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Opinion
Lying, Cheating, Stealing Trump Just Told Us Exactly What He Will Do This November If Democrats Win
The president has made it crystal clear that he’ll say or do anything to hang onto his power, because he knows if he loses that power his entire house of cards collapses.
Jul 17, 2026
Last night, Donald Trump essentially told us exactly what he will do this November. When reports start coming in that the Democrats are winning this fall, he will send in the troops.
He’ll point back to last night‘s speech and tell the nation:
“I told you so. I warned you. They rigged the election for the Democrats and now I have to stop it.”
He’ll mobilize ICE and the National Guard’s “Rapid Reaction Force” that he’s assembled over the past six months to seize ballot boxes and crush the inevitable “insurrection” — protests in the streets against his seizing ballot boxes — by “left-wing communist radical domestic terrorists.”
He’ll declare a state of emergency, invoke his NSPM-7, and blame it on a foreign country and/or “Antifa.” He’ll declare protesting a crime, and tear gas will fill our streets.
This is easy for me to imagine: I was there in 1967 when Lyndon Johnson did nearly the same thing, although for an entirely different purpose, and I’ve worked in several countries where this very scenario had already played out.
And those same white supremacists Trump has already pardoned can also easily imagine how it should play out when he calls them out to attack protesters; they’ve been terrorizing minority communities for centuries and are very good at it.
This includes his tens of thousands of well-armed loyalist cult members who’re salivating at the idea of splitting that $1.776 billion they believe they’ll get when he seizes absolute control of the country.
As Senator Amy Klobuchar said on MSNOW last night:
“This is a man desperate to hold onto his power and he will do anything to keep that power.”
Would he actually be so audacious as to try that? Could he actually pull it off?
He could, he will, because he’s already tried it once.
The difference is that six years ago — the last time he tried to overturn an election he lost — his Attorney General, FBI Director, Director of National Intelligence, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, DHS Secretary, and Chief of the National Guard would all have refused such an order, so he called on thousands of violent thugs to attack the Capitol, stop the election certification, and murder the vice president.
This time, in a classically Putin-esque move, he’s replaced all of those people with lickspittles like Blanche and true believer fanatics like Miller and Homan who’ll do exactly what he tells them to.
Many of them sat in the room with him last night, in the front row in front of the teleprompter, watching and nodding along with his lies. They know that if Democrats win and the election is certified this fall many of them, too, will end up on the wrong end of civil and criminal investigations.
Trump has recently declared, officially, that Democrats are traitors, communists, potential terrorists, and should be deported. The only thing he hasn’t demanded is for Democrats to be arrested for our politics, and that may well come in just a few months.
After all, he can’t afford to allow the House or Senate to fall into Democratic hands, because then he’ll be investigated with the power of law and subpoena for the many crimes he is currently committing.
He wouldn’t survive that politically, and he believes the Senate this time will actually convict him: they know that once he’s convicted and has thus lost his power, there’s no way he can regain it and he’ll no longer represent a threat to their political careers.
This is all why he’ll say or do anything to hang onto his power, because he knows if he loses that power his entire house of cards collapses.
He and his children go to prison or are forced into exile. His wife gets to reinvent her life the way she wants. What’s left of his properties gets sold off at auction like his casinos were the last time he went bankrupt.
This is what he’s imagining at 2 o’clock in the morning when he’s rage tweeting. He’s also remembering the terrifying hours he spent sitting in a courthouse charged with 34 felonies for which he could go to prison.
It’s easy for him to imagine, because it’s exactly what he constantly tries to do to people he thinks have slighted him, from Jim Comey to Leticia James to Adam Shiff and dozens of others: he tries to break them financially while threatening them with long and brutal imprisonment.
He’s done this repeatedly, and his most recent threat to break or jail somebody was issued the day before yesterday.
But none of what he’s planning works without a lot of ordinary people saying, “Yes,” and that’s also where we may have a say.
That’s the thing about these operations that gets lost when we talk about them as if they’re just the work of one man, America’s Hitler, to quote JD Vance. It’s never one man who pulls the whole thing off, although it does take a lying psychopath with charisma and some leadership skills to get the process rolling.
Ultimately, though, it can’t work without the National Guard captain who decides the order is lawful enough, the county clerk who hands over the machines because a federal agent showed her a piece of paper, the local cop who puts on the riot gear because his sergeant did, and the poll worker who turns his ballots over to masked ICE agents because it feels safer.
My friends who were there in Germany in 1933 told me, as does history, that that country didn’t fall to a majority; the Nazis never got a legitimate victory at the ballot box.
That nation fell, as others have throughout history, because tens of thousands of people in unremarkable jobs did the small thing that was asked of them in the moment it was asked, and told themselves it was only temporary, and it must be okay because somebody higher up must know something I don’t.
Every one of those people made that decision cold, under pressure, with a stranger in a uniform standing in front of them and about four seconds to think.
Which is why the useful work right now isn’t reactive, and it isn’t something we do in November. It’s finding out, before November, what the people around us are going to do.
— Go meet your county election officials; they’re mostly your neighbors, and in a lot of counties they’re the ones who’ll be standing between a federal agent sent by Trump and a ballot box with nobody backing them up.
— Ask your sheriff, on the record, at a public meeting, whether he takes orders from Washington or from the county.
— Ask your state legislators what the plan is if the National Guard shows up, because most of them probably haven’t thought about it and they damn well should. Ask your governor and state attorney general.
— Find out which lawyers in your town do election work and whether they’re organized. Get to know the people on your block well enough that you can call them at midnight, if necessary.
— Get to know your local elected officials and, in the few months ahead, show up at your local Democratic Party meeting.
People who’ve already decided what they’ll do, and who know that the folks around them decided the same thing, behave completely differently when the moment arrives than people who are trying to figure it out on the spot.
That’s not optimism. It’s just how it’s always worked, in Selma and Kiev and Manila and everywhere else people have looked at an illegal order or an out-of-control authority figure and said, “No.”
What matters most in the next four months is going to happen at the local level, in county commission meetings and election offices that nobody’s watching.
Go be somebody who’s watching.
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No Amount of ICE Killings Will Make America Great
In light of all this death, we must seriously ask ourselves: Are we, as a nation, greater because a 3-year-old girl will never know her father? Are federal agents murdering people working hard to provide for their families making any of our lives better? Are we safer because of ICE?
Jul 17, 2026
On July 13, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Biddeford, Maine murdered Joan Sebastian Durán Guerrero, a Colombian national authorized to work in the US. One of his neighbors described him as “an excellent person, a good father, good husband.”
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) alleged that Guerrero “attempted to flee the scene and, fearing for public safety, an officer discharged his weapon.”
Yet, footage obtained by The New York Times shows Guerrero slowly driving in a circle as he is confronted by multiple agents—there is no evidence that he endangered anyone. One of their vehicles is clearly shown ramming into his. Afterwards, three agents surround the car with one pointing his gun at the driver’s side window. While not shown in the video, five gunshots can be heard. After the incident, there were four visible bullet holes on the front windshield.
Such excessive and unnecessary violence is the new norm. Last October, Marimar Martinez, a US citizen, was shot five times in her car. In December, Isaias Sanchez Barboza, a Mexican national, was shot at least three times. In January, Renee Nicole Good, a US citizen, was also shot three times, including one to her head. The same month, Alex Pretti, another US citizen, was shot at least 10 times in the span of five seconds.
So long as ICE exists, it will continue to kill.
This latest shooting comes less than a week after ICE agents in Houston murdered Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican national who had lived in the US for 35 years. Here too, DHS blamed the victim. A DHS spokesperson alleged that Araujo “weaponized his vehicle in an attempt to run over an ICE law enforcement officer resulting in our officer firing his weapon in self-defense.” DHS used the same story to justify the murder of Good and shooting Martinez. As in those cases, video evidence and eyewitness accounts dispute the Trump administration’s narrative.
A week after Araujo’s death, the FBI filed a warrant application claiming that the agency has reason to believe that there were illegal drugs in the vehicle he was driving. FBI Special Agent David McNeilly alleged that he observed small plastic bags “with a white crystal-like substance” in the cargo van. The application cites probable cause for “distribution, manufacturing, or possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance and simple possession of a controlled substance.”
Domingo Garcia, the president of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) Adelante PAC, accused federal investigators of trying to “change the public discourse and prejudice a jury in Harris County.” He further remarked, “It just smells of a smear campaign and a cover up.”
Garcia is right to be suspicious. There are many documented cases of law enforcement planting drugs on victims. The Trump administration has also demonstrated time and time again that it is incapable of holding itself accountable. After shooting Martinez five times, Border Patrol agent Charles Exum was congratulated by then-Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino. Good and Pretti were immediately smeared as “domestic terrorists” by several members of the Trump administration, including by then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.
Moreover, this administration has actively sought to manipulate federal investigations into past ICE killings—this includes launching an investigation into Renee Good’s wife, Becca Good, while actively stopping probes into her murderer, Jonathan Ross. They have also intentionally delayed turning over key evidence to state prosecutors.
It is worth further emphasizing that, by DHS’ own admission, Araujo was not the target of ICE’s operation. Even if there were drugs in the van (and there is no evidence that there were), those agents did not know that. They did not kill him because of drugs; they did not kill him to protect public safety; they did not kill him in self-defense. ICE agents killed him and Guererro because they knew they could.
Guerrero and Araujo were not the only people to die in ICE-related incidents this month. On July 14, a 28-year-old man in Florida died while fleeing ICE agents.
A day prior, Jesús Manuel Arenas-Silva, a Venezuelan national, died while being transferred between detention centers in Georgia. In a press release, his sister and immigrants’ rights groups reported that, despite their repeated pleas, ICE deprived him of medication he desperately needed. Including Arenas-Silva, at least 22 people have reportedly died in ICE custody this year.
Importantly, this figure does not include the deaths of people like Nurul Amin Shah Alam and Daphy Michel. Shah Alam, a nearly blind refugee who did not speak English, was abandoned by immigration enforcement agents alone on a cold winter night in New York state. He was found dead a few days later. A state medical examiner ruled his death a homicide.
Similarly, Michel, a Haitian asylum-seeker “suffering from untreated severe mental health issues and a significant language barrier,” was arrested by ICE in late February. Agents put an ankle monitor on her, drove her 25 miles away to Pittsburg where she was then abandoned. She died of hypothermia days later. Her death was also ruled a homicide.
On June 4, ICE announced it would no longer investigate or report the deaths of those recently released from detention centers—people like Shah Alam and Michel. This rescinds a policy instituted in 2021 by the Biden administration to hold the agency accountable for releasing severely ill detainees.
This is the reality of what ICE is: an agency that kills people; an agency that intentionally lets people die; an agency without remorse or accountability. Banning traffic stops or mandating bodycams will not change this. So long as ICE exists, it will continue to kill.
In light of all this death, we must seriously ask ourselves: Are we, as a nation, greater because a 3-year-old girl will never know her father? Are federal agents murdering people working hard to provide for their families making any of our lives better? Are we safer because of ICE?
The tens of billions of our taxpayer money spent on ICE could be going to fund childcare, instead of killing parents. It could be used to fund healthcare instead of an agency that deprives medication. It could be used to meaningfully improve the lives of millions instead of agents that kill and injure innocent people.
For all our sakes, enough must finally be enough. We must abolish ICE. Punish the ICE agents who have committed these shootings. Hold every member of the Trump administration who covered their crimes and every politician who voted to fund ICE responsible for the chaos they have unleashed across our country.
Unless there is real change, it is not a matter of if, but when ICE will kill again.
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Big Idiot Trump and His Disastrous Loser of a War Against Iran
Donald Trump takes his place among the great buffoons of history, leading an imperial power that hasn’t won a single war of any sort since World War II ended.
Jul 17, 2026
I recently drove to a gas station in Massachusetts to fill my tank with regular gas, the cheapest around, and, to my surprise, given what’s going on, it was only $4.59 a gallon.
Okay, okay, I take back that “only” and admit it. It’s not good to joke about the nightmare of gas prices these days. But in truth, that may indeed still prove to be the good news, since Donald Trump remains at war (or perhaps at chaos) with Iran, a country a mere 6,300 miles or so from Washington, DC, and so crucial to American power on this distinctly overheating planet of ours (right?). And even as I was writing this, Iran had indeed again closed the Strait of Hormuz through which about 25% of global oil and 20% of global natural gas normally passes, and Donald Trump was threatening to take over the Strait himself.
The terrible (even terrifying) logic of what he is now doing is (or at least should be) overwhelmingly obvious to anyone who has even a faint memory of this country’s imperial history since it emerged victorious from World War II in 1945. And yet give Donald Trump credit. People deal with him as if he were a unique figure in American history and in some ways, of course, he couldn’t be more so. But not, it turns out, when it comes to American-style war. There, he seems almost boringly part of a story (now more than three-quarters of a century old) of how the seemingly greatest power on Planet Earth in the endless decades after World War II simply couldn’t—no, not ever!—win a war.
After all, Harry S. Truman got us into a major conflict in Korea, almost 7,000 miles from Washington, D.C., in 1950, and when it ended three years later, the US left the North Koreans with approximately half of the Korean peninsula.
In 1961, President John F. Kennedy increased American support for what had been the French colony of Indochina (until its military lost the battle of Dien Bien Phu to Ho Chi Minh’s rebel forces in 1954). He would then oversee what would become a full-scale American war in Vietnam, a mere 8,500 or so miles from this country, as well as a war in Laos (also about 8,500 miles away) and Cambodia (nearly 9,000 miles away) that would last a mere 14 more years, ending in a chaotically disastrous US withdrawal and absolute defeat in 1975.
In 2001, President George W. Bush would launch a war in Afghanistan as part of what he labeled his Global War on Terror, a country a mere 7,000 miles from Washington. It would last just 20 more years before ending in—yes, of course!—a distinct American defeat and the grim withdrawal of the last US troops there by presidents Donald J. Trump and Joe Biden in 2021. In 2003, Bush would also launch a war in Iraq, a mere 10,000 or so miles from Washington, a conflict that would be ended by President Barack Obama, again in defeat, in 2011 (although Washington would continue to engage in some fighting there in subsequent years).
And that’s not even counting various other American war-making activities on this planet, including a never-ending air war in Somalia, launched by President George H.W. Bush in the early 1990s that continues today and still shows no sign of success.
So, just to make the obvious point, the greatest and—after the Soviet Union fell in 1991—only true imperial power on planet Earth hasn’t had a genuine war-making success to its name from the end of the Second World War in 1945 to the Trumpian moment 80 years later. And, of course, we’re talking about the country that has by far the largest military on planet Earth, puts more money (still called “defense spending,” even if the department that spends it has now been renamed the Department of War) into its military than the next six countries combined, and accounts for 33% of all military spending on this planet. And mind you, that’s even before Donald Trump tries to raise this country’s military spending from nearly one trillion dollars annually to almost $1.5 trillion dollars. And yet, we’re also talking about the power that hasn’t won a single war of any sort since World War II ended.
Now, given all of that, what should we expect when it comes to Donald Trump’s war against Iran? Don’t, of course, misunderstand me. The American president and his military are clearly capable of creating scenes of utter destruction and devastation there (as was true from Korea and Vietnam to Afghanistan and Iraq). They are also capable of killing staggering numbers of Iranians and turning that region into a potential disaster area. And President Trump is already insisting, of course, that he will reinstall the US blockade of Iranian ports, while calling himself and his country “the guardian“ of the Strait of Hormuz.
The one thing that history suggests, however, is that Trump and crew will not actually be capable of winning their war against that country.
When it comes to war and imperial powers on this planet, the US offers a staggering tale of defeat in our time (one that, it seems, Vladimir Putin may be repeating in Ukraine). And it may suggest why the country that’s clearly the next great imperial power on Planet Earth, China, has shown remarkably little desire to head down a similar road. Yes, in 1979, the Chinese did engage in a border war with Vietnam and, from 2020 to 2021, it also engaged in border skirmishes with India. And it certainly has built up both its military and its nuclear forces in these years.
Nonetheless, it seems to have remarkably little interest in heading down the usual imperial path of global warmaking, given the lesson that the United States has offered in spending staggering amounts of money on genuinely fruitless wars, decade after decade after decade to this very moment. There may never have been quite such a power and such a story in this planet’s imperial past.
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Beware: Trump's Attack on Cuba Is Only Bound to Escalate
Americans need to be vigilant. The pretext for an invasion is being written in real time.
Jul 17, 2026
The federal indictment of Raúl Castro on decades-old charges is just the latest escalation in a long-running US campaign to justify invading Cuba.
The case against the 95-year-old former Cuban president — based on his alleged involvement in the downing of two planes in 1996 — comes in a year of intensified anti-Cuban policy that has steadily built since the beginning of President Donald Trump’s first term.
For many on the island, the Obama presidency had felt like a real turning point in US-Cuban relations.
“The Cuba of 2015, 2016, was quite different than the Cuba we are living in now,” Liz Oliva Fernández, a Cuban journalist at the US-based news outlet Belly of the Beast, tells In These Times and Foreign Policy in Focus. “For the first time in my life my friends weren’t thinking of leaving Cuba in order to have a better future.”
The Obama administration’s steps toward normalization, underscored by the restoration of diplomatic ties and an easing of the blockade between 2014 and 2016, didn’t last long though. The first Trump administration not only rolled back progress made under Obama, but actually tightened the sanctions regime even further.
Under Trump, Cuba was re-added to the State Sponsor of Terrorism list, which imposes penalties on other countries that trade with the island nation. US diplomatic personnel were pulled out of the US embassy in Cuba following baseless conspiracies about “Havana Syndrome.” And perhaps most damagingly, Trump lifted the suspension of Title III of the Helms Burton Act.
This last move opened the floodgates for Americans who had claims to property nationalized after the 1959 Cuban Revolution to sue companies for doing business on that property, hamstringing the economy even further.
“That scared a lot of people,” Oliva Fernández says.
The election of President Joe Biden did not change things, even though he had been a central player in the Obama White House. Biden’s feeble effort to remove Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism — less than a week before Trump was re-inaugurated — is emblematic of an administration that did too little, too late.
“Biden didn’t do anything, he didn’t lift a finger,” Oliva Fernández says. “There was no difference between Trump and Biden policy on Cuba.”
Trump’s second term has taken America’s anti-Cuba policies even further.
In January, the administration declared the Cuban government posed an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the United States. This designation, based on familiar yet baseless accusations of collusion with Russia, China, Hamas, and Hezbollah, has been devastating for the island because it created a secondary tariff system against any country selling or providing oil to Cuba.
In the six months since that executive order, only one tanker — the Russian ship Anatoly Kolodkin — has delivered fuel to Cuba. Over that period of time, the people of Cuba have dealt with rolling blackouts and a near collapse of the nation’s healthcare system.
In May, another executive order by President Trump imposed new sanctions targeting foreign individuals and businesses that engage with Cuba economically.
Then came the indictment against Raúl Castro, which Acting US Attorney General Todd Blanche implied could be enforced by the US military. That threat carries more weight after the illegal US capture of President Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela early this year. Maduro was indicted in 2020 — the final year of the first Trump administration — before the US bombed Venezuela and captured him in 2025, the first year of the second Trump administration.
“The decision to indict Raúl Castro is a pretext that’s prompting fears of a Venezuela-like scenario via leadership decapitation,” Oliva Fernández says.
On May 20, the same day the indictment was filed, the American aircraft carrier USS Nimitz was deployed to the Caribbean, increasing the possibility of coming military action.
Meanwhile, mainstream US media has been busy setting the stage for a potential military move against Cuba. In May, for example, Axios ran a report citing “classified intelligence” for a claim that the Cuban has been buying drones for a potential upcoming attack on America’s military base at Guantanamo Bay. Other recent stories in the Wall Street Journal and CBS News also raise the possibility of armed conflict.
The accusation of drone purchases for possible military action follows a familiar script of creating a pretext for military aggression. “It’s the same recipe they have been feeding the American people from Iraq to Libya to Afghanistan,” Oliva Fernández says.
In an interview on Democracy Now! last month, Princeton University historian Ada Ferrer said, “In terms of invading, Trump has been threatening that since January, since the Maduro operation…I have no doubt Trump would do that if he thought it would work.”
And while the Trump administration has accelerated this aggression toward Cuba, US foreign policy has been building toward this posture for decades. Since the overthrow of the US-allied Batista regime during the Cuban revolution of 1959, successive US presidential administrations have relentlessly tried to unseat the communist government. Beyond the economic embargo, the US has been behind multiple coup attempts such as the Bay of Pigs invasion and covertly supported government opposition figures.
In the face of the most recent aggression, some Americans — including some Cuban Americans — have been organizing to prevent an invasion. In February, for example, hundreds of activists mobilized under the banner of the Nuestra América Convoy to break the siege by flying to Cuba to deliver food, medicine, and solar panels to alleviate the effects of the oil embargo.
An invasion of Cuba would be a disaster for both the residents of the island and the American public. President Miguel Díaz-Canal has pledged that any incursion would be met with “a struggle.”
“We will defend ourselves, and if we need to die, we’ll die,” Díaz-Canal told NBC News. A military conflict would only worsen the existing energy and food crises on the island, and likely lead to casualties from the type of bombing campaign the US has recently deployed in Venezuela and Iran.
With working people already wracked by a high cost of living, the war in Iran, and a Pentagon budget that now tops $1 trillion, polls show over half of Americans would oppose military action against Cuba. The cost of opening yet another front in the US’s imperial wars would be borne by the public.
That’s why Americans need to be vigilant. The pretext for an invasion is being written in real time. We have the power to push back against these war-mongering narratives, denying public support for an invasion.
This article was jointly published by In These Times Magazine and Foreign Policy In Focus.
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Sociopathic Trump Delivers Absurd—and Terrifying—Address to the Nation
The president's speech was riddled with so many lies that I’m reluctant to dignify them with rebuttals, but you should have them.
Jul 17, 2026
The real message to be drawn from Trump’s address to the nation Thursday night is that he will call into question the votes of every state and city that chooses a Democratic senator or representative in the 2026 midterm elections. He’ll push Republican governors and mayors not to certify the results. He’ll demand recounts and audits.
We’ve been here before, but this time he’s even less restrained than he was in 2020 and is surrounded by people who will do his bidding.
His address to the nation was absurd. It was riddled with so many lies that I’m reluctant to dignify them with rebuttals, but you should have them.
He mentioned a newly-declassified investigation into a voter registration group in Muskegon, Michigan that apparently had invited fraudulent registrations in 2020—but Trump didn’t mention that the applications had been caught and none of them had resulted in any ballots being sent out incorrectly. The FBI closed the investigation, stating “the investigation to date did not identify a criminal violation or a priority threat to national security.”
He alleged, once again, that foreign powers have hijacked votes, or that federal or state officials plotted to rig either the 2020 election. But no evidence has ever emerged showing that vote counts have been manipulated or corrupted. Intelligence reports, state audits of vote tallies and lawsuits have repeatedly affirmed official results in 2020 and other years. Nothing suggests China manipulated votes. Instead, US intelligence assessment says China “probably also continued longstanding efforts” to gather information on US voters and public opinion and to use that information to influence US policy “as it has during all election cycles since at least 2008.”
The most significant foreign influence operations occurred in the 2016 presidential election and were conducted by Russia, in favor of Trump, according to the Mueller report. To the extent that this and other reports appeared to cast doubt on the legitimacy of Trump’s victory, they have had the effect of fueling his distrust of US intelligence agencies.
Despite his repeated assertions that US elections are not secure, Trump during his second term has significantly cut the budget of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, including its election work. That’s because Trump grew contemptuous of the agency, and the government’s election security work generally, after it validated the integrity of the 2020 election.
So the entire performance was fake—an extension of his Big Lie that the 2020 election was “stolen” from him.
It was also a commercial for the “Save America Act,” which would make it harder for many American citizens to vote. Voters would have to prove their citizenship in person upon registering to vote, with documents such as an enhanced form of REAL ID (a state ID card compliant with federal regulations) that indicates American citizenship; a birth certificate; a passport or military identification card.
An estimated 9 percent of eligible voters, or 21.3 million Americans, either do not have documents that prove their citizenship, such as passports and birth certificates, or cannot retrieve them in a day or less, according a study by the Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement at University of Maryland and the Brennan Center for Justice. And 45 states do not issue the kind of enhanced driver’s license indicating citizenship status that would be needed to verify voting eligibility.
The point is that American democracy is acutely endangered by a sociopath who will stop at nothing to get the results he wants.
This means that you and I and every other patriotic American have to do whatever we can to ensure free and fair elections, and fight Trump’s torrent of lies and authoritarian moves.
If you’re anything like me, you’re worn out by Trump. You’d like nothing better than to tune him out. I get it. But American democracy is seriously on the line here. We must keep up—and accelerate—the fight.
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The Not-So-Secret Israeli Plan for Gaza: Never Leaving
Until Israel is compelled to relinquish its military control over Gaza, everything else you see or are told will be nothing but political theater.
Jul 17, 2026
Here is the bottom line: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has no intention of leaving Gaza, either before Israel’s general elections—likely to be held in October—or after. Conceding an inch from the roughly 70 percent of the territory his army currently occupies in Gaza will be considered a weakness by the majority of Israeli voters and would result in an open revolt within his extremist coalition.
He has made his intentions clear time and again. Recent statements by Israel's political leadership have only reinforced that reality, with officials insisting that Israel must maintain indefinite military dominance over the Strip and explicitly rejecting any framework that requires a full withdrawal of troops. To Netanyahu, the military footprint in Gaza is a permanent fixture, not a temporary bargaining chip.
Some may argue that Netanyahu’s statements are merely political fodder aimed at prolonging his career and avoiding the disastrous outcomes awaiting him—in terms of state investigations and court trials—should he be ejected from power. However, his extremist policies throughout his entire career at the helm of Israeli politics say otherwise. There has never been a period in Netanyahu’s history in which he showed a genuine willingness to compromise or engage in an authentic political process with the Palestinians.
The political track aimed at reconstructing Gaza and ending the Israeli military presence has little bearing on the grim realities unfolding on the ground.
This reduces the point of the Washington-led Board of Peace and its subsequent administrative bodies to near irrelevance. These entities—including the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG) and a multinational International Stabilization Force (ISF)—were supposedly assembled with the sole aim of managing a transitional phase, delivering humanitarian aid, and deploying a peacekeeping buffer to facilitate a gradual Israeli military withdrawal.
It seems that two separate, irreconcilable tracks are taking shape. One is the Israeli track of continued war, entrenched military occupation, and prolonged genocide. The other is an international track, controlled firmly by Washington, aimed largely at finding alternative ways to manage Gaza on behalf of Israel.
Yet even with its obvious limitations, the Gaza plan’s first phase theoretically promises a phased Israeli military repositioning, a sustainable ceasefire, a massive influx of reconstruction aid, and the gradual handover of civil administration to a non-factional Palestinian authority.
Little of that has actually been delivered. While the United States and international envoys claim the ceasefire hinges on disarmament, Israel has used the diplomatic deadlock to advance its troops further into the Strip rather than withdrawing them. Aid remains choked at the borders, and the promised reconstruction has not even begun.
Indirect talks are ongoing in Cairo, though it seems that only Palestinians are being held accountable or expected to carry out heavy concessions. Moreover, after 19 years of Hamas governing Gaza, the movement announced on July 6 that it has officially dissolved the Emergency Committee that has been administering the Strip. The movement declared its full readiness to transfer governance to the National Committee, intended to administer Gaza under the framework of the US-brokered plan.
On paper, this suggests that a political transition is finally underway. In reality, no such transition is taking place.
Israel is actively preventing this technocratic government from assuming any real duties. Rather than facilitating a civil handover, the Israeli political security cabinet has completely dismissed the transition. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar openly labeled the move a "trick," arguing that a technocratic administration would merely be responsible for municipal tasks like garbage collection while allowing resistance networks to persist.
Instead, Israel’s military strategy continues to fuel conditions that undermine any possibility of stabilizing the devastated Strip. Its objective is not merely to reject an alternative Palestinian administration, but to ensure that no functioning Palestinian governing authority can emerge at all. By doing so, Tel Aviv wants to create a permanent governance vacuum, sowing further chaos and fragmentation.
If no alternative Palestinian political body is permitted to stabilize Gaza, the default collapse will inevitably force local factions to reassert control over daily survival, thus giving Israel yet more pretenses to exact more punishment on a helpless population.
Following the Hamas political move, Israel simply responded with its standard currency: immediate violence. This was starkly illustrated on July 9, when Israeli forces carried out a targeted airstrike on a vehicle in Gaza City in a failed attempt to assassinate Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem. Though the assassination attempt failed, the strike sent a clear message that Israel has no intention of respecting political transformations or ceasefires.
While no houses are being built, no schools are being constructed, and no hospitals are being revived, the only numbers that keep growing are those of the dead and wounded. The human cost has reached unfathomable proportions: the Palestinian death toll in Gaza has surpassed 73,000, with the number of wounded exceeding 173,200. Tragically, these numbers continue to climb daily: over 1,098 Palestinians have been killed since the so-called ceasefire framework was initially agreed upon, proving that the truce exists only in media rhetoric, not on the ground.
This leaves us with a single, inescapable conclusion: the political track aimed at reconstructing Gaza and ending the Israeli military presence has little bearing on the grim realities unfolding on the ground.
The only way out is a stronger, independent international will that wrestles the future of Gaza from the grip of Netanyahu, translating political agreements into immediate humanitarian outcomes and a definitive end to the Israeli occupation.
Until Israel is compelled to relinquish its military control over Gaza, every new committee, reconstruction mechanism, or diplomatic initiative risks becoming little more than political theater.
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Politicians Should Stop Hiding Behind the 'Two-State Solution' Fantasy
Saying the phrase “two-state solution” has become little more than a way of dodging key facts that exist on the ground.
Jul 16, 2026
Creation of a Palestinian state next to Israel seemed feasible when President Bill Clinton hosted the signing of the Oslo accords at the White House in September 1993. The goal was reaffirmed in 2011 when 90 percent of the Senate co-sponsored a resolution supporting “a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.”
But today, the two-state scenario is far-fetched to the point of delusion if not evasion.
For politicians, it has become a box to check. According to data from the American Jewish Congress, every Democrat and most Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee currently say they support “the two-state solution.”
Whatever the rhetoric, ending Israeli control over Palestinians in the territories occupied since 1967 is not on the table.
A grim truth is that no one really knows what a genuine “solution” might be for the mega-tragedy that continues to unfold in Palestine.
“Nobody who talks about a so-called ‘two-state solution’ talks about an end to settlements and colonization, and an end to the occupation,” Palestinian-American historian Rashid Khalidi said in an interview this year. “If you don’t have those as the preconditions, it’s not a state—it’s some reshuffling of a status quo of colonization and occupation.”
At best, only such reshuffling is on the horizon. The essence of colonization and occupation is baked into Israel’s Jewish nationalism that has hardened into systemic cruelty toward Palestinians undergoing genocide.
Yet the boilerplate refrain for a two-state solution has great political utility in the United States. For most politicians, it’s very handy for virtue signaling. The same holds true for pro-Israel pressure groups. Even AIPAC, while incapable of faulting the Israeli government for anything, blames Palestinians for refusing “to negotiate on the basis of the Trump peace framework—which envisions a two-state solution.”
Especially for politicians eager to have the deep-pocketed Israel lobby on their side at election time, saying “two-state solution” has become little more than a way of dodging key facts that exist on the ground. The Israeli military now controls 70 percent of Gaza after reducing it to rubble that has buried an unknown number of bodies. The 2.1 million Palestinians still alive in the enclave are confined to just 30 percent of its 141 square miles, under terrible living conditions.
Meanwhile, the proliferation of settlements in the West Bank has pushed Palestinian people into smaller and smaller fragmented areas, divided by hundreds of checkpoints, while they face lawless violence from Israelis akin to the KKK’s terrorizing of blacks in the Jim Crow South. Several hundred settlements and outposts in the West Bank are now home to upward of 730,000 Israelis, with more arriving all the time.
Given such realities, advocates for a two-state solution have no credible answer to a basic question that is rarely asked: Where would the putative Palestinian state actually be located?
When Britain, Canada, and Australia announced their formal recognition of a Palestinian state last fall, putting the number of nations doing so over 150, they were recognizing a phantom. “Israelis and Palestinians alike say the possibility of a two-state solution seems more remote than ever,” the New York Times reported at the time. “Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has devastated the enclave. Israeli settlements have become ever more entrenched in the West Bank.”
But in US politics, the routine is to maintain the convenient fantasy of a two-state solution. Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris was simply offering up requisite platitudes during a CNN interview in August 2024 when she declared her commitment to “work toward a two-state solution, where Israel is secure and in equal measure the Palestinians have security and self-determination and dignity.”
David Mandel, a Sacramento chapter leader of Jewish Voice for Peace, told me: “In light of demographic and political realities, a ‘two-state solution’ has become a mostly empty mantra, frequently mouthed by politicians who did nothing to bring it about when it might have been a viable path to end violence and build toward something better.” He added: “It has also become a political refuge for many Americans, including a great many Jews, who are generally progressive and want to differentiate themselves from Benjamin Netanyahu and his ilk, but only performatively, without joining efforts to end real violations of Palestinian rights like occupation, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and genocide.”
A grim truth is that no one really knows what a genuine “solution” might be for the mega-tragedy that continues to unfold in Palestine. Unhelpful from Americans is the facile prescription of a two-state solution or, for that matter, any other supposed remedy. Claiming to know what’s best for Palestinians is built into a colonial mindset that has propelled intervention in the region for more than a hundred years.
The pivotal role for Americans is to end their government’s enabling of ethnic cleansing and genocide. The obvious step in that direction is to halt US weapons shipments to Israel, but much more is involved. “I want to stop American aid,” Prime Minister Netanyahu said during a June 30 interview on Israeli television. “It’s like welfare. I don’t want it.” Earlier in the month, Netanyahu wrote about his plan to “draw down US financial military assistance over the next decade” in a letter to Republican Representative Marlin Stutzman. “The time has now arrived for us to move from aid recipient to partner.”
Netanyahu touted what the congressman described as a “new framework of joint defense cooperation, co-development, coproduction and mutual investment in areas including advanced missile defense, artificial intelligence unmanned systems, cybersecurity and next generation military platforms.” That Israeli wish list is in line with Section 219 of the National Defense Authorization Act now pending in the House. “The provision would speed efforts to embed Israeli technologies into US weapons systems in ways almost never codified into law, even for allies,” Human Rights Watch warns.
While Israel’s disrepute is now widespread among Americans, and more members of Congress are voting to cut off US weapons shipments, current moves to integrate the US and Israeli militaries are aiming to bypass public opinion and the political process. Increasingly, the pro-Israel mission in the United States is to circumvent democracy.
Is a two-state solution the best possibility for Palestine? That’s not for Americans to say. But there is a “two-state solution” that the United States could and should impose—on itself and Israel.
In this decade, the catastrophic US-Israel alliance has enabled not only genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians but also the ongoing wars of aggression on Iran and Lebanon. The alliance should not morph. It should end.
American refusal to support the genocidal state of Israel would be a “two-state solution.” And it might lead to solutions in Palestine.
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The Unrestrained Brutality of ICE Is a Reign of Terror
There is little point in considering DHS’ pretexts for killing on a case-by-case basis. ICE’s abuse of immigrants is not the result of individual misdeeds—it is policy.
Jul 16, 2026
In less than one week, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents killed twice.
Neither victim was the man they were looking for. And each time their excuses made no sense. But the killings served a purpose: terrorizing immigrant communities, in pursuit of President Donald Trump’s white nationalist agenda.
On July 7 in Houston, masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents who did not identify themselves stopped and shot to death Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old Mexican national and father of three. Araujo had lived in the United States for 35 years and had applied to obtain legal status. He was on his way to work in construction.
Using its by-now familiar excuse, Homeland Security officials claimed that Araujo rammed an ICE vehicle and tried to run down ICE agents by “weaponizing” his van. The claim was disputed by witnesses, is inconsistent with the video evidence, and makes no sense.
ICE cannot be reformed because its purpose is not enforcing the law. It is terrorism for a white supremacist vision of America.
Araujo had no criminal record. Why would this law-abiding, middle-aged family man ram an ICE vehicle and try to kill ICE agents?
Six days later, in Biddeford, Maine, ICE killed again. This time they killed Johan Sebastian Guerrero, a 26-year-old Colombian man who was authorized to work in the United States.
Again, ICE claimed that Guerrero tried to run down the ICE agent. Again, no evidence supported the excuse. Twelve hours later Homeland Security abandoned the “weaponized” vehicle claim and tried another story: The ICE agent, “fearing for public safety,” shot Guerrero because he “attempted to flee the scene.”
Under Homeland Security’s account, an unmarked ICE vehicle driven by an unknown masked man attempts to stop a vehicle, the driver (who was not their intended target) tries to escape, and the agent fires. They claim, essentially, that failing to stop (if that actually even happened) amounts to “fleeing the scene”—and requires deadly force.
Johan Sebastian Guerrero was working legally at two jobs, as a cleaner and a food delivery driver. He had a wife and a 3-year-old daughter. Who can claim he was so dangerous he had to be killed?
Since Trump returned to the White House, immigration enforcement agents have killed at least 11 times, including Renee Good and Alex Pretti, as of this writing.
ICE agents routinely shoot at people in vehicles, even though official US government policy warns against the practice and says law enforcement officers should “move out of the path of the vehicle” rather than shoot. In addition, at least 49 people have died in ICE custody so far in Trump’s second term—a number that will only climb.
Brutality and violence are routine features of ICE operations, yet no ICE agent has been held responsible. In Trump’s war against immigrants, ICE agents know they may slay with impunity.
Donald Trump’s campaign of demonization and vilification sets the stage. Trump calls immigrants “animals” and “not human,” likening them to criminals or escaped mental patients. He calls them “vermin” who “infest our country,” and he embraces the Nazi theme that a despised group is “poisoning the blood of our country.”
The unrestrained brutality of ICE is a reign of terror. Killing without cause is not a problem for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS); it is a feature. ICE’s indiscriminate violence conveys that non-white immigrants, lawful or otherwise, have no place in Trump’s America.
There is little point in considering DHS’ pretexts for killing on a case-by-case basis. ICE’s abuse of immigrants is not the result of individual misdeeds—it is policy. ICE cannot be reformed because its purpose is not enforcing the law. It is terrorism for a white supremacist vision of America.
Those who reject Trump’s vision, who insist on the humanity of our neighbors, who still believe we must welcome to America’s shores those yearning to breathe free, must stand up and say No.
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Can the Godless Commies Rescue Trump From the Consequences of His Own Actions?
It’s not godless communists who are walking around, arresting and sometimes killing Americans, it’s the Trump Gestapo, also known as ICE.
Jul 16, 2026
“These are not social Dumocrats, these are hardcore, godless communists.” And they will “attack all religions, but in particular, Christianity. They always do..."
“It's like crazy. They will close your churches in this country... They will kill your people, and that's what they're about. They want to end religion. They have to end religion because their ideology doesn't work if you have strong religion... This is the greatest threat to our country since its founding, in my opinion, 250 years ago, what's happening right now.”
This is our Dear Leader speaking, of course, ripping our seriously problematic political system to shreds and turning it into a cult, with Donald Trump as the cult leader, of course. Only he can save us, and by “us” I mean real Americans: the true believers in virtually nothing except what they’re told to believe, also known as MAGA,
“Donald Trump is a desperate man,” writes Elliott Negin at the LA Progressive. “With the midterms on the horizon and his approval ratings under water, he doesn’t want to talk about affordability. Nor does he want to talk about his war with Iran. And he certainly doesn’t want to talk about Jeffrey Epstein.”
Trump’s fearmongering is just a cover for his administration’s fear creating.
What he wants to—needs to—do is offer his followers, which in good times may amount to about half the country’s voters, an enemy so terrifying it takes their minds off Epstein, Iran, et al. Even the “white replacement” invasion by immigrants isn’t enough right now. He has decided to return to the Cold War, when nuclear annihilation was a possibility that everyone thought about, and bring back the godless commies. Oh my God, they’re back under our beds! But they’re Americans now: Democratic socialists. And somehow they’re on the rise politically.
Welcome to what’s starting to look like the end of actual democracy. If Trump succeeds, that’s what it may well be. Candidates will base their campaigns on vicious insults, not policies of any sort. Every last breath of reality could get squeezed out of our elections. Watch out, the commies are coming!
And they want to kill you. Here’s the truly unbearable irony of Trump’s words. It takes one to know one. Trump’s fearmongering is just a cover for his administration’s fear creating. It’s not godless communists who are walking around, arresting and sometimes killing Americans, it’s the Trump Gestapo, also known as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Eleven people, for instance, have been killed by ICE or Customs and Border Patrol, agents during the second Trump administration, including two men in the past week: Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, age 52, was shot while driving to work in Houston, Texas on July 7; and Joan Sebastian Guerrero, age 26, was shot in Biddleford, Maine on July 13. He was also driving to work.
In both incidents, federal officials claimed that the victims had attacked the agents with their vehicles and were killed in self-defense. The agents were not wearing body cameras and no evidence supports this claim. But in both cases, witnesses say that’s not what happened. The vehicles were not “weaponized,” and the men were shot for no reason (except, perhaps, racism).
And both victims were husbands and dads, and their families have been tossed into horrific shock and grief. Guerrero, for instance, had a 3-year-old daughter. His wife posted a photo of him on social media a day after his killing and wrote: “I love you. I have no words for this pain, my life, my love, watch over me, help me to have strength, I love you, stay with me always—don’t leave me alone, I beg you, my love.”
Yeah, better blame this—and so many other deaths—on the godless commies. So far there have been 11 killings by Homeland Security agents this year, along with 21 deaths in immigrant detention centers. Not to mention multi-thousands of arrests, with many detainees essentially disappeared from their loved ones’ lives.
And then there are the wars, the trillion-dollar military budget... on and on and on. I certainly don’t blame this solely on Trump. He's only making the best (by which I mean the worst) of the system he inherited.
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Whitmer’s Data Center Push Isn’t Just Bad for Michigan—It’s Bad for the World
Data center development depends on imported critical conflict minerals and massive amounts of electricity generated by fossil fuels, which contribute directly to US-backed conflicts and war.
Jul 16, 2026
“We’re used to people saying ‘fuck no’ and doing it anyway.” These words were seemingly spoken by our very own Gov. Gretchen Whitmer earlier this month, caught on a hot mic chatting with Oracle executive Clay Magouryk. The two were celebrating breaking ground on the controversial new AI data center in rural Saline, Michigan—currently the largest data center project in the country. Gov. Whitmer is apparently happy to sell Michigan out to military tech giants OpenAI and Oracle.
This is the latest in a series of data center projects being forced into communities that have made their opposition crystal clear. Michiganders are "fighting like hell" because they understand exactly what is at stake; Southwest Michigan residents have already filed a class-action lawsuit for the 24/7 noise nuisance that disrupts daily life and reduces property values.
The development of AI data centers creates harm and destruction. The companies that drive this development, such as OpenAI and Palantir, have contracts with the US military and government agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Locally, the influx of these data centers provides infrastructure for mass surveillance and diverts municipal resources. Globally, the push for data center expansion demands massive amounts of minerals and fossil fuels from resource-rich countries in the Global South, which are obtained through US military intervention and US-backed militia groups. As such, we as Michiganders must continue to oppose these data center projects.
The harm these data centers inflict ripples across the world. Data center development depends on imported critical conflict minerals and massive amounts of electricity generated by fossil fuels, which contribute directly to US-backed conflicts and war on Venezuela, Iran, and in Congo. Tantalum, tin, tungsten, and gold, referred to as 3TG, are essential, and their extraction is linked to financing armed groups and militias. The struggle for control over mineral-rich areas has led to prolonged violence in Congo, contributing to millions of deaths and leaving entire regions destabilized.
Gov. Whitmer’s hot mic comment confirmed what we already suspected: Our voices and opposition are flat out ignored in favor of destructive corporations.
Detroit is becoming a hub for technology, manufacturing, and the military-industrial complex, where events like the annual Reindustrialize conference bring together defense contractors, surveillance firms, and policymakers to strategize a future built on automated warfare and mass data extraction. Palantir, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing attended, representing key pillars of the US defense and surveillance industry. Palantir’s Project Maven and Where’s Daddy track individuals and automate kill chain recommendations with little human oversight. Lockheed Martin and Boeing produce the missiles, bombs, warcraft, and strike systems that turn algorithmic targeting into genocide.
It’s understandable that some Michiganders might think the development of AI data centers is a good thing, or at least an inevitability. Gov. Whitmer, for one, claims that if Michigan does not lead the charge on these data centers, “they’ll be done elsewhere… with lower wages in a way that abuses the natural resources and jacks up energy prices.” Thus far, this seems to mean that companies that develop these data centers can receive tax breaks and circumvent public input, which sets a disadvantageous precedent.
These data centers, furthermore, are not an inevitability, and they can drastically impact resource usage in their regions. At the Saline data center, even with the closed-loop cooling system to reduce on-site water consumption, water will be consumed indirectly: Increased electricity needs increase the need for water and oil consumption for local power plants. There is also no guarantee that any jobs created will be given to local residents. None of the reported advantages are worth the imperialism needed to supply resources to these data centers, nor the mass surveillance apparatus that comes with them.
Gov. Whitmer’s hot mic comment confirmed what we already suspected: Our voices and opposition are flat out ignored in favor of destructive corporations. Michiganders across the state have stood up and said, "Fuck no" to data centers and more war, yet projects keep moving forward. Residents deserve better than politicians who prioritize tech billionaires and war profiteers over their own people.
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The Trump Energy Agenda Means Astronomical Bills and Smoky Skies
Instead of speeding the conversion to clean cheap energy, which would save households huge amounts of money, we’re instead shoveling taxpayer cash to the fossil fuel industry, and in the process overheating the Earth.
Jul 16, 2026
I write this under an ashy, yellow northeast sky; smoke from wildfires in Ontario and Minnesota swept across the region in the middle of the night, and I awoke at 3:00 am (as I too often do in these parlous times) with stinging eyes. But I will try to see clearly enough to discern some of the latest numbers in the climate and energy battle—numbers which prove to me the economic folly of staying on our current course.
To me, I admit, these are secondary—there’s not enough money on Earth to make me want to condemn people to a few centuries of waking up in smoke, and I know without calculation that a clear blue sky is worth almost any price. But I also know how the world works, and so I want to provide people with the ammunition they need to carry on this fight—and the last few weeks have seen that ammunition piling up in the arsenals of logic and thrift. There is at this point no doubt that the world would operate more cheaply on clean energy, which is a lucky thing, and one that needs to be hammered home till the conventional wisdom (that sun and wind and batteries are a luxury) is finally routed.
The most basic point, of course, and yet one often lost in the debate is that once you’ve installed renewable energy you no longer have to pay for fuel. IRENA, the International Renewable Energy Agency, put a number on that in its annual report at the end of last month.
In 2025, renewables helped to avoid an estimated USD 480 billion in fossil fuel costs and around 8.4 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide emissions.
If we round the number of our fellow humans off to about 8 billion, that’s $60 for every man, woman, and child on the face of the planet, even though we’re still fairly early on the adoption curve for clean power. The numbers are stark:
Since 2010, the cost of solar PV has fallen by 89%, onshore wind by 71%, and offshore wind by 63%. This highlights how renewables are now the cheapest source of new electricity in most markets. In 2025, more than 90% of newly commissioned, utility-scale capacity delivered power at a lower cost than the cheapest, newly-installed fossil-fuel-based alternative.
If you move from energy generation to energy efficiency, the numbers are just as interesting. Mark Gongloff, in a charming essay that begins by noting GOP umbrage at New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s suggestion that during a heatwave 78°F would be a good setting for the AC, goes on to show how the Trump administration is gutting the ongoing federal effort to make appliances more efficient. Cost?
Higher standards available to the DOE could save the average US household $160 a year and all US businesses $15 billion a year in electricity costs between 2030 and 2050, according to the Appliance Standards Awareness Project (ASAP), a nonprofit research and advocacy group.
And what about making money? Dan McCarthy describes a new study from the “business-focused” think tank E2 that shows that the clean energy projects—at least 216 in number—cancelled since President Donald Trump took office would have supplied at least half a million good jobs:
Trump took office amid an unprecedented surge in the clean energy economy. The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act spurred the rapid construction of both renewable power projects and domestic factories intended to build solar panels, electric vehicles, batteries, and other crucial cleantech.
But the boom went bust pretty much as soon as Trump won the election in late 2024.
Just as an example, here’s a story from a few days ago about the administration stymieing four wind power projects in Minnesota that would have produced not just a gigawatt of badly needed clean electricity, enough for several hundred thousand homes, but also 1,100 construction and 4,400 “indirect jobs,” for a total economic hit of $168 million.
If you want to try to add it all up, here’s another analysis, from the people at Energy Innovation. Their model shows that, taken together, the result of the major Trump era moves on energy policy will be that
Households will pay an additional $650 billion for energy—an average of $460 per household in 2035 and $490 in 2040.
And their attacks on EVs, which mean that more Americans get to shell out at the gas pump year after year, will
inflate gasoline prices 14% in 2035 and 26% in 2040, atop near-term upward pressure from the Iran war and other market forces.
and the One Big Beautiful Bill, by removing incentives for a quick energy transition, will
cost the US economy 820,000 jobs per year on average over the next decade, in addition to the 144,000 clean energy jobs lost within the past 18 months.
And
Slowing down electrification and domestic energy manufacturing will lower GDP in all years, totaling $2.3 trillion cumulative lost GDP, with effects flowing into other economic sectors. The US economy will lose $150 billion in GDP in 2030, peaking at a $250 billion net loss in 2032, then reverting to losses of $200 billion in 2035 and $120 billion in 2040.
This all amounts to setting money on fire—almost unbelievable amounts. And real money—not notional SpaceX shares, now plummeting; not weird Kalshi bets. It’s money that families have to fork over, month after month, if they want to keep the lights on and the minivan trundling down the road.
And of course the numbers grow exponentially larger if you even try to calculate the public health and climate costs of burning ever more fossil fuel. The Energy Innovation study again:
Worsening local air pollution will raise healthcare costs by $43 billion, with annual increases of $4 billion in 2035 and $4.5 billion in 2040, contributing to rising household costs alongside rising energy prices and goods inflation.
And here’s a new report in the premier science journal Nature from Anders Levermann on the economic costs of a heating planet even before we hit the biggest and most expensive tipping points:
By definition, tipping points are reached when a series of interlinked changes amplify one another until the whole system becomes unstable and shifts uncontrollably into a different state. Loss of sea ice at the poles, for example, reduces the amount of sunlight reflected into space, further heating Earth’s surface, which then accelerates ice loss. These vicious cycles of change define a tipping point, at which the climate cannot return to its former patterns.
Before that point, the climate system becomes increasingly unstable. It fluctuates considerably—a rise in variability is a well-established property of such "non-linear dynamical systems" approaching a critical threshold. That society will face these fluctuations and that they will intensify through the tipping transition hasn’t been realized by scientists and policymakers, so far.
Earth will experience an increasingly erratic climate: more and stronger fluctuations in flows of melt water, ocean circulations, and the extent of sea ice. These changes will lead to more frequent and intense extremes in temperature, precipitation, and storms—leading not only to more heatwaves and droughts, but also to more cold spells and floods.
Modern economies are adapted to relatively stable climatic baselines. Agricultural productivity, infrastructure design, insurance pricing, and financial risk management all rely not only on expected mean conditions but also on the predictability of variability.
Farmers need to factor in lost harvests; architects and urban planners need to account for extremes of temperature, wind and rainfall; and financiers and insurers need to consider the cost and scale of damages. But once these factors are no longer predictable, all bets are off—life becomes uninsurable and the world becomes unsafe.
In case you think scientists are the only ones worrying, Richard Partington discusses new analyses from leading bankers that attempt to put some numbers on these emerging dangers: The rapidly approaching El Niño, for instance, is threatening massive “food shocks” that will stretch into at least 2028:
“El Niño puts ‘climateflation’ back on the agenda,” analysts at the Italian bank UniCredit wrote in a research note. “Europe’s recent heatwaves are a reminder that the climate baseline is already shifting. El Niño could add a new layer of pressure later this year, as it amplifies the effects of global warming.”
According to analysts at Goldman Sachs, the strength of this El Niño could cause a 15.8% surge in global food commodity prices. That would have a knock-on effect worldwide, including for consumers in Europe, where it predicted food prices could rise by 1.3% across the eurozone.
Unlike politicians, bankers actually try to do something to limit their risk. As Ishika Mookerjee reports, private equity funds are unleashing an increasing army of “heat detectives” to figure out the climate risks of their investments:
A Bloomberg Green analysis of the latest sustainability reports published by 12 of the largest alternative asset managers show overall mentions of physical climate risks and related terms nearly doubled from a year before, with Carlyle Group Inc., General Atlantic LP, KKR & Co. and Partners Group AG seeing large increases. Funds tend to identify floods and cyclones as the most immediate risks. Most are now screening their portfolios for vulnerabilities to heat and treating it as a long-term, chronic risk, especially for their combined private equity assets totaling more than $700 billion.
Given all that, the endlessly maddening question is why are we still headed down this path. Why is Gov. Kathy Hochul not listening to the private equity sleuths headquartered in her state’s financial capital and instead signing up New Yorkers for 40 years of new natural gas pipelines, and why is Hawaii flirting with liquefied natural gas? Why is the Trump administration doing everything it can to run our bill ever higher?
If you think the answer must be that there’s some competing policy formulation that comes up with different numbers, think again. Here’s the remarkable account from Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman of the first meeting between the oil industry and the Trump White House after the 2024 election:
At one point during the meeting, the executives began complaining about the Climate Superfund bills that had recently passed in Vermont and New York. As they spoke, Trump’s policy adviser, Stephen Miller was texting the attorney general Pam Bondi. “I’m on it,” Miller told the group. Less than two months later, the administration sued both states seeking to block enforcement of the laws.
In another instance, the ExxonMobil chief executive, Darren Woods, voiced concerns about European Union regulations that required big companies to monitor and reduce the environmental effects of their activities and develop “climate transition plans.”
Haberman and Swan report that, upon hearing this, Trump instructed Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick to impose additional tariffs on the EU until they abandoned those regulations.
At another point in the meeting, held in the Cabinet Room on March 19, 2025, Miller asked the executives in attendance for a list of 10 projects the White House could help fast-track and requested that they “highlight how much more energy the projects would produce in the United States during the Trump presidency.”
And in one of the most fateful exchanges, the Chevron chief executive, Mike Wirth, pushed for an extension of the firm’s license to operate in Venezuela.
Less than a year later, the Trump administration had seized the country’s leader, Nicolás Maduro. Shortly after that, Chevron expanded its presence in Venezuela.
Yesterday I called Swan to discuss this reporting, and he described to me a room filled with some of the most powerful executives in the world, stunned by what they were witnessing.
“They were almost in awe,” Swan told me. “There was no semblance of a policy process, but rather the CEOs were raising their grievances, and Trump was essentially saying, ‘Make it so, it shall be done.’”
Indeed, as David Fickling reports, Big Oil has no choice but to rely on gaming political systems, because private investors have shifted most of their money to clean energy. That means that subsidies are ever more important:
The cost of these measures looks set to rise to about $1.1 trillion this year, according to a study last week by the United Nations Development Programme. If crude averages $110 a barrel over the full year, it could climb as high as $1.43 trillion. That’s almost as much as was spent on such subsidies during the year the Ukraine war started in 2022.
Whatever the final figure, the amount of government cash support pumped into the fossil fuel system this year will be running close to the amount that both public and private investors were prepared to invest in it. It’s an extraordinary situation for an industry that claims to be governed by capitalist laws of supply and demand, rather than statist central planning.
Just to reiterate: Instead of speeding the conversion to clean cheap energy, which would save households huge amounts of money, we’re instead shoveling taxpayer cash to the fossil fuel industry, and in the process overheating the Earth, which will be the most expensive thing that ever happened, by orders of magnitude. The most important thing the planet’s leaders could possibly do is flip this switch, and reverse these flows—we’ve clearly got the money, since we’re shelling out these huge sums in subsidies. Fickling again:
This support is so pervasive that in most places we don’t even notice or question it. That has to change. Governments must stop throwing sand in the gears of the energy transition. Far from reducing as the climate emergency intensifies and heatwaves claim thousands of lives, they have been doubling down on counterproductive support for polluting fuels, while loading tariffs and regulations onto clean energy.
The horrible irony here is that markets are coming much closer to getting things right than our political institutions, which are currently doing all they can to maintain the status quo. Our next real chance to disrupt that madness? November 3.
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