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Opinion
Rep. John Larson Is an Irreplaceable Social Security Advocate
Larson understands how essential it is to protect and expand Social Security’s modest benefits, and he has the road map needed to get there.
Aug 10, 2026
Democratic Connecticut Congressman John Larson is a bulldog on behalf of the over 70 million Americans who rely on Social Security’s earned benefits, and the millions more Americans who will rely on those benefits in the future. As advocates for Social Security, who represent seniors, working families, and people with disabilities, we have had the opportunity to work alongside Rep. Larson. We can testify to the depth of his commitment: When it comes to fighting for Social Security, no one has worked harder than Rep. Larson.
A determined and relentless champion of Social Security beneficiaries, Larson has consistently pounded the pavement in his outreach to members across the entire ideological reach of the Democratic Party from the progressive Squad to moderate New Democrats to Democratic leadership and virtually everyone in between. In the last Congress, Larson’s Social Security 2100 Act earned in the last Congress support from over 90% of House Democrats, representing all corners of the Democratic coalition. His legislation would keep Social Security strong for decades to come, and increase benefits for everyone.
Rep. Larson refuses to give up. When faced with a political consensus that assumed it was necessary to cut Social Security’s hard-earned benefits, Larson worked to change the entire conversation about Social Security. Thanks to his hard work, Democrats are now united around strengthening Social Security by making the wealthy pay their fair share, and even some Republicans are beginning to come on board. Larson is working closely with Democratic Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (NY) on plans to bring a Social Security expansion bill up for a vote once Democrats regain control of the US House.
Importantly, Larson has gone face to face with Elon Musk’s so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” and has stood up to them, fighting for every inch when it comes to protecting Social Security from vicious DOGE attacks.
Larson understands that Social Security’s future is a question of values, not affordability.
Rep. John Larson’s enviable ability to propel a positive, far-reaching vision in the public debate, while working pragmatically with his colleagues to ensure consensus, is a rare combination of attributes. Larson understands how essential it is to protect and expand Social Security’s modest benefits, and he has the road map needed to get there.
One thing is certain: Congress must act on Social Security during the next few years. Without action, Social Security faces an automatic benefit cut of roughly 20% around the year 2032. Larson has a crucial role to play in ensuring that Congress addresses this the right way—by making the wealthy pay in at the same rate as the rest of us.
He will lead the charge. When the Democrats win back the gavel in the House of Representatives, Larson will chair the Social Security Subcommittee of the all-powerful Ways and Means Committee. That comes from his seniority. Whether Social Security is expanded or cut will be decided by the leaders in Congress. His voice, together with his knowledge, his tireless work effort, and his personal connections to colleagues achieved over his years of service, will make the difference whether benefits are increased or cut.
Larson understands that Social Security’s future is a question of values, not affordability. He possesses the moral vision to fight for the type of society that treasures everyone, especially people living through their most difficult and vulnerable moments. By pairing this sense of direction and purpose with a canny ability to understand and persuade his colleagues, Larson is indispensable to make sure legislation to protect and expand Social Security goes the distance.
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The Presidency Is a Public Trust, Not a Personal Monument
The Trump administration has devoted extraordinary attention, taxpayer dollars, and even the power of government to projects centered on the president himself instead of the challenges facing the American people and the core responsibilities of government.
Aug 10, 2026
While Americans worried about rising costs at home and another war in the Middle East, President Donald Trump spent much of June talking about construction projects at the White House.
According to a Washington Post analysis of the president's speeches, interviews, social media posts, and other public remarks, he discussed his construction and beautification projects on nearly 4 out of every 5 days in June—more often than healthcare or wages, and about as often as inflation and prices.
That focus has become so pronounced that veteran White House reporter Maggie Haberman recently remarked that roughly "70%" of President Trump's attention appears devoted to his renovation projects.
The issue isn't just President Trump's construction projects. It's what they reveal about this presidency's priorities. Again and again, this administration has devoted extraordinary attention, taxpayer dollars, and even the power of government to projects centered on the president himself instead of the challenges facing the American people and the core responsibilities of government.
Americans should expect the same urgency in pursuing justice for survivors and greater transparency that this administration showed in protecting a presidential monument.
To begin with, consider where President Trump has chosen to focus his attention.
Over the past several months, President Trump has repeatedly returned to his new White House ballroom, the rebuilt Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, triumphal arches, portraits, flagpoles, and other additions that bear his personal imprint. When asked who his proposed triumphal arch was intended to honor, he answered with one word: "Me."
But few presidents have devoted so much attention to themselves while Americans confronted far more pressing challenges. Families continue to struggle with the cost of groceries, housing, childcare, and healthcare. Students and parents are trying to pay for college. Small businesses face rising costs and tariff uncertainty. Conflict in the Middle East threatens American service members, regional stability, and higher energy prices here at home.
Second, consider how those same priorities have shaped the way taxpayer dollars have been spent.
A recent New York Times analysis found that the known costs of the president's construction projects total roughly $1.2 billion. In my home state of Illinois, that same money could restore Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits for almost all families expected to lose them this year or preserve Medicaid coverage for nearly 130,000 residents at risk of losing it.
Finally, the most troubling example is how this administration has used the power of government.
The Justice Department aggressively pursued people accused of damaging President Trump's Reflecting Pool. One defendant, former Olympic canoeist David Hearn, faced a felony carrying up to 10 years in prison before prosecutors acknowledged last week that the damage was caused by a botched installation—not vandalism—and dropped the case.
Since Jeffrey Epstein's 2019 federal arrest, no one beyond Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell has been criminally prosecuted in the United States for participating in Epstein's sex-trafficking network, yet acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has defended the administration's refusal to release additional Epstein records while arguing there is no current basis for further prosecutions.
Years of litigation, congressional investigations, investigative reporting, and millions of pages of records have documented the network around Jeffrey Epstein. Leon Black paid Epstein more than $158 million. Lesley Groff spent 18 years as Epstein's longtime assistant, scheduling thousands of massages while Epstein abused underage girls. Yet the Justice Department has shown little urgency in pursuing accountability beyond Epstein and Maxwell.
The administration rushed to bring a felony case over alleged damage to President Trump's Reflecting Pool before acknowledging the damage resulted from a botched government installation—not vandalism—and dismissing the case. Yet when it comes to the people who enabled one of the largest sex-trafficking operations in modern history, that urgency has been nowhere to be found.
Every prosecution must rest on the evidence and the law. But Americans should expect the same urgency in pursuing justice for survivors and greater transparency that this administration showed in protecting a presidential monument.
The presidency is a public trust. It should be measured not by the monuments a president leaves behind, but by whether Americans are stronger, more secure, and more prosperous because of the choices he made.
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A Strait of Hormuz Fee Is the Price of Trump's Dumb, Illegal War
The Trump administration may not like paying for the privilege of using the strait, but its decision to go to war in the first place created the situation the United States is now in. Bad policies have unintended consequences.
Aug 10, 2026
In the weeks since the US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding collapsed, Washington and Tehran have used the time to strengthen their respective positions in the event negotiations resume.
For the United States, this has largely taken the form of overt threats by President Donald Trump himself and hints that an even more comprehensive US bombing campaign against Iranian strategic targets is on the table. For Iran, the strategy is familiar: ensure maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz is kept to an absolute minimum.
US and Iranian officials continue to give conflicting accounts of where negotiations stand. Despite Trump’s repeated declarations that Tehran is begging for a deal, the Iranians stress no talks are occurring with the United States. Still, both sides seem to agree that any pending agreement will center on the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic waterway that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has proved capable of shutting down at will.
Various schemes have been proposed between Iran and Oman, the two countries on either end of the strait. While a deal is not finalized, Iran will most certainly retain more power over the strait’s traffic than it did before the war began in February.
The question now is whether tolls or fees will accompany any arrangement worked out between Tehran and Muscat. The Trump administration is dead set against acceding to any fee structure because it would provide the Iranian government with additional revenue and represent visible proof that Trump’s preventive war was a strategic mistake. Referring to the Strait of Hormuz, Secretary of State Marco Rubio reiterated the US position in July: "If we create a precedent in the Middle East where a nation-state can decide that they are going to control an international waterway, charge a toll…we have created a very dangerous precedent which will repeat itself in other parts of the world.”
Of course, permitting an Iranian toll or fee structure isn’t ideal. Before the war, such a hypothetical would have been difficult to imagine. The strait at that time was free and open, and roughly 120 to 150 ships relied on the route each day to get their products to customers worldwide.
The United States wants Iran to return to this status quo. Yet Iran has no intention of doing so — and to expect otherwise is to be completely ignorant of how events have played out since.
Trump’s war handed Iran the perfect excuse to leverage its geography, and the Iranians didn’t hesitate to do so. Originally, Tehran’s shuttering of the strait aimed to increase the cost on Washington and eventually convince US partners in the region to pressure Trump into ending the war. But over time, the Strait of Hormuz, in addition to Iran’s more aggressive posture toward its neighbors writ-large, has become something far more valuable: a strategic card Iran can play whenever Trump threatens to accelerate military operations.
Re-opening the strait is now as important to the United States as containing Iran’s nuclear program, if not more so. The question is how to do it.
Trump originally tried to pursue this objective through military force, hoping US strikes could degrade Iran’s military capacity to such an extent that the IRGC would have to stop shooting at ships. The strategy overestimated the US military’s power to force a change in Tehran’s strategic calculus and underestimated Iran’s ability to manufacture and launch cheap drones and missiles at scale. Every US strike merely reaffirmed the Iranian government’s belief that the war was existential for them. Instead of capitulating, Iran fought back, targeting vessels that used the southerly route near Oman’s coast and making it clear that heavier US bombing would compel more Iranian attacks on Gulf energy infrastructure.
US military attempts to bring the strait back to its pre-February state have failed and will likely continue to fail. If the Trump administration seeks to extricate itself from a war without end, its best option is to accept a toll or fee structure in the regional chokepoint. Hawks on Capitol Hill would no doubt scream bloody murder, and some of Trump’s own political allies will have a difficult time explaining how such a scheme is appealing. But if the choice is between swallowing fees or endless conflict, then the former is the better option. The Trump administration may not like paying for the privilege of using the strait, but its decision to go to war in the first place created the situation the United States is now in. Bad policies have unintended consequences.
Fortunately, fees in the strait would not be the end of the world.
This wouldn’t be the first time a country located next to a critical trade chokepoint received some form of compensation. The most obvious case is the Strait of Malacca in Southeast Asia, where shipowners contribute to a voluntary fund, administered by Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore, for navigational assistance, maritime safety, environmental protection and search and rescue. A similar arrangement in the Strait of Hormuz would thus not set a precedent. In fact, shipping companies and the insurance carriers that underwrite them might even view these voluntary payments as in their own interest if it helps prevent even costlier disasters or accidents.
There’s no use brushing the obvious under the rug: US acceptance of Iranian tolls or fees would be an embarrassing acknowledgment that Iran is now a principal arbiter of the strait. Moreover, depending on how high the fees are — Tehran is reportedly demanding 7% of the value of a ship’s cargo — the Iranians would be collecting revenue they wouldn’t have had prior to the war.
But even this scenario is not as dire as many assume. In practice, Iran’s leverage dissipates with every month that passes by. The Gulf Arab states are not sitting still and watching the new status quo helplessly. Rather, Tehran’s neighbors are increasingly adapting to Iran’s machinations by tapping into pipelines that bypass the strait altogether and exploring future projects that make their energy infrastructure more durable and less vulnerable to a single chokepoint.
Saudi Arabia is using its cross-country east-west pipeline to export more crude oil through the Red Sea. While this alternative route remains vulnerable to strikes by the Iran-aligned Houthis and doesn’t fully compensate for the loss of normal traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, it has still allowed the kingdom to avoid shutting down production entirely. Ditto the United Arab Emirates, which is sending more crude through its Fujairah export terminal, located outside the strait. Fujairah’s share of UAE exports increased to 66% in July from 51% a month earlier. Iran’s actions during the war will only reinforce Persian Gulf oil producers’ desire to diversify their routes, reducing Tehran’s ability to obstruct energy flows in the future.
Negotiations on reopening the Strait of Hormuz continue. If there comes a point where fees for passage are unavoidable, then US policymakers should keep a cool head. Ceding the point would be the most efficient way for the United States to remove itself from a foolish conflict at minimal cost.
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Why Print: On Newspapers, Democracy, and the Things a Screen Cannot Replace
We strive for a world in which we are informed with the paper in our hands—a world in which we run with that paper to our elected representatives and demand, “What the hell are you doing?"
Aug 10, 2026
Politics has become strangely empty. We sign petitions with a click, make five-dollar donations with a tap, and mistake engagement for participation.
Capitol Hill Citizen believes that democracy requires something more substantial than that. It requires attention, presence, and involvement. It requires something tangible.
That is why we print a newspaper.
In the absence of tangibility, we are each reduced to data, data that corporations use to manipulate us, predict us, and sell us back to ourselves. In a world where corporations are treated as people under the law, Capitol Hill Citizen calls upon its readers to do something that a corporation cannot do: hold a newspaper. Better yet, do democracy.
Democracy requires action. That means showing up, which is exactly what our journalists do as they report from the frontlines of the institutions that shape our lives. And it is what our readers do when they carry that reporting back into their communities. Action means feeling the paper, engaging with your fellow human beings, and speaking to people face to face.
Human engagement is the first thing the machine strips away from us.
Doing things with your hands, with that which distinguishes you from the machine, is a revolutionary act. We are living, breathing human beings with emotions and feelings, sights and smells. To hold a newspaper is a small reminder that we still inhabit bodies, communities, and a democracy that exists somewhere beyond the screen.
We strive for a world in which we are informed with the paper in our hands—a world in which we run with that paper to our elected representatives and demand, “What the hell are you doing? Why aren’t you addressing this? It’s on page 14. Look at it.”
To read Capitol Hill Citizen is to refuse to disappear into the churn of algorithm-driven news cycles and superficial political opportunism. We put Capitol Hill Citizen on every congressmember’s chair. And every congressmember does the same thing: they move it. But at least they move it.
This is not merely Golden Age thinking. We do not want things to go back to how they used to be. We want to take back something that has been stolen from us: the tangible, the embodied, the uniquely human. We want to read print.
This article first was first published in the Capitol Hill Citizen, an independent antiwar print newspaper for citizens done with the corporate duopoly and the internet addictions that keep the citizenry depressed, dejected, distracted and defeated. It appears at Common Dreams with permission.
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The Dangerous Corporate-Funded Morons of Third Way
Here's some advice for voters: disregard whatever you may hear from Third Way or any other so-called “leading Democratic centrist group.”
Aug 10, 2026
The statements seem as belligerent as Pete Hegseth on a bad hair day.
“We are preparing for the next war that is coming,” says Jonathan Cowan.
Cowan is president of Third Way, described by The New York Times as a “leading centrist Democratic group.” Cowan’s Third Way is preparing a $15 million war chest to “discredit democratic socialism.”
Pointing to Dr. Abdul El-Sayed’s victory in the Michigan Senate primary last week, Cowan warns that “it is deeply troubling to see radical, far-left candidates winning in places that are potential presidential swing states.”
Well, I find it deeply troubling that faux centrist groups are declaring war on progressives in the pages of The New York Times, without the Times revealing who they really are.
If you bother to look at the funding sources of Third Way — those that have been made public, that is (Third Way is structured as a 501(c)(4) social welfare organization that’s not legally required to publicly disclose its donors) — you’ll find a Star Wars cantina of billionaire megadonors, Fortune 500 CEOs, corporate dark money bundlers, and giant corporations.
Odd that The New York Times chooses to describe Third Way as a “leading Democratic centrist group” without revealing that it’s simply a Trojan Horse for corporate America.
Third Way senior vice president Matt Bennett has even conceded that “the majority” of Third Way’s donor support comes from the group’s board of trustees, most of whom are from the finance sector. (That’s the same Matt Bennett, by the way, who helped stage the infamous “Dukakis in a tank” photo-op that helped sink Dukakis’s 1988 presidential campaign.)
Here’s Third Way’s Board of Trustees (the most recent list available):
- Jonathan Vogelstein, chairman of New Providence Asset Management and senior advisor to private equity firm Warburg Pincus.
- David Heller, formerly global head of equity trading for Goldman Sachs.
- Bernard Schwartz (chairman emeritus), chairman and CEO of BLS Investments.
- David Horvitz, chairman of the board and CEO of SouthOcean Capital Partners, LLC and SouthOcean Investment Partners, LLC.
- David Coulter, managing director and senior advisor at Warburg Pincus, focusing on the firm’s financial services practice, and former vice chair of JPMorganChase.
- William Daley, vice chairman of Bank of New York Mellon, former vice chairman of JPMorganChase, former board member of pharmaceutical companies Abbott Labs and Merck.
- John Dyson, chairman of Millbrook Capital Management, Inc. (MCM), a private investment firm that manages a manufacturing company, a vineyard and wine group, and a hedge fund.
- Michael Edwards, deputy CIO of investment adviser Weiss Multi-Strategy Advisors.
- Andrew Feldstein, CEO and Co-CIO of BlueMountain Capital Management, board member of PNC Financial Services Group, former managing director of JPMorganChase.
- Brian Frank, founder and managing partner of Declaration Partners LP, an investment firm seeded by the founder of a large private equity firm.
- David Greenwald, chairman of finance law firm Fried Frank, former international general counsel and a deputy general counsel of Goldman Sachs.
- Derek Kaufman, former head of global fixed income at Citadel and a member of the firm’s Portfolio Committee, former managing director at JPMorganChase.
- Derek Kirkland, managing director and co-head of the Global Financial Institutions Group at Morgan Stanley’s Financial Institutions Group in Investment Banking.
- Doug Lawrence, CEO of DPL Green Investment and also managing principal and co-founder of 5 Stone Green Capital, formerly a managing director at JPMorganChase.
- Joseph Zimlich, CEO of private family financial manager the Bohemian Group, board member of First Western Trust Bank.
- Mark Spilker, founding member of GPS Investment Partners LLC, chairman of Chiron Investment Management LLC, former co-head of Goldman Sachs’s Investment Management Division, former president of Apollo Global Management, former member of Google’s Investment Advisory Committee.
- Barbara Manfrey Vogelstein, former venture capitalist, former partner at Warburg Pincus and Apax Partners & Co. Ventures.
- William Reeves, co-founder of BlueCrest Capital Management, former managing director at JPMorganChase.
Oh, and Third Way’s honorary co-chairs have included West Virginia’s former Sen. Joe Manchin and Arizona’s former Sen. Kyrsten Sinema. Enough said about its governing structure.
In 2020, Third Way claimed that Bernie Sanders’s Medicare for All plan would add more than $13 trillion to the federal deficit, although most other analyses — including one by the Koch-funded Mercatus Center — found that Sanders’s plan would save trillions while providing healthcare to millions of uninsured Americans.
Well, of course Third Way attacked Bernie’s plan. Among Third Way’s donors are pharmaceutical giant Amgen, pharmacy benefit manager CVS Health (which acquired health insurance giant Aetna in late 2018), and health products and drug company Baxter International.
Other corporate donors to Third Way are or have been members of the GOP-aligned American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a corporate bill mill that links lobbyists with state lawmakers. Amgen, Baxter Healthcare, CVS Caremark, DuPont, and trade groups the Consumer Technology Association and NCTA - The Internet and Television Association are members.
Third Way donors have also given money to the Republican Attorneys General Association, which helps elect Republicans who fight federal environmental and other regulations. Among them, Entergy, Facebook, Google, and Reynolds American, according to tax records.
Christopher Leonard, author of Kochland, revealed that Koch Industries secretly funded a report by Third Way intended to promote the Republican free trade agenda to Democrats.
After the Democrats’ 2024 election losses, Third Way argued that the party should reduce its dependence on small-dollar donors. In a five-page memo of “takeaways” from the election, Third Way asserted that small-dollar donors’ preferences “may not align with the broader electorate.”
The memo stopped short of naming alternative funding sources, but the implication was clear: Less grassroots support means more reliance on big checks from super PACs and wealthy donors, which is exactly what Third Way prefers.
The memo also included calls to curb “far-left influence,” adopt a “pro-capitalist” stance, and stop “demonizing wealth and corporations.”
***
So, please, disregard whatever you may hear from Third Way or any other so-called “leading Democratic centrist group.”
And pay no attention to headlines about “Democratic centrists preparing for war” against a “rising Left.”
Instead, focus on what’s really happening.
Voters want people in power who are going to fight for them, and not for the super-wealthy or big corporations and Wall Street.
This is especially true now — when the bottom 90 percent of Americans are struggling to pay the bills, a record portion of the nation’s wealth is in the hands of the richest one-tenth of one percent, big corporations and Wall Street have never been as powerful, Washington has been taken over by legalized bribery and corruption, and there’s no “center” between democracy and neofascism.
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Trump's Secret $24 Billion Tax on 401(k) Retirement Accounts
In a sane world, Trump would be impeached for such a blatantly illegal scheme. But that's not the world we currently live in.
Aug 10, 2026
You may not have heard about this latest tax from Trump. That could be because he’s not going through Congress to get it. Also, this scam could get buried in the middle of his many other grifting schemes. Trump is starting a new special subscription service to his social media platform, Truth Social, where big investors will pay $100,000 a month for advance access to Trump posts that can move markets.
This means that the next time Trump posts that he will blow Iran off the map and sends oil prices soaring, the people who paid Trump’s fee will have the opportunity to buy oil futures before the jump. The same story applies on the way down, as when he posts that a deal with Iran’s leaders is imminent.
And the inside information goes well beyond oil prices. He may announce a big military contract with Lockheed or one of his sons’ companies, sending stock prices soaring. Or he could announce a big DEI investigation of Disney or some other Hollywood entertainment company, causing their stock to plummet.
There are an infinite number of ways that Trump Truth Social announcements can move markets. This subscription service allows rich investors around the country to get in on the action.
If it’s not clear how Trump’s scheme amounts to a tax on your 401(k), think more carefully. If Trump’s clients get the jump on a big rise in oil prices, that means that they get the money, not you. This is true even if, like the vast majority of small investors, you are not actively managing your funds.
The person who is managing whatever fund(s) you hold will pay the higher price for oil or stock or anything else the funds might buy because Trump’s accomplices got their first. The same applies on the way down. The fund will get less money because the Trump gang already sold the stock before your fund manager had the chance to do so.
At this point, we can’t know how much money is involved because we don’t know how many big investors are prepared to sign up for what is blatantly an insider trading scheme. But we can do some speculation.
First, we need to calculate how much money an investor would expect to make from a service where they are paying $1.2 million a year. Since this scheme would likely lead to civil and possibly criminal charges if the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) or Justice Department ever gets taken over by honest people, it seems a very big payoff would be required.
Any person paying Trump for insider information would need to expect substantial legal bills, and also the possibility of being forced to leave the country or face prison time. (Ask Martha Stewart.) Let’s say the payoff has to be at least 20 to 1, which would mean they would need to earn $24 million a year for their Trump Truth Social subscription to make sense.
Then we need to speculate on how many people are prepared to sign up for Trump’s racket. We know Wall Street is a cesspool, but this level of open corruption is probably too sleazy even for most of the big traders. Still, there could be a 1,000 Trump-loving sewer dwellers who don’t mind being open about their thefts.
In that case, the Trump insiders would be siphoning off $24 billion a year from other investors in the market. That is not huge in the context of a $7.5 trillion budget, but it is larger than many things we have big fights over.
For example, the AIDS program for Africa, which saved tens of millions of lives, and Elon Musk eagerly fed into the wood chopper, cost $6 billion a year. That’s roughly a fourth of Trump’s 401(k) tax. The cost of extending the subsidies in the ACA exchanges, which Trump and the Republicans ended, would have been a bit higher at $27 billion a year.
So, 401(k) holders and other small investors are paying a considerable chunk of money through this “tax” to Trump and his enrolled insiders. As I said, this tax is not going to Congress for approval, but we can assume that all the Republicans in Congress approve of it. If not, Trump would be impeached for such a blatantly illegal scheme, but we know the Republican motto: “If Trump Does It, It’s Good.”
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Trump: The Empire-First President
Whereas previous administrations let pundits and strategists do the dirty work of advocating for empire, the Trump administration is presenting its own arguments.
Aug 09, 2026
The Trump administration marked the 250th anniversary of US independence with a series of statements in support of American empire.
Despite the fact that President Donald Trump campaigned against endless war and the White House issued a National Security Strategy that rejected “global domination,” the Trump administration celebrated the nation’s 250th anniversary by glorifying empire as one of the country’s highest achievements. Administration officials praised moments in US history when US leaders embraced empire, such as when Thomas Jefferson and John Adams spoke in favor of an “empire of liberty” and Theodore Roosevelt acted to take Panama.
At a time when many people in the country were reflecting on the ideals of liberty and equality that Jefferson had emphasized in the Declaration of Independence, the Trump administration glorified the country’s imperial history, creating a rationale for Empire First.
“We just tamed the wilderness and conquered the frontier and built the empire,” Trump said in an address from the National Mall on the Fourth of July. “It’s called the empire of liberty.”
Imperial Apologia
In recent decades, several thought leaders have been making the case for American empire. Bucking the norm of empire denial, which holds that the United States is not an empire, they have characterized the United States as an empire and called on the United States to play an imperial role in the world.
Advocates of empire gained ground during the years before and after 9/11, when they produced an outpouring of work that brought discussion of empire into the mainstream of US political discourse. Max Boot built momentum in articles such as “The Case for American Empire” and “American imperialism? No Need to Run Away From Label.” In a major feat of imperial apologia, Niall Ferguson constructed a lengthy defense of American empire in his book Colossus.
“Let me offer you the following straightforward conclusion,” Ferguson said in 2003. “The United States is an empire. It has long been an empire. It should be an empire.”
Although the country’s imperial apologists grew quiet as the Bush administration’s military operations turned into unpopular forever wars, the Trump administration is now bringing imperial rhetoric back into the mainstream of US political discourse.
Strategists and diplomats also spoke in favor of empire, although they did so largely in unofficial roles. Before joining the Bush administration as its first director of policy planning, Richard Haass advocated for Imperial America. Prior to becoming ambassador to NATO in the Obama administration, Ivo Daalder insisted that the United States is an empire.
Perhaps the closest a high-level official came to calling the United States an empire occurred in 2004, when a senior adviser to President George W. Bush told The New York Times that “we’re an empire now.” Various observers have speculated that the adviser was Karl Rove, one of the president’s closest aides, but Rove was careful not to openly advocate for empire.
In public, the Bush administration accepted the norm of empire denial. Again and again, Bush denied that the United States is an empire.
“We have no desire to dominate, no ambitions of empire,” Bush said in his State of the Union address in 2004. “Our aim is a democratic peace, a peace founded upon the dignity and rights of every man and woman.”
The Latest Imperial Turn
Although the country’s imperial apologists grew quiet as the Bush administration’s military operations turned into unpopular forever wars, the Trump administration is now bringing imperial rhetoric back into the mainstream of US political discourse. Having spent much of its initial time in office calling for the annexation of other lands and countries, it is now openly talking about empire, something previous administrations avoided.
A major turning point came during the country’s celebrations of its 250th anniversary. Rather than simply delivering platitudes in praise of freedom and democracy, as many US leaders did, the Trump administration added an extra dimension by openly glorifying empire.
During his visit to the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in early July, Trump repeatedly commended the country’s imperial history. He praised Roosevelt for his role in seizing colonies from Spain during the War of 1898.
When the country’s founders envisioned the United States as an empire of liberty, they were thinking of white US settlers moving into new territories, displacing Indigenous people, taking over their lands, and creating new states for entry into the United States.
“We got them all,” Trump said, citing Guam and Puerto Rico, both of which remain US colonies today. He also cited Cuba, a country which he wants to take for the United States. “After many, many decades, it’s coming our way,” he said.
In addition, Trump hailed Roosevelt for taking action to seize Panama, which had been part of Colombia. The acquisition of the Panama Canal Zone, Trump indicated, may have been the former president’s greatest achievement.
Roosevelt made the United States into “one of the greatest empires,” Trump said, making the point in both a speech and statement posted on the White House’s website.
After returning to Washington, Trump then gave a major speech in which he openly celebrated American empire. Speaking from the National Mall on the Fourth of July, Trump praised the conquest of the continent and declared that the United States is “the empire of liberty.”
Although many commentators dismissed the president’s remarks, with Rolling Stone calling them “bizarre,” he was not alone in bragging about empire. War Department official Elbridge Colby also delivered remarks in which he boasted that the United States is an empire.
“We are already, as our Founders put it, an empire of liberty unto ourselves,” Colby told a conference of defense ministers on July 8th. “I say this with pride, of course, not arrogance.”
With his remarks, Colby made an effort to reframe some of the president’s commentary. Providing context for the concept of an empire of liberty, Colby connected it to the country’s origins, when founders such as Thomas Jefferson and John Adams had used the phrase.
In addition, Colby attempted to disassociate American empire from imperialism. Whereas Trump had glorified American conquest and expansion, Colby insisted that “we do not need imperial possessions or dependencies.”
The American empire has nearly always featured imperial possession and territories, however, from its earliest history to the present day. By invoking the concept of an empire of liberty, both Trump and Colby appealed to an imperial idea that featured conquest and expansion at its very core.
When the country’s founders envisioned the United States as an empire of liberty, they were thinking of white US settlers moving into new territories, displacing Indigenous people, taking over their lands, and creating new states for entry into the United States. The founders may have claimed that expansion would provide liberty for white US settlers, but they also knew that it would mean dispossession and extirpation for Indigenous people.
“If ever we are constrained to lift the hatchet against any tribe, we will never lay it down till that tribe is exterminated, or driven beyond the Mississippi,” Jefferson wrote. “In war they will kill some of us; we shall destroy all of them.”
A Basis for Empire First
Apologia for American empire may not have been a main theme of most people’s celebrations on the Fourth of July, but the Trump administration presented its own vision. Rather than sticking to the liberal ideals of the Declaration of Independence, including its powerful symbolism of opposition to empire, the Trump administration lauded the United States for being an imperial power.
The Trump administration’s actions marked a significant shift in modern US politics. Whereas previous administrations let pundits and strategists do the dirty work of advocating for empire, the Trump administration is presenting its own arguments.
The administration’s empire talk is also promoting imperial values. With the president flouting international law and threatening countries with war crimes, the administration is cultivating an imperial culture. US military forces are taking pride in conducting extrajudicial killings in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific.
“The United States military is killing people and bragging about it,” Senator Tim Kaine (D-Va.) observed last month.
Congressional leaders have refrained from condemning American empire, but they may not be able to ignore the issue much longer now that the Trump administration is glorifying empire as an ideal to be praised and celebrated rather than avoided and condemned.
Indeed, the Trump administration is providing its own apologia for American empire, creating a basis for Empire First, with the president playing the leading role.
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Is It (Still) Un-American to Care?
I don’t think it’s inherently un-American to care about suffering in Gaza or Cuba. It is just an American expectation to get threatened by the State Department for giving a fuck.
Aug 09, 2026
I initially wrote this piece in 2024 during the student uprisings that took place around the United States. The content was focused on Gaza and the people who made up the movement for Palestine in the belly of the beast. I've rewritten some of it and replaced Gaza with Cuba. The arguments needed no editing at all.
In March, a delegation traveled to Cuba to bring medical aid to Cubans who were suffering under the fuel blockade imposed on them by the United States of America. In recent months, people and organizations who took part, including my own organization, have been targeted by the Trump administration via investigations, subpoenas, and threatening reports such as Marco Rubio's 100-page report "The Capital of 21st Century Communism." In this report, people who bring aid to Cuba or merely speak out against the unilateral policy of starvation that the US implements upon Cuba are accused of being foreign agents and linked to terrorism. People in the comment section of our videos echo the smears because if the accusation is coming from someone powerful like Marco Rubio, it must be true.
I’ve seen them suggest that CODEPINK and other organizers are acting on behalf of someone other than ourselves and perhaps paid to do so. And Rubio has even gone on record saying that the people he is targeting might even be "unpaid" agents of Cuba, which just sounds like he might be going after people for simply having their own opinions that are different from his.
Cuba has dealt with rolling blackouts, fuel, food, and medicine shortages as well as a looming threat of US invasion or attacks as threatened by the Trump administration. People are not getting the medicine they need or the nutrition, which can and will lead to a slow genocide in Cuba if the US starvation policy stays intact. That is what people are so against: the deliberate slow starvation of 11 million human beings, just 90 miles away from our own border. This recent escalation comes after 60 years of aggressive US policy toward Cuba that has punished its people for pursuing an economic and political system that strays from the US model of capitalist exploitation. Cuba, once existing as a playground for the wealthy elite of the US, is now a representation that not only can a small country overthrow US-backed puppets like Fulgencio Batista, but also pursue socialism.
How do we, in the greatest interest of preventing future wars, stop reproducing this accusation so much that it becomes the dominant narrative about anti-war activists?
The accusations of being foreign agents or affiliated with terrorist groups aren’t new or innovative accusations levied against anti-war activists. This narrative has been used since there were wars and people against them. So there are a few questions to be asked: Is it so un-American for regular people (not policymakers) to care about the disastrous loss of human life? Who is levying these accusations that some malign foreign entity pays (or doesn't pay) Americans who care about death and destruction to do so? And lastly, how do we, in the greatest interest of preventing future wars, stop reproducing this accusation so much that it becomes the dominant narrative about anti-war activists?
Is It So Un-American to Care About the Loss of Human Life?
There have been massive resistance movements to every single war, and whether politicians like it or not, many of the people who have participated have been Americans. If it’s un-American to disagree with our government, then we might as well pack it all up and call it a day on this whole democracy schtick. The accusation of being foreign agents or terrorist sympathizers denies the basic trajectory of social life at this present moment. In the United States, our neighbors are truly from all over the world, and humans are social animals. If we are, enjoyably, living our lives, then we will meet our neighbors, we will become their friends, and we will care deeply for them. Friends introduce each other to other friends, and we learn to care for people who live in places we have never been. Some forces seek to squash that diversity and others use it merely symbolically without accepting the fact that it might challenge who our country does or does not bomb. But both forces use the “foreign agent” accusation to destroy the lives of activists and squash movements into the curb until they have no teeth anymore. It has happened over and over again.
If we move ahead with the idea that it is not inherently un-American to care about massacres or blockades, what we are left with is that the accusation is a tool to get everyone to shut the hell up about what the pigs in power are doing to our families and friends far, far away from here. Or in some cases, right here at home when some of the most powerful people in the Trump administration launch First Amendment chilling investigations into regular people to attempt to stop them from talking about the massacres our country facilitates.
If the peace movement was such a well-funded foreign apparatus, we would never have a war ever again. We would never have blockades and embargoes that starve people to death. The war industry is far better funded than those of us in opposition to it.
So, I don’t think it’s inherently un-American to care about suffering. It is just an American expectation to get threatened by the State Department for giving a fuck. And the inverse is true: it’s also quintessentially American to remain apathetic to the massacres and not utter a word about them and be awarded some temporary comfort. For example, the quiet may have no subpoena in the mail this week or next. If you fall into the latter category, congratulations on your unthreatening inboxes, but I have some bad news for you: One day our country might do something that will anger you. Or, god forbid, your children become adults who decide to care. Then you or your children will become vulnerable to the same accusation and subsequent treatment, including repression, arrest, and murder (like we've seen in the cases of Alex Pretti and Renée Good). Unless we stop reproducing this narrative about protesters at this very critical moment, disagreeing with the government will continue to get you investigated, thrown in jail, or your life ruined by red scare tactics the US government continues to rinse and repeat.
Who Is Levying These Accusations That Some Malign Foreign Entity Pays Americans Who Care About Death and Destruction to Do So?
The short answer is the American elite. The politicians and rich have a vested interest in keeping us at war and attempting to drive communist countries like Cuba into the gutter. The US is the largest weapons dealer in the world, and the companies that make the weapons are the biggest donors to many of our politicians. Politicians are bought and sold by the war profiteers, but also by private equity that sees investment opportunities in Cuba. The ruling class has done a great job of making war a profitable industry for themselves. So they built up militarized domestic surveillance to protect the war industry from dissent. If the accusation of being foreign agents scared people into silence about what our country was doing to Vietnam, Cambodia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and so on, why wouldn’t this repression tactic work for what’s happening in Cuba? Besides the fact that the tactic has worked in the past, there’s also a part of it that might be a telling projection: that because the elite need to get paid for their morals and opinions, maybe everyone else does too.
So, their tactic of accusing people of being terrorists or foreign agents works at repressing the masses. They’ve learned this over and over again. Can we say the same, that we’ve learned the same lesson over and over again? It appears that we cannot. But we have the opportunity to do things differently right now.
How Do We, in the Greatest Interest of Preventing Future Wars, Stop Reproducing This Accusation So Much That It Becomes How We All View Anti-War Activists?
The longer we go without challenging this narrative, the longer it gets passed down to the war resisters after us. We don’t remember the US wars on Vietnam or Iraq kindly. So why do we still write off the people who resisted those wars? Maybe a lot of the Vietnam War protesters were communists, but they were also right when it mattered. It doesn’t matter if you disagree with the war in Vietnam now. Over 2 million Vietnamese people were killed by our government. It is long over. It only matters if you’re right when it’s actually happening or before it happens, not when the blood is already dried on the pavement.
And as it so happens, being a communist might be the most American thing you can do as more and more people feel like everyone around them somehow got the short end of the stick. Who has the long end of the stick? We’ve never met them.
Americans happen to have their own opinions, and many of us are not paid to have them. You can tell that is a fact by how few of us have healthcare. If the peace movement was such a well-funded foreign apparatus, we would never have a war ever again. We would never have blockades and embargoes that starve people to death. The war industry is far better funded than those of us in opposition to it.
If you ever disagree with the war machine, the titles of “foreign agent” or “terrorist sympathizer” will be waiting for you at your doorstep. It’s really just a matter of time.
Some of us can shake these accusations off. Two years ago, we all saw a photo of a young Palestinian girl with her face falling apart and her father trying to press her back together. We decided her life was worth more than any job or future opportunity we could ever lose from saying something. Her life was worth more than any threat I could ever receive—but the stakes don’t need to be so high for us to stand up for what’s right if we collectively decide right now that they don’t need to be. We can get it right when it comes to Cuba before it's too late. Power is reproduced in every single one of us. The accusations stick every time we don’t refute them on behalf of others. The accusations work every time it isn’t shot down or called out. So we must.
I am proud to be the national co-director of CODEPINK. I am called a foreign agent or terrorist sympathizer every time I post about a child being murdered in Gaza. Or that I don't agree with a policy of collective punishment in Cuba. Or when I dare suggest that the United States shouldn’t be stoking a war with China. The US and China both have nukes. I don’t have to be paid off by a foreign government to have the opinion that a confrontation between two nuclear powers would be a disaster.
Right now, CODEPINK, along with other organizations, are the subject of a smear campaign to discredit our work toward peace. We were accused of being funded by a deep and large web of interests that led back to the Chinese Communist Party, and now we are accused of being agents of the Cuban government. I am sorry to our haters and clickbait journalists, but that is just completely untrue. It is a disrespect to the fearless leadership of women in North America who don’t like blockades being imposed in our name and to our thousands of donors who make our work possible. Now, as the Trump administration escalates its hybrid war on Cuba and people are standing up for what they believe in, the same accusation is coming down on each and every one of us who happens to care about the 11 million Cubans who will go into this fall and winter without electricity, or without the medicines they need to survive. If you ever disagree with the war machine, the titles of “foreign agent” or “terrorist sympathizer” will be waiting for you at your doorstep. It’s really just a matter of time. If we want history to stop repeating itself, if we want to stop the senseless slaughter carried out by our government, we have to stop falling for the same tricks.
When the American elite make the inevitable pivot, and start telling you what country to hate: See through it. And when they start pointing fingers at people who think we shouldn’t go to war—ask if their accusations are actually admissions about their own integrity. You are not bought to care about Cuban life; your comrades aren’t either.
This moment, and every moment of resistance that comes after we are gone, requires us to learn this lesson and fast. The movement and the people sympathetic to it must stand up for themselves and reject the notion that it is fundamentally un-American to care about people or despise massacres.
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The Farm Bill Is a Health Bill
It cannot be cut into pieces without harming land and people.
Aug 09, 2026
Wanìshi means thank you in the Lenape language. This is the lyrical word we recently had the privilege of learning from a principal emissary from the Piscataway Indian Nation, and experiencing together. Wanìshi for the quiet moments between hard conversations and watching sunsets, where we shared in the spirit of collaboration, together with 18 other thinkers and doers who are deeply troubled by the trajectory of public agriculture policy, and its historically principal vehicle, the Farm Bill.
We embraced and shared in this collaborative mindset over the three days we spent with the America the Beautiful for All Coalition’s Legacy Lands workgroup in Maryland. The Farm Bill was one of the issues we discussed. A bill currently being treated by politicians as technical, as boring, as someone else's problem. When in our realities, it is none of those things. The Farm Bill decides who eats and who doesn't. It decides who is healthy and whose health is negotiable.
Between us, we have spent a combined five decades serving the communities this bill affects: rural families losing food, farmworkers losing protections, Black farmers losing land, tribal nations losing voice. So at that convening, and with this piece, we are expressing plainly a reality every farmer, rancher, and all of us who steward land intimately know. That land is a body and must be nourished. That we cannot cut it into fundable pieces and expect the pieces to bleed separately. The Farm Bill is a health bill. It cannot be cut into pieces without harming land and people. We do not view the content of the draft as a public health crisis because we have been trained to view it as agricultural policy. But it is, in fact, a public health crisis, and that crisis has a physical address: every community where conservation funding has been cut and every family living downstream of the farms and lands that lost it.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed on the Fourth of July last year, cut $187 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). More than 4.5 million people have lost their food assistance since then. In rural counties where the nearest grocery store is a 40-minute drive and the nearest doctor is farther, losing SNAP is not a policy change. It is a sentence. It means a child eating less, and then eating worse, and then showing up in an emergency room that is itself understaffed and underfunded. The Senate Farm Bill draft does not restore a single dollar.
That land is a body and must be nourished. That we cannot cut it into fundable pieces and expect the pieces to bleed separately. The Farm Bill is a health bill. It cannot be cut into pieces without harming land and people.
Both versions of the new bill cut funding for the conservation programs that keep farmland productive and water clean. The Senate draft alone slashes nearly $2 billion from EQIP, the program that helps small farmers put cover crops in, manage nutrients, and protect water. When those programs shrink, the runoff increases. Babies, adults, pets, and wildlife in the communities downstream all drink that water.
The agency responsible for delivering conservation to farmers is disappearing. The Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) lost nearly a quarter of its staff in one year. One hundred and forty-one counties went from having NRCS employees to having none. These were the people who helped farmers manage nutrients, reduce fertilizer runoff, and protect water. In their absence, nitrate from agricultural runoff enters rural drinking water unchecked. Research links nitrate contamination to colorectal cancer, thyroid disease, and birth defects in newborns, at levels below what the Environmental Protection Agency considers safe. The communities drinking that water are the same small rural towns that just lost their NRCS offices. A beginning farmer in southern Georgia or a small rancher in northern New Mexico picks up the phone and no one answers. Their neighbors downstream drink what runs off the fields no one is helping them manage.
For Latino communities across the rural West, acequias, the community irrigation systems that have sustained families for centuries, depend on the conservation programs this bill is cutting. A farmer in the San Luis Valley who has irrigated land the way her family has for six generations does not experience a conservation cut as a line item. She experiences it as a ditch that doesn't flow, a garden that doesn't grow, a family that buys what it used to harvest.
Black families once farmed 16 million acres in this country. Today they hold barely over 1%. Heirs' property, land passed down without clear title, is one of the mechanisms through which that loss continues: A single partition sale can erase a century of family ownership in an afternoon. The families who lose their land don't just lose wealth. They lose the foundation for food sovereignty, the one asset that could have fed a family, a neighborhood, a generation. A deed problem becomes a health problem, passed down the same way the land was supposed to be.
As we watch this Farm Bill, we carry with us the word our Piscataway colleague shared. Wanìshi. Thank you. We offer it now in the spirit of collaboration.
We will offer it again, in the spirit of gratitude, when Congress writes this bill for all of us.
We are waiting.
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Alaska's Vital Waters Are Already Under Stress; They Don't Need Deep-Sea Mining
The untested practice will further disrupt already fragile ecosystems, creating increased pollution from discarded sediments, sharp increases in noise, and other potential dangers to the marine environment and food security of Arctic Peoples.
Aug 09, 2026
In July, the US launched the first of three controversial 2026 deep-seabed mining lease sales in the waters of American Samoa, to be finalized in August; the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, to be finalized in November; and Alaska, to be finalized in December. Once the lease sales are sold, it is nearly impossible to reverse the sales unless they are purchased back from the federal government.
In Alaska, fishing is not just a sport; it is a critical element of food security for many Alaskans. As the Arctic faces increasing pressure on fish stocks, including but not limited to overfishing, marine pollution, and rising ocean temperatures, the US is now debating issuing deep-sea mining permits in Alaska waters, the use of which could further harm our marine ecosystems affecting everything from phytoplankton to whales.
Proponents of deep-sea mining argue that the minerals extracted from the seabed are critical to strengthening modern supply chains for technological advancement and national security. At this time, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is assessing the potential for Alaska’s Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) to mine cobalt, nickel, and rare earth elements.
At Pacific Environment, we are deeply concerned about the permits that BOEM is considering selling. Deep-sea mining isn’t just about sticking a vacuum on the ocean floor to surgically suck up particular minerals. It also involves large-scale exploration and extraction that will further disrupt already fragile ecosystems, creating increased pollution from discarded sediments, sharp increases in noise, and other potential dangers to the marine environment and food security of Arctic Peoples.
The Risks of Deep-Sea Mining in Alaska
Deep-sea mining would deploy mining equipment in some of the deepest and least understood areas of the ocean such as hydrothermal vents and seamounts. The wildlife that inhabit these areas—including plankton, corals, fish, and marine mammals—often exist only in those places and nowhere else on the planet. When damaged, these ecosystems are slow to recover, and the damage is likely to be permanent. Sea mining activities also result in massive sediment plumes that smother marine life on the bottom and in the water column.
When BOEM opened a commenting period for the public to weigh in on deep-seabed mining, over 90,000 comment letters poured in from individuals and groups opposing the sale of leases for this largely untested technology.
It is proven that noise in the ocean disrupts whale communication and migration and may also impact other communities of ocean life. Deep-sea mining will increase noise pollution in ways that are yet to be studied because it is challenging and costly to study deep ocean ecosystems.
Alaskans are already seeing declines in our salmon populations, creating a fishing crisis along the Yukon River and elsewhere, empty smokehouses, and Indigenous communities without a primary protein resource and with cultural traditions unpracticed. We are seeing whale strikes and die-offs along the Northwest coast of the United States, further negatively impacting coastal communities. We watch as the ocean warms; Arctic sea ice melts at a faster and faster pace and a critical tipping point for nitrogen—a critical element of ocean life—has passed.
Public Opposition Reflects Growing Concern
When BOEM opened a commenting period for the public to weigh in on deep-seabed mining, over 90,000 comment letters poured in from individuals and groups opposing the sale of leases for this largely untested technology. These comments highlight concerns about the lack of understanding of the long-term impacts these leases will have on Arctic waters that depend on intricate balances to support marine life.
While arguments can be made that we need to secure additional access to critical minerals, the risks of what we could lose are very significant. Arctic ocean ecosystems are fragile, not well understood, and already under intense pressure as the region warms four times faster than the rest of the planet. Alaska, and the world, depend on the marine environment for so many things; it makes no sense to jeopardize this sensitive ecosystem for an unproven and largely untested technology.
This piece was first published on the Pacific Environment blog.
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It's Time to Evolve Beyond Nationalism
I love the life this nation has given me, and value much of what it claims to stand for, but I think it’s time for humanity to reach beyond nationalism and borders and connect with a larger god—a larger global organizing principle.
Aug 09, 2026
“Nation” equals identity. I’m an American! Hurray!
It’s almost embarrassing to confess this, but yeah, that’s me (or used to be me), sitting back in my easy chair, waving a flag. My “nationality” is such a profound, lifelong part of who I am I rarely actually questioned it. At best I shrugged, then momentarily glared in anger at... the government, the media, whoever. Why do we have a trillion-dollar military budget, or a president who wants to up it to $1.5 trillion? Why do we always have an enemy or two or three, who isn’t as human as we are and must be defeated, or at least arrested?
At least being an American comes with a fair amount of rights—freedom of speech, freedom to question authority, and so-o-o much more—and usually I embrace those rights with a sense of hope that the future will be saner. But that sense of hope has been ebbing lately. I have come to realize over the years that I am no longer just an American. I’m a citizen of Planet Earth.
I say this with a sense of paradox. I love the life this nation has given me, and value much of what it claims to stand for, but I think it’s time for humanity to reach beyond nationalism and borders and connect with a larger god—a larger global organizing principle. And I do not claim that this will be simple or obvious.
The global military expenditures in 2025 were $2.9 trillion, a total that’s been increasing every year for the last 11 years.
But it’s time. “Nation” equals war. It equals “get outa here!” The more power it has, the more it sustains itself with the worst of who we are. This means it always needs an enemy... or two, or three, or 50,000.
And our enemy becomes the norm. Here’s where I truly lose hope that the human race can survive nationalism. We dehumanize our enemies, which gives us “permission” to kill them: to shatter their social structure, to erase them from existence. Ho hum.
For instance, here’s a quickie ICE update from ABC News the other day:
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested 51,000 individuals in July, according to sources familiar with the data. The arrests are the largest in a single month in DHS history...
And guess what?
“Those being detained in some cases do not have criminal records and have valid work authorization or parole documents...”
And what does the phrase “in some cases” mean? Maybe a dozen of the arrestees were good guys? That’s what it sounds like, as you give the story a read. After all, remember Donald Trump’s words back in 2015: “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best... They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people”
But all of them are aliens! They’re illegals (even if they’re not). They’re wrecking our country. They need to go.
And then, of course, there are the wars going on around the world, wreaking death and hell and genocide: Israel’s bombing of Palestine has killed over 73,000 people at this point, with more than 173,200 wounded. As PBS points out, over 1,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the start of the so-called “ceasefire.” And, my God, the death and casualty toll in the Ukraine war, on both sides, is approaching 2 million people over these last four years.
This is just part of it. The global military expenditures in 2025 were $2.9 trillion, a total that’s been increasing every year for the last 11 years. As Connie Peck, founder of the United Nations Institute for Training and Research Programme in Peacemaking and Conflict Prevention, wrote: “If similar increases continue, and NATO countries enlarge their expenditure to 5% as pledged, global military spending could reach 6.6 trillion by 2035—five times the level at the end of the Cold War.”
In other words, it’s getting worse. The more “they” spend, the more we have to spend. And the only way the world’s nations are safe from one another is by “mutually assured destruction”: a concept that, with the emergence of nuclear weapons, means the threat of planetary annihilation. I think it’s time to evolve beyond nationalism, which is not based on valuing life. It’s based on “winning.”
Peck writes: “Do we really want or need more weapons and more wars? Shouldn’t we, instead, choose cooperative security, collective security, and human security, as represented by the United Nations?”
Let’s stash our cynicism and, as Peck writes, begin addressing the root causes of conflict. We are capable of looking beyond ourselves. She quotes from the UN Charter Preamble.
Here are the words from the Preamble that pierced me most deeply, as I imagined them helping to create a new form of government: “We the peoples of the United Nations (have) determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war... and to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person...”
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