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inequality
'A Crime of Extreme Inequality': Richest 0.1% Generate More Carbon Pollution Than Half of Humanity
“The ultra-rich are setting the planet on fire and then charging the rest of us for the extinguishers."
Oct 27, 2026
The richest 0.1% of humanity generates more planet-heating carbon pollution than nearly half of the global population combined, according to an Oxfam analysis released late Monday as world leaders prepared to gather in Türkiye next month for the United Nations climate summit.
The new analysis provides an updated look at global elites' outsized contribution to a climate crisis that disproportionately impacts the poorest segments of the global population through increasingly devastating heatwaves, droughts, flooding, and other extreme weather, causing death, destruction, and mass displacement worldwide.
Oxfam estimates that a person in the richest 0.1% "has contributed nearly 400 times more to today’s extreme heatwaves than someone in the poorest 50%." The 8 million richest people in the world combined produce "over three times more carbon pollution than the entire population of Sub-Saharan Africa"—around 1.3 billion people.
"The climate crisis is often described as a shared human challenge. It is not," said Amitabh Behar, Oxfam International's executive director. "Those who have done the least to cause it are losing their homes, their harvests and, increasingly, their lives. Meanwhile, the super-rich can buy their way out of danger—by retreating to high-tech underground survival bunkers, hiring private firefighting crews, and securing private insurance—and are actively profiting from the consequences of their pollution. This is not a tragedy of shared fate; it is a crime of extreme inequality."
Oxfam's report notes that the same investors and firms profiting massively from the fossil fuel companies driving the climate crisis are also benefiting from disaster preparedness and recovery. The analysis places those investors in what it calls a "Destroy and Rebuild" index.
"Six major asset managers (including Vanguard, BlackRock, and State Street) make up more than one-quarter of all the Destroy and Rebuild corporations," the report states. "BlackRock and Vanguard are invested in 92% of the corporations in the index: The pair’s total investments in these corporations are more than $1 trillion."
“The ultra-rich are setting the planet on fire and then charging the rest of us for the extinguishers," said Behar. "They profit from the pollution. They profit from the disaster. And they profit again from the clean-up.”
"While ordinary people are forced to grapple with the consequences of emergencies they bear little responsibility in fueling, billionaires are busy outrunning the reality they and their private jets created."
In the United States—where the country's billionaire president has taken a sledgehammer to domestic and international efforts to combat the climate crisis—a person in the richest 0.1% emits 48 times as much carbon dioxide as the average American.
"The country’s richest 0.1% (333,271 people) emit 108 times more CO2 per person than the poorest half of the population (166.6 million people)," Oxfam's analysis shows. "In just under four months (118.3 days), someone in the richest 0.1% emits more CO2 than someone in the poorest half of the U.S. has emitted over the last 30 years."
Rachel Carle, senior advisor on climate justice at Oxfam America, said in a statement that the global climate emergency is "an inequality crisis at its core."
"While ordinary people are forced to grapple with the consequences of emergencies they bear little responsibility in fueling, billionaires are busy outrunning the reality they and their private jets created," said Carle. "Mark Zuckerberg can hunker down in his Hawaiian bunker at the first sign of chaos, but the rest of us don’t have that luxury. Addressing this glaring inequality is the first step to mitigating climate disaster, and that starts with making ultra-rich polluters pay their fair share."
In view of its findings, Oxfam urged governments to use the upcoming COP31 summit in Türkiye to:
- Make rich polluters pay to significantly and rapidly curb their carbon emissions, including through permanent wealth and income taxes, a permanent tax on fossil fuel corporations, and punitive taxes on high-emitting luxury items like private jets;
- Substantially increase climate finance for the Global South, prioritizing public, grant-based finance rather than loans that deepen debt. The amount for adaptation should be tripled by 2035;
- Radically reduce inequality within and between countries, including through climate-resilient public infrastructure and public services; and
- End profiteering from climate disasters. Governments need to curb corporate power in emergency response, reconstruction, and food systems during disasters.
"Another future remains possible," Oxfam's report concludes. "Creating a more equal world would enable emissions to fall rapidly, food systems to become fairer and more resilient, and the creation of public systems to protect people from crisis and adapt to the effects of climate change. Achieving that future will require bold political choices to curb excessive wealth and corporate power while investing in the resilience, rights, and livelihoods of the majority. Climate justice and equality must now become the foundation of climate action."
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Thousands March Across Europe Against Inequality and 'for Young People’s Future'
“Looking at countries like the United States, we don’t want to end up like them, where part of the population has everything and the others have nothing,” one French protester said.
Oct 24, 2026
Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets across Europe on Saturday as anger continues to build over the rising cost of living and deteriorating social services.
While demonstrators emphasized different demands in different countries, the protest wave reflects a sense that the status quo has ceased to work for ordinary people, especially the young.
“I see so many more similarities than differences,” Alice de Brito, the vice president of French student union UNEF, told CNN of the protests. “We are all talking about the need for investments in education, in the universities, in youth in general. But we are also talking about the cost of living, about housing.”
France
Across France, between 410,000 and 800,000 people turned out in the continuation of protests that erupted in September when students began to mobilize against underfunding, teacher shortages, and other poor conditions in their schools. Adult workers have joined with the students, criticizing widespread inequality and the rising cost of living, leading to mass demonstrations on October 17 and again a week later.
“Looking at countries like the United States, we don’t want to end up like them, where part of the population has everything and the others have nothing,” Paris protester Louis Ledoux--Xatard told The Associated Press.
“Too many billionaires; we are preparing the revolution," one group of protesters chanted, according to Al Jazeera.
There were 289 protests in France, including in Marseilles, Nantes, Nice, Lyon, Bordeaux, and Orleans. Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said that almost 1,000 people were arrested, though the number was expected to grow. Two people sustained significant injuries.
"Behind every police officer, a compliant camera."
The protest in Paris had originally been scheduled to run through the center of the city, but authorities relocated it to outskirts and banned marches organized by groups other than unions.
"It won’t stop the movement. It won’t stop students from demanding better conditions in schools,” nurse Soumaya Abed told AP of the changes.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who leads the left-wing France Unbowed party, criticized the government of President Emmanuel Macron for changing the route, but also praised the marchers for carrying on.
"Total victory for the social movement," Mélenchon wrote on social media. "The march gathered at the new authorized point and is now flowing calmly over more than four kilometers. The provocations for disorder by the Paris police prefect and [French Prime Minister Sébastien] Lecornu are a total failure. For the authorities, it is time to give in, or soon they will have only the exit door left."
Victoire totale du mouvement social. La marche s'est rassemblée au nouveau point autorisé et déferle dans le calme sur plus de quatre kilomètres. Les provocations aux désordres du préfet de police et de Lecornu sont un échec total. Pour les autorités, il est temps de céder, sinon il ne leur restera bientôt que la porte de sortie.
— Jean-Luc Mélenchon (@JLMelenchon) October 24, 2026
Media reported that the Parisian demonstration was largely peaceful until the end, when police released tear gas and fired water cannons and some black-clad protesters threw projectiles.
Reporters with Agence France-Presse said they saw:
police charge several times and vigorously use tear gas and batons against some, mostly young, protesters.
"The police started moving towards everyone, telling them to get down and back off. They were just taking people down, you know, beating protesters," one demonstrator bleeding from a baton blow to his face, who gave his first name as David, told AFP.
Other witnesses also described a repressive police response to The Guardian:
Mike, a 23-year-old student who also declined to give his surname, said: “Look around, they’re just teenagers. Is it normal for teenagers to be teargassed and beaten with batons?”
For Jessica, a 24-year-old student, said: “I just don’t understand why there’s so much violence. I feel like our right to protest is being trampled on.”
Mélenchon lambasted the police and the media for working together to discredit the movement.
"In Paris, to ruin the day and unwind, the so-called forces of law and order gas and fire into the crowd at the back of the procession, all in a bid to get footage for the domestic news channels that spent the whole week airing the images that spurred the Trappes killer," he wrote on social media, referring to a racially motivated shooting west of Paris on Friday that killed one and wounded five.
In a second post, he added: "It continues with the policing of minds through the televisions of power. Tonight, staging of the « tails of the procession » to spew hatred against the popular movement. Without a single image of the masses in peaceful action. Behind every police officer, a compliant camera."
He encouraged readers to "turn off the televisions! Form your own opinion without a guardian. Journey through social networks. Stay free to think for yourselves."
Belgium
In neighboring Belgium, hundreds of people marched in Brussels in a continuation of demonstrations for improvements in the education system.
“We are here for young people’s future, for better work," rally speaker Celia Ponce told the crowd, as The Brussels Times reported.
She also accused governments of wanting to "destroy public services."
Protesters build barricades with bikes and scooters in Brussels, Belgium.Follow Press TV on Telegram: https://t.co/1ymjeeywxb https://t.co/TtQNj1BQYU
— PressTV Extra (@PresstvExtra) October 24, 2026
Police used tear gas to disperse some protesters and, in an incident reported by Reuters, kicked and hit one demonstrator after they fell during a chase.
Spain
Approximately 25,000 people marched in Madrid to support Spain's pension system and demand that it keep pace with inflation and that a gender gap be eliminated, according to Al Jazeera.
"How beautiful Madrid is when it defends its rights," Emilio Delgado, deputy spokesperson for left party Mas Madrid, wrote on social media. "We propose that no pension should be below the minimum wage. A lifetime of work deserves a dignified retirement."
Un aviso a @NunezFeijoo: No vamos a permitir que recortéis las pensiones. https://t.co/lQ7V0cQomZ
— Emilio Delgado (@EmilioDelgadoOr) October 24, 2026
The protests come a month ahead of Spain's general election, in which current Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez's Spanish Socialist Workers' Party will face off against the right-wing Popular Party. Popular Party leader Alberto Nunez Feijoo has promised to adjust pensions according to inflation if his party wins, but demonstrators are still concerned about what a right-wing victory would mean for the pension system.
Portugal
In Portugal, meanwhile, the main demand was affordable housing.
People marched in Lisbon, continuing a movement that began October 10 in the city of Porto calling on the government to address the country's housing crisis, according to The Resident.
Palco dos protestos promovidos pelo movimento Acampada de Lisboa, o Rossio voltou a acolher "um mar de gente" que reivindica soluções do Governo para a atual crise da habitação.Veja a reportagem em direto no local: https://t.co/gpSIyl2mLr#agitacaosocial #europa #protestos #manifestacoes #lisboa #rossio #pais #portugal #habitacao #custodevida #noticias #sicnoticias
— SIC Notícias (@SICNoticias) October 24, 2026
"We have no home, so we set up tents!” read the slogan of the March, organized by the Acampada de Lisboa movement.
The protesters also opposed new policies from Prime Minister Luis Montenegro that would weaken a limit on annual rent increases and make it easier to evict people who are unable to make rent payments, according to AP.
Italy
Thousands of people joined demonstrations across Italy to protest the affordability crisis as well as the right-wing government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Protests were called for eight cities including Milan, Turin, and Rome, with 10,000 attending the Milan demonstration alone.
“We are here because of the rising prices and because I believe that our government has no respect for its citizens,” a 17-year-old student participant, who did not give a name, told Al Jazeera. “There are four people in my family. My mother works in a factory, but my father is about to lose his job. It’s hard to make ends meet on just one salary."
Thousands of protesters took to the streets across Italy to demonstrate against Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing government and the rising cost of living, as hundreds of soldiers were deployed to Milan as protests continue.🔗: https://t.co/JquqwnAyhj https://t.co/B97TnZaY9L
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) October 24, 2026
The Italian protests were a continuation of demonstrations that have taken place throughout October. There were fewer clashes between police and demonstrators on Saturday compared with earlier marches, though some protesters tried to enter the Colosseum before being pushed back.
Albania
In Albania, outrage over plans by US President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner to build a luxury resort near a protected wildlife area—which is widely seen as an example of government corruption—has dovetailed with demands by students for less corruption in the education system specifically as well as lower tuition fees and more funding.
A demonstration in the capital of Tirana on Saturday marked the 12th day of anti-government protests this month following a summer of mobilizations against the luxury hotel.
Some protesters lit fires and threw projectiles, while police used tear gas, rubber bullets, and water cannons.
Protesters in Albania have fought running battles with police, on a 12th day of anti-government protests. Police in the capital, Tirana, used water cannon, tear gas and rubber bullets after Prime Minister Edi Rama warned he would take strong action to quell unrest. https://t.co/6oZMYPU7Ei
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) October 24, 2026
One demonstrator, the 28-year-old Daniel Tahiri, told Reuters that the Albanian government was a "dictatorship with the clothes of democracy."
"Albanians have woken up," Tahiri said.
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1.5 Million Latinos Lost Food Aid Since Trump Passed Tax Giveaway for the Rich: Analysis
“As is so often the case, working families and communities of color bear the brunt of Trump’s economic policies."
Oct 20, 2026
An analysis published Tuesday estimates that 1.5 million US Latinos have lost access to federal food assistance since the passage of President Donald Trump’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the latest of numerous indicators of how the law's evisceration of the social safety net is hitting working-class families while delivering enormous benefits to the wealthy.
The analysis by Unrig Our Economy and Americans for Tax Fairness estimates that in seven states alone—Texas, Arizona, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Nebraska, and Iowa—771,687 Latinos have lost Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits since July 2025, when Trump signed the sweeping budget reconciliation package into law. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) contains the biggest cuts to SNAP and Medicaid in those programs' histories.
According to the analysis, Texas alone accounts for more than half of those losses, with an estimated 396,164 Latino residents losing food assistance, while Arizona has lost another 200,124 and New York has lost 92,816.
“The Republican tax law took food assistance away from more than 1.5 million Latinos to pay for tax breaks for billionaires and big corporations,” Leor Tal, campaign director for Unrig Our Economy, said in a statement. “Families are already struggling with the high cost of groceries and gas thanks to the war in Iran and tariffs. SNAP cuts make it even harder for Latino families—who are disproportionately impacted—to put food on the table.”
More broadly, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimated earlier this year that SNAP enrollment fell by more than 5 million people between July 2025 and June 2026, while more than 1.5 million children lost assistance.
The OBBBA contains new SNAP qualification requirements for people experiencing homelessness, veterans, former foster youth, and older adults. The Trump administration says the new rules are meant to ensure that only the truly needy receive benefits. However, the more stringent requirements are harming some of the most vulnerable people, as compliance procedures have proved to be an exclusionary barrier to qualified aid applicants.
The SNAP cuts have fueled what the New York Federal Reserve Bank in May called a “remarkable increase in food insecurity, particularly among lower-educated and lower-income households and households with young children.”
“The results are in: Trump and his GOP allies in Congress cut critical nutrition assistance that helps millions of Latinos and working people across the country meet their basic needs—all to deliver historic tax giveaways to billionaires and business elites,” said Jodie Rubenstein, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness.
“As is so often the case, working families and communities of color bear the brunt of Trump’s economic policies," Rubenstein added. "We cannot allow billionaire wealth to grow unchecked while communities go hungry.”
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40+ California Multimillionaires Sign Open Letter Backing Billionaire Wealth Tax
"We have the chance to lead the world in establishing basic tax fairness, raising revenues for essential programs, and checking the power of the richest among us."
Oct 20, 2026
Dozens of multimillionaire Californians have signed an open letter supporting a one-time wealth tax on the state's billionaire residents, calling the proposal a "very sensible solution" to a looming healthcare disaster and runaway inequality.
"People like us can afford to live wherever we want. We choose to live in California because we love our state," reads the letter, which was organized by Patriotic Millionaires and Tax The Ultra Rich Now. "As multimillionaires, we’re willing to do our part. It’s past time for billionaires—our thousand millionaire cousins—to do theirs. Their opposition to this commonsense idea is embarrassing for all of us."
The letter's signatories, including filmmaker Tim Disney and former congressional candidate Saikat Chakrabarti, reject arguments that a 5% wealth tax on California's billionaires would hamper innovation and damage the state's economic status.
"I’m not a billionaire, but I have enough experience building wealth in California’s tech sector to know this fear is overblown," said Chakrabarti. "A one-time, retroactive tax on 200 or so billion-dollar fortunes is in no way going to disincentivize future innovators from coming to/staying in the tech capital of the world and creating new products, services, and businesses. If I can afford to pay more in tax, so can my billionaire neighbors—especially as many of them make a killing with advances in AI."
The letter comes as billionaire opponents of the tax, which will appear on California's November ballot as Proposition 40, ramp up their spending against the measure in the days ahead of the midterm elections. One recent analysis of financial disclosures estimates that the initiative's billionaire opponents—including Google co-founder Sergey Brin and venture capitalist Peter Thiel—are spending roughly $1 million per day to defeat it.
The ballot measure is also opposed by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has endorsed a competing initiative that would cancel out the billionaire tax and prohibit future wealth taxes.
Experts say the proposed billionaire tax would raise around $100 billion in revenue, which would mostly be used to offset the impacts of federal Medicaid cuts that President Donald Trump signed into law last summer.
"Our state is one of the many starving for revenues and facing the prospect of drastic cuts to essential services like healthcare, food assistance, and education," the open letter reads. "Prop 40—a one-time, 5% tax on the wealth of billionaires—would help solve this problem and achieve what we’re after: establishing tax fairness, raising desperately needed revenues, and checking the power of the rich."
"To our fellow Californians, we have the chance to make history in November," the letter continues. "We have the chance to lead the world in establishing basic tax fairness, raising revenues for essential programs, and checking the power of the richest among us. With so much on the line, we urge you to stand up for the future of all Californians and vote 'yes' on Prop 40.
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'The Government Is Trembling': Protests Erupt in France, Spreading to 140 Cities
"For years we've had climate, economy, and equality problems, but the government is not doing anything about it," said one protester.
Oct 17, 2026
Protests erupted throughout France on Saturday, with demonstrators citing a wide variety of grievances including inequality, the high cost of living, and poor conditions in the nation's schools.
As reported by Agence France-Presse, tens of thousands of demonstrators marched in Paris and other cities to protest what they said was inaction by the French government on the biggest problems facing the country.
"For years we've had climate, economy, and equality problems," one protester identified as Agnes told AFP, "but the government is not doing anything about it."
18-year-old student Kamil Alahyan told AFP that there are "so many reasons" to protest, including "the elections coming up in 2027, politicians who lie, the ultra-rich who've been taking more and more wealth over the past 10 years."
A 19-year-old protester identified as Lola expressed a similar view in an interview published by The Guardian on Saturday.
"We are fighting because the cost of living is too harsh," Lola said, "because the price of fuel is too high, because high school pupils are being violently attacked and hurt all over the country just for trying to protest and ask for more teachers and decent learning conditions."
Student organizer Ryad Rani told AFP that "the government is trembling and it's right to tremble because when the French people are angry, they never let up."
Saturday's demonstrations mark the expansion of a movement that began last month when students blockaded their schools to protest staffing shortages, dilapidated buildings, and a widely criticized university application system.
According to The New York Times, demonstrations took place in at least 140 cities across the country.
Some of the protests did turn violent in major cities including Lyon, Marseille, and Paris, AFP reported. A Saturday BBC report claimed that more than 270 protesters have been arrested nationwide.
French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu accused "ultra-left groups" of inciting violence at the demonstrations.
"To those who clearly want to use these acts of violence as a 'warm-up' ahead of the presidential election, let me be clear: we will not be intimidated," Lecornu wrote in a social media post. "No one will impose their political agenda through violence."
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader the left-wing France Unbowed party, slammed the media for focusing too much on the isolated incidents of violence and not reporting on the overwhelmingly peaceful nature of the demonstrations.
"Crowds of people everywhere, calm and joyful everywhere when the police aren't around," Mélenchon wrote in a social media post that featured photos of peaceful marches from across the country, which he described as "images you won't see in the official media."
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COLA Lift for Social Security Not Enough, Say Critics, as Trump Economy Makes Life Harder for Seniors
"Social Security’s future is on the ballot this November," said one advocate, "and that includes the size of annual COLA adjustments.“
Oct 14, 2026
The rising cost of healthcare and other essentials means that the modest cost-of-living adjustment for about 76 million Social Security beneficiaries, announced Wednesday by Social Security Administrator Frank Bisignano, is likely to make only a small difference for senior citizens struggling to afford gasoline and groceries, said economic justice advocates.
Bisignano said the COLA for 2027, effective in January for most beneficiaries, will be 3.6%, amounting to an average of about $75 more per month.
Along with senior citizens, 40% of whom rely on Social Security for at least half their income, about 7.3 million people with disabilities who receive Supplemental Security Income will also receive the COLA increase starting December 31.
The COLA is higher than last year's, when the SSA adjusted monthly earned benefits by 2.8%.
But Richard Fiesta, executive director of the Alliance for Retired Americans, said the new increase "is just not enough to keep up with the cost of food, gas, utilities, and prescription drugs."
"A good chunk" of increased Social Security payments "will be wiped out" by higher premiums for Medicare Part B, which covers medically necessary and preventive healthcare services, said Fiesta. Those premiums are projected to rise to $209.50 per month in January, up from $202.90 per month this year.
Medicare Part D prescription drug plans are also expected to see increased premiums next year, while Social Security beneficiaries, like other Americans, will likely be impacted by continued inflation driven by President Donald Trump's illegal war on Iran and his tariff policy.
Social Security recipients are aware of the limits of the COLA, a poll released Monday by the AARP showed. Seventy-six percent of respondents said a 3.5% COLA would not keep up with rising prices they are facing at the grocery store, gas station, and pharmacy.
Fiesta called on billionaires and the wealthiest 1% of Americans to "pay their fair share" to make it possible to "boost benefits for everyone, implement a COLA that reflects the cost of things older Americans spend money on, and guarantee the program’s solvency for future generations."
While most American workers pay into Social Security year-round, millionaires in the US stop paying into the program just two months into the year because the payroll tax does not apply to income over a certain level. Some of the richest Americans, like Tesla CEO Elon Musk, pay very little into the crucial anti-poverty program by earning most of their money through investments rather than income.
"In just three weeks, older Americans will have an opportunity to elect members of Congress who will make strengthening Social Security a priority. The future of our earned benefits is on the ballot.”
“Strengthening and expanding Social Security must be a national priority," said Fiesta. "It’s time for clear and decisive action. In just three weeks, older Americans will have an opportunity to elect members of Congress who will make strengthening Social Security a priority. The future of our earned benefits is on the ballot.”
At Social Security Works (SSW), which advocates for strengthening the program and regularly debunks myths from the Republican Party claiming that Social Security is unaffordable for the country, Nancy Altman said the COLA increase "will help" some seniors, "but it doesn’t fully account for the costs that Social Security beneficiaries face."
"The Trump administration’s war of choice with Iran and tariff chaos have driven gasoline prices up nearly 40 percent, and caused grocery costs to skyrocket," said Altman, president of SSW.
Part of the problem, said Altman, is the SSA's use of the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W), which measures price changes for goods purchased by working families, to determine the annual COLA.
SSW has called for the use of the Consumer Price Index for the Elderly (CPI-E) to better reflect how Social Security recipients spend their money.
Meanwhile, Altman said, Republicans including House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) have proposed calculating the COLA using the chained Consumer Price Index (CPI), which would “substantially lower benefits over time," according to an AARP analysis.
“That’s a cut to the American people’s hard-earned benefits," said Altman. "Over time, switching to the chained CPI, as the Republicans have proposed, would shrink yearly benefits by hundreds and even thousands of dollars. Switching to the CPI-E, as the Democrats propose, would increase benefits. This would particularly impact women and Hispanics, who have longer average life expectancies."
She noted that US senators elected in November will have a say in whether Social Security remains fully funded through their six-year terms—and urged Americans to vote accordingly.
In 2032, said Altman, "Social Security is projected to face a funding shortfall. The vast majority of Republicans refuse to support a single penny in revenue increases, even from the ultra-wealthy, to address the shortfall. That leaves benefit cuts, including less generous COLAs, as their only option."
"The bottom line: Social Security’s future is on the ballot this November," she said, "and that includes the size of annual COLA adjustments.“
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Donald Trump Has Colonized the Ultimate Frontier: Our Minds
He has taken us over and, resist as we will, we live in "his" world now. Even our thoughts are shaped and limited by the polarity he has bludgeoned onto the world.
Oct 12, 2026
Hope,
Vanquished, cries, and an atrocious and despotic Anguish,
On my bent neck plants his black flag.
[Charles Baudelaire, “Spleen”]
It should have been an ordinary conversation. A former political colleague; her partner, a poet; my wife, and I, at a farmer’s market we visit every Saturday. We talked about a few people we knew, and then we paused. “We won’t talk about the larger political situation,” the poet said. “Too much depressing stuff there.”
I was taken by surprise, because what she said was true. Not in the usual sense, that a nameless police force was arresting and deporting Americans, that there was a hell-mell push into fossil fuels despite the rapid progress of global warming, that democracy and free elections were imperiled, that the social safety net was being slashed to ribbons of its former self. That the rich were getting evermore rich, and faster, or that corruption on a monumental scale had infected our politics.
No, what was surprising was my realization that worry and decline and hopelessness had so infected our lives that there was little else to talk about. With that subject out of bounds—we would not, could not, talk about Donald Trump—we were reduced to silence. A good book, a wonderful movie, the pleasures of the late summer garden, a recipe we liked, even the weather: All were reduced to the margin, crowded out by an administration intent on destroying not only the present, but the future. Unchecked AI could destroy humanity within 10 years; the American president (at the United Nations no less!) threatened to drop nuclear weapons and eradicate Iran; measles and polio were once again on the brink of becoming an epidemic: These were things we would not discuss.
Donald Trump had pervaded every nook and cranny of our consciousness. And if we ruled out talking about him and his coterie, well, there was nothing left to talk about.
Donald Trump has turned our minds into a battlefield where his image dominates every activity.
It was a terrifying realization, that all life and thought had been reduced to talking about Trump. With him, terror abounds; without him, conversation shrinks into silence.
This is the most lasting damage he has done. He has taken over our waking (and non-waking, perhaps) lives, reducing the richness of consciousness to the sterility of staring at ruin and catastrophe, all over, all the time.
Seventy years ago, in his satiric poem, “America,” Allen Ginsberg asked, “Are you going to let your emotional life be run by Time magazine?” Today, it is Donald Trump who runs our emotional lives. Without him, we have little to talk about, other than family. (It should be stated: Often family is very much worth talking about, and being connected to. A healthful alternative to Trump.)
Trump’s monuments to himself (the ballroom, the helipad, the triumphal arch) will not, no matter what he thinks, remain. Like Ozymandias, the ancient king whom Percy Bysshe Shelley memorialized by writing of his statue, all will one day be in ruins.
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
But in another way, he has succeeded. We each have only one life to live. So much of our waking lives, of our consciousness, has been colonized by Donald Trump. In this, his presence looms immense. He is the colossus of our thoughts, and without him, we don’t know who or what we are.
At the risk of redundancy, let me repeat: Donald Trump has colonized our minds. There is little room in our consciousness for imagining the better future we once longed for, and worked for: Not much room for peace, justice, caring for the less fortunate, empathy for others. He, the potentate of revenge, to quote Baudelaire about the wreckage wrought by despair, “has planted his black flag on our bent neck.”
We marvel and rebel at his colonization of all branches of government, on his desire to turn allies into vassal states, on his dividing the nation and the world into spheres he can control. What we do not pay enough notice to is how at the same time Donald Trump’s existence has reduced our lives and hopes. He has taken us over and, resist as we will, we live in "his" world now. Even our thoughts are shaped and limited by the polarity he has bludgeoned onto the world.
Our minds were once, to press a metaphor, a garden where we could gambol as imagination pushed us one way or another, a free space where we could hope, or plan for a better future, or just replenish ourselves as we move through the difficulties of daily life. Now? Donald Trump has turned our minds into a battlefield where his image dominates every activity. We are his, now. Alas.
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172 Billionaire Families Have Spent Record $1.7 Billion on 2026 Midterms So Far: Analysis
"With each passing election since the Citizens United decision, billionaires have systematically bought up our democracy."
Oct 07, 2026
An analysis released Wednesday shows that 172 billionaire families in the United States have collectively spent more than $1.7 billion on the 2026 elections—a record-shattering sum for a midterm cycle.
The analysis by the Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) Action Fund shows that the "vast bulk" of billionaire political spending this election cycle has flowed to super PACs, a product of the Supreme Court's notorious 2010 Citizens United ruling. Super PACs can raise and spend unlimited sums in support of favored candidates, giving billionaires a powerful vehicle to influence elections.
ATF Action Fund found that billionaire political spending has increased 53-fold since the Citizens United decision. This cycle, less than 20% of billionaire donations went to committees subject to contribution limits.
"With each passing election since the Citizens United decision, billionaires have systematically bought up our democracy," said Jodie Rubenstein, ATF Action Fund's executive director. "These billionaires are backing a crooked tax system that shifts wealth upward through massive tax giveaways to the wealthy and big business. We can’t let billionaire money erode our democracy while working families struggle to get by."
"Working- and middle-class Americans must fight back and make clear this November that our democracy is not for sale," Rubenstein added.
The top-spending billionaire families so far this cycle are those of Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, cofounders of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. The two families have pumped a combined $149 million into the 2026 elections, with donations flowing to both Republicans and Democrats. Andreessen and Horowitz have given major donations to Leading the Future, a super PAC that opposes strict artificial intelligence regulations.
The families of investor George Soros, businessman Jeff Yass, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk are other leading spenders this cycle. The top 15 billionaire spenders have accounted for $962 million in combined 2026 election outlays, according to the new analysis.
GOP candidates have been the chief beneficiaries of billionaire election spending this cycle, ATF Action Fund found, with 113 billionaire families giving mostly to Republicans and 45 donating predominately to Democrats.
"A large group of billionaires is sending their checks to MAGA Inc., which has raised over $222 million from them since January 2025," the new analysis shows. "In fact $1 out of every $2 to Donald Trump’s MAGA Inc. super PAC comes directly from a billionaire on our list."
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Can the Billionaire Oligarchs Buy Their Way Out of Populist Outrage?
Working people notice when they're getting screwed but a massive right-wing media infrastructure exists to redirect their anger, probably the oligarchs’ greatest achievement.
Oct 06, 2026
Will the worldwide revolt against oligarchy reach America before the billionaires buy our elections this fall?
Two weeks ago tomorrow, on September 23rd, Madrid’s police had to cordon off a downtown street to carry an 87-year-old woman named María del Carmen Abascal out of the apartment she’d lived in for seven decades. She normally uses a wheelchair, so they carried her out on a stretcher, which provided some truly inflammatory social media video. All because her landlord wanted to raise the rent, which requires a change of tenants.
The pictures of María being carried out of her apartment lit Spain on fire; she’s become the face of the nation’s housing crisis which has seen average rents nearly double in the past ten years. This past weekend tens of thousands marched again, with about a thousand people camped out in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol: one banner read “Looking for an apartment, selling a kidney.”
While the pressure campaign worked on the landlord, who backed down and agreed to let her go home, it didn’t work on the “conservative” politicians who dominate the Spanish parliament. When Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s government proposed emergency tenant protections, the conservative opposition parties joined forces to kill them in parliament. As a result, Sánchez has pretty much been forced into taking the gamble of calling a snap election for November 29th.
Spain is the microcosm, but this is happening all across the developed world. France is on fire because students are tired of their schools being starved for resources. Populist movements are sweeping the European continent.
Forty-five years of “conservative” neoliberalism and austerity — all specifically designed to make the rich richer at the expense of working class people — have left average citizens furious.
And that fury is driving two parallel movements; the big question before us is which one will prevail both this fall here and over the next few years worldwide.
One movement is reflected in the encampment in Puerta del Sol where people understand that the landlord, land speculators, and the morbidly rich are the cause of their pain. You could call this the New Deal movement, for shorthand.
The other is seen in the far-right parties that have been topping the polls in Germany, France, and Britain by telling those same frightened people that it’s not the billionaires that are the problem; it’s that brown-skinned immigrant with a funny name or the queer kid who lives down the street.
Whichever side wins the argument over who’s the villain in today’s economic crisis for working people will be the one that ends up running these countries, including America.
We’ve seen this movie before here in America, although most people have no memory of it and could only vaguely recognize a quick telling of history.
The last time the morbidly rich held as much of our nation’s wealth and political power as they do today was the Gilded Age from the 1880s to the late 1920s, and popular rage at the oligarchs led to real progressive change:
- Congress passed the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890, and then progressive Republican Presidents Teddy Roosevelt and William Howard Taft used it to break up the railroad and oil trusts along with dozens of others.
- The Tillman Act of 1907 made it a crime for corporations to give money or any sort of support to federal candidates for office.
- The income tax arrived in 1913 and the estate tax in 1916, and by the 1930s Franklin Roosevelt was building Social Security, the right to unionize, and the rest of the New Deal on that simple foundation.
- After World War II, democracies around the world copied FDR’s American New Deal formula, and that tightly regulated capitalism along with high taxes on the morbidly rich produced the largest middle class in history.
Then working class people and progressives got complacent, thinking this would be the new normal forever, with a single paycheck being the entrée into the middle class. The oligarchs, however, were just getting started, just like they did during the Industrial Revolution following the Civil War that produced the first Gilded Age.
As I lay out in The Hidden History of American Oligarchy, the counterattack began in 1971 when a corrupt tobacco lawyer named Lewis Powell wrote a memo for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce urging corporate America to step up and use their great wealth to seize control of our courts, campuses, media, low-media-cost low-population states that could be flipped Red, and Congress.
The Heritage Foundation and ALEC followed within two years, as rightwing billionaires started buying radio stations, newspapers, and television networks, while Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan turned the project into government policy.
The regulations and tax rates that had restrained great wealth and political corruption came down, and the money and political power of giant corporations and the morbidly rich have largely controlled both our politics and our economy ever since.
Working people noticed they were getting screwed but by then there was a massive rightwing media infrastructure to redirect their anger, probably the oligarchs’ greatest achievement.
For example, when Bush’s 2008 property- and bank-crash set off real rage at the banks and their oligarch CEOs, Koch-funded front groups organized it into the Tea Party and pointed it at Obama and his attempts to give all Americans healthcare.
It hit its peak of success when Donald Trump came down the escalator in 2015, telling voters he didn’t need anybody’s money because, as he put it, “I’m really rich.” Suddenly it wasn’t the rich who were screwing average Americans: it was the rich who’d save us!
To pull it off, he appropriated New Deal and Great Society language, promising to save and even strengthen Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid; this is what con men have done throughout history.
The voters wanted their New Deal back with its middle class security on a single paycheck, but, true to Republican form, what they got instead was trillions in tax cuts for billionaires like Trump and his cabinet, paid for with almost a trillion dollars in cuts to Medicaid, an experimental program in six states to further privatize Medicare, and threats to cut Social Security.
One of the most interesting laboratories for finding out whether billionaire money can still buy public opinion the way the Kochs did with the Tea Party is Prop 40 in California, the 5 percent one-time tax on that state’s roughly 230 billionaires that will cover the healthcare shortfall the state will experience because of the Big Beautiful Billionaire’s Bill’s cuts to Medicaid.
A billionaire-backed group has gathered more than $187 million to stop it, while the measure’s backers have only pulled together an estimated $31 million. Google’s Sergey Brin alone has put in over $100 million.
The billionaires’ group even succeeded in getting two decoy measures, Props 41 and 42, on the same ballot, written so that if either one gets more votes than Prop 40, the billionaire tax dies even if a majority of Californians vote for it.
And the ads for the “No on 40” campaign is featuring teachers, firefighters, and the head of the state’s Planned Parenthood affiliates while the “Yes on 40” side says in the official voter guide that actual teachers, nurses, and Planned Parenthood workers support the tax.
It’s the same kind of phony grassroots campaign Reagan used when he promised cutting taxes and killing unions would increase prosperity, and when the Tea Party and GOP warned against “communism” in Obamacare, forcing the end to the possibility of a public option.
This same billionaire and corporate money is now pouring into the Senate races nationwide, using tools the robber barons of the late 19th century could have only dreamed about.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee released a deepfake of Texas Democrat James Talarico in a dress with a disclosure so small and faint that Berkeley digital forensics expert Hany Farid said most people wouldn’t immediately know it was fake. Another group produced a phony “Daisy” ad portraying him as a doctor performing gender surgeries on children.
In Michigan, Republicans greeted Abdul El-Sayed’s primary win with ads built around his full name and the Muslim Brotherhood, and their main super PAC has committed $51 million to that one race. On Sunday, I watched MS NOW play two of the newest deceptive Republican deepfakes, one putting Talarico in a makeup chair and another inventing “terrorists” in El-Sayed’s family.
Spending just on Senate races is projected to pass $3.4 billion this cycle, and most of the big money is just now starting to hit the airwaves and, thus, tightening the races that had seemed were in the bag for Democrats.
And if the lies don’t work, there’s always the power of our currently-billionaire-run government to insert itself in ways that can spin an election out of control. Last September Trump signed a national security memorandum called NSPM-7 that directs the FBI, the Treasury, and the IRS to go after the networks and funders behind what it calls domestic terrorism, and it lists among the “indicators” of that terrorism:
“anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity.”
By that standard, María’s Spanish neighbors camped in a public square to protest a greedy landlord could find themselves under investigation. Add the masked, anonymous, trigger-happy ICE thugs already working our streets with their new electric shock gloves, and the machinery of a “papers, please” society is right here right now.
There’s no way this one single election will settle all this. During the first Gilded Age, it took 45 years to go from the Sherman Act to Social Security — with quite a few lost elections along the way —and the people who won that fight went through it never knowing if they’d prevail or not; the biggest intervention was probably the Republican Great Depression.
But this November is a hinge moment in history. A Congress that can check Trump, a billionaire tax passed in the biggest state in the union, and senators like Talarico and El-Sayed who explicitly have run against the Epstein billionaire class would tell every Republican and the oligarchs who own them that their old trick of pointing at immigrants and trans kids has stopped working.
On the other hand, if the deepfakes, decoy ballot measures, massive rightwing media penetration, algorithmic manipulation on billionaire-owned social media platforms, and billions in ads win out instead, they’ll be used in every election from here on.
The easy lesson here is that if Spain’s protesters got an 87-year-old woman back into her home by showing up, we can do the same for our democracy that’s been so badly battered by 45 years of Republican con men and Democratic neoliberals.
The next No Kings day of action is Saturday, October 17th, and “No Kings” has always meant “No Oligarchs,” too.
Check your registration at vote.org, call your members of Congress through the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121 and tell them you want deepfake political ads outlawed, and if you live in California, vote yes on 40 and no on 41 and 42.
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The Wealthy Hold More Power Than Ever—Can We Take It Back?
How can government enact and enforce the necessary reforms if it’s under the control of a power elite that won’t permit them?
Oct 05, 2026
Behind this election’s dominant issue of affordability lies the record concentration of wealth at the top of America. The richest 0.001% of Americans—a handful of extraordinarily wealthy men—now control more of the nation’s wealth than at any time in modern history.
To be sure, wealth is not a zero-sum game in which the riches of those at the top necessarily come at the expense of everyone else. But power is a zero-sum game, because the more of it that is held by some people, the less of it is held by others.
Wealth cannot be separated from power. Great wealth becomes great power through campaign contributions, media ownership, the ability to buy off opposition, the capacity to wage pubic relations campaigns, and the resources to deploy armies of lawyers who litigate on your behalf. Recent years provide abundant illustration of all this.
This massive power shift is even more starkly illustrated by the billionaires, financial mavens, and tech bros who put Trump in power, who refuse to slow climate change, and who are now deciding on the future of AI and therefore humanity.
In these ways, great power also becomes great wealth. It buys changes in laws, regulations, and court decisions that bestow even more wealth on those with the power to alter the system to their benefit—and to siphon off resources from everyone else.
This power shift has also become clearly evident in recent years. In the Trump era it has taken the form of blatant corruption. But the political bribes, billionaire media ownership, PR campaigns, and well-financed litigation predated President Donald Trump.
For many years (with the notable exception of the Biden administration), antitrust enforcement has been defanged to make it easier for big firms to monopolize. Among the most widely discussed findings about the US economy is the rise of corporate concentration since the 1980s. The biggest firms, their top executives, and their major shareholders have all done wonderfully well. Consumers and employees, however, have faced higher prices, lower paychecks, and fewer choices.
At the same time, labor laws have been altered to make it more difficult to organize unions. In the 1950s, more than a third of private-sector workers were unionized. Now, fewer than 6% are.
Tax laws have been changed to reduce the rates and amounts paid by the super-wealthy, to the point where many pay no taxes at all—even though they have more wealth than ever.
This massive power shift is even more starkly illustrated by the billionaires, financial mavens, and tech bros who put Trump in power, who refuse to slow climate change, and who are now deciding on the future of AI and therefore humanity.
The question I keep coming back to is whether this can be reversed.
There is historic precedent. After the first Gilded Age—which ran from the 1890s to the start of World War I, and which featured wide inequalities of income, wealth, and political power—America reacted in what came to be known as the Progressive Era.
Starting under Theodore Roosevelt, monopolies were busted up, corporations were regulated, a progressive income tax was enacted, and corporate political donations (bribes) were barred. Then, starting in 1933, under Teddy Roosevelt’s fifth cousin, power continued to be shifted to what became the largest middle class in world history.
Then came the 1970s and 1980s, when the process began to go in reverse.
The challenge is arguably much greater today because wealth and power are more concentrated than in the first Gilded Age, creating a chicken-and-egg paradox: How can government enact and enforce the necessary reforms if it’s under the control of a power elite that won’t permit them?
Now, just four weeks from what could be a major political victory for the Democrats in taking back at least one chamber of Congress, this paradox should soon be the center of our national debate.
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