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In Trumplandia, Peace Ain’t What It’s Cracked Up to Be
Has anyone noticed how much peace has broken out in the USA ever since Donald Trump descended that golden escalator onto the stage of American politics?
Feb 04, 2026
This past January 15, the 2025 Nobel Laureate for Peace, Maria Corina Machado, took her prize medal, encased in a gold (of course) and glass frame, to the White House and presented it to our president. Beneath the medal, Machado had inscribed these words:
Presented as a Personal Symbol of Gratitude on behalf of the Venezuelan People in Recognition of President Trump’s Principled and Decisive Action to Secure a Free Venezuela. The Courage of America and its President Donald J. Trump, will Never be Forgotten by the Venezuelan People.
While our “peacemaker-in-chief” was no doubt gladdened by Machado’s unprecedented gesture, he still sounded a bit pouty by claiming that having “put out eight wars, in theory, you should get [a Nobel Peace Prize] for each war” in which he boasted that he had “saved millions and millions of lives.”
The eight “wars” he takes credit for ending—Israel-Hamas, Israel-Iran, India-Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo-Rwanda, Armenia-Azerbaijan, Cambodia-Thailand, Serbia-Kosovo, and Egypt-Ethiopia—on the one hand, were all short-lived ceasefires or border skirmishes rather than the end of formal wars and, on the other, are places where tensions persist and conflict continues. Bottom line regarding all these faux wars is that Trump is as entitled to claim Machado’s Nobel Peace Prize as he is to take credit for walking on the moon long before Neil Armstrong did.
Where are our patriots—progressive patriots, five, eight, ten-million strong—called to the nation’s capital, like the “patriots” of January 6, willing to take our stand and storm the White House?
Closer to home, has anyone noticed how much peace has broken out in the USA ever since Donald Trump descended that golden escalator onto the stage of American politics?
In his very first very “presidential” campaign speech, he launched his first anti-immigration salvo: “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best… They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
Since Trump entered politics, a 2020 report from the FBI revealed that hate crimes increased by just under 20% in America.
According to CNN (January 26, 2026), the Obama years (2009-2016) saw 213 mass shootings at schools, churches, or shopping areas—an average of 26.6 shootings per year. Since Trump (2017-2025), the total number has risen to 556 and an average of 61.8 per year.
At Charlie Kirk’s memorial service, Trump contrasted his approach to campaigning to that of Charlie Kirk—himself no saint in the political arena:
He did not hate his opponents. He wanted the best for them. That's where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponent, and I don't want the best for them… maybe they can convince me that that's not right, but I can't stand my opponent.
Since Trump, instances of school bullying and antisemitic attacks have risen precipitously. These included the mass shootings in the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and in a Walmart supermarket in El Paso, Texas, conducted by white supremacists who embraced racist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theories popular in their circles. As to instances of bullying, just after Trump’s 2024 election victory an elementary school teacher in Georgia reported, “This is my 21st year of teaching. This is the first time I’ve had a student call another student the N-word.”
In 2022 a deranged attacker broke into the San Francisco home of then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). Finding her husband at home, he asked, “Where’s Nancy?” Learning she was in Washington DC, he began assaulting Paul Pelosi, beating him with a hammer and fracturing his skull. Several days later, a number of Republicans, including the president, made light of the attack.
The president’s official coin commemorating the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution bears the face of Trump on one side and on the other his post-assassination image of a bloodied but defiant Trump admonishing his fellow Americans to “Fight! Fight! Fight!”
During his 2016 campaign rallies, he urged his followers to punch protesters in the mouth, promising to pay their lawyers’ fees.
In his first term, on immigration he wondered why the US could not get more migrants from, say, Norway instead of from “shithole countries” in Africa or elsewhere.
In his first off-year election (2018) Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) were all elected to the US House of Representatives and became known as “The Squad.” On July 14, 2019, Trump publicly advised them to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done.”
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) led the fight(s) to impeach Trump, one of whose followers left Schiff a warning in the congressman’s voice mailbox: “I’m gonna f-ing blow your brains out,”
As his first term was ending, Trump encouraged some 2,500 of his closest friends to march on Congress and “fight like hell” on January 6, 2021. Later, very early in his second term he pardoned them and awarded some of them the Presidential Medal of Freedom. When informed that the “patriots” had hung a noose from makeshift gallows on Capitol grounds to “hang Mike Pence,” as the chant admonished, Trump, the defender of evangelical Christians, replied, “So what?”
All through his second campaign for the presidency (2024) he centered his message on anti-immigration, frequently referring to immigrants as “not even human. They’re animals.” He warned that these newcomers would increase crime in the streets and, in a quotation from Hitler’s Mein Kampf, “poison the bloodstream” of America.
All the while, America’s megalomaniacal monster waved an imaginary Christian flag and promised to fight for it. That is one reason evangelicals were less than unenthusiastic about a potential Mike Pence presidency. As sociologists of religion Phillip Gorski and Samuel Perry explained, “[T]he fight was more important than the faith… Pence had the faith, but Trump had the fight. And the fight was really all they cared about.” (The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy, 3.)
All of which has brought us through several weeks of clashes between masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and American citizens using their First Amendment right of free speech to protest Trump’s dragnet of blue states, searching and destroying Black and brown families—some illegal, some documented, some American citizens—that have brought the nation to the boiling point.
Nowadays we have no “Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young” lamenting “four dead in Ohio.”
But we do have a president who makes Richard Nixon look like a Boy Scout. And we have Bruce Springsteen:
King Trump's private army from the DHSPeace, it would seem, is not what it’s cracked up to be. In Trumplandia, it appears, P-E-A-C-E spells MURDER.
Guns belted to their coats
Came to Minneapolis to enforce the law
Or so their story goes
Against smoke and rubber bullets
In the dawn's early light
Citizens stood for justice
Their voices ringing through the night
And there were bloody footprints
Where mercy should have stood
And two dead, left to die on snow-filled streets
Alex Pretti and Renee Good
Oh, our Minneapolis, I hear your voice
Singing through the bloody mist
We'll take our stand for this land
And the stranger in our midst
Here in our home, they killed and roamed
In the winter of '26….
Now they say they're here to uphold the law
But they trample on our rights
If your skin is black or brown, my friend
You can be questioned or deported on sight….
Oh, our Minneapolis, I hear your voice
Singing through the bloody mist
Here in our home, they killed and roamed
In the winter of '26
We'll take our stand for this land
And the stranger in our midst
We'll remember the names of those who died
On the streets of Minneapolis...
But where are our patriots—progressive patriots, 5-, 8-, 10-million strong—called to the nation’s capital, like the “patriots” of January 6, willing to take our stand and storm the White House?
In 1970, massive numbers of protesters marched to Kent State University. Millions of others showed America that nonviolent protest could work. So where are those of us willing to chant; spill some of our own blood, if necessary; and chant, “Hey, hey, Donald J, how many protesters did you kill today?” until “We the People” come face to face with Mr. Trump, call on Congress to invoke the 25th Amendment, and tell them all: “NO MORE KINGS!?”Keep ReadingShow Less
'Era of Unconstrained Nuclear Competition' Looms With US-Russia New START Treaty Expiring
“The United States and Russia already have enough deployed nuclear weapons to kill tens of millions of people in an hour and devastate the world," said one expert, warning a lapse will "only make the world less safe."
Feb 03, 2026
If New START expires on Thursday, it will be the first time in decades that the United States and Russia don't have a nuclear arms control treaty, and experts have been sounding the alarm about the arms race that likely lies ahead.
“The expiration of New START would be massively destabilizing and potentially very costly both in terms of economics and security," said Jennifer Knox, a research and policy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists' (UCS) Global Security Program, in a Tuesday statement.
"The United States and Russia already have enough deployed nuclear weapons to kill tens of millions of people in an hour and devastate the world," Knox pointed out. "Letting New START lapse would erase decades of hard-won progress and only make the world less safe."
New START was signed in April 2010, under the Obama administration, and entered into force the following February. A decade later, just days into the Biden administration, it was renewed for five years. In 2022, Russia invaded neighboring Ukraine—an ongoing conflict—and the next year, Russian President Vladimir Putin suspended his country's participation in the treaty, though he has not withdrawn.
"The global security environment facing the United States is very different from when New START was first negotiated, but it remains true that bounding an open-ended, costly arms race will still require some form of agreement between Washington and Moscow," said Ankit Panda, the Stanton senior fellow in the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's Nuclear Policy Program, in a statement.
"The public and lawmakers alike must recognize that we are on the cusp of a fundamentally new nuclear age—one that is more unpredictable, complex, and dangerous than anything we've witnessed post-Cold War," warned Panda, one of the experts participating in a Wednesday briefing about the treaty. "A big risk is that without any quantitative limits or hands-on verification, we'll end up with compounding worst-case-scenario thinking in both capitals, as during the Cold War."
While Putin has halted US inspections of Russian nuclear facilities, he has still proposed extending the treaty for a year. Tara Drozdenko, director of the UCS Global Security Program, said that "abiding by New START for another year would be a win-win-win for the United States, Russia, and the rest of the world... The Trump administration should take swift action to publicly acknowledge that the United States will continue to abide by New START in the interim."
However, US President Donald Trump—who fancies himself as a deal-maker—hasn't expressed an interest in fighting for the pact, telling the New York Times last month that "if it expires, it expires," and "I'd rather do a new agreement that's much better."
Trump has called for China—which has the most nuclear weapons after Russia and the United States, and is building up its arsenal—to be part of a new deal, but Beijing hasn't signaled it will do so. Putin has proposed participation from France and the United Kingdom. The other nuclear-armed nations are India, Israel, North Korea, and Pakistan.
Noting Trump's comments to the Times and aspiration for the Chinese government to join, Jennifer Kavanagh, director of military analysis at the think tank Defense Priorities, declared that "this is wishful thinking–if the administration thinks getting a new 'better' treaty after this one lapses will be easy, they are mistaken."
"New START's end brings few benefits and lots of risks to the United States, especially as Washington tries to stabilize relations with rivals like Russia and China," she said, suggesting that Trump "would be better off hanging on to the agreement he has a little longer before trying to get a better one."
Dmitry Medvedev, a Putin ally who signed the treaty while serving as president and is now deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, said in a Monday interview with Reuters, TASS, and the WarGonzo project that "our proposal remains on the table, the treaty has not yet expired, and if the Americans want to extend it, that can be done."
"For almost 60 years, we haven't had a situation where strategic nuclear potentials weren't limited in some way. Now such a situation is possible," he noted. "I spent almost my entire life, starting from 1972, under the umbrella of the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty."
"In some ways, even with all the costs, it is still an element of trust," Medvedev said. "When such a treaty exists, there is trust. When it doesn't, that trust is exhausted. The fact that we are now in this situation is clear evidence of a crisis in international relations. This is absolutely obvious."
Considering New START's potential expiration this week, the Russian leader said that "I don't want to say that this immediately means a catastrophe and a nuclear war, but it should still alert everyone. The clock that is ticking will, in this case, undoubtedly accelerate again."
According to Reuters, he was referencing the Doomsday Clock. Last week, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists' Science and Security Board set the symbolic clock at 85 seconds to midnight, the closest it has ever been to global catastrophe, citing various developments, including a failure to extend the treaty, Russian weapons tests, and China's growing arsenal.
"In 2025, it was almost impossible to identify a nuclear issue that got better," Jon B. Wolfsthal, a board member and director of global risk at the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), said last week. "More states are relying more intently on nuclear weapons, multiple states are openly talking about using nuclear weapons for not only deterrence but for coercion. Hundreds of billions are being spent to modernize and expand nuclear arsenals all over the world, and more and more non-nuclear states are considering whether they should acquire their own nuclear weapons or are hedging their nuclear bets."
"Instead of stoking the fires of the nuclear arms competition, nuclear states are reducing their own security and putting the entire planet at risk. Leaders of all states must relearn the lessons of the Cold War—no one wins a nuclear arms race, and the only way to reduce nuclear dangers is through binding agreement to limit the size and shape of their nuclear arsenals," he argued. "Nuclear states and their partners need to invest now in proven crisis communication and risk reduction tools, recommit to preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, refrain from nuclear threats, and pursue a more predictable and stable global security system."
Regarding New START specifically, FAS Nuclear Information Project associate director Matt Korda stressed this week that "we are about to enter an era of unconstrained nuclear competition without any guardrails. Not only will there no longer be anything stopping the nuclear superpowers from nearly doubling their deployed nuclear arsenals, but they would now be doing so in an environment of mutual distrust, opacity, and worst-case thinking."
"While New START was a bilateral agreement between Russia and the United States, its expiration will have far-reaching consequences for the world," he said. "There are no benefits from a costly arms buildup that brings us right back to where we started, but there would be real advantages in pursuing transparency and predictability in an otherwise unpredictable world."
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Human Rights Watch Israel-Palestine Team Quits Over Blocked Report on Right of Return
“I have lost my faith in the integrity of how we do our work and our commitment to principled reporting on the facts and application of the law,” said resigning staffer Omar Shakir.
Feb 03, 2026
Two Human Rights Watch employees—the group's entire Israel-Palestine team—resigned after senior staffers blocked a report calling Israel's denial of Palestinian refugees' right of return to their homeland a crime against humanity.
Jewish Currents' Alex Kane reported Tuesday that HRW Israel-Palestine team lead Omar Shakir and assistant researcher Milena Ansari are stepping down over leadership's decision to nix the report, which was scheduled for release on December 4. Shakir wrote in his resignation email that one senior HRW leader informed him that calling Israel's denial of Palestinian right of return would be seen as a call to “demographically extinguish the Jewishness of the Israeli state.”
“I have lost my faith in the integrity of how we do our work and our commitment to principled reporting on the facts and application of the law,” Shakir—who is also member of Jewish Currents' advisory board—wrote in his resignation letter. “As such, I am no longer able to represent or work for Human Rights Watch.”
In an interview published Tuesday by Drop Site News, Shakir—who was deported from Israel in 2019 over his advocacy of Palestinian rights—said: “I’ve given every bit of myself to the work for a decade. I’ve defended the work in very, very difficult circumstances... The refugees I interviewed deserve to know why their stories aren’t being told."
Ansari said that "whatever justification" HRW leadership "had for pausing the report is not based on the law or facts."
The resignations underscored tensions among HRW staffers over how to navigate a potential political minefield while conducting legal analysis and reporting of Israeli policies and practices in the illegally occupied Palestinian territories.
As Kane reported:
The resignations have roiled one of the most prominent human rights groups in the world just as HRW’s new executive director, Philippe Bolopion, begins his tenure. In a statement, HRW said that the report “raised complex and consequential issues. In our review process, we concluded that aspects of the research and the factual basis for our legal conclusions needed to be strengthened to meet Human Rights Watch’s high standards.” They said that “the publication of the report was paused pending further analysis and research,” and that the process was “ongoing.”
Kenneth Roth, a longtime former HRW executive director, defended the group's decision to block the report, asserting on social media that Bolopion "was right to suspend a report using a novel and unsupported legal theory to contend that denying the right to return to a locale is a crime against humanity."
However, Shakir countered that HRW "found in 2023 denial of a return to amount to a crime against humanity in Chagos."
"This is based on [International Criminal Court] precedent," he added. "Other reports echoed the analysis. Are you calling on HRW to retract a report for its first time ever, or it just different rules for Palestine?"
Polis Project founder Suchitra Vijayan said on X Tuesday that "the decision by Human Rights Watch’s leadership to pull a report on the right of return for Palestinian refugees, after it had cleared internal review, legal sign-off, and publication preparation, demands public reckoning."
"This was not a draft in dispute and the explanation offered so far evades the central issue of 'institutional independence' in the face of political pressure," added Vijayan, who is also a professor at Columbia and New York universities. "Why was the report stopped, and what does this decision signals for the future of its work and credibility on Palestine?"
Offering "solidarity to Omar and Milena" on social media, Medical Aid for Palestinians director of advocacy and campaigns Rohan Talbot said that "Palestinian rights are yet again exceptionalized, their suffering trivialized, and their pursuit of justice forestalled by people who care more about reputation and expediency than law and justice."
Sarah Leah Whitson, HRW's former Middle East and North Africa director and currently executive director at Democracy for the Arab World Now, told Drop Site News on Tuesday that “We have once again run into Human Rights Watch’s systemic ‘Israel Exception,’ with work critical of Israel subjected to exceptional review and arbitrary processes that no other country work faces."
The modern state of Israel was established in 1948 largely through a more than decadelong campaign of terrorism against both the British occupiers of Palestine and Palestinian Arabs and the ethnic cleansing of the latter. More than 750,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homeland, sometimes via massacres or the threat thereof, in what Arabs call the Nakba, or catastrophe.
More than 400 Palestinian villages were destroyed or abandoned, and their denizens—some of whom still hold the keys to their stolen homes—have yet to return. Today, they and their descendants number more than 7 million, all of whom have been denied the right of return affirmed in United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194.
Many Palestinians and experts around the world argue that the Nakba never ended—a position that has gained attention over the past 28 months, as Israel has faced mounting allegations of genocide for a war that's left more than 250,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing in the coastal strip and around 2 million people forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened.
Bolopion told Kane Tuesday that the controversy over the blocked report is “a genuine and good-faith disagreement among colleagues on complex legal and advocacy questions."
“HRW remains committed to the right of return for all Palestinians, as has been our policy for many years," he added.
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‘This Rogue Agency Should Not Receive a Single Penny,’ Progressives Say of ICE as Trump Signs Funding Bill
As some Democrats suggest compromising in order to reform the agency, Rep. Rashida Tlaib said that “ICE was built on violence and is terrorizing neighborhoods. It will not change.”
Feb 03, 2026
President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed a bill to end a brief government shutdown after the US House of Representatives narrowly passed the $1.2 trillion funding package.
While the bill keeps most of the federal government funded until the end of September, lawmakers sidestepped the question of funding for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which Democrats have vowed to block absent reforms to rein in its lawless behavior after the shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis and a rash of other attacks on civil rights.
The bill, which passed on Tuesday by a vote of 217-214, extends funding for ICE's parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), for just two weeks, setting up a battle in the coming weeks on which the party remains split.
While most Democrats voted against Tuesday's measure, 21 joined the bulk of Republicans to drag it just over the line, despite calls from progressive activists and groups, such as MoveOn, which Axios said peppered lawmakers with letters urging them to use every bit of "leverage" they can to force drastic changes at the agency.
House Appropriations Committee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), who voted for the bill, acknowledged that it was "a leverage tool that people are giving up," but said funding for the rest of the government took precedence.
The real fight is expected to take place over the next 10 days, with DHS funding set to run out on February 14.
ICE will be funded regardless of whether a new round of DHS funding passes, since Republicans already passed $170 billion in DHS funding in last year's One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Democrats in both the House and Senate have laid out lists of reforms they say Republicans must acquiesce to if they want any additional funding for ICE, including requirements that agents nationwide wear body cameras, get judicial warrants for arrests, and adhere to a code of conduct similar to those for state and local law enforcement.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the chair emerita of the Congressional Progressive Caucus who voted against Tuesday's bill reiterated that in order to pass longterm DHS funding, "there must be due process, a requirement for judicial warrants and bond hearings; every agent must not only have a bodycam but also be required to use it, take off their masks, and, in cases of misconduct, undergo immediate, independent investigations."
Some critics have pointed out that ICE agents already routinely violate court orders and constitutional requirements, raising questions about whether new laws would even be enforceable.
A memo issued last week, telling agents they do not need to obtain judicial warrants to enter homes, has been described as a blatant violation of the Fourth Amendment. Despite this, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said on Tuesday that Republicans will not even consider negotiating the warrant requirement, calling it "unworkable."
"We cannot trust this DHS, which has already received an unprecedented funding spike for ICE, to operate within the bounds of our Constitution or our laws," Jayapal said. "And for that reason, we cannot continue to fund them without significant and enforceable guardrails."
According to recent polls, the vast majority of Democratic voters want to go beyond reforms and push to abolish ICE outright. In the wake of ICE's reign of terror in Minneapolis, it's a position that nearly half the country now holds, with more people saying they want the agency to be done away with than saying they want it preserved.
"The American people are begging us to stop sending their tax dollars to execute people in the streets, abduct 5-year-olds, and separate families," said Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), who gathered with other progressive lawmakers in the cold outside DHS headquarters on Tuesday. "ICE was built on violence and is terrorizing neighborhoods. It will not change... No one should vote to send another cent to DHS."
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who comes from the Minnesota Somali community targeted by Trump's operation there, agreed: "This rogue agency should not receive a single penny. It should be abolished and prosecuted."
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