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universal healthcare
Report Highlights 'Uniquely Poor Performance' of US For-Profit Health System Compared to Other Nations
"We know what high-performing health systems look like—other countries have them and are building them. It’s high time the US did better.”
May 28, 2026
An annual analysis that examines healthcare systems across nearly two dozen wealthy countries around the world once again highlighted the United States' "uniquely poor performance relative to its peers," with this year's US Health Care from a Global Perspective report focusing on "insurance coverage and access to care, affordability of care, delivery of care, and equity of health outcomes."
As advocates for expanding the US Medicare system to the entire population have long warned, the country's for-profit healthcare system—which ties the ability to get care to one's employment and allows insurance companies to boost profits by denying care to patients—"The US, on average, has the poorest health outcomes of any high-income country," the Commonwealth Fund's report reads.
The report examines the US system compared with other countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), including the United Kingdom, France, New Zealand, Japan, and Mexico.
It finds that the US spent 18% of its gross domestic product on healthcare in 2024—nearly twice the OECD average.
Life expectancy in the US reached an all-time high in 2024, but was still among the shortest when compared to the 19 other countries, nearly five years shorter than Japan, Spain, and Switzerland, and longer than the average lifespan in Turkey and Mexico.
While the US and Mexico also both rank high on the list in terms of preventable deaths, the latter nation announced last month that it would soon be joining every other country included in the analysis by shifting to a universal, government-run healthcare system.
In the United States, the for-profit health sector—which spent a record $877.69 million on lobbying last year—contributes to the high number of avoidable deaths, which stands at 312 per 100,000 people. About 27 million Americans are still uninsured, more than 16 years after the passage of the Affordable Care Act, and the Republican Party's refusal to continue ACA subsidies last year as well as its $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts over the next decade, according to Thursday's report, are "projected to increase the number of uninsured Americans by an additional 17 million by 2034, potentially leading to more than 50,000 additional preventable deaths annually."
"By contrast, Mexico’s recently established Universal Health Service will provide all residents with access to free care at any public health institute, starting in 2027," the report states. "The US is one of the only countries to have enacted policies that reduce coverage."
High out-of-pocket costs may also contribute to poor outcomes and the high number of preventable deaths in the US, the Commonwealth Fund suggests. Americans spend $400 per person, per year, on out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs, while people in France spend $100.
"The US is one of the only countries to have enacted policies that reduce coverage."
"In the US, where approximately 8% of the population is uninsured and one-quarter has coverage that comes with high out-of-pocket costs or deductibles, people are far more likely to forgo needed care because of costs than people in peer countries," reads the report. "This can mean not filling prescriptions, not obtaining diagnostic tests, treatment, or follow-up care, or being unable to adhere to clinician-recommended care plans."
The report also identifies the US as a country that lags behind its peers in producing new doctors, contributing to a crisis in primary care, with the US having the fewest number of primary care providers per 1,000 people. The country also has the "highest medical tuition fees of any country in our analysis," said the Commonwealth Fund.
The organization also found that in 2023, the US had nearly 19 maternal deaths for every 100,000 live births, representing a decline for the country that has long had "among the highest rates of maternal deaths related to complications of pregnancy and childbirth."
"By contrast, in 11 of the 18 countries we studied there were less than five maternal deaths per 100,000 live births," reads the report, which also notes that in the US, maternal mortality is "exceptionally high" among Black women, at 50 deaths per 100,000 live births.
"This far exceeds national maternal mortality in any of the other countries," the report states. "Inequities in access to care and patients’ care experiences—often rooted in discrimination and clinician bias—may be prime contributing factors."
Dr. Joseph Betancourt, president of the Commonwealth Fund, noted that "the US has long prided itself on having the best healthcare in the world, but the population benefits from this excellence unevenly, and it remains largely out of reach for many Americans."
"We spend more than any other nation on healthcare, so our poorer health outcomes aren’t due to a lack of resources—it is about how we choose to use them," said Betancourt. "We know what high-performing health systems look like—other countries have them and are building them. It’s high time the US did better."
"Other countries have shown that alternatives work. What’s striking isn’t the absence of solutions; it’s our reluctance to implement them."
The report does not explicitly call on the US to shift to a universal, government-funded healthcare system, but studies have shown that expanding Medicare to the entire US population, as lawmakers including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) have consistently demanded, would address many of the problems listed in the report.
Studies by the Congressional Budget Office and Yale University have shown that Medicare for All would save an estimated $650 billion and prevent 68,000 avoidable deaths each year.
The policy, which has been proposed in Congress numerous times, is also broadly popular; 65% of US voters—including 78% of Democrats, 71% of Independents, and 49% of Republicans—support creating a national, government-run healthcare program, according to a Data for Progress poll last year.
Despite this, both Republican and Democratic lawmakers continue to insist the proposal is unpopular and too expensive, with Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow (D-8), who is running against vehement Medicare for All advocate Abdul El-Sayed in the Democratic US Senate primary, insisting recently that "the support for a true single-payer system isn't there yet."
Reginald Williams II, senior vice president at Commonwealth Fund, emphasized that it is "not inevitable" that "Americans pay more for healthcare and get less in return."
"It’s the result of different choices," he said. "Other countries have shown that alternatives work. What’s striking isn’t the absence of solutions; it’s our reluctance to implement them. The failure of the US health system is not a failure of ideas. It’s a failure of will to act on them.”
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As Mexico Enacts Universal Healthcare, Advocate Says Insurers' 'Stranglehold' Is Moving US in 'Opposite Direction'
Medicare for All advocate Wendell Potter said it's "both inspiring and frustrating" to see other nations advance their public healthcare systems while the US dismantles its own.
Apr 10, 2026
As Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum moves forward with a plan to enact universal healthcare for her country’s more than 130 million people, a longtime advocate for Medicare for All in the US called the development “both inspiring and frustrating.”
"Inspiring because it shows what is possible," Wendell Potter, a former insurance company communications director who has become a leading critic of the industry, told Common Dreams. "Frustrating because here in the US we are going in the opposite direction."
Earlier this week, Sheinbaum announced a decree that she called "a historic step" for Mexico.
Beginning in 2027, her government plans to unify Mexico's public health institutions into a single Universal Health Service, allowing patients across the country to receive care from the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS), the Social Security Institute and Social Services of Workers of the State (ISSSTE), and the IMSS‑Bienestar program, which provides free services to those without employer-provided insurance.
According to TeleSur, universal access would be rolled out gradually, with universal emergency care and continuity of treatment, free of financial constraints, beginning in January. Specialized services such as radiotherapy, laboratory tests, and imaging studies would be phased in later that year, and universal prescription fulfillment and hospitalization would also be added to the program in 2028.
"The goal is that when we leave the government [in 2030], any Mexican man or woman can go to any health institution for treatment for any ailment and be received," Sheinbaum said.
Mexico has expanded its annual healthcare budget in recent years, but Sheinbaum's government hopes that consolidating all of Mexico's health services into a single program will eliminate bureaucratic bloat and create a more cost-effective system that saves money over time.
Potter described the plan as “just another example of countries around the world lapping the US when it comes to healthcare policy.”
While tens of millions more previously uninsured Mexicans have become eligible for free care under the healthcare expansion efforts of Sheinbaum and her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the US under President Donald Trump is in the process of shredding public healthcare programs and subsidies.
Following the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law by Trump last year, 11.8 million Americans are expected to lose Medicaid and other coverage, and more than 20 million are projected to see higher premiums after insurance subsidies under the Affordable Care Act were allowed to expire.
"Due to the stranglehold Big Insurance has on too many politicians in this country, instead of expanding care and lowering costs, we are simply helping Big Insurance make more and more money," Potter said. "It is totally backwards."
"We must continue to keep Medicare for All as our north star here. But also acknowledge the reality that we need to change so much about our current political environment to make it possible," he said. "And that has to start with breaking up Big Insurance's stranglehold on Washington."
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Trump, Extreme Wealth Concentration, and Our Societal Crisis
The US government simply has not done enough to ensure that the livelihoods of all Americans are protected or improved in this new Gilded Age. What it has done is made sure the rich get richer by the minute and more politically powerful year after year.
Feb 09, 2026
The decline of Keynesian economic theory in the 1970s marked a tipping point in the evolution of capitalism in the United States. Beginning with the Great Depression, Keynesian economic policy facilitated the expansion of social welfare programs to mitigate the social inequities of the nation's economic system. In the last quarter of the 20th century, however, rising political conservatism targeted public expenditures for social services. Cuts in education and health, including reductions in social welfare programs and the weakening of the social safety network for the poor, were then and continue today to be goals of political conservatives. Conservatives, furthermore, argue that cutting taxes for the wealthy and corporations promotes investment, economic growth and job creation; and that smaller government and less regulation of market forces distributes wealth the most equitably. These ideas are variously known as supply-side economics, neoliberal economics or simply “trickle-down theory.” Historically, though, trickle-down theory has failed to benefit American working families. In fact, during the course of the last several decades this market strategy has encouraged vast accumulation of private wealth and accelerated its concentration on both a national and global scale. Tragically, it has had deeply injurious social consequences. The societal crisis America finds itself in today relates directly to extreme concentration of wealth.
Absent effective public regulation of economic activities, government and law protect investors and corporations in their aggressive pursuit of wealth. The distribution of wealth in the U.S. is a primary indicator of who benefits most from the political and legal organization of American society. In the third quarter of 2025, according to Federal Reserve data, the top 1% of Americans held 31.7% of all wealth while the bottom 50% held 2.5% (Federal Reserve 2025). That is the highest concentration of wealth in the post-WWII era (Economic Inequality), greater than almost any other developed country. Another indicator of the government's weak support for workers and their families is the federal minimum wage. It is $7.25/hour. At forty hours per week this represents a monthly income of $1160 and a yearly income of $13,920. In 2025, the federal poverty level for individuals was $15,650 and $32,150 for families of four (Poverty Level). These dismal figures show how dire wages are for many millions of Americans. In real terms (inflation-adjusted) the average wage of American workers peaked 48 years ago in 1978 (Wages Peaked).
If one takes a closer look at wealth concentration and the average American’s opportunity to accrue wealth since the 1970s and 1980s, it offers more evidence of how the last few decades of capitalism's development have denied workers a fair share of the tremendous wealth that has been generated. Indeed, a 2023 Rand Corporation analysis revealed that, since 1975, $79 trillion in wealth had been transferred from the bottom 90% to the top 1%. (Massive Wealth Transfer ). This massive redistribution of wealth continues today. In 2023 alone, $3.9 trillion in wealth was siphoned from working Americans to the richest Americans, enough to give every full-time worker in the bottom 90% a $32,000 raise for the year (2023 Wealth Transfer). When it comes to gaining wealth for the average working American, owning a home is the principal path. Home ownership, however, is completely out of reach for the poor and millions more in today's middle class find it unattainable. The median home price to annual income ratio was 5 in 2025. In other words, the median price of a home was equal to 5 years of salary. The ratio was 3.7 in 1985 when a median-price home was $82,800. Today a median-price home is $416,900. Not only is the distribution of wealth radically unequal, the pathway to increased wealth in home ownership has narrowed dramatically.
The political division and violence in America today stems in large measure from a political system whose policies have encouraged radical disparities in incomes and wealth.
These data amply illustrate the crisis poor and increasingly middle income people in the United States face. The poorest Americans, the bottom 20%, simply do not have enough money to meet their daily needs. Nearly a third of all households lives on less than $50,000 annual income (Household Income). In the richest country in the world 36.8 million Americans live in poverty (Poverty), including 9 million children without adequate access to food, shelter and healthcare (Children). At the same time, the more than 900 billionaires in the U.S. have a collective wealth of $6.9 trillion, their wealth increasing 18% in 2025 alone (Fortune). As reported in Forbes, Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, now has wealth of $778 billion (Elon Musk). It would take the average American worker 16 million years to make that much (Extrapolated).
The US government simply has not done enough to ensure that the livelihoods of all Americans are protected in this new Gilded Age. In fact, the government actually provides 40% more benefits to the wealthy than to the impoverished. In his 2023 book Poverty, By America, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Matthew Desmond draws attention to this fact. From recent government data “compiling spending on social insurance, means-tested programs, tax benefits, and financial aid for higher education,” Desmond calculates that the top 20% of income earners on average receives $35,363 in government benefits and individuals in the bottom 20% receive an average $25,733 (p. 99). This reality is a result of policies, policies that benefit wealthy Americans and corporations at the expense of working people. Public policy, in turn, is shaped by corporate lobbying and political contributions as well as professional research that supports goals of the wealthiest and most influential: smaller government, broad corporate deregulation, limited worker protections, and tax breaks favoring the wealthy over working Americans.
It has not always been this way. Between 1947 and 1979, the period when Keynesian economic theory and policies prevailed, “hourly wages grew 2.2 percent. From 1979 to the present, average growth in hourly wages fell to 0.7 percent per year, only one-third of the average rate in the earlier postwar period” (Economic Policy Institute). In the first three decades after WWII labor unions tripled weekly earnings of manufacturing workers across the nation. Collective bargaining gained “for union workers an unprecedented measure of security against old age, illness and unemployment, and, through contractual protections, greatly strengthening their right to fair treatment at the workplace” (Labor Unions). Significantly, one-third of workers (32.3% in 1959) were unionized in this post-war period (Bureau of Labor Statistics ). By 2024, the percentage of wage and salary workers in unions fell to 9.9 percent (Bureau of Labor Statistics). Concentrated wealth, particularly corporate wealth, and government failure to protect workers dampened wages. Also, in the 1950s the statutory taxes on U.S.corporate and personal wealth were much higher, though the effective tax rate was considerably lower due to corporate tax loopholes and rich taxpayers recategorizing income as derived from investments (Tax Rates). The statutory corporate income tax was over 50 percent (Economic Policy Institute). Today it is 21 percent (Corporate Tax). While it is difficult to determine the percentage of taxes actually paid by wealthy individuals and corporations in the early post-war era, it is clear that the statutory personal and corporate income tax is lower today than it was 70 years ago. Of course, enforcement of steeply progressive taxation would make billions of dollars, even trillions, available to fund social programs that distribute income and wealth more fairly.
The pro-democracy citizenry must organize around a political vision that emphasizes several political projects: a just, progressive taxation system; a guaranteed household income; universal healthcare; quality public education; free preschool education; and scientific and technological initiatives for a sustainable economy.
A society riven by such income and wealth inequality is inherently unstable. The political division and violence in America today stems in large measure from a political system whose policies have encouraged radical disparities in incomes and wealth. The loss of 6.5 million manufacturing jobs since 1979 (1979 and 2025), for example, has been facilitated by trade agreements that enable corporations to chase the cheapest wages throughout the world. Runaway companies have gutted industrial towns without consequence, leaving behind poorer communities of people with limited resources to rebuild their lives and neighborhoods. The federal government, moreover, has done virtually nothing to force corporations to pay reparations for the social disintegration left in their wake. As the coastal regions and large metropolitan centers of the nation were generally integrated into the surging commerce of unbridled globalization, distant rural regions experienced economic stagnation and decline. It is little wonder that an authoritarian political figure that exploits these divisions has risen to the presidency of the United States.
In his seminal book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, French economist Thomas Piketty provides an analysis of capitalism in which he notes that “the history of the distribution of wealth has always been deeply political” (p. 20). Reduction of taxes that favors the wealthy is one political determination reflecting the unstemmed power of concentrated wealth. While this political maneuver undermines a primary income and wealth distributive mechanism (taxation system), it further restricts the resources for funding other re-distributive projects such as social welfare, public education and healthcare. Smaller government and privatization of public services are corollary results.
A principal dynamic factor in the process of wealth accumulation and concentration over the last several decades is the growth of profits as the economic growth rate has slowed down. Put another way, the wealthy are taking a larger and larger slice of diminishing income and wealth production. As the vast inequalities in the distribution of income and wealth deny the provision of basic living necessities to tens of millions and circumscribe opportunity for most Americans, social instability and political division and violence escalate. In response, an authoritarian regime consolidates its power around armed force to repress those protesting its anti-democratic policies. Its armed repression inevitably leads to bloodshed.
The pro-democracy citizenry must organize around a political vision that emphasizes several political projects: a just, progressive taxation system; a guaranteed household income; universal healthcare; quality public education; free preschool education; and scientific and technological initiatives for a sustainable economy. These political goals stand in stark contrast to an authoritarian regime that advances the interests of the one percent. They offer a view of the future that is constructive and inspirational, one that generates broad social justice and appeals to the vast majority of Americans.
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DC Shooting Was Not an Afghan or Immigrant Import—It Was All-American Violence
American violence in its many forms destabilized the alleged killer Rahmanullah Lakanwal.
Dec 07, 2025
I’ve heard very few people say it, but Spencer Ackerman recently said it best: “The most sobering fact about Wednesday’s slayings is that the alleged killer, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, was all too compatible with Western Civilization.” And we have the data to back his claims.
The early findings from investigations into the potential motives of Lakanwal, who allegedly shot two National Guardsmen last month, do not gel well with the MAGA narrative that immigrants are in some way inherently dangerous criminals. Instead, what is coming to light is an all too believable American context: US imperialism-induced trauma, lack of resources, and infrastructure to assist those in need (oh I don’t know, something like Universal Healthcare?), and most likely an all too easily accessed gun, created violent conditions. These are all quite sadly the makings of a very American event. Regardless, the Trump administration is unsurprisingly using this tragedy to justify and expedite an anti-immigrant agenda they already had in motion. Everything they have to say on the matter is pure fiction. It might be tiresome, but we need to continue providing the actual evidence contrary to MAGA’s lies.
I spent the better part of 2025 engaged in a research project with the Afghan community in the state of Vermont. I conducted a large survey, a series of interviews, and a national data analysis aimed at assessing the socioeconomic well-being of Afghans in the state, four years after the US ended its 20-year occupation in Afghanistan, which led to the subsequent fall of Kabul and the largest airlift in US history. Over 200,000 Afghans most closely allied with US operations have since been resettled in communities around the US, including Vermont.
Over the course of 2025, I spent a lot of time working side by side with Afghans, in Afghan homes, in conversations around coffee tables, and at community gathering spaces, getting to know Afghan Vermonters. One can of course never generalize about the "nature" of an entire population; however, in my experience, Afghans were overwhelmingly kind, welcoming, generous, and at the risk of repeating a common trope associated with liberal-American ideology, incredibly hardworking. It feels ridiculous to even have to type these words, but at no point did I feel in danger, like I was amid "criminals," or any other ludicrous claims the Trump administration and their ilk try to place on entire groups of people, just because they have arrived from other countries. The hundreds of Afghans I engaged with always met me with a smile, offered me phenomenal tea and snacks, and were generous with their time, candidly sharing their experiences in the US.
Western civilization created the conditions in which Lakanwal suffered severe mental health issues, and once he was brought to the US, created the conditions in which Lakanwal had likely limited healthcare supports, reportedly dire economic struggles, and it is safe to assume all too easy access to a gun.
Certain uninformed parties might say, “They played you like a fool, those absolute criminals!” So, anecdotal evidence aside, and the fact that I lived to tell the tale of my experiences with these supposed criminals, we also have the data. And the data is vast.
As countless data-rich research projects, reports, policy analyses, and peer-reviewed journal article after peer-reviewed journal article show, immigrants in the US, across the board, unequivocally, are far less likely to commit a crime in the US than US-born persons. For an extensive but non-exhaustive list that just scratches the surface, see this resource I put together during the 2024 election cycle. What this data overwhelmingly show, if we can generalize anything about an entire subset of people like “immigrants” or “Afghans,” is that immigrants in America are overwhelmingly peaceful and law-abiding.
For the sake of countering one more MAGA lie that says immigrants and the services they receive are already too costly to the US taxpayer, let me point to the other endless data sets that show (time and time again) that immigrants from all backgrounds, from undocumented, to refugee, to O-1 visa holder alike, provide far more economic benefits to the US than they receive in governmental aid. Immigrants of all backgrounds, examined from many angles and subsets, pay far more into the US tax system than they receive in governmental expenditures and likewise contribute billions of dollars in spending and labor power into the US economy. Need we keep reminding ourselves that this country, after all, was built by immigrants? Correcting the past tense, this country will forever rely on immigrants in ways mainstream politicians seem to never admit.
The data I analyzed in the above-mentioned research is one more set proving this. Through a nationwide analysis of American Community Surveys, we showed that the recently resettled Afghan population in the United States (2021 and on) is already contributing far more in taxes than the costs associated with their resettlement and other support services (including SNAP, housing vouchers, Medicaid, and so on), a ratio that steadily improves each year of US residence per average Afghan household. What’s more is that Afghan spending power in the US (money left to spend after taxes) reached about $2 billion by 2023 (latest available data).
And the findings of our national data make sense given the results of the community survey we also conducted of a large portion of Afghan Vermonters. We found that Afghans in Vermont are highly employed: 73.6% of adult Afghans are currently employed, compared with the total Vermont employment rate of 65.3%. Because of systemic issues that must be addressed in Vermont and across the country, those employed Afghans tend to be paid far less than US-born workers. But even given this systemic wage discrimination, taxes paid through Afghan incomes provide a net gain to the US tax system, and their remaining earnings provide priceless benefits to their local, state, and national economies. I firmly believe that all humans, regardless of any economic benefit they may provide, deserve equal treatment, rights, and dignity, including freedom of movement to improve their lives, wherever that may be. However, for those who need the economics of it all, the truth is clear and undeniable.
In our report, I discuss the undeniable benefit Afghans have provided for Vermont and the country, explore the ways in which Afghans and New Americans still struggle in our communities, e.g. inherently lower wages than US-born people, and I provide a suggested list of policy solutions to improve Afghan and New American livelihoods here, which includes expanding free industry-specific ESL programs; streamlined credential evaluation and licensing for foreign-trained professionals; expanded access to higher education for English Language Learners; investment in affordable and flexible childcare; improved public transportation; and policy solutions at the national level that promote more streamlined pathways to Lawful Permanent Resident status for Afghans in coordination with family reunification efforts, which includes increased funding for legal aid services, to name a few.
Of course, rather than supporting immigrant communities that are so deeply important to the country, President Donald Trump is taking the opportunity to further attack them for political gain. He is twisting the contexts and conditions of last month’s violence to push his far-right agenda, cutting off services that immigrants depend on, and imposing more draconian immigration bans that smack of the purest white nationalism.
Despite these challenges, refugees and immigrants of all statuses continue to contribute significantly to US society and the economy. As the endless research continues to show, refugees and immigrants of all backgrounds are not dangerous for the country and in fact in many ways keep it running.
So, if new Americans are not the problem as the Trump administration would have us believe, then what is? We come back to Ackerman: American Imperial aggression and a violent socioeconomic landscape is the problem. American violence in its many forms destabilized Lakanwal.
The US government is now treating all Afghans like criminals, when those same individuals in one way or another, for 20 years, aided the US in Afghanistan.
What’s become clear in the early days since this tragedy is that Lakanwal struggled with mental health issues that are unsurprising given what he has gone through. If Ackerman’s math is correct, Lakanwal was recruited into one of the CIA’s now infamous Zero Unit “death squads” at the age of 15. A good portion of Lakanwal’s formative years were spent as a child soldier employed by one of the deadliest armed forces in the world, the United States, in which he likely experienced and committed violence few of us could imagine, all at the command and employ of the US government.
“When he saw blood, bodies, and the wounded, he could not tolerate it, and it put a lot of pressure on his mind,” a friend of Lakanwal told the New York Times.
As Ackerman and others are astute to point out, the long-lasting legacy of imperialism has been known to come home in the form of violence.
And whatever affordable mental health support systems Lakanwal may have had in the US, which could have perhaps mitigated the effects of his trauma, were likely minimal.
Here we find American violence in the form of neoliberal policy. Once Lakanwal was resettled in the US, he was thrust into a harsh socioeconomic climate, where many manage to get by as the above data show, but when those with physical or mental illness falter, there are few services available to support them, particularly as the Trump administration has attempted to slash as much as possible, e.g. SNAP and healthcare subsidies. These forms of violence affect everyone including immigrants and are increasingly American.
American violence rears its head again in its abandonment of those in need.
American violence also rears itself in its refusal to regulate gun control in any meaningful way. The US accounts for 76% of public mass shooting incidents around the world, the vast majority conducted by US citizens. Public shootings are an American problem, not an immigrant or Afghan problem.
Western civilization created the conditions in which Lakanwal suffered severe mental health issues, and once he was brought to the US, created the conditions in which Lakanwal had likely limited healthcare supports, reportedly dire economic struggles, and it is safe to assume all too easy access to a gun.
I firmly believe that all persons should be treated with dignity, equality, and afforded the same rights as anyone else, no matter where they come from. There is, however, a deep and undeniable irony in all this that brings to light the true inhumanity of US immigration and domestic policy. That irony rests on the fact that the US government is now treating all Afghans like criminals, when those same individuals in one way or another, for 20 years, aided the US in Afghanistan (no matter how we feel about the occupation) and are still at great risk if they are sent back. They risk death in the context of a violence made possible by the outcomes of imperial violence turned abandonment. They should have been evacuated. They should be allowed to come to the US. They should be given the resources they need to thrive here. Instead, the Trump administration is using them as a scapegoat to churn forth with its nativist, fascist immigration agenda, while it cuts resources for all "old" and "new" Americans alike. The double-edged sword of the Trump administration’s violent opportunism knows no bounds.
If Western civilization is one that commits acts of violence around the world. If Western civilization is one that places profit and corporate lobbyists over the needs of its population. If Western civilization, in the American context, continues to refuse to regulate access to guns in any meaningful way. Then November 26's shooting was an American problem, not an immigrant problem.
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Does Anyone Even Remember Trump Once Favored Medicare for All?
Who's going to pay for covering everybody, including the currently uninsured? "The government's going to pay for it," Trump said in a 2015 interview.
Nov 25, 2025
When asked what they like most about Trump, fervent supporters often say, “He says what he thinks.” Well, not always. Donald Trump has long supported government-run universal healthcare—well before he had to deal with a crazed Congressional GOP in his first term. The controlling Republicans repealed Obamacare dozens of times in the House of Representatives (repeal was blocked in the Senate)—without offering any alternative.
President Trump also denounced Obamacare in vitriolic expletives, but he offers no alternatives.
However, let’s look back at a time when Trump, before his first term, was not tongue-tied about Medicare for All.
In a little-noticed Washington Post article (May 5, 2017), headlined “Trump’s forbidden love: Single-payer health care,” Aaron Blake reports that “in his heart of hearts, [Trump] wants single-payer health care. Indeed, it seems to be his forbidden fruit.”
Blake goes back to 2000 when “he [Trump] advocated for it as both a potential Reform Party presidential candidate and in his book, “The America We Deserve,” to wit:
“We must have universal health care. Just imagine the improved quality of life for our society as a whole,” he wrote, adding: “The Canadian-style, single-payer system in which all payments for medical care are made to a single agency (as opposed to the large number of HMOs and insurance companies with their diverse rules, claim forms, and deductibles)…helps Canadians live longer and healthier than Americans…Just before the 2016 campaign, Trump appeared on David Letterman’s show and held up Scotland’s socialist system as the ideal.”
Then, in April 2017, a law professor argued in the New York Post that Trump should just go for it. Universal Healthcare would be great for the Republican Party, as it would challenge the Democrats’ claim that it is the compassionate party. Moreover, Trump’s supporters would actually like better, less costly healthcare.
“A friend of mine was in Scotland recently. He got very, very sick. They took him by ambulance and he was there for four days. He was really in trouble, and they released him and he said, ‘Where do I pay?’ And they said, ‘There’s no charge,’” Trump said. “Not only that, he said it was like great doctors, great care. I mean, we could have a great system in this country.”
Then, early in the 2016 campaign, he again praised the single-payer systems in Scotland and Canada—while also arguing that the United States needed to have a private system.
Asked on “Morning Joe” whether he supported single-payer, he said: “No, but it’s certainly something that in certain countries works. It actually works incredibly well in Scotland. Some people think it really works in Canada. But not here, I don’t think it would work as well here.”
He said two days later at a GOP debate: “As far as single-payer, it works in Canada. It works incredibly well in Scotland. It could have worked in a different age, which is the age you’re talking about here.”
Later on, Trump would repeatedly push for universal health care without specifically subscribing to the words “single-payer.”
“Everybody’s got to be covered. This is an un-Republican thing for me to say,” Trump said in a September 2015 “60 Minutes” interview. “I am going to take care of everybody. I don’t care if it costs me votes or not. Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they’re taken care of now.”
He added when asked who is going to pay for it: “The government’s gonna pay for it.”
[…]
Law professor F.H. Buckley argued in the New York Post last month that, in the face of defeat for the Republican health-care bill, Trump should just go for it. He argued that it would be a great thing for the Republican Party because it would eliminate Democrats’ claim to being the party of compassion and that Trump’s supporters would actually like it.
“Leave behind all the people who hated you, who curse when you succeed,” Buckley wrote. “Reach out to the people who voted for you. Challenge the Democrats by offering them what they’ve always said they wanted.”
Fast forward, and Buckley’s words are even more timely. In a few weeks, the Republicans have promised a vote on extending the Obamacare subsidies to 22 million Americans. The Grand Old Plutocrats are in a bind. If they reject these subsidies, they give the Democrats a huge and decisive winning campaign issue for the 2026 elections. If they accede and keep the prices from skyrocketing, they hand a victory to the Democrats in defiance of their past rejections of universal healthcare and look weak.
My sister Claire Nader suggests that this is a great opportunity for Trump’s sense of grandiosity. Knowing the Congressional Republicans’ bind and disarray, he can announce his single-payer universal health care—everybody in, nobody out—and cite how much more efficient such a system is in Scotland, Canada, Australia, and other countries.
Then Trump could tout the political advantages—sweeping aside all the media coverage coming about the loss of Medicaid coverage by tens of millions of Americans, including Trump voters. Gone would be the huge inflationary price increases, continued inscrutable bills, with their overcharges and fraud. Getting healthcare would be far less aggravating than today. Imagine no more giant health insurance companies with their denials of benefits, rip-offs, suffocating fine print, and prior authorization requirements that enrage physicians. All people would need to show is their Medicare card.
Trump could pluck H.R. 676 out of its obscurity (about 140 House Democrats signed on in 2019). He would get support for this bill from all the Democrats plus a hefty slice of GOP lawmakers, especially those running for re-election in 2026.
Trump is running out of distractions, and running out of the gas that kept his opponents in shock and awe. His polls are dropping. A recession is on the horizon. Inflation is here. His campaign promises are papier-mache. Government health insurance for all, with private (and some public, as with the VA) delivery of health care, comes close to the Canadian healthcare system that has worked for some 50 years, with better health outcomes.
As Claire wryly reminded me, Trump could become the Tommy Douglas of the United States. Douglas started Canadian Medicare in Saskatchewan in 1962 and is a hero in Canada.
Any Democrats holding back support for “Medicare for All” for fear of making Trump look good should think of the tens of millions of Americans who would feel good in so many ways, shorn of the anxiety, dread, and fear produced by our current broken, gouging healthcare system.
Trump’s past, present, and future will still give the Dems plenty of fodder for their loathing of the president’s policies and actions.
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Universal Healthcare Will Save Lives... and Could Save the Democratic Party
As the only wealthy country without universal health coverage, sticking to our current system is truly not “politically feasible.” Democratic leaders need to understand and embrace Americans' desire for change.
Oct 22, 2025
The ongoing government shutdown, a standoff over health insurance premiums, is a missed opportunity to truly reform healthcare and revive the Democratic Party.
Democrats have been hyper focused on restoring Medicaid cuts and preserving Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies to blunt the harmful healthcare impact of the Republican budget. But this narrow strategy not only fails to address the core issues of the current system but ignores what most Americans want most: a system free from profit-driven conflicts of interest, prior authorizations, co-pays, deductibles, or the threat of bankruptcy.
As a practicing gynecologic oncologist, I witness the human toll of this political timidity every day. I’ve seen patients on chemotherapy skip nausea medications because of co-pays, delay a surveillance PET scan because of the deductible, or substitute ineffective online elixirs for proven treatments because they cost less. As president of Physicians for a National Health Program, I have heard from thousands of physicians who are struggling to uphold their professional commitment to high-quality care because health insurance companies routinely deny coverage for medically recommended treatments.
What I hear in my clinic is also reflected in the polls and crosses party lines: Americans want trustworthy, high-quality healthcare without conflicts of interest, co-pays, deductibles, or financial risk. A May 2025 Pew poll confirms this, with 68% of Americans, including 90% of Democrats and 45% of Republicans, believing the government should provide health insurance for all. A November 2024 Gallup poll shows 62% of Americans, including 90% of Democrats, 65% of Independents, and 32% of Republicans, think the federal government should guarantee health coverage for everyone. And a 2024 Marist Poll found 86% of Gen Z and 76% of Millennials also share the opinion that health insurance is the government's responsibility.
Championing universal healthcare gives Democrats a chance to move away from the status quo and win back frustrated voters, especially the youth.
Today, more people, regardless of insurance status, are being forced to make difficult healthcare choices based on their finances. I have patients who regularly ignore pain and nausea because they are behind on medical bills and cannot afford to seek care. Consider that in America, 66% of bankruptcies are linked to medical issues, and 80% of those who went bankrupt had health insurance when they incurred the debt. In 2023, the average household medical debt was $10,570, and in 2024, about 20% of adults aged 18-49 borrowed money to pay for healthcare costs. A 2025 KFF poll found that 70% of adults worry about medical or dental bills leading to debt.
Americans from all parties agree that our political and economic systems need change, and most believe Republicans, not Democrats, can deliver it. According to an April 2025 Navigator poll, 74% of Americans (including 71% of Democrats, 78% of Independents, and 77% of Republicans) think our system “needs major changes,” with 12% feeling “the system needs to be torn down completely.” The same poll shows that 51% of Americans see Democrats as “focused on preserving the way government works,” including 54% of Democrats, 43% of Independents, and 54% of Republicans. Meanwhile, 65% of those surveyed believe Republicans are focused on changing the government, including 65% of Democrats, 57% of Independents, and 68% of Republicans.
Republicans are giving us change, but it’s not what Americans were hoping for. Their comprehensive efforts to reduce healthcare access, dismantle public health systems, and cut funding for essential medical research will have deadly consequences. Specifically, the mortality impacts of the Republican budget reconciliation bill—which includes deep cuts to Medicaid, the elimination of ACA subsidies, rollbacks to Medicare drug access, and weakening of nursing home safety standards—are estimated to cause 51,000 preventable deaths each year. This tragic number adds to the approximately 45,000 preventable deaths already linked to lack of insurance. While we can estimate the increased death toll among the millions losing healthcare coverage, the long-term effects of defunding the public health system and losing future lifesaving research are impossible to measure.
Meanwhile, Democrats are defending the status quo instead of fighting for the comprehensive health care reform that Americans need. Despite the unpopularity of much of what the Trump administration has done, support for the Democratic Party from its core members remains slim, with historically low voter registration and approval numbers. Championing universal healthcare gives Democrats a chance to move away from the status quo and win back frustrated voters, especially the youth.
The main arguments against universal healthcare are that it is unaffordable and politically unfeasible. However, the cost issue is challenged by basic economic analysis: We could afford to cover everyone if we weren’t actively wasting 25-30% of our healthcare spending on bureaucracy, overhead, and excessive profits for the health insurance industry. There is no evidence that these corporations improve healthcare or make any meaningful contribution. To the contrary, privatized Medicare (Medicare Advantage) wastes resources, costs more, and results in worse outcomes. In fact, when states deprivatize Medicaid, they save money and improve outcomes. For example, Connecticut shifted from privatized to public Medicaid in 2011, leading to a 4.7% increase in early cancer detection, an 8% increase in cancer survival, and savings of over $4 billion over 13 years.
The US spends more per person than other developed nations but has worse health outcomes, including lower life expectancy and higher maternal and infant deaths. As the only wealthy country without universal health coverage, sticking to our current system is truly not “politically feasible.” Democratic leaders need to understand and embrace Americans' desire for change. They must fight for guaranteed universal healthcare—a system free from profit-driven conflicts, co-pays, deductibles, prior authorizations, and bankruptcy risks. Universal healthcare will save lives and may resuscitate the Democratic Party.
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Progressive Activist Avi Lewis Launches Bid for NDP Leadership in Canada
Lewis said NDP must “fling the doors wide open, and build a party for the 99%.”
Sep 25, 2025
The longtime progressive activist Avi Lewis officially launched his bid for leadership of Canada's New Democratic Party, which he aims to revitalize with a platform of economic populism.
Lewis, a journalist and documentarian whose grandfather helped to found the NDP in 1961, says the way to bring the party back to relevance amid an electoral low point is to “fling the doors wide open, and build a party for the 99%.”
At a kickoff party in Toronto on Wednesday, the former parliamentary candidate from Vancouver railed against the “Liberal-Conservative alliance” that dominates Canadian politics. The two major parties' leaders, Lewis said, "compete fiercely in public, while behind the scenes, they collude to boost corporate profits."
"In the name of protecting the country, the government is rapidly passing and proposing legislation that will change the culture and character of Canada," Lewis said. "From sweeping aside Indigenous rights and environmental protections for so-called nation-building projects, to rolling back higher taxes on the uberwealthy and digital giants, to the generational austerity of 15% cuts to public spending, to the $9 billion that materialized in an instant for the military this year, ramping up to $150 billion a year a decade from now—the changes afoot are extreme."
Lewis pledged to “build a government that is an instrument for the people, not for corporate Canada.”
The NDP—once Canada's third-largest national political party—has been ailing of late after a dismal showing in the nation's most recent parliamentary elections. The party, which held over 100 seats 14 years ago, dropped to a new low of just seven seats in 2025, not enough to even be recognized for committee assignments or federal funding.
The humiliating showing resulted in the resignation of Jagmeet Singh, who'd led the party for eight years, but was widely criticized by those on the left for his coziness with the establishment of the dominant Liberal Party and his failure to keep the NDP competitive. It is in this state of "political wilderness" that Lewis has emerged with an ambitious change agenda.
(Video: Avi Lewis for NDP Leader)
"Life in Canada today feels on the edge," Lewis said in a video released last week announcing his leadership run. "Everyone seeking a little stability, everyone being told 'You're all on your own.'"
He identified several causes of that precarity. One was the "economic attack" from US President Donald Trump, whom Lewis described as sending "disruption grenades" in the form of steep tariffs and annexation threats. But Lewis said that Trump merely "magnifies... the everyday emergency of trying to get by in an impossible economy."
According to one survey conducted in July, 57% of Canadians said their current incomes did not allow them to afford basic necessities like housing, groceries, energy, and cell phone plans.
"Working hard doesn't earn you a living," Lewis said.
"These days, every politician claims to be shocked by the costs," he continued. "What they don't talk about is why: The billions in profits for the tiny group of corporations that control every part of our economy. Three phone providers, three grocery giants, five oil companies, and the five big banks that fund them."
Lewis' plan to confront corporate power is years in the making. Alongside his wife, the acclaimed journalist and author Naomi Klein, Lewis rolled out the Leap Manifesto in 2015 as an agenda for the NDP. Leap focused on confronting the climate crisis, but its contents formed the basis of what he now refers to as a "Green New Deal." The accelerating climate emergency remains at the center of his agenda in 2025.
"Oil and gas CEOs," he said in the video, are "not just hoarding extreme wealth," but "foreclosing on our shared future."
Lewis has never held a parliamentary office, though he has run for a federal Vancouver-area seat twice before and achieved two third-place finishes, receiving 26% of the vote in 2021 and 12.5% in 2025.
In his bid to lead NDP, he has so far leaned heavily into his family legacy and his reputation as a lifelong activist who has "butted heads with the powerful," over issues like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the privatization of healthcare and public transit.
"For four decades," he said, "I have stood with workers, telling stories of working-class heroes and organizing for dignity in factories and fields, classrooms and care homes, shop floors and fishing fleets."
Lewis, who also identified free trade deals as job killers, proposed a "Green New Deal" as a means to revive Canadian industry and create "millions of good-paying jobs."
He has also proposed a wealth tax, a national cap on rent increases, a public option for groceries, and expanded universal healthcare that covers "medication to mental health."
During his speech Wednesday night, Lewis described NDP as "the only party that can accurately diagnose the cause of our everyday emergency, and offer solutions as big as the crises we face."
"The federal government has the power, the resources, and the responsibility to ensure the fundamentals of a good life—healthy food, truly affordable housing, functioning public transit, and hey, maybe a proper vacation once in a while," he said. "But we won’t get it if we don’t fight for it. And that’s where the NDP comes in. After all, the NDP is the original party of workers’ struggle. And in this moment of epic change and uncertainty, the party is needed as never before."
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A Battle for the Soul of America in Pennsylvania’s Bible Belt
There are Christians who are preaching and practicing the ministry of Jesus, the son of God, who himself was unhoused and undocumented and sided with the poor. And then there are Christian nationalists.
Jul 22, 2025
Most days, in the heart of Pennsylvania’s Bible Belt, the old sanctuary at Christ Lutheran Church sits empty. Decades ago, it was home to a congregation of 3,000 people. By the late 1990s, that number had dwindled to seven. At the turn of the millennium, Jody Silliker, a young minister fresh out of seminary, was sent to shutter the downtown church, a mile from the state legislature in Harrisburg.
Instead, she immersed herself in the deindustrialized community, meeting unhoused families, the unemployed, migrant workers, sex workers, and other low-wage laborers. Just a few years after welfare reform eviscerated the social safety net and proclaimed the era of “personal responsibility,” Silliker retrofitted the church annex and opened a free medical clinic.
Earlier this spring, we visited Christ Lutheran. We’ve been on the road since April, meeting with leaders from poor and dispossessed communities in this country and sharing notes from our new book, You Only Get What You’re Organized to Take: Lessons from the Movement to End Poverty. As the Trump administration abducts our neighbors off the streets and eviscerates everything from Medicaid to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, we want to better understand what it will take to ignite a democratic awakening in this country. How, in the words of theologian Howard Thurman, the “masses of people, with their backs constantly up against the wall” in Donald Trump’s America, can push back together.
A Battle for the Bible in the Battleground State of Pennsylvania
In small towns, as well as cities like Harrisburg, there is an underreported but epic struggle being waged for the hearts and minds of everyday people, with ripple effects for the entire nation. And the church—its pulpit, pews, and survival programs—is a critical staging ground for that struggle. There are Christians who are preaching and practicing the ministry of Jesus, the son of God, who himself was unhoused and undocumented and sided with the poor, the sick, the indebted, the incarcerated, and the immigrant, while decrying the idolatry of tyrants.
And then there are Christian nationalists, whose religion of empire is more akin to the worship of Caesar than the Jesus of the scriptures.
Today, Christian nationalists are attempting to transform our democracy into their dominion and remake (or simply dismantle) the government in the image of Project 2025. Earlier this spring, even before Trump’s disastrous “Big Beautiful Bill” passed Congress, Paul Dans, the architect of Project 2025, marveled that the new administration’s policies were unfurling on a scale and scope beyond his “wildest dreams.” Now, those same Christian nationalists are gutting access to Medicaid, banning reproductive freedom and gender-affirming healthcare, criminalizing the unhoused, and scapegoating immigrant communities in the courts and Congress, even though the scriptures decry such actions. “Woe to you who deprive the rights of the poor, making women and homeless children your prey,” laments the prophet Isaiah.
Thankfully, there are brave faith leaders standing firmly in the breach, refusing to let the Bible and the church be hijacked by extremists. At Christ Lutheran, Jody Silliker’s successor, Pastor Matthew Best, is now following in her footsteps. Just a few miles from Life Center, an evangelical megachurch that hosted Elon Musk late in the 2024 election season, Pastor Best continues to transform his resplendent church into a community mission. On the second floor, volunteer dentists pull rotten teeth and perform root canals, cost-free. In the basement, nurses treat emergencies, mental health crises, and chronic health issues. More than 50 national flags hang from the ceiling, each representing the nationality of a patient. Since 2018, 100,000 people have walked under those flags to receive medical care. Nobody is asked for payment, documentation, or insurance.
In early July, right after Trump signed his Big Beautiful Bill, Pastor Best preached a sermon reminding his multiracial, multilingual, intergenerational, and predominantly poor congregation that they were not alone in feeling like exiles in their own land. As he put it:
Jeremiah 29 is a letter written to people in exile—or about to be. It’s sent to those who have lost everything: their homes, their land, their freedom, their safety. It’s sent to those who feel like strangers in a strange land, people who are trying to make sense of how everything they depended on has fallen apart. At the time of this letter, some of the people of Judah have already been taken into exile in Babylon. They were the first wave—the leaders, artisans, and young people deported when Babylon invaded. They are trying to build a life in a strange land. But back in Jerusalem, others are still there—living in a fragile illusion of normal. The temple still stands. A king still rules. But it won’t last. More exile is coming.
To bring his point home, Pastor Best translated the Bible into what he called “Harrisburg English”:
This is what the Lord says to all of you living in exile—the ones just barely scraping by, the ones pushed to the margins, the ones wondering if God has left.
“I see you. I haven’t abandoned you. Build your homes—even if they’re one-room apartments. Grow food—even if it’s a tomato plant in a pot. Love your families—whatever they look like. Create beauty in the middle of struggle. Pray for your city—even when it feels broken. Don’t check out. Don’t give up. For in its healing, you will find your own. Don’t listen to those who say things are fine. Don’t trust those who profit off your pain. Because I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “Plans for welfare and not for harm. Plans to give you a future and a hope. When you cry out, I will listen. When you search for me with your whole heart, you will find me. Not in the halls of Congress. Not behind gated communities. But in free clinics. In shared meals. In prayers whispered through tears. In justice rolling down like waters. I will gather you. I will bring you home.”
That, beloved, is the gospel in exile.
Pastor Best’s bottom-up ministry is mirrored by others in that area. His friends Tammy Rojas and Matthew Rosing, who have survived homelessness, incarceration, and low wages, are commissioned ministers with the Freedom Church of the Poor, a spiritual home for grassroots organizers founded during the first month of the Covid-19 pandemic. They are also longtime leaders of Put People First PA!, which organizes poor people across the state of Pennsylvania to defend Medicaid and demand universal healthcare.
In 2019, Rojas and Rosing led an effort to stop the corporate capture and closure of St. Joseph Hospital in Lancaster, an hour southwest of Harrisburg. For the couple, the fight couldn’t have been more personal: Rojas had been born at that hospital and Rosing received lifesaving care there on multiple occasions. Ultimately, despite their efforts, St. Joseph was closed.
After that defeat, they redoubled their efforts to organize within the region’s abandoned communities. Today, in the wake of Trump’s historic Medicaid cuts and as Rojas and Rosing anticipate the closure of more hospitals, they continue to recruit new members and allies for their “Healthcare is a Human Right” campaign at feeding programs and free clinics like the one at Christ Lutheran. Around their necks, they all too appropriately wear stoles that read: “Fight Poverty, Not the Poor” and “Jesus Was Homeless.”
Dominionism in the “City on the Hill”
Rojas and Rosing face formidable opposition in the region. In Lancaster, where they live, Christian nationalists are working hard to amass power. In recent years, the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) has set up shop in that historically Anabaptist area. Once a fringe movement of the Christian Right, NAR has quietly built a sophisticated and well-funded national operation over the last couple decades. In 2024, the Southern Poverty Law Center described it as the “greatest threat to American democracy that most people have never heard of.”
NAR churches in Lancaster have proliferated, taking over, or “steeplejacking,” historic and dying churches. On first glance, such local church activity may appear quite benign. NAR leaders provide food and other material and spiritual aid through their ministries, artfully deploying the language of diversity and encouraging people to “come as you are.” Some families attend services just to sing lively renditions of contemporary Christian music. Indeed, many people join those churches, which have become de facto community centers, for the most human of needs: connection and fellowship.
Today, the work of Pastors Best, Rojas, and Rosing in Pennsylvania’s Bible Belt underscores the still-vital role of religion in advancing a more just and vibrant democracy in the Trump era.
Stick around long enough, though, and you’ll discover an institutional pipeline suffused with toxic theology that funnels people toward Christian nationalism. In their churches, food banks, recovery services, and community meetings, local NAR leaders offer individual and highly spiritualized explanations for this country’s systemic crises of poverty, homelessness, hunger, and addiction. The solution to these and other social problems, they insist, is fidelity to a dominionist God and a theology eager to bring Christian nationalism to, and keep it in, power. Forget science, reasonable public policy, or the separation of church and state. In meetings with more dedicated church activists, these same leaders invoke Biblical imagery to proclaim spiritual warfare against “demonic” influences in our government, schools, and family structures (that is, diverse expressions of religious, political, or gender identity).
This far-right movement melds its grassroots activity in south-central Pennsylvania with a broader campaign to influence a new generation of county and state politicians, law enforcement officials, businesspeople, and educators. In the years ahead, Christian nationalists like them, who now command power at the highest reaches of the federal government, will only intensify their activities across the country. Indeed, a number of figures within Trump’s cabinet and his coterie of advisers, as well as congressional leaders like Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.), have close ties to the Christian nationalist ecosystem. These are the same politicians who championed Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, including its historic tax cuts for the wealthy, increased military, detention, and immigration enforcement spending, and death-dealing cuts to the social safety net.
A Moral Resurrection in the Age of Trump?
To fight back, we need to forge new alliances across racial, religious, geographic, and partisan lines. Certainly, today’s ongoing political crisis should remind concerned Christians that they can’t sit out the battle for the Bible and should remind the rest of us that we can’t concede religion to extremists. Christian nationalists weaponize the Good Book because they believe they have a monopoly on morality and can distort the word of God with impunity.
The policy effects of their theological distortions will continue to be devastating. In early June, for example, the Minnesota state legislature voted to strip healthcare from undocumented immigrants, despite majority control by the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. To rationalize his vote, state Rep. Isaac Schultz (R-10B) blithely argued: “The role of the church—the role of people of faith—is to care for our neighbors. Yes… But not in this instance, specifically.”
Clearly, Shultz has not studied the Bible closely enough. If he had, he would have discovered that the Bible’s 2,000 passages about poverty and justice constitute perhaps the most important mass media ever produced that had something good to say about immigrants, the poor, the sick, and otherwise marginalized people. In scripture after scripture, Jesus condemns the violent policies of empire, which enriches itself on the backs of the poor. Instead, he proclaims the Good News of Jubilee: a vision of social and economic emancipation for the entirety of humanity.
In this country, the liberatory heart of Christianity, among other religious traditions, has always been a source of strength for popular social movements. In every previous era, there were people who grounded their freedom struggles in the holy word and spirit of God. Today, the work of Pastors Best, Rojas, and Rosing in Pennsylvania’s Bible Belt underscores the still-vital role of religion in advancing a more just and vibrant democracy in the Trump era. In Harrisburg and Lancaster, these Christians are building a bottom-up and deeply moral movement that recognizes the material, spiritual, and emotional needs of everyday people.
“The church speaks to birth, death, and resurrection,” Pastor Best explained while giving us a tour of Christ Lutheran’s free medical clinic. “This is the resurrection.”
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Hungry for Progressive Economics, Nearly 2/3 of Democrats Want New Party Leadership: Poll
Voters described universal healthcare, affordable childcare, and higher taxes on the rich as top priorities in a new Reuters/Ipsos poll. But they were less likely to believe that party leaders shared those priorities.
Jun 20, 2025
Democratic voters want new leadership that will prioritize their day-to-day needs and do more to challenge corporate power, according to a poll published Thursday.
Sixty-two percent of the nearly 1,300 self-identified Democrats who responded to the new Reuters/Ipsos poll agreed with the statement that "the leadership of the Democratic Party should be replaced with new people," while just 24% wanted to keep the old guard around.
The new data delivers another blow to party leaders such as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), who have faced growing scrutiny for failing to effectively oppose President Donald Trump in the eyes of their constituents.
The poll, conducted from June 11-16, revealed stark gaps between the agenda Democratic voters would like to see prioritized and what they perceive as party leadership's priorities. Voters overwhelmingly support populist economic policies, according to the data, but doubt that party leaders share those goals—with young voters especially skeptical.
(Graphic: Reuters/Ipsos)
Across all age groups, more than three-quarters of voters described universal healthcare, affordable childcare, and higher taxes on the rich as top priorities. But voters were less likely to believe that party leaders did as well.
Voters between ages 18 to 39 especially had a grim view of leadership. While 81% said they wanted universal healthcare, just 66% said they thought party leadership did too. On limiting money in politics, 62% said it was a priority, compared with just 44% who thought leadership felt the same.
Democrats over 40 were even more inclined to believe in top progressive agenda items. Although they perceived less of a divide between their views and those of party leaders, a significant gap remained.
Following Kamala Harris' defeat in the 2024 election, many corporate-friendly pundits embraced the narrative that voters perceived the Democratic policy agenda as too far left. But the Reuters/Ipsos poll suggests the opposite.
As Sharon Zhang wrote for Truthout, "The majority of federally elected Democrats actually oppose proposals like Medicare for All, and many party leaders have actively worked to sabotage support for such ideas," including Schumer, who declined to support Sen. Bernie Sanders' Medicare for All bill this year.
"Far from taxing the rich," she added, "party leaders have also cozied up to billionaires." Tech giants including Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple all donated millions of dollars to the Harris campaign.
Ben Tulchin, a pollster for Bernie Sanders' 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns, told Reuters that Democratic Party had "room for improvement" on showing Americans that they "are the ones standing up for working people."
"It needs to transform itself into a party that everyday people can get excited about," Tulchin said. "That requires a changing of the guard."
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May Day in Pictures: Workers Worldwide Demand Alternative to 'Billionaire Vision of the World'
"This is a war on working people—and we will not stand down."
May 01, 2025
With right-wing, pro-corporate political parties across the world aggressively pushing anti-immigration policies and sentiment as they worsen inequality and attack crucial services, working people across the world gathered on Thursday to mark May Day—the holiday memorializing the struggles and victories of the global labor movement—and to let those in power know they aren't fooled by xenophobic scapegoating.
"They tell people that migrants are to blame for failing hospitals, job insecurity, and rising rents," said Esther Lynch, general secretary of the European Trade Union Conference in Paris. "This is a lie—a dangerous lie. The true cause is austerity, it is underfunding, privatization, and a refusal to invest in people. It's price gauging, it's union busting, it's pay injustice."
Here are photos from demonstrations and marches worldwide:
May Day 2025 in Pictures
Protesters with red flags raise their fists as they march during a May Day (Labour Day) rally, marking International Workers' Day, outside the Greek Parliament in Athens, on May 1, 2025. (Photo: Angelos Tzortzinis/AFP via Getty Images)
Paris was the site of France's main May Day rally, but an estimated 260 protests kicked off throughout the country, hosted by the General Confederation of France (CGT).
In the United States, protests were expected in nearly 1,000 cities, with many participants tying the fight against union-busting, the high cost of living, privatization, and corporate greed to President Donald Trump's administration—which has spent the past three months working to secure $4.5 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthy while pushing a mass deportation campaign and blaming working families' struggles on a so-called "invasion" by immigrants.
"This is a war on working people—and we will not stand down," a website for the U.S. May Day protests reads. "They're defunding our schools, privatizing public services, attacking unions, and targeting immigrant families with fear and violence. Working people built this nation and we know how to take care of each other. We won't back down—we will never stop fighting for our families and the rights and freedoms that propel opportunity and a better life for all Americans. Their time is up."
French union leaders also used the occasion to decry the "Trumpization" of global politics, and Italian protesters in Turin paraded a puppet of the U.S. president.
The global movement sent the message that "there is an alternative to the billionaire vision of the world," said the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC).
Other May Day marches and rallies were held in countries including Germany, the United Kingdom, Spain, Greece, the Philippines, Turkey, and Japan.
"Around the world, workers are being denied the basics of life like well-funded hospitals and schools, living wages, and freedom to move, while billionaires pocket record profits and unimaginable power," said Luc Triangle, general secretary of the ITUC. "A system built for the 0.0001% is rigged against the rest of us—but workers around the world are standing up and organizing to take back democracy."
"Workers are demanding a New Social Contract that works for them—not the billionaires undermining democracy," said Triangle. "Fair taxation, strong public services, living wages, and a just transition are not radical demands—they are the foundation of a just society."
On May 8, the ITUC plans to issue an open letter to heads of state and global institutions demanding a new social contract, including collective bargaining rights for all workers; minimum living wages; and governments that ensure universal healthcare, education, and other public services.
"Let us be clear: austerity is a political choice, not an economic necessity. And it is a choice that has caused and is causing enormous damage," said Lynch. "When governments slash spending under the guise of fiscal responsibility, the real result is increased hardship, unemployment, and insecurity—especially for working people."
"Jobs in the public and private sector are being lost across the E.U. due to austerity policies," she added. "Vital public services are being slashed, wages are being frozen, pensions cut and entire communities are being abandoned. In this vacuum, the far right grows stronger—not by offering solutions, but by spreading fear."
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