all other methods of biological warfare… [and] confine its biological research to defensive measures such as immunization and safety measures.” Over the next years, US biological weapons stocks were destroyed with the process completed in May 1972.
Subsequently, the United Nations Conference on Disarmament negotiated “The Biological Weapons Convention” (BWC), the first multilateral treaty to ban an entire class of weapons of mass destruction. It was opened for signature on April 10, 1972 and signed by the US, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union the same day. It entered into force on March 26, 1975. Currently, it has 189 State Parties and four Signatory States, with only four States outside the Convention.
Because it was the first of its kind, however, the BWC lacked the important monitoring and verification procedures that were later included in the Chemical Weapons Convention. There are no mandatory verified declarations of biological facilities or activities; no inspections or site visits to verify compliance; no international organization to oversee implementation; and no penalties for non-compliance, although complaints can be made to the UN Security Council (which are subject to veto by any of the five Permanent Members). Only four staff are involved in its tiny Implementation Support Unit, compared with over 500 for the Chemical Weapons Convention.
In spite of the Soviet Union becoming a signatory to the BWC in 1972, the USSR continued to covertly develop and produce offensive biological weapons in what became the world’s largest and most sophisticated biological weapons program, with 40-50 biological research facilities scattered around the country, employing 65,000 people. The aim was to create “exotic biological weapons using techniques made possible by recombinant DNA.” Recombinant DNA, also called genetic engineering, involves joining the DNA from two entirely different species to make new pathogens.
Not detecting this vast biological weapons program was one of the biggest intelligence failures of the Cold War as it was totally unknown in the West until 1989, when a Soviet scientist, Vladimir Pasechnik, defected, shocking the British Intelligence Services and the CIA with details of the massive program and its deadly stockpiles. They learned that the Soviets had “genetically engineered a strain of Yersinia pestis to resist antibiotics” and had also stockpiled vast volumes of other deadly pathogens in the labs’ freezers, such as smallpox, anthrax, ebola, Marburg virus disease, and many others—all weaponized to kill populations in the most diabolical manner.
The terrifying extent of this biowarfare program was later confirmed by other defecting Soviet scientists, especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. In January 1992, Boris Yeltsin admitted that he knew about the program and pledged to close down the institutes, retire their directors, and ask for international inspections. But the two generals he appointed to carry out this mission resisted his orders. In 1992, a Trilateral Agreement was signed by Russia with the United States and the United Kingdom “promising to end biological weapons programs and convert facilities to benevolent purposes, but compliance with the agreement—and the fate of the former Soviet bio-agents and facilities—is still mostly undocumented.”
The State Department’s 2025 compliance report states: “The United States assesses that Russia maintains an offensive biological warfare program and is in violation of its obligations under Article I and II of the BWC… Key military biological facilities associated with the Soviet offensive program remain, inaccessible and not transparent, nearly 30 years after Yeltsin’s decree.”
Jacobsen’s Book Is Based on the Secret Soviet Biological Weapons Program
The latter part of Jacobsen’s book deals with the breakdown of law and order, as mass death and panic take hold and cause chaos. Ultimately, the president deploys the Insurrection Act, whereby military forces attempt to establish martial law for the first time in American history. Just as they are about to release the strategic national stockpiles of medicine, scientists at the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease receive their first bacterial specimens (from the infected hunter who landed in Dallas and died in a local hospital). Microbiologists in biocontainment suits examine the specimens, and plague cultures are grown and used to test for antibiotic resistance in small animals. Simultaneously, microbiologists extract DNA from the specimen and feed it into a high-speed sequencing machine to get a genetic fingerprint of the pathogen.
What they discover is appalling—the organism has been bioengineered and “looks alarmingly like a 21st century version of something Russian scientists worked on during the Soviet-era secret biological weapons programs.” It is a combination of two pathogens, one concealed within another, referred to as a “bobby-trap bio-weapon,” whereby, after a person becomes infected with pneumonic plague and takes antibiotics as soon as possible under the assumption they will be cured, the antibiotics trigger the chimera weapon’s bobby-trap mechanism—in this fictional case, the Venezuelan equine encephalitis gene which has been covertly spliced into the Yersinia pestis genome to cause acute neurological symptoms and death. As a result, there is no cure.
The book is not meant to create unnecessary fear. It is meant to make clear what is now possible, and what is at stake. The tools to engineer life are advancing faster than the rules that govern them. This gap is where existential danger lives. The point is not panic; the point is pressure. To demand guardrails, oversight, and accountability before the science outruns our ability to control it. Before we set something irreversible in motion.
Although the real-life situation in Siberia will hopefully not turn out to be the same as in Annie Jacobsen’s book, it should cause us to take notice.
Attempts to Improve the Biological Weapons Convention
Serious attempts have been made in the past to strengthen the BWC but without success. An Ad Hoc Group labored from 1995 to 2001 to create a protocol where states would submit declarations of treaty-relevant facilities and activities to an international body that would conduct routine on-site visits, as well as challenge inspections of suspect facilities and activities. But the draft was rejected by the US under President George W. Bush, who argued that it could harm US national security. Nothing more happened for many years.
Another attempt is currently underway, although progress is slow. A Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention Working Group was established at the 2022 BWC Review Conference and has been working steadily over the last four years to come up with the text of draft recommendations before the 2027 BWC Review Conference. At their August meeting this year, 90.6% of the text had been agreed, although fundamental disagreements over verification frameworks, transfer controls, and funding remain—and tensions are high.
The chair of the Working Group has highlighted the urgency, arguing that the sudden convergence of artificial intelligence and biology is “creating new security challenges,” warning that a gap “may emerge between these rapidly advancing capabilities and our collective ability to understand their governance and prevent their misuse.”
What We Can Do
Although most of us cannot directly influence negotiations about strengthening the BWC, there are things that we can do to support such efforts and to lessen the increasingly grave dangers that confront us.
We can be sure to vote in the upcoming midterms for Democratic candidates, who have been more likely to support regulatory controls in Congress, as well as multilaterally. We can support these candidates with financial contributions and by working on their campaigns to ensure that they get elected, since time is short. Once elected, we can strive to persuade them to urgently implement appropriate policies.
After all, who wants human extinction? Presumably, none of us—no matter how jaded we may have become.
We can educate ourselves about the threats by reading widely, including Jacobsen’s excellent books, as well as opinion pieces on the subject, such as ones I’ve written on AI and nuclear weapons. We can do online research to identify, join, financially support, and work with others in public advocacy organizations against threats that are of particular concern to us. We can attend protest rallies and discuss our concerns with friends, encouraging them to also become active, so that we can develop a large public constituency to combat these extreme dangers.
Just a couple of days ago, on October 11, The Lancet Commission on 21st Century Global Threats to Health highlighted 17 major threats to human health over the next 75 years, asserting that, “Malicious use of AI, including bioweapons, and nuclear conflict with nuclear famine [caused by nuclear winter] carry risks of extinction in the next 75 years.” There are so many existential dangers to confront that it can sometimes feel overwhelming and lead us to a state of helplessness when what we need, instead, is a pro-active approach that will foster resourcefulness.
By facing up to our natural tendency to avoid frightening information and by confronting our fears head-on, we can gain a true sense of self-efficacy and social responsibility. In this way, we can save those we love; ensure that future generations thrive; preserve the rich cultural heritage we have created; protect the magnificent array of other species on Earth; and safeguard our beautiful, one-of-a-kind planet—from all of these truly insane and, frankly, evil machinations—often designed by normal people, who have been seduced by competitive processes; rationales that “everyone is doing it”; lucrative remuneration; lapse of conscience; and bad ideas into creating conditions for the most dystopian futures imaginable.
As Gareth Evans, former Australian foreign minister, former president and CEO of the International Crisis Group, and co-chair of the Commission on Nuclear Proliferation and Disarmament has recently commented with regard to the nuclear threat, “It is up to those of us who passionately believe in both the possibility and necessity of a nuclear weapon free world, however disappointed and frustrated we may be right now, to get out there and continue to campaign our hearts out for it.” I suggest that we extend his call to action to all the existential threats we face. After all, who wants human extinction? Presumably, none of us—no matter how jaded we may have become. We must assume responsibility for the continuation of our kind and choose human survival.
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7 Questions a 2026 Candidate Must Get Right to Earn Your Vote on Election Day
Use this form letter to make sure that the people you vote for have spoken out against the current administration’s rampant corruption and indecency by taking a strong public stand when it counts.
Oct 17, 2026
I happen to live in a state where MAGA enthusiasms are relatively subdued, and where Republicans skew toward old-school conservatism rather than Q-Anon crazy. The old Prescott Bush world of Connecticut. The state’s senators and the representative of my congressional district do an “admirable enough” job representing my interests and advocating for good causes, giving me just enough to complain about, but not too much. Given the times we live in, and with the midterms looming large, I rather wish I could cast a ballot in a state that where my vote might make a bigger difference; a state where senators and congressional representatives have gotten away with far too much, often for far too long. Mind you, I don’t want to live in such a place, I just want to vote there.
It is with all this in mind that I have written a letter, a request for information by a concerned and proactive citizen, that might prove useful and revealing to those who live in deeply red or contested states. It seeks information from those currently in office in those states, but it might just as easily be tailored to those seeking office as well. Anyone who chooses to use the letter can adapt it as they please. It’s all about accountability and protecting our rights as citizens. As follows:
Dear Senator X or Congressional Representative Y,
As a citizen of your state or district, I am determined to make sure that the votes I cast next month go to the most qualified and talented candidates on the ballot. For me, getting things right means, above all, making sure that the persons I vote for are committed to protecting the US Constitution and upholding the basic principles of American democracy—as all senators and congressional representatives are sworn to do. I also want to make sure that the persons I vote for have spoken out against the current administration’s rampant corruption and indecency by taking a strong public stand when it counts.
With that in mind, I would love to have you, or a member of your staff, bring me up to speed on your track record of protecting my rights as a citizen and of supporting the cause of restoring decency by answering the following questions, all very straightforward, and not at all time-consuming—and to keep things simple I have narrowed my questions down to just seven items from the last year or so.
- When, on February 6, 2026, President Donald Trump shared a video depicting Barack and Michele Obama as apes, you expressed your outrage how, and where can I locate that public response?
- When, on February 28, 2026, President Trump launched an unprovoked war against Iran, having sought no congressional approval (though the law requires it), what steps did you take to rein in this abuse of power?
- When, earlier this month, President Trump used nearly 22 million taxpayer dollars to fund a series of political ads praising himself, you spoke out how, and took what measures to uphold the rule of law?
- When, in November of 2024, President-elect Donald Trump nominated Fox News’ Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense (and here you should feel free to swap in any other agency head as you like, such as Robert Kennedy Jr., Kristi Noem, Todd Blanche, Linda McMahon, etc.), what measures did you take either that day, or in the following weeks, to protect the American people from having someone so dangerously unqualified hold that office? Again, please indicate where can I locate that information.
- When, on September 23, 2026, Donald Trump went before the United Nations General Assembly and threatened to annihilate Iran, in what public forum did you express your outrage, and what measures did you take (or are you taking) to follow up on that outrage?
- When, at a campaign rally in Grand Island Nebraska on October 6, 2026, President Trump joked about wishing Iran would launch a nuclear attack on Los Angeles and San Diego, how was your outrage expressed before the American public?
- When, on October 9, 2026, Donald Trump announced plans to brush aside legal sanctions that are currently in place by purchasing 300,000 tons of diesel fuel from Russia, followed by another 3-4.5 million tons in the months ahead, thereby tossing a lifeline to Vladimir Putin in his war against Ukraine, you registered your objections how, and what actions have you since undertaken to address this outrage?
That’s it. I have so many additional questions I would like to ask you—regarding how you have responded to the president’s attempt to overthrow the 2020 election, to his leveling of the East Wing of the White House, his embrace of Putin, his threats to Greenland, his self-enrichment in office, his dismissal of the Epstein scandal as a “democrat hoax,” his disgraceful posts, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement killings, the reflecting pool, the budget deficit, his support of genocide in Gaza, and so on, and on, and on… But I will accept your answers to the seven questions posed above as sufficient for the purpose of your earning or failing to earn my vote.
Please understand that a track record of silence or inaction on any one of these items, let alone on several or all, will tell me all that I need to know. Weak objections, objections devoid of action, and objections made for show won’t cut it for me either. To earn my vote, you will need to provide evidence that you opposed these dangerous and demeaning abuses and illegalities aggressively, right when they took place, not just for show, and especially not just now, when elections loom and public support for the president’s agenda is crumbling.
I thank you in advance for your attention to this matter.
Sincerely,
Concerned Citizen [Name]
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By Delivering a Shortened Workweek, Lula Proves He's Still in the Running
Many US media outlets think the fight is over in Brazil, but it is far from over here; Lula is nearly tied in the polls and has a lot ahead of him.
Oct 17, 2026
Greetings from Rio de Janeiro, where President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is mounting a hell of a comeback after achieving the Workers' Party's 40-year goal of shortening the Brazilian workweek from six to five days.
Now, polling shows Lula is back in the fight, even as US media ignores it.
Polls Show Brazilian Presidential Race Tied
Following the first round of the election, where Lula trailed Flávio Bolsonaro by 1.8%, many wrote off Lula’s campaign. However, in the past week Lula has pulled off an impressive series of street mobilizations that have rocked the Brazilian presidential race, with over 1 million marching on Copacabana Beach on a Monday afternoon when Lula wasn’t even there.
With more than 38 million Brazilians not voting in the first round of the presidential election and Bolsonaro only leading by 2 million votes in the first round, many Bolsonaro allies worry that the scale and magnitude of Lula’s rallies could inspire massive Get Out the Vote efforts throughout the country.
The mobilizations helped create the energy that led the Brazilian Congress to pass a measure shortening the Brazilian workweek from six days to five Wednesday. This may now create enough energy to help Lula win the presidency.
Various polls this week have shown the race nearly tied.
A new PoderData poll shows Lula and Bolsonaro tied, with a little over a week until election day. Yet another poll released by Real Big Time Data shows that Bolsonaro is only leading by 1%. A third poll by CNT and MDA shows Bolsonaro at 50.5% while Lula has 49.5%
Bolsonaro Party Leader Worries About Mass Lula Mobilizations
With more than 38 million Brazilians not voting in the first round of the presidential election and Bolsonaro only leading by 2 million votes in the first round, many Bolsonaro allies worry that the scale and magnitude of Lula’s rallies could inspire massive Get Out the Vote efforts throughout the country.
In an audio message sent to party insiders, top Bolsonaro ally Congressman Gustavo Geyer said that he was worried about the potential of the street protests to mobilize the vote for Lula.
In the audio message, Geyer complained at length about the 4 million-strong WhatsApp group “Lula’s Army.” Previously, a Bolsonaro-appointed Supreme Court Justice, Kassio Nunes Marques, blocked the WhatsApp group for several hours before being overruled by other members of the Brazilian Supreme Court.
"The campaign of electoral terrorism that Lula and the PT [Workers’ Party] are conducting in a criminal manner—that 'Lula’s Army' channel, created by that 'Rachadones' character—is truly managing to mobilize the left in a way we have never seen before,” said Guyer. “The demons of Workers’ Party have crawled out of the catacombs of hell and are genuinely making an impact on the tracking polls.”
Lula Shortens Brazilian Workweek With Only One Vote Against
For nearly 40 years, the Workers’ Party has tried and failed to shorten the Brazilian workweek from six days to five. But this week, Lula pulled off a stunning victory when the Brazilian Senate voted to shorten the Brazilian workweek while not decreasing the pay of workers.
Only one senator voted against the measure, and Senator Flavio Bolsonaro skipped the vote rather than vote against it.
Brazilian labor leaders say that the success of the vote proves the momentum their campaign is having in the streets.
“The Bolsonaro family lost,” said Miguel Torres, the president of the Força Sindical labor federation. “It's a victory for workers.”
Bolsonaro Wants Supreme Court to Silence Unions
Fearing attacks from unions, Flavio Bolsonaro went to the Brazilian Supreme Electoral Tribunal, part of the Brazilian Supreme Court, this week to ask it to silence union attacks against him on social media.
Bolsonaro's lawsuit names 56 people, mainly union leaders and student leaders. Flavio wants the court to block these individuals from using their institutional channels to promote Lula.
"This offensive doesn't just target Lula's campaign. It's directed against public participation, against the right of citizens to organize, express support, and criticize a candidacy," said André Matheus, a specialist in freedom of expression and vice-president of the Lawfare Commission of the Institute of Brazilian Lawyers (IAB).
For more, check out ICL Noticias.
Help Cover Lula's Comeback Fight
Many US media outlets think the fight is over in Brazil, but it is far from over here. Lula is nearly tied in the polls and has a lot ahead of him. We've got nine days left, and Payday intends to cover the tough fight ahead.
We need your help to cover this story that no one else is covering: Donate today.
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No Kings—and No Oligarchs
Even if the Democrats secure a victory in the midterm elections, would-be king Donald’s ultra-rich supporters will continue to find ways to protect their privileged status in society.
Oct 17, 2026
Two opposing views from America’s Founding Fathers are particularly relevant to the upcoming No Kings rallies:
- “Of more worth is one honest man to society and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived.”—Thomas Paine
- “There never was, nor ever will be a civilized Society without an Aristocracy.”—Gouverneur Morris
I once played the historic figure of Gouverneur Morris in Paul Foster’s stage play, Tom Paine, about the life of Thomas Paine who, in 1776, wrote a pamphlet called “Common Sense,” which guided and gave form to the American Revolution. Much has been written about how that work has direct relevance to today’s No Kings rallies, making a compelling case for the preservation of a republic and representative democracy over authoritarianism. However, thinking back to Foster’s play, I’m reminded that it’s important to also remember Morris because, as a bitter critic of Paine, he represents a viewpoint diametrically opposed to Paine’s egalitarianism, as represented in the role of oligarchs in society, or the “gentry,” as he called them. Their loyalty and support underpins the power of a king. And 250 years later, this is just as true for today’s oligarchs and their would-be king, Donald J. Trump.
Simply have a look at any image of the 2025 presidential inauguration. The platform behind Trump is crowded with the richest people in the country, among them, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook, Sam Altman, Sundar Pichai, and Rupert Murdoch.
Attending the No Kings rallies to express loudly and clearly the views of the 99% is a step in the right direction.
These people are enablers of Donald Trump, but at the same time, as Paine points out, the relationship between oligarchs and an authoritarian ruler is an uneasy one: “The rich are in general slaves to fear, and submit to courtly power with the trembling duplicity of a spaniel.” How else to describe the obsequious fawning over Donald Trump by those same people on the platform?
A wealthy landholder and capitalist, Gouverneur Morris was a member the “1%” of his day. And when resentment against King George III was brewing in the colonies in the 1770s, he and his fellow landowners worried that any change to the status quo could threaten their power and privilege. Suppressing discontent, however, he realized, would not be easy. Referring to popular leaders in the colonies, in a 1774 letter to John Penn, Morris wrote: “These sheep, simple as they are, cannot be gulled as heretofore. In short, there is no ruling them; and now, to leave the metaphor, the heads of the mobility [mob] grow dangerous to the gentry, and how to keep them down is the question.”
Today’s oligarchs have a simple answer: Spend a billion dollars to elect right-wing candidates in this year’s midterm elections. The degree to which that will work any better than Morris’ efforts in the 1770s remains to be seen.
After armed conflict broke out between colonists and British troops in Lexington and Concord in April 1775, most wealthy landholders did not openly side with the king. However, many argued for negotiations to end the hostilities and reconciliation with the Crown. Thomas Paine thought this was madness. Once blood has been shed, he said, reconciliation was impossible: “As well can the lover forgive the ravisher of his mistress, as the continent forgive the murders of Britain." Indeed, in the end, a peaceful settlement between king and colonists was not to be.
Today, with two years of increasing violence, both rhetorical and physical, on the part of the second Trump administration, that same line has undeniably been crossed.
If in the elections on November 3, Democrats win control of Congress, there will no doubt be calls for toning down the rhetoric, more cooperation across the aisle, and a working relationship between Trump and a Democratic Congress. But, as with Paine’s argument, that may very well not be possible.
At the end of the War of Independence, when the new country’s constitution was being considered, America’s wealthy managed to guarantee their continued privileged position in society. Paine had argued: “The true and only true basis of representative government is equality of rights. Every man has a right to one vote… The rich have no more right to exclude the poor from the right of voting, or of electing and being elected, than the poor have to exclude the rich.” However, at the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Morris made the case that only those who owned property should have the right to vote. “Children do not vote,” he said, “Why? Because they want prudence; because they have no will of their own. The ignorant and the dependent can be as little trusted with the public interest.” James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Adams agreed, and although the Constitution left the right to vote in the hands of the individual states, in most cases that meant that only white male voters with property could vote.
Although they will still seek to benefit from their proximity to power in the wake of a Democratic victory in the midterms, like Morris and his fellow gentry, Trump’s ultra-rich supporters will continue to find ways to protect their privileged status in society. With virtually unlimited resources, both financial and technical (including advanced AI models), along with increasing control of the media, the oligarchs will do their best to influence policy, legislation, regulation, and public opinion. This will make them difficult to keep in check. But attending the No Kings rallies to express loudly and clearly the views of the 99% is a step in the right direction.
Before the war, judges in the colonies were appointed and paid by the Crown. This made them natural allies of the king and the wealthy in society. Morris believed that “the principle purpose of the state was protecting private property” and a strong executive and the courts were the instruments to ensure that. In today’s America, this alliance is again in force on the Supreme Court. Trump has nominated 3 of its 9 judges, and 3 others were nominated by Republican presidents, giving the conservatives a supermajority. For this reason, the court has ruled in Trump’s favor in many cases, notably rolling back voting rights and loosening campaign financing laws, both of which entrench the power of the wealthy over the poor. But the court has also afforded Trump king-like immunity from prosecution for all “official acts.”
Thomas Paine had a response to that: “When it is laid down as a maxim, that a King can do no wrong, it places him in a state of similar security with that of idiots and persons insane, and responsibility is out of the question with respect to himself.” I leave it to you to decide if that description applies to our would-be king.
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Student Protesters Inspire One Another—and Should Inspire All of Us
When high schoolers in the US protest, they demonstrate our historic connection to the recent uprising in France.
Oct 17, 2026
High school students in France have captured international attention by protesting essential conditions of schooling—too few teachers, too many funding cuts, and a crumbling infrastructure. After nearly 7,000 arrests—more than 85% of whom were under 18—French education minister Edouard Geffray conceded to some of their demands and offered to hire 3,000 more teachers.
The role of high school students is clearly impactful, but we need not look to France to understand the power of student-led activism. The United States, in fact, is rich with examples.
Protestors have made reference to May 1968 protests in France, when 10 million workers, about two-thirds of the workforce, went on the largest general strike in French history. Students in France inspired a transnational movement that galvanized millions around decolonization, national liberation movements, and the rights of students in a new social order.
Those 1968 uprisings were also informed, most likely, by high school student activism in the United States.
As I explore in my book in 2022, “A New Kind of Youth,” high school students were agents of social change in the U.S. for more than 100 years. The NAACP, the oldest longstanding civil rights organization, began mobilizing high school students in 1921, where they challenged many of the same schooling conditions that French high schoolers protest today. More than a century earlier, the first NAACP youth chapters rejected textbooks with racist histories and demanded more equitable investments in segregated Black schools, for instance.
The NAACP was not the only organization to see the potential of youth activism. Radical organizers Esther Cooper Jackson, James E. Jackson, Edward Strong and others who worked in solidarity with interracial and international working-class coalitions formed the Southern Negro Youth Congress in 1937 in order to mobilize youth to actualize full citizenship rights for all, including equitably funded education.
By the Second World War, thousands of high school youth formed local organizations and joined national and international conferences in calling on state and federal agencies to alleviate discriminatory schooling conditions, end police brutality, build international solidarity, and promote pacifism in the face of wars for empires, all the while illuminating the links between racism and capitalism.
In 1946, activist scholar W.E.B. DuBois spoke to hundreds of young people assembled in South Carolina, and delivered a stirring speech he titled “Behold the Land.” As an elder in the Black freedom struggle, Du Bois charged the youth movement he saw unfolding before him. He observed that young people, many of whom were in high school, were “embarked upon a great and holy crusade, the emancipation of mankind, the upbuilding of democracy, the breaking down…of forces of evil.”
Du Bois’s words, not surprisingly, were prophetic.
High school students emerged as overlooked progenitors of key Civil Rights Movement victories. Robert Russo Moton High School student Barbara Johns orchestrated a student walkout in 1951 in Farmville, Virginia. She led her classmates in a schoolwide walkout and marched downtown. Facing expulsion, she reached out to Oliver Hill, a Virginia-based attorney with the NAACP.
The NAACP responded to Johns’ call and organized the small but committed Black community in the heart of Virgina to file a suit that demanded desegregation. The court case became Davis v. Prince Edward County, Virginia (1951)—one of the five court cases behind the Brown v. Board of Education (1954).
Students turned out in larger numbers and provided needed momentum in other parts of the Civil Rights Movement. When Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. tackled segregation in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963, he called for massive nonviolent protests. It was youth from elementary to high school, not local adults, who responded to the call.
An estimated 4,000 students participated in the Birmingham Children’s Crusade. They prompted the iconic photographs of the notoriously racist police commissioner Bull Connor who turned police dogs and fire houses on children. When the dust settled, more than 2,000 students were arrested and expelled from school.
Moderate segregationists listened in the wake of the offensive. State and federal governments conceded basic points and desegregated public spaces in Birmingham. During the “Freedom Summer” of 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law, promising anti-discriminatory protections for all.
Historic student activism led to historic liberal milestones that protected basic civil rights and made the United States more inclusive.
To be sure, such concessions fell short in enacting a genuine collective and participatory democracy. But youth activists were quick to respond to its shortcomings, making demands for today’s most salient issues. High schoolers went on strike to support common sense gun reform legislation during the March for Our Lives protests in 2018. Youth not yet in college participated in the Fridays for Future climate justice protests and joined Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.
When high schoolers protest, they demonstrate our historic connection to the recent uprising in France. The connection proffers inspiring indications that massive youth organization will lead to structural change. And the material demands made in France—for better schooling conditions and equitable investment in education in the race of austerity cuts—resonate across the United States and other struggling democracies.
It’s time that we listen, again, to what high schoolers have to say.
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Follow the Money: How Billionaire Wealth Became Political Power
Wealth creates political power; political power produces tax and economic policies favorable to wealth; those policies concentrate still more wealth; and some of that wealth is reinvested in politics to keep the cycle going.
Oct 16, 2026
In 1971, corporate lawyer Lewis Powell wrote a confidential memo to the US Chamber of Commerce warning that American business was under attack. Among his complaints were politicians and activists who portrayed tax breaks as benefiting “only the rich” and who dared to set the “rich” against the “poor,” and “business against the people.”
Powell’s solution was not subtle. Corporate America needed political power, and that power “must be assiduously cultivated” and, when necessary, “used aggressively and with determination.” Business should organize, influence the media and universities, build political power, and exploit what Powell called the “vast opportunity” presented by the courts.
Heist: Who Stole the American Dream? traces much of what happened next. Powell joined the Supreme Court and later wrote the majority opinion in First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, expanding constitutional protection for corporate spending on ballot measures. Decades later, Citizens United would further expand corporate political spending rights. Meanwhile, Ronald Reagan ushered in enormous tax cuts, deregulation, attacks on organized labor, and an economic philosophy that promised prosperity would trickle down (it never did!).
That brings us to a question I think every politician promising a better future should have to answer: Tell me what you want to do—and tell me who you're willing to tax to pay for it.
More than half a century after the Powell Memo, we’ve got the receipts.
According to a new Americans for Tax Fairness analysis, America’s 977 billionaires now control a record $9.24 trillion. In just one year, their wealth increased by $2.2 trillion, or 32%, while the overall economy grew by about 6%. The richest 16 Americans alone possess nearly $4 trillion, more wealth than all US billionaires combined had less than six years ago.
But those gains look even more extraordinary when we look at what is happening to everyone else. The bottom half of American households collectively owns just over 2% of the nation’s wealth. Nearly 48 million Americans live in households struggling with food insecurity. And the divide between workers and those at the top of corporate America has exploded: CEOs at the country’s 350 largest firms made 325 times as much as the typical worker in 2025, up from 21 times as much in 1965. Since 1978, CEO compensation has risen 1,316%, while typical worker compensation increased just 28%.
Yet as wealth becomes increasingly concentrated at the top, Washington is moving in precisely the opposite direction for millions of working families: massive tax cuts disproportionately benefiting the wealthy alongside deep cuts to Medicaid, food assistance, and other programs people depend on.
That brings us to a question I think every politician promising a better future should have to answer: Tell me what you want to do—and tell me who you're willing to tax to pay for it. Want universal healthcare? Affordable housing? Better schools? Modern infrastructure? A serious response to climate change? A stronger safety net? Great. How are you going to pay for it?
After decades in which an extraordinary share of America's wealth has accumulated at the very top, pretending we can adequately fund those priorities without asking substantially more from those who have accumulated that wealth is not a serious answer.
California's Proposition 40 puts that question directly before voters.
The measure would impose a one-time 5% tax on billionaire wealth, primarily to help protect healthcare from massive federal cuts. In a letter endorsing the measure, six Nobel Prize-winning economists note that California's roughly 250 billionaires now possess $2.3 trillion, up from about $700 billion a decade ago. From 2019 through 2025 alone, those billionaires gained $1.4 trillion in wealth, while the state income taxes they paid during that period amounted to just 1.6% of those gains.
The good news is that none of this is inevitable. These rules were created through political choices, and they can be changed through political choices and organized action.
How have some of California's wealthiest people responded to being asked for a small portion of those enormous gains? By spending an extraordinary amount of money to stop it.
As of October 10, billionaire-backed opposition efforts have reportedly raised approximately $300 million to fight Prop 40, vastly outspending its supporters. The opposition includes Building a Better California, which is also backing Props 41 and 42, competing measures that could potentially block the billionaire tax even if voters approve it.
Think about that for a moment. A small number of extraordinarily wealthy people can spend a quarter-billion dollars influencing an election over whether extraordinarily wealthy people should pay more in taxes.
And California is only one battlefield. American billionaires had already contributed more than $433 million to the 2026 midterms by early this year. Nearly 80% went to Republican candidates and conservative organizations.
This is the feedback loop Powell envisioned, taken to an extreme he might not have imagined: Wealth creates political power; political power produces tax and economic policies favorable to wealth; those policies concentrate still more wealth; and some of that wealth is reinvested in politics to keep the cycle going.
That is why this debate is about more than tax rates. It is about democracy.
It is also why Prop 40 matters beyond California. As the six Nobel economists wrote, passage could help “kickstart a movement” to tax extreme wealth elsewhere. They concluded that this vote could ultimately be remembered as a turning point in the struggle between democracy and oligarchy.
The good news is that none of this is inevitable. These rules were created through political choices, and they can be changed through political choices and organized action.
Vote. Demand that candidates tell us not only what they want to accomplish, but who they are willing to tax to pay for it. Join the No Kings mobilization on October 17. And watch and share Heist: Who Stole the American Dream? to understand how we got here.
Then let's stop the heist.
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Automated Activation on ICE Body Cameras Is Common Sense
ICE rejected the recommendation to implement automated activation technology for use, making claims that are baseless and somewhat puzzling, especially since some federal law enforcement officers already use automated activation.
Oct 16, 2026
The Government Accountability Office, an independent non-partisan watchdog agency, released a report this month finding that the US Customs and Border Protection and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement have unsuccessfully implemented their body camera programs, with ICE failing to meet its own policy initiative of “accurately documenting events” to promote transparency and enhance public trust.
The GAO report noted, “ICE lacks a reasonable assurance of compliance with activation requirements in policy” and for this reason recommended that automated camera activation be used to ensure that body cameras are activated in accordance with its policy. ICE policy stipulates that agents activate their body cameras “as soon as practical at the beginning of an Enforcement Activity and deactivation when the activity is concluded.”
Automated activation technology guarantees that a body camera is automatically switched on the moment an officer draws their firearm or conducted energy device (commonly TASER) to capture as much as an enforcement activity (from start to finish) as possible.
Automated activation for body cameras is already used by federal law enforcement officers, so why not for ICE?
ICE however rejected the recommendation to implement automated activation technology for use with its body cameras citing “significant operational risks, including inadvertent or false activations during routine movement,” while suggesting that accidental activations of its body cameras could record sensitive information, violate privacy, and even contravene the First Amendment.
These claims are baseless and somewhat puzzling especially since some federal law enforcement officers already use automated activation, as do other police agencies across the country.
Consider the VA Police who are federal law enforcement officers of the US Department of Veterans Affairs. According to their policy, body cameras are automatically activated when an officer draws their firearm.
In the case of an accidental activation, VA Police policy classifies such footage under the category of “false activation” and when designated as such, denotes that the accidental footage can be stored for 30 days before deletion whereas the retention of footage categorized as “investigation” may be retained for as long as 25 years.
The VA Police use Axon body cameras, the same devices used by ICE and by many police departments in the US.
Axon body cameras have a “false activation cancellation” option as an additional feature of their body-cameras products, providing law enforcement officers with the ability to “stop accidental or undesired recordings” should they occur. The option is initiated with the simple press of a “cancel button” on the screen of the body camera.
There are obvious worries of the unauthorized deletion of recordings, but such concerns can be addressed with good policy. Consider Section 11 “Accidental Recordings” of the body camera policy of the San Jose Police Department (SJPD) as an example.
Section 11 outlines the process for the handling of body camera recordings that have no evidentiary or investigative value. In such circumstances, the “officer will submit a request for deletion via email” to their direct supervisor. The policy specifies that the request email is to be forwarded through the chain of command. The receiving commanding officer is then responsible for reviewing the accidental footage prior to approving (or denying) the request for deletion. The email chain provides a shared written record to deter any malfeasance and to ensure accountability.
As if all of this wasn’t enough to warrant automated body camera activation for use with its body cameras, ICE has maintained that it will only release footage that “is in the best interests of the agency.” Presumably then any “false activations” of ICE body cameras that capture sensitive information or violate privacy would not be released anyway.
Automated activation for body cameras is already used by federal law enforcement officers, so why not for ICE?
The logical conclusion is that ICE’s failure to adopt automated camera activation into its body camera program is merely a blatant attempt to evade any semblance of transparency and accountability.
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Will Trump Cultists Make January 3rd the Next January 6th?
There is no legal authority for the president to take control of federal elections or to conspire with House and Senate Republicans to exclude elected Democrats from taking office. But if you think that will stop Trump from trying, you have been asleep for the last 10 years.
Oct 16, 2026
“Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything.” — attributed to Joseph Stalin
If the Trump administration fails to stop Democrats from taking back Congress in next month’s midterms, as nearly all major polls suggest, the MAGA cult is unlikely to accede quietly. The White House and its allies will file a flurry of lawsuits claiming election fraud, demand recounts across the country, pump out incessant propaganda about Chinese and Iranian cyber-interference, threaten to prosecute state election officials and perhaps even seize voting machines, among other gambits.
Should these maneuvers fail, they will set the stage for a decisive “High Noon”-style showdown on Jan. 3, 2027, when the 120th Congress is slated to begin. To maintain Republican majorities in the House and Senate, the president can be expected to wage a final battle of obstruction and orchestrated chaos, possibly culminating in a declaration of a national emergency. If the past is any sort of prologue, he will do anything to avoid the hearings and investigations that will be initiated if the Democrats prevail.
Under the 20th Amendment, a new Congress convenes at two-year intervals at noon on Jan. 3. This is supposed to be a ceremonial event similar to the joint session of Congress that counts Electoral College ballots on Jan. 6 every four years. But as we saw in 2021, ceremony can quickly give way to sabotage.
Each chamber has its own rules for the swearing-in of new and reelected members, and each will present Trump with different opportunities to undermine the election. Writing last month in The New Republic, former US Circuit Court Judge Michael Luttig outlined a scenario in which House Speaker Mike Johnson could use the office of the clerk of the House to alter the outcome of the midterms and precipitate a constitutional crisis in a last-ditch bid to secure Republican control.
The speaker has the unilateral power to remove the incumbent clerk.
The clerk is a nonpartisan administrator whose job on Jan. 3 is to prepare the “roll” of members-elect, which lists all individuals who have been elected and certified by their respective states to serve. After compiling the roll, the clerk calls the members-elect to order. The members thereafter elect a new speaker, who proceeds in turn to swear in the members-elect. The first session of the new House then begins, enabling it to conduct the nation’s business.
Although the clerk’s duties are strictly ministerial, Luttig posits that sometime before noon on Jan. 3, Johnson will replace the current House clerk, Kevin McCumber, with a MAGA loyalist who will refuse to list a decisive number of Democrats on the roll, preventing them from being seated. Under the House’s internal rules, the speaker has the unilateral power to remove the incumbent clerk, and under federal law, the power to replace the clerk with whomever he wishes until the whole House elects a successor.
“McCumber,” Luttig explains, “is a Republican appointed by former Speaker Kevin McCarthy. He is widely respected for his integrity and faithful adherence to the Constitution and is reputed to be unwilling to carry out orders he considers to be unconstitutional.” His replacement could be anyone—Alina Habba, Mike Lindell, Laura Loomer, or any number of other zealots. There are no age, citizenship or even sanity requirements.
Democrats targeted by a rogue clerk will no doubt seek immediate relief from the courts. Luttig believes they will eventually win, relying on a 1969 Supreme Court precedent decision (Powell v. McCormack) that ordered the seating of New York Rep. Adam Clayton Powell, who had been excluded from the 90th Congress by a majority vote of House members despite being duly reelected.
But any such litigation would take time, especially if appeals are taken all the way to the US Supreme Court, which is firmly in the hands of six MAGA-friendly justices. Although Luttig contends that even the Roberts Court would ultimately block the clerk’s action, he has no illusions. Roberts and company could conceivably dodge legal challenges on technical grounds, holding that the issue of the clerk’s authority presents a “political question” beyond its jurisdiction and that any intervention would violate the separation of powers between the legislative and judicial branches of government. In the meantime, the country would be left with a wholly dysfunctional House unable to discharge even its most basic appropriations and budgetary functions.
As might be expected, Luttig has received considerable pushback for his article. Critics on the right have accused him of fearmongering, and some prominent liberal commentators, such as election law expert Rick Hasen, have objected that his scenario is “unlikely” to occur.
What if Vance … refuses to swear in a critical number of Democrats?
But Luttig’s article may not go far enough. It contains no discussion, for example, of what may happen on Jan. 3 in the Senate. Even if Democrats win a majority, Vice President JD Vance will remain the body’s president, and it will be his responsibility to swear in each newly elected or reelected member. What if Vance, following instructions from his boss, refuses to swear in a critical number of Democrats? Legal and political bedlam may be an understatement.
In concert with their House counterparts, the unseated Democratic senators will take to litigation, but that, too, would take weeks if not months to resolve. In the meantime, the seated Republicans will hold the majority.
The other wild card absent from Luttig’s analysis is how Trump might take advantage of the bedlam. Trump’s allies on the extreme right have long urged him to take control of the midterms by invoking his considerable powers under the National Emergencies Act, a post-Watergate reform that was designed to rein in presidential authority but in practice has worked in the opposite direction.
The act accords the president broad discretion to issue an emergency declaration, as long as he specifies at least one existing statutory power that will be used to initiate and combat the emergency. Presidents of both parties have used the act with little congressional oversight. Trump has invoked it at least 21 times to advance such projects as building his southern border wall to stem immigration, promoting fossil fuel production and instituting his tariffs on foreign goods and services. And, while the Supreme Court invalidated much of his tariff regime last February, his other declarations, along with dozens declared by past presidents, are still in force.
There is no legal authority for the president to take control of federal elections or to conspire with House and Senate Republicans to exclude elected Democrats from taking office. But if you think that will stop Trump from trying, you have been asleep for the last 10 years. The best—and perhaps only—way to stop this scenario is to vote in numbers so massive that Trump’s election plots are killed in the crib. We have the power to prevent Jan. 3 from becoming the new Jan. 6. Let’s use it while we still can.
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Trump's Greed and Moral Squalor Delivers a Despicable Era for the United States
Part of the project of ridding ourselves of Trump must be to rekindle our understanding of the common good and appreciation of what we owe one another as members of the same society.
Oct 16, 2026
The Democrats’ focus on affordability seems to be a winning strategy (we’ll know for sure in a little over two weeks). But we mustn’t lose sight of the moral squalor at the core of the Trump regime.
It’s that moral squalor—the utter disregard for the opinions, norms, and ideals of the nation or, for that matter, of humanity—that uniquely marks Trump and the reprobates he has attracted to Washington. It has also poisoned much of the Republican Party, including the billionaires and tech bros who finance it.
To put this despicable era behind us, we’ll need to renounce and reverse this squalor.
What are loosely described as Trump’s “conflicts of interest,” for example, extend way beyond enriching himself from his presidency. He has violated the basic norms of presidential decency.
He just decided to host the Group of 20 annual summit of world leaders at his private golf club in Miami in December. When he sought to do this during his first term, it was viewed as a blatant violation of the emoluments clause of the Constitution. Now, after America’s moral sensibilities have been numbed by Trump’s appetite for foreign gifts—such as Qatar’s “donation” of a $400 million jumbo jet—it barely merits a mention.
He sells advance notice of his market-altering announcements for $100,000 a month, thereby profiting by tipping off people who trade on the information before it becomes publicly available. He files a trademark application for “Trump TV” to control the name of a streaming service that the White House uses for official presidential communications, thereby pocketing the benefits from taxpayer funds used to create and run the channel.
His family-backed crypto firm introduces a stablecoin just months before he signs legislation promoting it. His wife is paid tens of millions for a self-promotional film by Jeff Bezos’s Amazon, a federal contractor and major retailer subject to a myriad of regulations. His son has a Russian oligarch, close to Putin, pick up the tab for part of his wedding afterparty in the Bahamas.
He arranges for the Justice Department to grant him and his family immunity for any back taxes and penalties they might owe.
And so on. Trump has tossed away all constraints on making money off his presidency “because I got no credit in the first term” and “I found out that nobody cared.”
Credit? Someone who is entrusted with the highest office in the land must receive “credit” for doing what’s right, in order to continue doing what’s right? Nobody cares? A president can embrace corruption if the public doesn’t mind?
It’s not just the blatant self-dealing. His moral squalor extends to every aspect of governing.
He lies incessantly—a gushing firehose of deception.
His foreign policies make Henry Kissinger’s realpolitik seem principled by comparison. He orders the abduction of the president of another nation, installs a new president of his choosing, and announces he’s taking that nation’s oil—and doesn’t even account for what he does with the oil money.
He attacks Iran without consulting America’s traditional allies or even Congress.
Eager to reduce diesel prices (which are hurting Republicans in the midterms), he turns his back on Ukraine and sides with Putin, the aggressor in that conflict—making a deal to import Russian diesel fuel (a windfall for Putin who can now bomb Ukraine even harder) while demanding that Ukraine stop attacking Russian oil refineries. Trump then blames Ukraine president Zelenskyy for high oil prices rather than Trump’s own war with Iran, and says Ukraine should get a new president.
If this isn’t moral squalor, I don’t know what is.
The squalor also extends to usurping the authority of Congress to decide on tariffs, wars, and whether and how to spend taxpayer money.
And extends to his cynical defiance of Supreme Court orders. When the high court invalidates Trump’s tariffs, he reimposes them under a different statute. When the court rules that he doesn’t have grounds to remove a member of the Fed board of governors, he concocts a means to do so anyway. When the court says he has to remove his name from the Kennedy Center, he closes the center and threatens to demolish it.
It extends to his using the Justice Department and the FBI to prosecute people who have stood up to him, including courageous judges and prosecutors.
It extends to his overt bigotry and racism—claiming Mexicans are “bringing drugs and crime”; calling Somali-Americans “garbage” and denouncing “what they’ve done to Minnesota, these people from Somalia”; and taunting Muslims (calling Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Senate candidate from Michigan, “Mohammed”).
It extends to giving a gigantic tax cut to America’s wealthiest people, financed by cutting nutrition assistance and health care to America’s most vulnerable people.
The moral squalor has turned much of America into a police state—terrorizing large numbers of people residing here, including many here legally. Deploying ICE agents at schools, courthouses, and hospitals. Forcibly taking parents away from their children. Allowing masked gunmen without identification to grab suspected undocumented immigrants off our streets, from their cars, and out of their homes—giving them no opportunity to defend themselves in front of third parties before putting them into often overcrowded and unhealthy prisons or sending them to other countries where they’re imprisoned. Killing and murdering—even murdering Americans who are trying to monitor their activities—then refusing even to conduct official inquiries into the murders.
When asked if there are limits to his authority, Trump replies: “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
“My own” morality is no morality at all. Morality reflects collective judgments about right and wrong, shared values about what we owe one another as citizens of the same society. Morality refers to the ideals we seek to achieve together.
Trump is not guided by any sense of right and wrong. He is guided only by what enriches him or gives him more power and glory—a nihilistic might-makes-right ethos in which the strong do whatever they want and the weak suffer what they must.
To be sure, Trump’s moral squalor could not have permeated America—he could not have been elected a second time—had our shared norms and ideals not already been compromised.
Vast inequalities of income and wealth, coupled with a growing sense that the social contract at the heart of the American system was coming undone and that those at the top have rigged the game, were already fueling anger and distrust. Trump ignited that fuel.
But without shared ideals or common moral values, there is nothing pushing back against this despicable president and regime—no countervailing moral force against the ongoing squalor.
Part of the project of ridding ourselves of Trump, therefore, must be to rekindle our understanding of the common good and appreciation of what we owe one another as members of the same society.
Of course we must make life more affordable; Democrats are wise to emphasize this in the midterms. But we also must demand common decency from our president.
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Remembering the Missed Opportunity of Reykjavík as Nuclear Doomsday Looms
Four decades ago, US and Russian leaders came closer than ever to eliminating all nuclear weapons. How can we keep that vision alive today?
Oct 16, 2026
Forty years ago this week President Ronald Reagan and Secretary General Mikhail Gorbachev met from October 11-12 in Reykjavík, Iceland in a hastily organized summit that came closer to the complete elimination of all nuclear weapons than at any point in our nuclear age. This was a time at the peak of the Cold War, when there were roughly 70,000 nuclear weapons in the global arsenals and the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists Doomsday Clock was set at three minutes till midnight.
Meeting in Geneva in November 1985, the year before, the two leaders made their joint declaration that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” The two Cold Warriors shared an understanding of the horror of nuclear weapons.
The Icelandic summit between the two leaders came together quickly after Reagan gave a speech to the United Nations General Assembly in September 1986 calling for a nuclear arms reduction accord. This was followed closely by Secretary General Gorbachev extending an offer to meet in October culminating in the Icelandic Summit.
Nuclear war is a real and present danger. It is not a future that must be. But it is the future that will be if we do not act.
At Reykjavík, Gorbachev argued for a 50% reduction in strategic nuclear weapons and total elimination of all intermediate range missiles deployed in Europe. Back-and-forth discussions continued throughout the summit, and in the final hours, Reagan proposed the complete elimination of ALL nuclear arms. The caveat was his unwavering commitment to the flawed Strategic Defense Initiative or so-called “Star Wars,” a protective shield over the planet to protect from nuclear attack. He wanted testing and development to be allowed in space.
In the final hours, Gorbachev insisted that testing be limited to the labs and not in space. And thus the talks collapsed and humanity lost its greatest chance to date to eliminate these weapons.
This summit paved the way for continued dialogue and, in the years to follow, serious, though far less magnanimous, arms control agreements were reached. These included the Intermediate Nuclear Force Treaty, INF, which eliminated an entire class of nuclear weapons, and the 1991 START Treaty dramatically removing approximately 80% of the world's strategic nuclear weapons.
Fast forward 40 years to October 2026. While there have been dramatic reductions in global nuclear arsenals to 12,187 weapons we find ourselves much closer to nuclear war than at any time throughout the entire 81-year nuclear age.
We have the leaders of the two largest nuclear powers reminding the world of their nuclear arsenals and threatening to use them, whether in Russia’s war on Ukraine or Trump‘s repeated threats throughout his terms, both in terms of nuclear button size envy and threats to bring fire and fury on adversaries. His lack of leadership in arms control has allowed treaties to expire on his watch. His careless media bravado in April, posting “a whole civilization will die tonight never to be brought back again,” does little to resolve crises of his own making. Just last month, speaking to world leaders at the 81st opening sessions of the United Nations General Assembly, he asked, “Would there be a deal that let Iran rebuild a greater country than it ever was before?“ After which he considered whether to “annihilate the Islamic Republic” and “drive them into hell with no chance of survival and hope of future greatness or generations?“
Analogous to “Star Wars,“ Trump‘s obsession with being top dog has resulted in his own “Golden Dome,” a proposal to provide an impenetrable shield from a nuclear attack. At a projected cost of $1.2 trillion, the program with a projected success rate of 80% would be better named the “golden sieve.”
Taking into account these nuclear realities, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists this year moved their Doomsday Clock minute hand to 85 seconds to midnight, which is the closest it has ever been since its inception.
In making their decision they have considered:
- The state of current nuclear arsenals with the ongoing modernization of all global arsenals, breakdown in nuclear arms control talks, and current nuclear use rhetoric;
- Climate change complacency and lack of policies;
- Disruptive technologies, including AI, particularly in military settings where nuclear launch scenarios have been posed to AI, and in bio-hazard design capabilities of AI; and
- Bio threats, and misinformation.
Nuclear war is a real and present danger. It is not a future that must be. But it is the future that will be if we do not act. If we do nothing then it is not a matter of “if” nuclear weapons will be used, it is a question of “when.” There are no “right hands” when it comes to controlling the nuclear button, but it is obvious that Trump’s hand must be removed from that possibility. As citizens, we must demand the United States move Back From the Brink of nuclear war, and lead a global effort to abolish these weapons once and for all.
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Should We Fear Communism or the Authoritarianism in the Republican Party?
President Donald Trump has reenergized the Red Scare by labeling Democrats as communists, but this is ironic as today’s real threat is Trump’s authoritarianism and his dictatorial goals.
Oct 16, 2026
In his 1951 treatise, The True Believer, Eric Hoffer saw the fanatical leaders of communist and fascist states—Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler specifically—as fundamentally products of the same cloth, cloth different from, he quoted, the “Social-Democrat and the trade-union boss.” Stalin may have been a communist and Hitler a fascist, but similarly each a dictator.
Stalin forged a centralized, and brutal, control of the national economy under the guise of continuing the proletarian class struggle earlier led by Vladimir Lenin. Hitler led a racial struggle murdering millions of Jews and others with the goal of establishing a nation for the so-called Aryan race.
Today, with the midterm elections in November, President Donald Trump frames Democrats as the embodiment of communism, as the authoritarian threat America faces. This while Trump has also praised the communist leader, Xi Jinping, in China; Vladimir Putin in Russia; and the right-wing leadership of Viktor Orbán in Hungary, among similar leaders.
the hypocrisy is clear in Trump saying if Democrats win in the midterm elections they would threaten individual liberty as a caucus of communists.
And what is the leadership style shared by Orbán, Jinping, and Putin? Authoritarianism is the correct answer. Leaders, in Hoffer’s treatise, of the same cloth. Cloth Trump appears to want to dress himself in.
Since the defeat of Hitler, with the advent of the Cold War after World War II, communism has been seen as the major threat to the American way of life. Concern with the global spread of communism, after all, framed the context leading the US into the Vietnam War.
Richard Nixon, when the vice president, wrote on the threat of communism opening his essay in 1960 stating that, I quote, the “major problem confronting the people of the United States and free peoples everywhere in the last half of the 20th century is the threat to peace and freedom presented by the militant aggressiveness of international communism.”
Nixon’s warning followed the Red Scare that gripped America after World War II, often referred to as McCarthyism for the Wisconsin senator, Joseph McCarthy. McCarthy’s singular claim to fame, and eventual disgrace, was his anti-communism agenda in the 1950s as the chair of the Senate Permanent Investigation Subcommittee with his allegations of communist infiltration in the US government, the Army and, notoriously, Hollywood.
Cometh Today Trump’s McCarthyism
President Trump in his speech on July 4, during this year’s celebration of the 250th anniversary of the United States on the National Mall, hailed the triumph over both fascism and communism saying that “after we vanquished fascism [in World War II], Americans stood against the evil of communism in the Cold War.”
Ever since, as far as I am aware, he hasn’t mentioned any war against fascism. He targeted only communism in the reminder of his speech on July 4, telling the audience: “America will never be a communist country. Won’t happen... It’s like a cancer. You have to cut it out and you got to cut it out fast.”
Trump has polished his aim as the midterm elections in November have grown closer, alluding to the Democratic Party becoming the seat of communism in America. At the Republican midterm convention in Texas on September 9, Trump said that (his words) “the Democrat establishment has been overthrown and replaced by crazed lunatics and radicals. They call themselves Democrat socialists, but actually they’re communists.” Then he added that if “they win the greatest legislative body in history will for the first time ever be controlled by a communist caucus.”
In labeling Democratic candidates as communist, Trump diverts attention from failures in his policies and his growing and sustained disapproval.
The backdrop to Trump’s painting votes for Democrats as a vote for a communist takeover of the United States has been the emergence of a small minority of Democratic candidates with membership in the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), following the success of Zohran Mamdani, New York City’s DSA-member mayor.
With that backdrop fueling Trump’s anti-communism rhetoric, other Democratic candidates in the midterm elections unaffiliated with DSA, like Michigan’s Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, have even had to emphasize they are not socialists and embrace capitalism.
Opinions of Americans on Socialism (and Authoritarianism)
The terms “socialism” and “communism” seem for many to represent the same entity, though in practice meaningful distinctions exist. In any case, polls have focused on opinions of socialism.
The subtitle to a research report in 2022 from Pew Research Center on views of socialism among Americans reads: “Many Democrats say socialism meets people’s basic needs; Republicans say it restricts individual freedoms.”
Among Democrats and those Democrat leaning in 2019, 65% reported viewing socialism positively, with 57% so viewing in 2022. Only 15% of Republican and Republican-leaning voters held a positive view of socialism in 2019, with 14% doing so in 2022.
In a more recent survey by Gallup in 2026, 65% of Democrats had an overall positive view of socialism compared with 45% among Independents and 14% of Republicans.
Regarding Authoritarianism. In her 2016 article at Vox, Amanda Taub chronicled research on how the rise of American authoritarianism, especially in the Republican Party, preceded and fertilized Trump’s rise to power. She highlighted the work of social scientists like Stanley Feldman, who saw authoritarianism more as a personality trait than simply a political preference. A trait highly valuing hierarchy, order, and conformity over other attributes. A trait Feldman measured by four questions on child-rearing goals, such as, “Please tell me which one you think is more important for a child to have: obedience or self-reliance?”
Vox commissioned a study in 2016 on the relationship between authoritarianism and perceived threats to one’s way of life. Summarizing some of the findings, Taub wrote:
…that 44% of white respondents nationwide scored as "high" or "very high" authoritarians, [and that] people in this 44% only vote or otherwise act as authoritarians once triggered by some perceived threat, physical or social. But that latency is part of how, over the past few decades, authoritarians have quietly become a powerful political constituency without anyone realizing it.
Over 65% of those scoring highest on Feldman’s authoritarianism scale were Republican voters. Whereas individuals whose scores were the most non-authoritarian, by always selecting the non-authoritarian parenting answers, were almost 75% Democrats.
These results, Taub emphasized, didn’t mean authoritarian-leaning folks were inherently Republicans. Rather, changes in the Republican Party’s platform attracted more authoritarians. Becoming the party promising “to stave off social change and, if necessary, to impose order happened to speak powerfully to voters with authoritarian inclinations,” Taub wrote. On the other hand, Taub wrote, “Democrats, by contrast, have positioned themselves as the party of civil rights, equality, and social progress—in other words, as the party of social change, a position that not only fails to attract but actively repels change-averse authoritarians.”
A more recent study in 2024 by the Public Religion Research Institute had related findings using a different measure of authoritarianism, the Right-Wing Authoritarian Scale. Among Republicans, 67% scored high on this authoritarianism scale, compared with only 35% among independents and 28% of Democrats.
A Perplexing Phenomenon. Those with more authoritarian inclinations, that is Republicans, are also more likely to view socialism as an authoritarian menace threatening their freedoms.
Perhaps the answer to this riddle is that the scope of concern over freedom among those with ingrained authoritarian traits may be more limited to concerns over their freedoms only, not freedoms among other groups; a hypothesis worthy of further study.
Whatever the case, the hypocrisy is clear in Trump saying if Democrats win in the midterm elections they would threaten individual liberty as a caucus of communists.
The Republican Party remains today a major seat of authoritarianism in the United States, and the supportive arm of Trump’s would-be dictatorial rule threatening individual freedoms.
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