Category: Analysis and Opinion / News Items

“Here Comes the Sun”: Bill McKibben on Renewable Energy, “Sun Day” & the “Last Chance” for Climate

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And but yet, here we are in the United States, going in the complete opposite direction from what China and the rest of the world are striving for. How do we deal with that situation here in this country?

As the Trump administration grows increasingly hostile to renewable energy, we speak with acclaimed environmentalist Bill McKibben about his new book, Here Comes the Sun, in which he lays out a hopeful vision for the future that includes avoiding climate catastrophe, reshaping the economy and saving democracy. He says the key to unlock that future is fully embracing renewable energy over the fierce opposition of the fossil fuel industry and its political enablers. He notes that solar and wind are already the cheapest and fastest-growing power sources in history, with more green energy coming online every year.

“It’s not that we’re going to stop global warming. It’s too late for that. It’s that we really have a chance to reboot the way the world and its economy and its geopolitics works right now,” says McKibben.

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

We turn now to the climate crisis. A new report by the clean energy tech research group Ember finds China is, quote, “creating the conditions for a decline in fossil fuel use,” unquote, as it leads the production of solar panels and wind turbines.

Meanwhile, another new report confirms the Trump administration is openly hostile to renewable energy and has overseen, quote, “the most abrupt shift in energy and climate policy in recent memory,” unquote, which has led to a jump in greenhouse gas emissions in the first seven months of the Trump presidency. Trump’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill not only ended subsidies for renewable power sources, but applies a new tax on solar and wind projects.

On Friday, the Department of Energy wrote on social media, quote, “Wind and solar energy infrastructure is essentially worthless when it is dark outside, and the wind is not blowing,” they said.

Trump criticized renewable energy efforts during a recent Cabinet meeting.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We don’t allow windmills. We’re not allowing any windmills to go up, I mean, unless there’s a legal situation where somebody committed to it a long time ago. We don’t allow windmills, and we don’t want the solar panels that I was speaking with the secretary about, because they take up, you know, thousands of acres of our farmland. You see these big, ugly patches of black plastic that comes from China.

AMY GOODMAN: Despite all this, the Los Angeles Times reports today renewable energy reached nearly 25% of U.S. power generation in June, up from 18% last year.

We spend the rest of the hour with Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org, founder of the group Third Act. His new book is titled Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization.

You, actually, Bill McKibben, despite Trump going back on renewable energy, people fear going back decades, hold out great hope. You see this as a opportunity we’ve never had before.

BILL McKIBBEN: Amy, Juan, you guys have been at this for a long time. This is as dark a moment as there’s ever been in our democracy, and our planet is overheating fast. In the midst of that, there is this one big good thing simultaneously happening, and it’s so big and so good that it might help with both the climate and the authoritarianism crisis. And that’s this rise in the last 36 months, a pretty untold story, of just extraordinary amounts of clean energy surging into the world’s energy system. It is centered in China, and the numbers are staggering. May is the last month we have data for. In May, the Chinese were putting up three gigawatts of solar panels a day, a gigawatt being the rough equivalent of a coal-fired power plant. They were putting up one of those, made out of solar panels, every eight hours.

California, which has done more than any place in this country, reached some kind of tipping point in the last 18 months. Most days now, California supplies more than 100% of its electricity from renewable energy for long stretches. At night, the biggest source of supply on its grid is batteries that have been soaking up excess sunshine all afternoon. Bottom line, California, fourth-largest economy in the world, is using 40% less natural gas to produce electricity than they were two years ago. That’s the kind of number — that may be the most optimistic thing that I’ve — number that I’ve heard in the 40 years I’ve been working on the climate crisis. It’s the kind of number that begins to shave tenths of a degree off how hot the world eventually gets. And remember, every tenth of a degree means 100 million people moving from a safe climate zone to a dangerous one.

So, it’s not that we’re going to stop global warming. It’s too late for that. It’s that we have really a chance to reboot the way the world and its economy and its geopolitics works right now.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Bill, I wanted to ask you about this staggering investment that China has been putting into renewable energies. It accounts now for almost a third of all the clean energy investment in the world. It’s producing 80% of all the solar panels, 60% of the wind turbines. And so, all of this investment has actually driven the price of green energy down, so that now it’s in some — according to the Ember report, 90% of wind and solar projects commissioned worldwide produce power more cheaply than fossil fuel alternatives. So, isn’t this — doesn’t this mean that the Global South now will gobble up, the poorer nations of the world will gobble up clean energy alternatives to fossil fuel?

BILL McKIBBEN: Absolutely, Juan. It’s really important to understand that as of about four years ago, we live on a planet where the cheapest way to produce energy is to point a sheet of glass at the sun. And China has been leading that effort. We know about petrostates. China is the world’s first electrostate. And now, as you say, that’s leaking out from across its borders.

Pakistan, right next door, last year, Pakistanis, just basically using TikTok videos as their guide, installed enough solar panels to equal half the country’s national electric grid. Pakistani farmers, who were early adopters of this, because diesel to run their tube wells for irrigation is their biggest cost input, they bought millions of these solar panels. They lack the money to build the metal stanchions to point them at the sun, so, instead, they’re just laying them on the ground. Nonetheless, Pakistan was using 35% less diesel last year than the year before.

Now this is leaking into Africa, not just the solar panels, but the things that make use of the clean energy that they provide. We’re used to thinking of Detroit as the center of the world’s auto industry. That is not true. It’s now two or three cities in China whose names I find difficult to pronounce. They’re producing the best and cheapest cars on the planet, and they are flooding the markets of the developing world. Forget about Ford. It’s BYD that’s going to be the car company of the future.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And but yet, here we are in the United States, going in the complete opposite direction from what China and the rest of the world are striving for. How do we deal with that situation here in this country?

BILL McKIBBEN: So, it’s what’s so fascinating. And it’s pretty easy, I think, to explain the success of renewable energy, which is good news for almost everyone on the planet, except the people who own oil wells and coal mines. And for them, it’s an existential threat.

So, what did they do? You’ll recall candidate Trump last year telling the oil industry that for a billion dollars — I mean, it was kind of Austin Powers moment – for a billion dollars, they could have anything they wanted. They ended up raising about half a billion, between donations, advertising, lobbying, in the last election cycle. And clearly that was enough, because they’ve — the Trump administration has done everything that Big Oil could have hoped — and more, really.

I mean, I don’t think anyone anticipated that they would actually shut down work on 80% complete wind farms off the coast of New England like they did last week. That’s just insane. I mean, if they keep with it, a thousand years from now, archeologists will be trying to explain how this aqueous Stonehenge emerged off the coast of Rhode Island. We’re — if we keep at this, our role in the world a decade from now will be as the kind of Colonial Williamsburg of internal combustion, a place where the rest of the planet, if they can get tourist visas, come to gawk at how people did things in the olden days.

And that’s especially aggravating, or should be, for Americans, because this technology was invented here. I mean, the solar cell was invented 20 miles away, in Edison, New Jersey. The first industrial wind turbine was 30 miles south of my house in Vermont in the 1940s. And yet we’re just handing it all to China in order to appease the oil industry.

AMY GOODMAN: You talk about California. You’re headed, what, to D.C. to speak at Politics and Prose, then the Petro Metro. That’s Houston. You’re headed to Texas.

BILL McKIBBEN: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: Texas might surprise people, when it comes to solar and wind energy.

BILL McKIBBEN: Texas is now putting up clean energy faster than California, faster than any place in this country. Big Oil doesn’t like that. And they tried, in the state legislative session this year, to pass a number of laws, the most prominent of which people called ”DEI for natural gas.” It was going to force anybody who wanted to put up five megawatts of solar to also put up five megawatts of natural gas. People emerged from the hinterlands across rural Texas to say, “Don’t do this. This is how we pay property taxes in our county. This is what keeps the schools open.” And so the Legislature backed off, returned to their project of redistricting Texas to help Mr. Trump instead.

It’s not clear that even in this country they can beat down the economics of renewable energy, though, obviously, they’re going to do much damage, which is precisely why we’re rallying across the country on September 21st for this thing we’re calling Sun Day.

AMY GOODMAN: You’re wearing a T-shirt that says “Sun Day.”

BILL McKIBBEN: Indeed, I am, because there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of events planned for that day. We obviously can’t change policy in Washington in the short term, but we can change policy in states and localities across the country to make it much, much easier to do solar power.

Amy, it costs three times as much to put up solar panels in the U.S. as it does on your house in Australia or the EU. A tiny bit of that’s from tariffs on solar panels. Mostly it’s because we have 15,000 municipalities, each with their own building code and team of inspectors. It can take months to get done what takes days everyplace else. This can be changed with easy — with ease by local officials. California, Maryland and New Jersey have already adopted this thing called the SolarAPP, that allows a contractor to get instant permitting just by putting a few details into a computer program. We need that across the country, especially in light of federal intransigence.

AMY GOODMAN: Sun Day is September 21st, the fall equinox?

BILL McKIBBEN: The fall equinox, exactly right.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Bill, I wanted to ask you — last month, the Environmental Protection Agency formally proposed revoking the Obama-era scientific determination that greenhouse gases are a danger to public health and welfare because they cause global warming. Your response to that, and what people can do?

BILL McKIBBEN: I mean, it’s nonsense, of course. The EPA and the Trump administration can’t repeal the laws of physics, which are the problem here. That’s what’s driving climate change.

But I think there’s something deeper going on, as we move into this possibility of a world that runs on clean energy. And I was really thinking about it as we were listening to Jeremy report from Middle East. I mean, think about — you guys have run The War and Peace Report for a long time. Think about what this show and this world would have been like for the last few decades if oil was of trivial value on this planet, how many wars and coups and assassination attempts would have been averted. Humans are, you know, altogether too good at starting wars, but figuring out how to start one over sunshine will be a trick.

I think that this is not just a possibility for dealing with climate change. I think the fact that we have access now to energy that’s available to everyone everywhere, instead of being something concentrated in a few spots, controlled by a few autocrats and plutocrats, that’s a huge, huge potential gift.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s a real challenge to capitalism, because, I mean, this is decentralized as you can get, unless the Big Oil companies, when they see their days are numbered, just switch over to try to control the access to the sun.

BILL McKIBBEN: Even if they switch over, which I don’t think they will, I’m afraid, all they can do — and it’s very important, and you can make a lot of money doing it — is build the solar panels. But once you’ve built the solar panels, the sun delivers the energy for free every morning when it rises above the horizon. There’s no way to hoard it or hold it in reserve. The same charismatic object in our galaxy that brings us light and warmth and, via photosynthesis, our food is now willing to provide us with all the power we could ever want. That’s the kind of moment that changes civilization, as thoroughly as learning to harness the combustion of fossil fuel changed civilization. That’s what we call the Industrial Revolution.

AMY GOODMAN: You’re here in New York. Zohran Mamdani has just shocked the Democratic establishment. Still, the Democratic leader in Congress from New York, Hakeem Jeffries, astonishingly, has not endorsed the Democratic primary candidate. But how do you see Zohran Mandani’s race for mayor of New York as a model for the rest of the country?

BILL McKIBBEN: Well, I mean, the fact that he’s creative and full of good humor is a shocking thing in our political life, but it’s a real reminder of how much there is that we could do. Across Europe, in cities full of apartment dwellers like New York, millions of people have put up what we call balcony solar over the last three years. They just go to the Best Buy, come home with a solar panel designed to hang over the railing of their apartment balcony, plug it into the wall with a standard plug and producing 20% of the power they use. That’s illegal everywhere in the country, except in the state of Utah, where the state Legislature, that progressive bastion, enabled it by a unanimous vote earlier this year. I’m betting that within weeks of Mr. Mamdani becoming Mayor Mamdani, we’re going to see balcony solar installations sprouting across the five boroughs. And what a nice sign that will be.

AMY GOODMAN: And you gave this — you started Sunday with another renegade mayor, and that is Michelle Wu of Boston, who Trump is trying to take on.

BILL McKIBBEN: Michelle Wu, Zohran —

AMY GOODMAN: We have 20 seconds.

BILL McKIBBEN: — Zohran Mamdani, people like this, offer a real potential future. And they have an enormous ally in this new technology that really gives us a fresh kind of hope.

AMY GOODMAN: Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org, founder of the organization Third Act. His new book is just out, Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization. He is on book tour. Tonight he’ll be in D.C. at Politics and Prose, tomorrow in Houston. And he’s organizing a national mobilization for September 21st, the fall equinox, called Sun Day 2025, celebrating solar and wind power. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

This is viewer supported news. Please do your part today.

Donate

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

Join me on Wings of Change. We still have so much work to do as activists and organizations make plans for the upcoming months and years. Wings of Change is pleased and excited to be a part of that work through education, information, and inspiration.

Subscribe to Wings of Change here!

Donate

Whatever you are able donate will bring you articles and opinions from independent websites, writers, and journalists as well as a blog with opinions and creative contributions.

Sue Ann Martinson

One place to begin is with reason and truth, and how fundamental they are to creating critically engaged citizens and communities.

—Henry A. Giroux

September 20, 2025
Scores of Climate Experts Condemn Trump Climate Report as ‘Junk Science’

A 435-page review found the authors used standard climate denier tropes to produce a report riddled with errors.

Scores of Climate Experts Condemn Trump Climate Report as ‘Junk Science’

Memorials for some of the more than 100 people killed in July 2025’s catastrophic flash flooding in central Texas, which was intensified by climate change. Credit: source/credit info: World Central Kitchen (CC BY 4.0)

By Sharon Kelly and Emily J Gertz / DeSmog International / Series: MAGA / September 2, 2025

Analysis

A group of more than 85 climate experts today released a scathing review of the Trump administration’s “Climate Working Group” report on climate change science, condemning it as “biased, full of errors, and not fit to inform policymaking.”

The reviewers include MacArthur “Genius” Fellows, a half-dozen members of the National Academy of Sciences, Royal Society fellows, and fellows from other prominent scientific organizations including the American Meteorological Society, which issued its own separate statement criticizing the Climate Working Group report.

They found that the federal report “exhibits pervasive problems with misrepresentation and selective citation of the scientific literature, cherry-picking of data, and faulty or absent statistics” in order “to downplay the risks of record-breaking heat, intense rainfall, worsening wildfires, rising sea levels, and widespread health harms – all well-established by decades of peer-reviewed science.”

The Trump administration’s report was authored by five longtime climate deniers — Steve Koonin, John Christy, Ross McKitrick, Judith Curry, and Roy Spencer —as part of its effort to gut federal powers to regulate climate-heating pollution from cars, power plants, and other major sources. The Department of Energy (DOE) released it on July 29.

On the same day the Trump report was released, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the agency’s proposal to rescind the foundation of those regulations: its scientific “endangerment finding” affirming that carbon pollution threatens human health and welfare by creating dangerous planetary warming.

Texas A&M climate scientist Andrew Dessler organized the volunteer effort to review the report, which is being submitted to the Department of Energy during the public comment period that closes on September 2. The public comment period on the EPA’s proposal is open through September 22.

Announcing the release of the review this morning on his personal blog, Dessler termed the Trump report “a show trial for climate science.

“Like any good Soviet trial, the outcome of this exercise by the Dept. of Energy is already known: climate science will be judged too uncertain to justify the endangerment finding,” Dessler said. “Once you understand that, everything about the DOE report makes total sense. You understand why the five contrarian authors were selected: The only way to get this report was to pick these authors. If any other writing team had been chosen, the report would have been 180° different.”

The Trump report’s authors have previously defended their work, telling the journal Nature that they are “committed to a transparent and fact-based dialogue on climate science and know from long experience that scientific criticism and rebuttal are essential to that process.”

In response to a request for comment, Curry referred reporters to her blog, where she described the Dessler review as “comprehensive” and a “laudable effort,” noting that it “was prepared in 30 days (sort of weakens the argument that the DOE report was written too quickly, ha ha).”

The Energy Department’s public comment period on the report was set for 30 days, rather than a more typical 60 days. The agency has not announced an extension.

After “skimming” the review, Curry said, she “didn’t spot anything in this report that would lead to changing any of the conclusions in the DOE Report.”

The four other members of the Climate Working Group, as well as the Energy Department, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“A Wonderful Example of Junk Science”

The Trump report “is a travesty for U.S. scientific integrity,” said Ryan Katz-Rosene of the University of Ottawa, an expert on climate and sustainability policies and politics, in a statement. “It reads like a list of common climate skeptic tropes — long ago rebutted by the scientific community — being rehashed by a group of disgruntled scientists.”

The 435-page expert review found that the Trump climate report exhibited a pattern of questionable reasoning, as well as dozens of factual and structural flaws — such as relying on “verifiably flawed and unrepresentative [scientific] literature.”

It was also riddled with typos, scrambled citations, unsupported claims about climate science, and references to research or data that the reviewers could not find, along with at least one manufactured quote.

These sorts of errors have become associated with AI slop, though the reviewers didn’t speculate whether the report’s five authors — who the expert reviewers described in a statement as a “tiny team of hand-picked contrarians” — used AI to write their report.

“I always like to find a silver lining,” climate scientist Andy Miller, a 33-year EPA veteran, said in a statement. “In this case the silver lining is that this document is a wonderful example of junk science that can be used as an example for years to come.”

Koonin, Curry, and their co-authors used several climate disinformation tactics in their report. Here are just a few.

Omitting Evidence

The review found many instances where the Trump report left out vital details — sometimes entire fields of study — that would undercut the administration’s case for deregulation.

“The only mention of the oceans throughout the entire report is in the context of ocean acidification, coral reefs, and sea level rise,” the review noted. “The glaring omission of the myriad impacts of climate change on the ocean — marine heat waves, changing species distributions, changes in ocean circulation, increased harmful algal blooms, coastal erosion, and economic impacts on commercially valuable fisheries to name a few — is a significant problem with the report.”

The report also has a bad case of “selection bias,” by elevating minor issues or weak science over well-established and strong science, or issues vital to climate action.

In one instance, the Trump team heavily downplayed the scientific research at the heart of the Paris Agreement’s nitty-gritty methodologies for measuring carbon emissions, and put a more marginal approach at the center instead.

“For a report claiming to be a ‘Critical Review’ of greenhouse gas impacts to entirely ignore the primary scientific framework for international and national climate policy is an inexplicable and scientifically unjustifiable omission,” the review concluded.

In sections where Trump’s climate team claimed that there were no long-term extreme weather trends associated with climate change — such as more frequent and destructive floods and hurricanes — the review found that they left out key findings that contradicted their conclusion, cherry-picked studies, quoted research out of context, and used outdated materials instead of the best available science.

The five authors used similar tactics to slant sections on tornadoes and wildfires.

Zombie Arguments

The Trump administration report raises questions about climate change that have been asked and answered — repeatedly. Rehashing these long-settled scientific debates created an opportunity for the report’s authors to deny the fundamental cause of the climate crisis: burning fossil fuels.

“Those sorts of back-from-the-dead arguments [create] a ‘zombie argument’ that is inconsistent with the state of the best available science,” the expert review concluded.

One such resurrected claim pointed to record-breaking high temperatures in the 1930s to dismiss climate change as a factor in recent heat waves. However, many of these records have fallen since 2000. “[I]n our calculation, the most recent few years have had as many record-breaking high temperatures as the 1930s,” the review notes. “In fact, the year with the most record-breaking hot days is 2023.”

The federal report sometimes griped about the absence of their claims from recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change surveys of the best-available science, without acknowledging that climate scientists have moved on from those questions for good reasons.

“So much literature has been produced to refute the claims of the [Climate Working Group] report authors, and over so long a time period,” the review pointed out, “that these claims are no longer part of the active scientific debate.”

Echo Chambers

The Trump administration’s five authors relied heavily on citations to their own climate-related research and analyses, the review found.

Overall, 11 percent of the report’s citations were self-citations, according to the review — roughly two to four times more than the self-citations in the climate science overview released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2021.

In a couple of chapters, the self-citations numbered more than one out of every four.

This echo chamber of self-citations pushes out other, peer-reviewed and published science on the same topics, “of which there is plenty,” according to the expert review.

Word Games

The expert review found that conclusions reached by the Trump team sometimes relied on incorrect uses of scientific terms in ways that favored climate denial.

In one example, reviewers explained that the term ocean acidification “is not used in a way to indicate that the ocean is becoming an acid,” but “the more commonly used term for the phenomena of ocean carbonate chemistry changes because it provides a straightforward terminology to describing the declining pH of the ocean.”

Elsewhere, the Trump team uses the term “greening” in a misleading way that “implies ‘greening’ is an expansion of vegetation into areas that were previously non-vegetated,“ the review found. This is a key mistake because the report “thus incorrectly interprets the literature on ‘greening’ throughout this section.”

The Endangerment Finding, Endangered

Opponents of greenhouse gas cuts have worked for decades to block or overturn the federal government’s power to regulate them.

The legal basis for this authority is the EPA endangerment finding that — despite being credited to the Obama-Biden administration by Trump officials — dates back to George W. Bush’s second term as president.

In 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in lawsuit brought by Massachusetts and several other states, that CO2, methane, and four other greenhouse gases are pollutants under the Clean Air Act. In the ruling the court also found that under the Clean Air Act, the EPA had a duty under to analyze whether they endanger public health or welfare and — if so — to regulate sources of carbon pollution.

In response to this decision, the EPA produced its endangerment finding. Rather than regulate carbon pollution, however, the Bush White House suppressed the document.

In 2009 the Obama White House released the finding, and began establishing rules under the Clean Air Act to cap and cut carbon pollution from motor vehicles as well as power plants and other industrial sources.

Since then, as DeSmog has previously reported, a powerful anti-climate coalition of politicians, oil companies, trade groups, and right-wing networks has been trying to overturn the endangerment finding, culminating in Project 2025 — the extreme-right blueprint for transforming the federal government.

Project 2025’s chapter on the EPA, which mentions “updating” the 2009 endangerment finding, was written in part by Aaron Szabo, now a high-level Trump appointee to the agency.

The director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, Russ Vought, was one of the main architects of Project 2025, and has publicly supported rescinding the endangerment finding.

Some members of the Trump climate working group were also part of his first administration. Steve Koonin, a physicist, advised the government on climate change during Trump’s first term, and atmospheric scientist John Christy was on the EPA’s Science Advisory Board.

Another Trump report co-author, climatologist Judith Curry, was a paid witness for the state of Montana during a 2023 trial on whether the state’s promotion of fossil fuels violated its constitution. The 16 young Montana residents who sued the state won that case.

UPDATE Sept. 2, 2025: This story has been updated to include a statement from Judith Curry, and to correct the end date of the public comment period for the EPA’s proposal to rescind the endangerment finding.

Join me on Wings of Change. We still have so much work to do as activists and organizations make plans for the upcoming months and years. Wings of Change is pleased and excited to be a part of that work through education, information, and inspiration.

Subscribe to Wings of Change here!

Donate

Whatever you are able donate will bring you articles and opinions from independent websites, writers, and journalists as well as a blog with opinions and creative contributions.

Sue Ann Martinson

One place to begin is with reason and truth, and how fundamental they are to creating critically engaged citizens and communities.

—Henry A. Giroux

September 10, 2025
DN! “The Border Is Invading America”: Jean Guerrero on the Bipartisan Failures of Immigration Policy

The reality is that the border is invading us, and it’s coming not only for the rights of immigrants and for immigrants themselves, but for the rights of all of us.

AMY GOODMAN: We speak to journalist Jean Guerrero about the Trump administration’s ongoing anti-immigrant crackdown and the bipartisan roots of “anti-immigrant cruelty” in the United States. Guerrero’s latest opinion piece in The New York Times is titled “The Border Is Invading America” and traces the development of U.S. border policies since the Clinton administration. “The brute force that the border once unleashed out of sight, in the desert or behind the locked doors of detention centers, is now erupting on our streets,” says Guerrero. “We desperately need a reckoning with the structural abuses embedded in our immigration system and with how both parties have played a role in sustaining them, because, otherwise, the border is going to continue to coil inward and to destroy our collective rights.”

Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org.

As President Trump threatens to send the National Guard to Chicago and a federal judge rules against their deployment to quell ICE protests in Los Angeles, we turn now to Jean Guerrero, contributing opinion writer at The New York Times. Her new essay is headlined “The Border Is Invading America.” She writes, quote, “The U.S.-Mexico border is no longer just a line on a map; it is a roaming force, drifting through our cities and ravaging schools, courthouses and workplaces. It has become unmoored from geography, dragging its violence and impunity into the heart of American life.”

Jean Guerrero is author of Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda and a visiting professor at the University of Southern California Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism, joining us from Los Angeles.

Jean, welcome back to Democracy Now! Why don’t you elaborate again on your piece, “The Border Is Invading America”?

JEAN GUERRERO: Yeah, of course. Thank you, Amy.

So, what we’re seeing across the U.S. is that the Border Patrol is now operating deep inside the country alongside ICE, and it’s bringing its Wild West mentality. You know, they’re wearing cowboy hats, and they’re treating Los Angeles and places across the United States like lawless outposts on a hostile frontier. They’ve been deputized to carry the border with them and to enforce its racialized logic wherever they go.

As we know, the administration has asked the Supreme Court to allow it to continue to use racial profiling in immigration enforcement. And in Southern California, we are routinely seeing people targeted based on their skin color, which is why I wrote that the border is no longer something that only divides countries; it also snakes between white and Brown, between families and neighbors, between citizens and the rights that they once thought were inviolate.

And the brute force that the border once unleashed out of sight, in the desert or behind the locked doors of detention centers, is now erupting on our streets. For example, in Southern California, we’re seeing fathers killed while fleeing immigration raids. We recently saw a family shot at in their car while trying to get away from agents. We are seeing people violently tackled and disappeared into unmarked vans. And too many Americans continue to believe that the border is meant to stop a, quote-unquote, “invasion.” But the reality is that the border is invading us, and it’s coming not only for the rights of immigrants and for immigrants themselves, but for the rights of all of us.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Jean, in your piece, you basically also charge that Democratic leaders have been complicit now for decades in the stoking of anti-immigrant xenophobia in the U.S. You write at one point, quote, “I have repeatedly asked Trump voters about his immigration policies, such as his first term’s family separation. They tend to reply by shrugging their shoulders and pointing at similar actions by Democratic leaders, saying, ‘Obama put kids in cages’ or ‘Obama separated families, too.’” Could you talk about that?

JEAN GUERRERO: Yeah, I think it’s important to talk about that, because what happened is that the Democratic Party normalized anti-immigrant cruelty alongside Republican administrations. And until we reckon with that bipartisan nature of our racialized immigration system, then we’re not going to be able to restrain it, because we need to hold our elected officials accountable in both parties for what they have created together.

So, as I wrote in my piece, it was the Clinton administration that oversaw the initial militarization of the border in the 1990s, after which we have seen as many as 80,000 people who have died trying to cross the border. That’s a stadium of human beings who have died of dehydration in the desert, who have died of broken backs falling off of the border barriers, or even from Border Patrol agents’ bullets.

And after Clinton’s border militarization, we saw President Obama deport 3 million people, more than any previous president. Oftentimes these are individuals who were deported to their deaths. And the Obama administration also oversaw — or, decided against removing exceptions for racial profiling in immigration enforcement. This is a decision that the Biden administration made, as well, and so both of these administrations affirmed a two-tiered system of justice, one in which immigrants and people who merely look like immigrants have fewer rights.

However, when Trump came along, many Democrats treated his cruel policies as if they were shocking new horrors unique to Republicans. And this is a moral inconsistency and hypocrisy that Trump’s senior adviser Stephen Miller knew to exploit, which I can talk about in a moment. But the point is that Democratic leaders’ selective outrage on the immigration issue helped fuel the crisis that we’re living today, and we need to reckon with that, because right now too many Democratic Party leaders wrongly believe that we are where we are today because they were too nice to immigrants.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, and I wanted to ask you particularly, again, about the role of Stephen Miller. There’s been really no one quite like him at the high echelons of federal government in terms of the emphasis on naked mass deportations. Can you talk about him, as well, as the architect of the Trump policies?

JEAN GUERRERO: Yes, yeah, the architect of Trump’s immigration policies. So, as I wrote in my book Hatemonger, Stephen Miller is a student of liberal hypocrisy. He grew up in Santa Monica, California, where he saw the performative nature of many Democratic leaders’ compassion for immigrants. Santa Monica is a place where many working-class immigrant residents have been pushed into overcrowded apartments or out of the city altogether because of rising rents. So, as Trump’s speechwriter, it was not hard for Stephen Miller to make the case that Democratic Party leaders defend immigrants only as a source of cheap labor or because they want their votes, even though immigrants don’t vote, unless they’re citizens. But essentially, Miller knew that, in practice, if not in proclamation, Democratic Party leaders had normalized indifference and cruelty toward immigrants. And this long-standing indifference toward immigrants that the Democratic Party has, except when they’re wielding this issue as a cudgel against Trump, is something that has worked symbiotically with the racism of Republican leaders to enable the border’s violent encroachment on our lives, which we are now seeing.

And unfortunately, Democratic leaders are now largely silent on immigration. They are convinced that to win back voters and to win back Americans’ trust, they have to either sidestep the immigration issue or they have to channel the right’s hostility toward immigrants. For example, we were seeing California Governor Newsom approve cutting back on healthcare benefits for the undocumented. He’s really had a more muted tone on sanctuary laws in California. I actually reached out to his office for comment on the deaths of immigrants that we saw this summer, and haven’t heard back. But as Democrats like him appear to see it, the party’s failure is not inhumanity or incoherence on the immigration issue, but rather an overabundance of compassion for the foreign-born. And this delusion would be comical if it wasn’t so costly. It’s a gift for restrictionists like Stephen Miller, who use the disconnectedness of Democratic Party elites to stoke resentment toward all liberals and to bolster the false perception that immigrants are to blame for everything.

So, really, what I’m arguing for in the piece is that we need — we desperately need a reckoning with the structural abuses embedded in our immigration system and with how both parties have played a role in sustaining them, because, otherwise, the border is going to continue to coil inward and to destroy our collective rights.

AMY GOODMAN: Jean Guerrero, we want to thank you so much for being with us, New York Times contributing opinion writer. We’ll link to your piece, “The Border Is Invading America.” Jean is also author of Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda and visiting professor at USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

Next story from this daily show

Army Vet Charged with “Conspiracy” for ICE Protest as Trump Expands War on Dissent

Join me on Wings of Change. We still have so much work to do as activists and organizations make plans for the upcoming months and years. Wings of Change is pleased and excited to be a part of that work through education, information, and inspiration.

Subscribe to Wings of Change here!

Donate

Whatever you are able donate will bring you articles and opinions from independent websites, writers, and journalists as well as a blog with opinions and creative contributions.

Sue Ann Martinson

One place to begin is with reason and truth, and how fundamental they are to creating critically engaged citizens and communities.

—Henry A. Giroux

September 6, 2025
Heather Cox Richardson, Labor, Energy, and Saving America and the Planet

[Trump] refers to climate change as a “hoax,” says that windmills cause cancer, and falsely claims that renewable energy is more expensive than other ways to generate power.

By Heather Cox Richardson / Letters from an American / August 30, 2025

August 30, 2025 / READ IN APP (Substack)

Just days before Labor Day, a holiday designed to celebrate the importance and power of American workers in the United States, the Transportation Department cancelled $679 million in funding for offshore wind projects, and the Department of Energy announced it is withdrawing a $716 million loan guarantee to complete infrastructure for an offshore wind project in New Jersey.

These cancellations reflect President Donald J. Trump’s apparent determination to kill off wind and solar power initiatives and to force the United States to depend on fossil fuels. He refers to climate change as a “hoax,” says that windmills cause cancer, and falsely claims that renewable energy is more expensive than other ways to generate power. Former president Joe Biden made investing in clean energy a central pillar of his administration; Trump often seems to construct policies mostly to erase the legacies of his predecessors.

Reversing the shift toward renewable energy not only attacks attempts to address the crisis of climate change and boosts the fossil fuel industry on which some of Trump’s apparent allies depend, but also undermines a society based on the independence of American workers. In 2023, about 3.5 million Americans worked in jobs related to the renewable energy sector, and jobs in that sector grew at more than twice the rate of those in other sectors in what was a strong U.S. labor market. The production of coal, which Trump often points to as an ideal for American jobs, peaked in 2008. Between then and 2021, employment in coal mining fell by almost 60% in the East and almost 40% in the West, leaving a total of about 40,000 employees.

Another cut last week sums up the repercussions of the administration’s attack on renewable energy. On August 22 the Interior Department suddenly and without explanation stopped construction of a wind farm off the coast of Connecticut and Rhode Island that was 80% complete and was set to be finished early next year. As Matthew Daly of the Associated Press noted yesterday, Revolution Wind was the region’s first commercial-scale offshore wind farm. It was designed to power more than 350,000 homes, provide jobs in Connecticut and Rhode Island, and enable Rhode Island to meet its goal of 100% renewable energy by 2033.

The Board of Directors of the Chamber of Commerce of Eastern Connecticut expressed their dismay at the decision, noting that Revolution Wind employed more than 1,000 local union workers and is part of a $20 billion investment in “American energy generation, port infrastructure, supply chain, and domestic shipbuilding and manufacturing across over 40 states” by Ørsted, a Danish multinational company.

“Stopping this fully permitted, important project without a clear stated reason not only seriously undermines the state’s efforts to work towards a carbon neutral energy supply but equally important it sends a message to investors from all over the world that they may want to rethink investing in America. The message resulting from the President’s action is a lack of trust, uncertainty, and lack of predictability,” they wrote.

Connecticut governor Ned Lamont and Rhode Island governor Dan McKee, both Democrats, are working together to save the project. In a statement, Lamont said: “We are working closely with Rhode Island to save this project because it represents exactly the kind of investment that reduces energy costs, strengthens regional production, and builds a more secure energy future—the very goals President Trump claims to support but undermines with this decision.”

“It’s an attack on our jobs,” McKee said. “It’s an attack on our energy. It’s an attack on our families and their ability to pay the bills.”

The Trump administration launched this attack on renewable energy at a time when electricity prices are bouncing upward. According to Ari Natter and Naureen S. Malik of Bloomberg, electricity prices jumped about 10% between January and May and are projected to rise another 5.8% next year. Trump has tried to blame those rising costs on renewable energy, but in the country’s largest grid, which stretches from Virginia to Illinois, nearly all the electricity comes from natural gas, coal, and nuclear reactors.

More to the point is that the region also has the world’s highest concentration of AI data centers, driving power demand—and costs—upward. At the same time, according to Natter and Malik, the infrastructure for transmission is too outdated to handle the amounts of electricity the data centers will need.

Historically, a system in which local economies support small businesses and entrepreneurs promotes a wide distribution of political power. In contrast, extractive industries support a system that concentrates wealth and power in the hands of a few individuals.

Trump’s cuts are adding stress to this already overburdened system. Over the next decade, they are projected to reduce additions to the electric grid by half compared to projections from before his cuts. In July, Ella Nilsen of CNN reported that cuts to renewable power generation, as well as to the tax credits that encouraged the development of more renewable power projects, are exacerbating the electrical shortage and driving prices up.

The Trump administration claims that relying on fossil fuels will jump-start the economy, but higher costs for electricity are already fueling inflation, and in the longer term, more expensive power will slow economic growth. In contrast, China has leaped ahead to dominate the global clean energy industry. Cheaper electricity there is expected to make it more attractive for future investment.

Renewable energy is crucial to addressing the existential crisis of climate change, but as former president Joe Biden emphasized, developing the sector was also key for building a strong middle class. Well-paying jobs, in turn, help to protect democracy.

Historically, a system in which local economies support small businesses and entrepreneurs promotes a wide distribution of political power. In contrast, extractive industries support a system that concentrates wealth and power in the hands of a few individuals. The extractive systems in the pre–Civil War American South, where cotton concentrated power and wealth, and later in the American West, where mining, cattle, and agribusiness did the same, nurtured political systems in which a few men controlled their regions.

As president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO Chrissy Lynch said in July after the Republicans passed the budget reconciliation bill cutting clean energy tax credits: “Working families shouldn’t have to purchase energy from billionaire oil tycoons and foreign governments or let them set the price of our energy bills.”

Her observation hit home earlier this week, when Joe Wallace, Costas Paris, Alex Leary, and Collin Eaton of the Wall Street Journal reported that the comments of Russian president Vladimir Putin and Trump at their meeting in Alaska on August 15 in which they talked about doing more business together were not vague goodwill. ExxonMobil and Russia’s biggest energy company, Rosneft, have been in secret talks to resume a partnership to extract Russian oil, including in the Arctic, that had been severed by Russia’s attack on Ukraine in 2022.

Lou Antonellis, the business manager of the Massachusetts International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 103, added that the cuts to renewable energy projects in the U.S. were not just cuts to funding. “[Y]ou’re pulling paychecks from working families, you’re pulling apprentices out of training facilities, you’re pulling opportunity straight out of our communities. Every solar panel installed, every wind turbine wired, every EV charger connected, that’s a job with wages, healthcare, and a pension that stands for dignity for the American worker. You don’t kill that kind of progress: you build on it.”

Notes:

https://apnews.com/article/trump-offshore-wind-renewable-energy-transportation-8578da8b985b6d4eef20ec4d85c21b5d

https://climatechange.ri.gov/ri-executive-climate-change-coordinating-council-ec4#:~:text=Goals,for%20Rhode%20Island%20by%202030

https://www.fox61.com/article/news/local/new-london-county/new-london/revolution-wind-halt-offshore-work-new-london-connecticut-project/520-22253f23-810b-4922-91e0-1ec558a2811f

https://ctexaminer.com/2025/08/30/dangers-of-pulling-the-plug-on-revolution-wind/

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-08-27/soaring-power-bills-in-largest-us-grid-pose-risk-for-republicans

https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/16/climate/china-us-wind-solar-energy-trump

https://www.markey.senate.gov/news/press-releases/fighting-for-a-livable-future-markey-labor-leaders-workers-speak-out-against-republican-efforts-to-cut-clean-energy-and-climate-investments#:~:text=They’re%20building%20our%20clean,these%20tax%20credits%20are%20repealed.

https://citizensclimatelobby.org/blog/policy/how-clean-energy-creates-more-jobs/

https://www.energy.gov/eere/job-creation-and-economic-growth

https://stateline.org/2025/02/11/blue-states-hope-their-clean-energy-plans-withstand-collision-with-trump/

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=54579#:~:text=Employment%20in%20the%20coal%20mining%20industry%20also,in%202008%20to%2011%2C115%20employees%20in%202021

https://www.wsj.com/business/energy-oil/exxon-rosneft-russia-oil-talks-f524e81f

You are all an inspiration to me. Please join me on Wings of Change. We still have so much work to do as activists and organizations make plans for the upcoming months and years. Wings of Change is pleased and excited to be a part of that work through education, information, and inspiration.

Subscribe to Wings of Change!

Please subscribe and donate to WingsofChange.me. Wings of Change is reader supported and depends on your support.

Whatever you are able donate will bring you articles and opinions from independent websites, writers, and journalists as well as a blog with opinions and creative contributions.

One place to begin is with reason and truth, and how fundamental they are to creating critically engaged citizens and communities.

—Henry A. Giroux

August 31, 2025
How the UN could act today to stop the genocide in Palestine

As a key deadline approaches in the United Nations General Assembly, a little-used UN mechanism, immune from the US veto, could bring military protection to the Palestinian people — if we demand it.

How the UN could act today to stop the genocide in Palestine

Antonio Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, addresses the opening of the 77th General Debate of the UN General Assembly, September 2022. (Photo: Michael Kappeler/dpa via ZUMA Press/APA Images)

By Craig Mokhiber Mondoweiss August 27, 2025  23

After twenty-two months of unprecedented carnage, three things are clear: (1) the Israeli regime will not end the genocide in Palestine of its own will, (2) the U.S. government, Israel’s principal collaborator, as well as the majority of Israelis, and the regime’s proxies and lobbies in the West, are fully committed to this genocide, and to the destruction and erasure of every remnant of Palestine from the river to the sea, and (3) other Western governments like the UK and Germany as well as far too many complicit Arab states in the region are fully dedicated to the cause of Israeli impunity.

That means that genocide (and apartheid) will only end through resistance against the Israeli regime, the steadfastness of the Palestinian people, the solidarity of the rest of the world, and the isolation, weakening, defeat, and dismantling of the Israeli regime.

As was the case in apartheid South Africa, this is a long-term struggle. But even in the face of Western government obstruction, there are things that can be done right now. Things like boycott, divestment, sanctions, demonstrations, disruption, civil disobedience, education, prosecutions under universal jurisdiction, and civil cases against Israeli perpetrators and complicit actors in our own societies. And yes, we can also demand intervention and protection for the Palestinian people.

Advertisement

Established by a Cold War-era resolution adopted in 1950, the Uniting for Peace mechanism authorizes the UN General Assembly (UNGA) to act when the Security Council is blocked by the veto of one of its permanent members. Under this mechanism, the UNGA could mandate a UN protection force to deploy to Palestine, protect civilians, ensure humanitarian aid, preserve evidence of Israeli crimes, and assist in recovery and reconstruction.

And the upcoming deadline set by the UNGA last year for Israeli compliance with the orders and findings of the International Court of Justice, with a promise of “further measures” in the wake of non-compliance, provides a critical moment for action. Indeed, the time for intervention is long past due.

Models of intervention

As I have written previously, any country can legally intervene (individually or in concert with others) to stop the genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes of the Israeli regime. Indeed, under the Geneva Conventions, the Genocide Convention, and other sources of law, states are legally obliged to do so in the face of such atrocities. International law requires intervention, the State of Palestine has invited intervention, and Palestinian civil society has appealed for intervention. But few states have met this solemn obligation, while Yemen, under Ansar Allah, has been mercilessly attacked by U.S. forces for doing so, and the genocide has been allowed to rage on for almost two years now. Thus, a multilateral mandate could provide the legal, political, and diplomatic cover that most states would need to participate in an intervention.

Here, caution is warranted. There are many proposals for intervention. But some of these are not about protection for the Palestinian people, let alone their liberation.

Some have called for civilian monitors for Gaza, essentially a few dozen observers in blue vests armed only with clipboards and radios. But there have been human rights monitors in the West Bank and Gaza for decades, before and throughout the current genocide. While these perform valuable work, they have no deterrent effect, and the Israeli regime views them as no impediment at all to its nefarious designs.

Others, including the French and the Saudis, have called for a so-called “stabilization force.” But the details of their proposal suggest that such an intervention would not be designed principally to protect the Palestinians from the Israeli regime, but rather to keep an eye on the Palestinian resistance, and to restore the cruel status quo ante before October 2023, with the caging of the Palestinian people, and their slow, systematic annihilation.

At the same time, many such proposals appear to be designed in large measure to resume the process of normalization of the Israeli regime, and to resuscitate the ruse of Oslo. Needless to say, a return to a kind of Oslo 2.0, as yet another smokescreen for Israeli impunity, wherein Palestinians are told they must negotiate for their rights with their oppressor, as their rights and land are continuously eroded and the regime’s status increasingly solidified and normalized, is not the answer.

Then there is Donald Trump’s proposal for direct U.S. occupation, ethnic purging, and colonial domination of Gaza, revealing once again the dangerous and deeply racist delusions of the U.S. empire. Finally, the Israeli regime itself has suggested the deployment of a proxy occupation force manned by forces from Arab states that collaborate with the regime. As is self-evident, these proposals are not about ending genocide and apartheid. They are about entrenching them.

The UN options

That brings us to the United Nations.

Mid-September will see the expiration of the deadline set last year by the General Assembly for Israel to comply with the demands of the International Court of Justice and of the UNGA or face “further measures.” Western delegations are scurrying to forestall this ratcheting up of Israeli accountability by shifting the focus to recognizing Palestine or by trying to resuscitate the long-dead corpse of Oslo and the so-called “two state solution,” i.e., another political process that normalizes Israel, marginalizes Palestinians, provides a smokescreen for continuing Israeli abuses, and offers an amorphous promise of a Palestinian Bantustan somewhere down the road. But the UN need not fall for this ruse.

Of course, the UN itself has much to answer for in this genocide. To be sure, some in the UN have been absolutely heroic: like the UNRWA workers, who have been murdered in their hundreds by the Israeli genocide, many along with their families; other UN humanitarians who have continued to work to relieve the suffering of the people of Gaza, in the face of enormous risk; the UN’s International Court of Justice, which has issued historic decisions affirming the rights of the Palestinian people in the face of enormous pressure not to do so; and the UN special rapporteurs, like Francesca Albanese, who have endured two years of smears, slander, harassment, death threats, and U.S. sanctions, just for telling the truth and applying the law.

But the political side of the UN has failed miserably. Some, like the UNSG, his senior advisors (on genocide, children in conflict, sexual violence in conflict, political affairs, etc.), the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and other senior political leadership, have failed miserably, not because they could not do more, but because they chose not to. And, of course, the enduring symbol of UN failure is the Security Council, rendered entirely useless under the constraints imposed on it by the U.S. and its Western allies. Uniting for Peace offers a chance to right the UN ship, and to rescue the legacy of the organization from the potentially fatal blow of yet another genocide on its watch.

Security Council scenarios

Of course, under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, the Security Council has the power to deploy an armed force and to impose that force even against a country’s will.

But given that the U.S., UK, and France (all genocide complicit states) have veto power in the Council, there are only two possible outcomes from the Security Council in addressing a proposal for intervention: (1) A mandate that pleases the U.S., as Israel’s proxy, and which therefore would be framed in a way disastrous for the Palestinians, and could be imposed against the will of the Palestinians, under Chapter 7, or (2) A U.S. veto of any force that would actually be helpful.

Clearly, the Security Council, by design, is no friend to the occupied, the colonized, or the oppressed. As such, the road to protection and justice travels not through the Security Council, but around it.

Uniting for Peace in the UNGA

Thus, meaningful UN Security Council action is effectively impossible in a body dominated by the U.S. veto.

But here is the point: the world need not surrender in the face of that veto.

The UN General Assembly (UNGA), that will meet in September, is empowered under the Uniting for Peace resolution, to act when the Security Council is unable to act owing to the veto. There are historical precedents. And taking such extraordinary action has never been more urgent.

A UNGA resolution adopted under Uniting for Peace could

1.    Call on all states to adopt comprehensive sanctions and a military embargo against the Israeli regime. While it lacks the power to enforce sanctions, it can call them, monitor them, and supplement them as required.

2.    Decide to reject the UNGA credentials of Israel, as the UNGA did in the case of apartheid South Africa.

3.    Mandate an accountability mechanism (like a criminal tribunal) to address Israeli war crimes, crimes against humanity, apartheid, and genocide.

4.    Reactivate the UN’s long-dormant anti-apartheid mechanisms to address Israeli apartheid, and

5. Mandate an armed, multinational, UN protection force to deploy to Gaza (and, ultimately, to the West Bank), acting at the request of the State of Palestine, to protect civilians, open entry points via land and sea, facilitate humanitarian aid, preserve evidence of Israeli crimes, and assist in recovery and reconstruction.

All of these actions could be adopted by the UNGA with a two-thirds majority, thereby circumventing the U.S. veto in the Security Council. As Palestine has requested intervention, no Chapter 7 action by the Security Council is needed to deploy a protection force. Palestine would retain full authority over when and for how long the mission was to be deployed, obviating fears of yet another occupation force.

Very importantly, as affirmed by recent World Court findings, Israel would have no legal right to refuse, obstruct, or influence the mission. The Court has affirmed that Israel has no authority, no sovereignty, and no rights in Gaza or in the West Bank.

The process is simple: (1) First, a proposal is vetoed in the Security Council (this is inevitable, given the role of the U.S. as a proxy for Israel in the Security Council); (2) States call for an emergency special session (ESS) of the UNGA under the Uniting for Peace mechanism (this too is easy, as the 10^th Emergency Special Session remains active, and can be easily resumed at the request of a member state); (3) A resolution is proposed by one or more sponsors, in close consultation with the state of Palestine; (4) The resolution is adopted with a two-thirds majority (a threshold required by the rules for “important matters” such as this. Previous voting patterns on Palestine indicate that this margin is achievable); (5) The UN Secretary-General is instructed to solicit troop contributions from countries, in consultation with the State of Palestine as the requesting entity, and: (6) The mission is assembled and deployed (while likely to be politically challenging due to predictably active U.S. interference, this is technically easy).

Legally, there are no hurdles. The rules allow it, the UNGA’s Uniting for Peace power has been repeatedly affirmed, and there are precedents, most notably the UNGA’s mandating of the 1956 UN Emergency Force to the Sinai (UNEF) over the objections of the UK, France, and Israel.

Of course, the U.S. and the Israeli regime will use every available carrot and stick to try to prevent the securing of the necessary two-thirds majority, seeking to water down the text, and bribing and threatening states to vote no, to abstain, or to be absent for the vote. The current lawless government in Washington may even threaten sanctions on behalf of the Israeli regime, as it has already done vis-à-vis the International Criminal Court and the UN’s Special Rapporteur. And they are likely to try to obstruct the protection force itself, once mandated.

As such, the global majority of states will need to stay the course in the face of U.S. and Israeli threats. And global civil society will need to be steadfast in its demands for protection and justice, ensuring the glare of public exposure under which states will be forced to vote for or against a force to protect the Palestinians from genocide. None will be allowed to hide behind the U.S. veto, throwing up their hands with the familiar refrain of “we tried but the U.S. vetoed it.”

Once mandated, let the protection force be deployed by air, land, and sea, accompanied by international media and supported by all diplomatic avenues to ensure its successful deployment and to press the regime and its Western backers to stand down. The world has a chance, belatedly, to stop a genocide and other crimes against humanity. All it needs is the will to do so.

Conclusion

In the face of historic atrocities such as these, that threaten the very survival of a people, and that could bury the nascent project of human rights and international law in their wake, every tool available must be deployed. The world has not done so. It must try, and quickly.

Of course, we are not naïve. Success is not assured. But failure is guaranteed if we do not try.

And time is of the essence. Genocide continues to rage in Gaza and is spreading as well in the West Bank. Famine has been declared in Gaza. Israel is expanding its military presence in Gaza and is rampaging across the West Bank. And September 18 will mark the end of a one-year deadline set by the UNGA for Israel to comply with their demands and that of the World Court or face “further measures.” The time to act is now.r

Craig Mokhiber is an international human rights lawyer and former senior United Nations Official. He left the UN in October of 2023, penning a widely read letter that warned of genocide in Gaza, criticized the international response and called for a new approach to Palestine and Israel based on equality, human rights and international law.

Free speech is under attack—especially when it comes to Palestine.

From the censorship of student voices to the assassinations of journalists in Gaza, the cost of telling the truth about Palestine has never been higher. At Mondoweiss, we publish fearless reporting and critical analysis that others won’t touch—because we believe the public needs to know the truth about Palestine.

Mondoweiss is funded by readers who believe in justice, transparency, and freedom of the press. If you believe journalism should challenge power—not serve it—please make a donation today.

In this critical time in our country hearing the voices of truth and engaging in honest discussion for critical issues is all the more important while censorship (and outright lies) along with attacks on truth-tellers are common. Support the WingsofChange.me website and Rise Up Times on social media as we to bring you important articles and journalism beyond the mainstream corporate media. Access is alway free, but if you would like to help:
Whatever you are able donate will bring you articles and opinions from independent websites, writers, and journalists as well as a blog with the opinions and creative contributions.

One place to begin is with reason and truth, and how fundamental they are to creating critically engaged citizens and communities.

—Henry A. Giroux

August 30, 2025
“Time to Cut Ties with Israel”: U.N. Expert Francesca Albanese on Gaza Hospital Bombing

“There has been a tolerance of Israel’s impunity for decades,” says Albanese. “However, the United States is the single most important factor of crisis in the United Nations.”

Israel’s war on Gaza is the deadliest conflict for journalists in recorded history. In an attack on Nasser Hospital in Gaza Monday, Israel killed five more journalists in addition to over a dozen others. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed the hospital attack was a “tragic mishap,” but just hours later, Israeli forces killed a sixth journalist. “There is a pattern of targeting and killing journalists that lets us think that there is an intention,” says Francesca Albanese, U.N. special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory.

As countries prepare for the U.N. General Assembly, Albanese notes the complicity of Western states in the genocide in Gaza, particularly the United States. “There has been a tolerance of Israel’s impunity for decades,” says Albanese. “However, the United States is the single most important factor of crisis in the United Nations.”

Note: Video also included below: “Chicago Leaders Prepare to Face the Dictator Head On” Below the Chicago video is the full transcript of Franceca Albanese’s intertiew video with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!

“We Must Defeat Fascism”: Chicago Alderman on Trump’s Threat to Deploy Troops to City

Transcript for Francesca Albanese

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: Human rights and press freedom groups are denouncing Israel’s attack on Nasser Hospital in Gaza Monday that killed at least 21 journalists — that killed at least 21 people, including five journalists. According to eyewitnesses, Israel carried out a double-tap strike on the hospital. In the initial strike, a drone hit Hussam al-Masri, a cameraman who worked for Reuters. Then another strike, minutes later, hit journalists and rescue workers who were responding to the initial strike.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed the hospital attack was a, quote, “tragic mishap.” But just hours later, Israeli forces killed a sixth journalist, Hassan Douhan, a well-known editor at Al-Hayat Al-Jadida. He was killed when an Israeli tank shelled a tent sheltering displaced people in Khan Younis.

Over the past 23 months, Israel has barred all foreign journalists from reporting inside Gaza, while systematically killing Palestinian journalists. According to one count, Israel has killed least 245 journalists. On Monday, Thibaut Bruttin, the director general of Reporters Without Borders, denounced Israel’s attack on journalists.

THIBAUT BRUTTIN: When and where is it going to end? Are we going to let the Israel Defense Forces continue the repeated killing of journalists? There is international law. There are guarantees that should be granted to journalists covering conflicts. And none of that seems to be applying. So, we need to be very clear about the fact that none of the journalists that are allegedly terrorists are terrorists. They are professional journalists working for legacy professional media, like, for example, Reuters or, for example, AP.

AMY GOODMAN: In other news from Gaza, three more Palestinians have starved to death, bringing the total to at least 303.

We’re joined right now by Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory. She’s joining us from Tunis, Tunisia.

Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Francesca Albanese. Can you start off by responding to the killing of the, at this point, in the last day, six journalists, five of them in a double-tap strike on Nasser Hospital?

FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Thank you, Amy. Yeah, of course.

Look, in a situation of conflicts, targeting or killing journalists is unlawful. Journalists, like doctors and medical personnel and rescues, all those who have been killed in this attack, are civilians, so killing them is unlawful. They are protected under international humanitarian law.

However, here, it’s not an isolated incident. Journalists have been killed in such high numbers. Some say 200 have been documented. Al Jazeera speaks of 270 journalists killed. So there is a pattern of targeting and killing journalists, that let us think that there is an intention behind it. There is a widespread and systematic attack against them, like there is a systematic and widespread attack against civilians. And this might qualify as also as a crime against humanity in and of itself.

However, however, I want to remind everyone that we are on the 688th day of the assault against Gaza, which an increasing consensus denounces as genocidal. And there is famine, and there is this complete destruction of landscapes in Gaza. So, the question is: What are member states waiting exactly to intervene and stop this carnage?

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Francesca Albanese, you have said that there have to be response. You’ve called for sanctions against Israel. Could you talk about how those might work, especially, as you mentioned, the fact that state governments are not taking any action?

FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Oh, absolutely. Look, I would like people to understand this in the broader context of international law. No later than last year, the International Court of Justice has confirmed that Israel’s presence in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem is unlawful, must be dismantled totally and unconditionally. And the General Assembly has also given Israel a very generous deadline of one year to do so, which will expire in a month from now. In the face of this, member states have an obligation not to aid and assist in any possible ways a state like Israel in maintaining the situation created by Israel’s unlawful presence. So, while it is abhorrent that they are not stopping Israel, this delay increases their level of responsibility, their violation of international law, and possibly their complicity with the crimes that Israel is committing.

This is why my recommendations are for member states who do not want to incur in this legal — in their legal responsibilities, and also out of humanity, to break the siege. Member states who have a port in the Mediterranean Sea must absolutely send their navies, under their national flag, with humanitarian aid and doctors, with food and baby formula, because 500,000 people, according to the United Nations, are close to — are really close to starvation. But also, as we see the Sumud Flotilla, so ordinary citizens jumping on boats and trying to do what member states are not doing, I feel that it’s totally immoral and irresponsible to let individuals like this take this risk, when it’s a state obligation to break the siege.

But also, it’s time to cut ties with Israel, to cut trade, because this is also what the ICJ has reminded member states they need to take all steps to prevent trade and investment relations that are assisting in the maintenance of Israel’s unlawful presence. And we must recall that while Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, it’s also advancing, as it was said in the beginning, annexation at an incredible, incredible speed. So there is no way out of this other than a firm, robust action from member states.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And I wanted to ask you — the Trump administration, instead of heeding your calls as the special rapporteur, have instead imposed sanctions on you, supposedly claiming that your naming of dozens of companies that are profiting from the Israeli occupation and genocide in Gaza. And Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, quote, “Albanese’s campaign of political and economic warfare against the United States and Israel will no longer be tolerated.” Your response to these kinds of words from leaders of the United States?

FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Well, first of all, as a non-American, but as someone who has lived in the United States, I wonder how American people understand this, because, of course, it’s a violation of the First Amendment, right? I mean, I’ve just done my job, which is a pro bono job. I’ve been requested by the United Nations to investigate and report on the most prominent violations of international law that occur in the occupied Palestinian territory. And I’ve simply stated facts, according due process to businesses, saying there is an economy of the occupation, and this is the reason why Israel has profited and has allowed private entities, arms manufacturers, even banks, pension funds, universities, really, to help and profit — to help it and profit from Israel’s maintenance of the unlawful occupation. Now, this occupation has also turned into genocidal over the past 688 days, and I’ve denounced it. I’ve said, “How come that Israelis were becoming — many Israelis were becoming poorer and poorer, and Israeli stocks exchange kept on going up?”

Because of that, I’ve been sanctioned, which is something unprecedented, that no states in 80 years of life of the United Nations have ever attempted, had ever dared, because it’s absolute — it’s a violation of international law, of the U.N. Charter, of the Convention on Privileges and Immunities. And still, the United Nations — the United States maintains a sanction, which are now entering the second month. It’s abominable. And this is the situation. But you understand, against a person who has just written a report, I have been called a threat to global economy. It’s clear that I’ve hit a nerve, but this is not the way to react to this.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to turn to the last story that the Reuters cameraman Hussam al-Masri filmed before he was killed by Israel on Monday at Nasser Hospital. On Saturday, just two days before, al-Masri shot this interview with Hikmat Fojo, a Palestinian woman whose relatives were killed in another Israeli strike.

HIKMAT FOJO: [translated] While they were sleeping, they were hit by missiles. While they were sleeping, an entire family was lost. And he was praying. He was praying. He was praying. His children were gone. Two were martyred. They were born after 10 years of waiting. One was sleeping. And the woman’s hands and legs, but, God willing, it’s all right. God willing, it doesn’t matter. If my nephew’s hand remains amputated, it doesn’t matter, but may he stay alive, O Lord.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that was the — one of the last pieces of video that the Palestinian journalist, the Reuters journalist Hussam al-Masri filmed before he was killed Monday in that double-tap strike. He had — apparently was setting up a live stream at the fourth-floor balcony, which journalists used, when he was hit. So, now I want to go to Reuters reporter Steve Holland, who questioned President Trump about this in the Oval Office.

STEVE HOLLAND: If we could get your reaction, sir? The Israelis bombed a hospital in Gaza, that killed 20 people, including five journalists. Are you —

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: When did this happen?

STEVE HOLLAND: This happened overnight today.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I didn’t know that.

STEVE HOLLAND: Any reaction to this? Are you going to talk to Prime Minister —

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, I’m not happy about it. I don’t want to see it. At the same time, we have to end that whole nightmare. I’m the one that got the hostages out. I got them out, all of them.

AMY GOODMAN: That was President Trump. Francesca Albanese, can you talk about the responsibility of the United States? And tell us more about the mechanisms at the U.N., since it’s very clear they block any kind of action at the U.N. Security Council.

FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Yeah, as I said, there are clear indication, clear instructions from International Court of Justice on how to deal with the situation. The only lawful thing that Israel can do in the occupied Palestinian territory is to withdraw, withdraw the troops, dismantle the settlements, stop exploiting Palestinian resources.

In the face of this, any aid, any support, any exchange of commerce, military intelligence and others from the United States or others is a breach of the obligation not to render aid and assistance in maintaining the situation. However, on top of this, there are proceedings for genocide pending before the International Court of Justice, which trigger an obligation to prevent, which, as a minimum, as the ICJ has said in the case of Nicaragua v. Germany, entails the ban on transfer of weapons to a country, to a state which is committing violations of international humanitarian law, meaning even war crimes. You know, we don’t even need to go and bother the Genocide Convention. So, yet again, another layer of responsibility of the United States.

And then there are proceedings against Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including starvation. Because of this, even if the United States is not a party to the ICC, it should be respectful of international law, international criminal law. And instead of giving — of receiving the ICC-wanted Netanyahu as if he was really a war hero, as is being defined, the United States should facilitate justice and accountability. Instead, they are waging a war against the ICC itself, not just me. All the judges of the ICC have been sanctioned, and so the prosecutor of the court. So, this is the situation.

Of course, there are complicities on the side of this administration, and, in my opinion, even in the — on the previous one. But this is something that belongs to the American people. It’s the American people that need to, or the American — the American political landscape that needs to, take action on this.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Francesca Albanese, I wanted to ask you — in a few weeks, the U.N. — the annual meeting of the U.N. General Assembly will take place. Leaders from all over the world will come and give speeches to the U.N. General Assembly. Do you think this is a defining moment for the United Nations as an institution in its inability of the member states or the unwillingness of the member states to stop a genocide that the entire world has been witnessing now for —

FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Yeah.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: — two years?

FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Yeah, I will take the opportunity to also answer the other part of Amy’s question, which I dropped, but it’s — yeah, I think that it’s a — it’s an historical moment, the one we live in, and it’s a defining one. We will not get out of this genocide with the same pretense of innocence that we had when we entered. The crimes of Israel against the Palestinians were already 56-plus years old when the assault against Gaza on the terrible — after the terrible day that October 7 was — and there is no question about that. So, there have been a tolerance of Israel’s impunity for decades.

However, the United States is the single most important factor of crisis in the United Nations system at the moment, because the United Nations are clearly paralyzed in the face of a crisis which is political, legal and humanitarian, and the United States have contributed to that paralysis by also — for example, what are the mechanisms to impose sanctions or to dispose of coercive or noncoercive measures against Israel within the U.N. would be through the Security Council, and the United States have firmly and steadily sheltered Israel from most important instances of accountability. A rare exception is the 2016 Security Council resolution that recognized the illegality of the settlements under international law.

So, it’s a catch-22 situation. But at the same time, I want to remind everyone that the international community is constituted by 193 member states, and the other 191, that does not — are not part of the Gaza genocide as much as Israel in the United States, should do the utmost not only to stop the genocide, but also to salvage what remains of the multilateral system, because so far it has protected — I wouldn’t say all of us, but most of us, especially in the West. And it seems that we are really giving it for granted. But we will miss human rights very much when we don’t have them anymore.

AMY GOODMAN: Francesca Albanese, the International Criminal Court has said it deplores new U.S. sanctions on its judges and prosecutors. Last week, the U.S. State Department announced new sanctions on two judges and two prosecutors in the ICC for engaging in efforts to prosecute U.S. and Israeli citizens. The ICC statement said, “These sanctions are a flagrant attack against the independence of an impartial judicial institution which operates under the mandate from 125 States Parties from all regions. They constitute also an affront against the Court’s States Parties, the rules-based international order and, above all, millions of innocent victims across the world.” I’m wondering if you can comment on this latest development, the sanctions against the ICC prosecutors and judges, and also your own situation. You are the U.N. special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory, and the U.S. has sanctioned you. And if you can talk exactly about what that means?

FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Look, the sanctions are very heavy and, frankly, an awful, awful instrument, when targeting, when directed at people whose job and whose efforts are in the — in the pursuit of justice and accountability. So, look at the absurdity of using an instrument, which is meant to protect U.S., U.S. interests and U.S. citizens, being used to punish people who are trying to stop and make account — make people responsible for crimes accountable. Where is the harm to the U.S. citizens? What is harmed — and this is why I often say these sanctions are a sign of fragility of those who use it — who use them. I mean, they are — what’s the harm that is done to the American interest, other than to the illegality that is denounced?

Yes, the special rapporteur has put on notice 48 businesses. And what? Why didn’t they defend themselves? Why didn’t they interact with me, most of them, surely the American companies? Why did they went to complain to the American administration, who put me on notice not to continue this investigation already made? Again, look, I come from a place which has been plagued by Mafia-style logics, techniques, and I’m fully familiar with this way of behaving. And this kind of threats win only if they meet fear. But the people, united, must resist this. And this is why I’m not going to step back, and I’m not going to stop my work.

AMY GOODMAN: And I wanted to ask a final question about the West Bank. As we went air, I think something like 24 people have been injured in Ramallah in an Israeli military raid. This is not Gaza. This is Ramallah. At the same time, you have the far-right ministers talking about starting to annex the West Bank this week. What does this mean?

FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: And what role does the U.N. have in this?

FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Yes, two things. First, when we say this is not Gaza, last week, the Israeli newspaper +972/Local Call issued a report based on a leaked document by the Israeli army, which admitted that only one of six of the people killed in Gaza were Hamas combatants. And I want to — I want to underscore that Israel’s definition of “combatant” is much broader than what is, in fact, afforded by international law. So, it confirms and actually aggravates the accusations of the U.N., independent experts and others that the death toll has steadily been 70 — at least 70% women and children, and therefore civilians. So, they are saying that, in fact, 80%-plus of the death toll in Gaza is made of civilians.

The situation is not different from the West Bank, where Israel is advancing its ethnic cleansing agenda through annexation. This is not new. In February 2023, the coalition government passed an agreement that basically transferred to Bezalel Smotrich, so the minister of finance, control over large swathes of the West Bank. This was yet another act of annexation, but formalizing what Israel has been doing for 57 years, creating settlements, which are war crime, in occupied territories for Israeli Jews only that were on — were on stolen land and were resulting in forcibly — dispossession and forcible displacement of Palestinians. Of course, today, this has reached abysmal proportion, because there is — there is even that veneer of respect of international humanitarian law has gone. There are settlers and soldiers ravaging the West Bank, and the Jordan Valley is unprotected, other than from by a few Israeli activists who go there night and day and try to protect shepherds and pastoralist communities.

But, look, the situation is abominable, abominable. And now the state of Palestine has requested an intervention from the international community. Some presidents, like some authorities, like the Irish president, has called for a military intervention. And I understand that everything must pass up, in accordance with international law, through the Security Council. And at the same time, because Israel has no sovereignty whatsoever over Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, it’s about time that a protection — the deployment of a protection presence is considered, because there is no other way to stop what Israel is doing.

AMY GOODMAN: Francesca Albanese, we want to thank you for being with us, U.N. special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory. We were hoping to reach a doctor at Nasser Hospital, but could not reach him today.

Coming up, we go to Chicago as local and state officials push back against President Trump’s threat to send in the National Guard. We’ll also look at Trump’s new executive orders ending so-called cashless bail. Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: The late folk singer-songwriter Michael Hurley performing “What’s Buggin’ You Baby?” at our Democracy Now! studio.

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

In this critical time in our country hearing the voices of truth and engaging in honest discussion for critical issues is all the more important while censorship (and outright lies) along with attacks on truth-tellers are common. Support the WingsofChange.me website and Rise Up Times on social media as we to bring you important articles and journalism beyond the mainstream corporate media. Access is alway free, but if you would like to help:
Whatever you are able donate will bring you articles and opinions from independent websites, writers, and journalists as well as a blog with the opinions and creative contributions.

One place to begin is with reason and truth, and how fundamental they are to creating critically engaged citizens and communities.

—Henry A. Giroux

August 26, 2025
The Cancer Plague: Nuclear Power and Waste, by Susu Jeffrey

The Cancer Plague: Nuclear Power and Waste / Original to Wings of Change
By Susu Jeffrey / August 18, 2025

“Sometimes before I give a speech, I ask the audience to stand up if they or someone in their family has had cancer,” says John LaForge of Nukewatch. “Eighty percent of the audience gets up.”

The Monticello nuclear power reactor is on the Mississippi River about 35-miles northwest of Minneapolis. Xcel’s twin Prairie Island reactors, plus about 50 giant dry casks storing waste reactor fuel, are all in the floodplain of the Mississippi. This waste is sited 44 to 51 miles southeast of Minneapolis and St. Paul.

There are no plans to move the waste off-island because there is no alternative destination. In fact, 34 more concrete encased steel casks are planned. There is no national hot radioactive waste repository. Think of these waste container sites as permanent radioactive waste dumps.

The greater Twin Cities’ 3.7 million people are in the nuclear “shadow” (within 50 miles) of all three nukes. The Mississippi River serves 20 million people with drinking water, way beyond the Minnesota state population of 5.7 million. Minnesota’s aging nukes are a national threat. For approximately the next six generations, radioactive tritium will be a part of the drinking water wherever those molecules wander.

The Monticello nuke was licensed in 1970 for 40 years, and went online in 1971, a year it had two radioactive cesium spills. In 2010, the license was renewed for another 20 years until 2030. Xcel Energy has even been granted an extension for another 20 years until 2050. It is a corporate financial security move not yet approved by the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission which holds the final consent. Paperwork is one thing, pipes are another.

In November 2022, a 50-year-old underground pipe leaked 829,000 gallons of tritium-contaminated wastewater that reached the Mississippi River, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Xcel failed to make public the radioactive spill for four months. After a May 15, 2024 public hearing in Monticello where citizens testified “We don’t trust you. You lie,” an NRC executive “clarified” Xcel’s “miscommunication.”

Senior Environmental Project Manager, Stephen J. Koenick admitted some tritium had been measured in the Mississippi. Tritium bonds with water and cannot be separated out. Water obeys gravity running downhill, in the case of Monticello, from the reactor to the Mississippi. The runaway tritium will persist in the environment for ten half-lives or about 123 years.

The trumpeter swan gets its name from its loud sonorous call — and the spot on the Mississippi River near the Monticello nuclear power plant is often filled with them in winter. Tim Post | MPR News file*

No telling where Xcel’s radioactive molecules will land. Men have a one in two chance of being diagnosed with cancer during their lifetimes; for women the chance is one in three (National Cancer Institute, 2/9/2022). There is tremendous popular, fear-driven support for the oncology industry.

The good news is that while cancer numbers are up so is the cancer survival rate. However, at nuke weapons, nuke reactors, and the virtually forever waste sites, “accidents” happen along with on-going radioactive decay. Radioactivity cannot be contained. When I was a newspaper reporter in Brevard County, Florida, where Cape Canaveral is located, I learned that nuclear waste cannot be rocketed off into space because it’s too hot, too heavy, and the rockets too faulty.

Nuclear Safety Regulations Changing

Among Pres. Trump’s cost-cutting moves is a weakening of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s exposure standards. Staff would be cut and regulations “revised” virtually cutting off the commission’s independent status. The Monticello nuke was licensed for 40 years and was rubber stamped to work for 80. Octogenarian nukes are considered “safe enough” now by the nuclear/government consortium.

Piecemeal fix-it parts for geriatric machinery or people are a lucrative business. Locating a leaking tritium pipe underground, between buildings, removing and replacing it is a non-negotiable emergency at nuclear reactors with miles and miles of piping. Upkeep expenses figure in utility rate hikes.

Joseph Mangano and Ernest Sternglass did a study of eight downwind U.S. communities in the two years after a nuclear reactor closure. A remarkable 17.4 percent drop in infant mortality was found. “We finally have peer-reviewed accurate data attaching nuclear power reactors to death and injury in the host communities,” New York State Assemblyman Richard Brodsky said of the 2002 report in the Archives of Environmental Health.

Monopoly capitalism or public service?

Clearly the Monticello reactor was designed to make money. In November 2024, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison wrote that Xcel has “aggressively” pursued multi-year rate hikes while earning large profits. In 2024 Xcel reported $1.94-billion net earnings, a profit margin up 14% from 2023.

According to Xcel propaganda, the nuke is “the biggest employer and largest local taxpayer” in Monticello, MN, and generates an estimated $550 million in economic activity each year in the region. And like profits, cancer rates are up notably among people under 50 and rising faster among women than men the American Cancer Society reports.

Repeatedly, the Xcel corporation wins its rate hike and re-licensing “asks.” These asks get rewritten and resubmitted until a “compromise” is reached. In 2025, residential customers will pay $5.39 more per month, down from the original ask of $9.89, according to Minnesota Public Radio, which also noted that greater increases are on the horizon for EVs and data center capital improvements.

Cancer

St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital advertises heavily with videos of big-eyed, bald children cancer patients. In a review of published studies of 136 nuclear reactor sites in the European Journal of Cancer Care in 2007, elevated leukemia disease rates in children were documented in the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Spain, Japan, and Canada. This is not a new story.

The danger of mental retardation of fetuses exposed in the womb was reported in The New York Times (page A1 on 12/20/1989). Tritium crosses the placenta. In addition to the health costs of breathing and ingesting exhausts from nuclear power reactors, there is the problem of what to do with and how to contain its long-lived waste. The nuclear profit god is a once and future terrorist.

Please sign now: A petition calling for the closure of the Monticello nuclear reactor! Here is the link:

https://chng.it/bY8KBrYKyZ

* The Trumpeter Swans have been a tourist attraction at the Monticello nuclear reactor plant in the past. With the discovering of the tritium poison leak they can no longer gather in the poisoned water.

Susu Jeffrey is a poet and writer living in Minneapolis. She has opposed nuclear weapons/nuclear power since before her arrest at Seabrook, New Hampshire in 1977.

In this critical time in our country hearing the voices of truth and engaging in honest discussion for critical issues is all the more important while censorship (and outright lies) along with attacks on truth-tellers are common. Support the WingsofChange.me website and Rise Up Times on social media as we to bring you important articles and journalism beyond the mainstream corporate media. Access is alway free, but if you would like to help:
Whatever you are able donate will bring you articles and opinions from independent websites, writers, and journalists as well as a blog with the opinions and creative contributions.

One place to begin is with reason and truth, and how fundamental they are to creating critically engaged citizens and communities.

—Henry A. Giroux

August 22, 2025
Glenn Greenwald: Palantir Exposed —The New Deep State

The government, if it has a policy or is pursuing things that are unpopular, especially among its own voters, can just try and confuse things by claiming that people’s descriptions of what they’re doing is untrue and false and trying to just confuse people with a bunch of irrelevancies or false claims. And then a lot of people don’t know what to make of it.

Stephen Miller’s BLATANT CENSORSHIP LIES Debunked

In this critical time in our country hearing the voices of truth and engaging in honest discussion for critical issues is all the more important while censorship (and outright lies) along with attacks on truth-tellers are common. Support the WingsofChange.me website and Rise Up Times on social media as we to bring you important articles and journalism beyond the mainstream corporate media. Access is alway free, but if you would like to help:
Whatever you are able donate will bring you articles and opinions from independent websites, writers, and journalists as well as a blog with the opinions and creative contributions.

One place to begin is with reason and truth, and how fundamental they are to creating critically engaged citizens and communities.

—Henry A. Giroux

August 20, 2025
American Nightmare: Facing the Challenge of Fascism, by Henry A. Giroux

We are witnessing the imminent emergence of new forms of resistance willing to support broad-based struggles intent on producing ongoing forms of nonviolent resistance at all levels of society.

—Henry A. Giroux

Facing the Challenge of Fascism. Photo by Roger Ballen

In “Staring into the Authoritarian Abyss,” the introduction to his book American Nightmare: Facing the Challenge of Fascism, Henry A. Giroux wrote the following:

Under the economic, religious, and political extremists Trump has been installing in positions of power, intolerance and militarization will intensify. Financial capital will be deregulated in order to be free to engage in behavior that puts the American public and the planet in danger. Institutions that embody the common good, such as public schools, will be defunded or privatized, and as a culture of greed and selfishness reaches new heights, there will be a further retreat from civil literacy and a growing abandonment by the state of any allegiance to the public interest. The free-market mentality that gained prominence under the presidency of Ronald Regan will advance under Trump and will continue to drive politics, destroy many social protections, further privilege the wealthy, and deregulate economic activity.[1]

Published in 2018, the analysis in American Nightmare could have been created yesterday. Giroux goes on to explain Trump’s tax reform bill of his first term which bears more than a passing resemblance to the Big Beautiful [Ugly] Bill recently passed by Congress. He explains that the bill:

largely favors the ultra-rich and and major corporations and would eventually leave 83 million middle-class and poor families paying more in taxes. Moreover, the increase in the deficit caused by these tax cuts enables the Republicans to wage and justify a major assault on the welfare state and its chief social provisions, such as social security, Medicare, and Medicaid. And what other rationale is there for Trump’s war on the environment, evident not only in his withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement but also in his opening up billions of acres of land on both the Pacific and Atlantic coasts for oil drilling? This is beyond shameful. It constitutes an act of war on the planet and the health of millions of adults and children.[2]

This pro-corporate fascism will make all human activities, practices, and institutions subject to market principles and commercialization. In other words, “there will be no place for morality and no place for compassion. Principles of equality, egalitarianism, and meritocracy however frail, are no longer espoused by the major political parties.”[3] The result is a morally bankrupt government of and by corporations that denigrates and ignores the people, the common ‘man’: the workers, the working class, whether they be black, brown, red or white, and whether they are recent arrivals or their ancestors were immigrants decades ago. Some were forced to come to these shores, especially as Black slaves, others have come of their own free will. We are, from the Mayflower on, a nation of immigrants. The native indigenous peoples were of course already in the Americas; in the U.S. they are most often called Native Americans.

What do we do to challenge this fascism that is overtaking our country?

Giroux says “One place to begin is with reason and truth, and how fundamental they are to creating critically engaged citizens and communities.”

Both reason and truth are under attack and it is essential to create “social formations within authoritarian societies to advance social justice, egalitarianism, political tolerance, cultural diversity, and vibrant democracy-centered communities.”[4]

Giroux calls these communities “democracies in exile.” These groups are resistant to Trumpian fascist politics and “are grounded in community building, economic justice, and a discourse of critique, hope, social justice, and self-reflection,” a concept he explains and illustrates throughout the book in the process of his detailed analysis.

Since 2018 when this book was published many such communities have flourished. At the national level the Poor People’s Campaign led by Liz Theoharis and William Barber is a re-establishing of Martin Luther King’s Poor People’s Campaign after his death.

Local communities have been building their own groups, often as social structures, to support action around a particular issue whether it be housing, food scarcity, immigration and deportation, blatant racism and DEI, widespread poverty, voting rights and defending Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and SNAP (food for low income families and many elders, who need this source to eat.)

Peace and justice groups are anti-militarism. Since this book was written they have taken on the issue of genocide in Gaza/Palestine and opposed Israel’s cruelty with the bombing and now starvation and genocide of Gazans. Support with constant demonstrations and actions critical of U.S. aid to Israel has spread worldwide where millions have marched against their governments’ support of Israel. Peace and justice groups that have for many years opposed Israeli apartheid in Israel/Palestine and supported equality in Israel/Palestine have activly opposed Israel’s Zionism, They have been accused, along with the many who have joined them, of antisemitism but are actually anti-Zionist not antisemitic, Zionism being an imperialistic political system created in the late 19th century and not to be confused with the ancient religion of Judaism.

Professor George Yancy, Professor of Philosophy at Emory Univeresity who wrote the Foreword to Giroux’s book about the American nightmare, fittingly ends his commentary with a quote from the poet James Baldwin:

People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself [sic] into a monster.[5]

Some thoughts about this book from Sue Ann Martinson —

What I have always liked about Giroux’s thinking and writing is the way he makes the connections between often seemingly disparate facts and actions and this book is no exception. In the case of Trump, Giroux weaves what appear to be isolated attacks and outrageous statements into a tapestry that shows what often may be easily dismissed as simple nonsense but instead show greater purpose: He holds these lies, deceits, and vagaries as a system that melds together with greater intent and purpose and takes Trump out of the level of con man and baffoon into the realm of an authoritarian dictator who is power and greed crazy and into a totalitarian and fascistic state held together by the concept of White Supremacy.[6]

Giroux shows how before Trump the seeds of totalitarianism and fascism were already deep in the soil of 20th century America from earlier centuries and how Trump is both the messenger and tool of unearthing them. He is now bringing them to fruition in this his second term.

Fascistic programs that were foreshadowed in his first presidential term are now being carried out as Trump’s authoritarianism has rapidly deteriorated into cruelty.

This book is long, and I have read only part of it so far. It is also scholarly and dense. Full of fascinating and illuminating detail and references to other scholars, it is well-documented. I am going to fast forward to the last chapter and conclusion of the book. I will finish reading it because it contains so much information, discussion and many insights that are relevant to now and to our future. I encourage others to read it as well.

Foreshadowing the Present

Professor George Yancy entitled his Foreword “Facing the Challenges: the Urgency of Now.” It echos the urgency in the title of Martin Luther King’s book Why We Can’t Wait.

Giroux’s title for his last chapter is “Toward a Politics of Ungovernability.” He prefaces the chapter with a quote from James Baldwin: “In this country we are menaced−intolerably menaced−by a lack of vision. . . .” Giroux begins the chapter with a reference to MLK’s famous Riverside speech where King:

…spoke eloquently about what it meant to use nonviolent direct action as part of a broader struggle to connect racism, militarism, and war. His call to address a “society gone mad on war” and the need to “address the fierce urgency of now” was rooted in an intersectional politics. one that recognized a comprehensive view of oppression, struggle, and politics itself. Racism, poverty, and disposability could not be abstracted from the issue of militarism and how those modes of oppression informed each other.[7]

Restoring Historical Memory

Giroux also emphasizes the need for historical memory. How American history is taught is a major target of the Trump administration as they attempt to bury any history that does not support white supremacy. The point is to not include the attempted genocide of native peoples and the treatment of Blacks in American history and of others as well that we used to call ‘minorities.’ Their truths contradict the idealized America the Trumpites have invented that has the appearance of the clean slate that MAGA wishes to impose.[8]

This erasure of memory also includes the banning of books that is taking place in many states. Most of these books are about people of color and about LGBTQIA+ people. Many are classics and award-winning books.

DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) is another program that is under attack. Trump has asked corporations to drop DEI guidelines in their workplaces and organizational guidelines. Many corporations have agreed, such as Target who dropped the program and is being boycotted, but others such as Costco have resisted and kept the DEI policies.

Shutting Down American Style Authoritarianism

“A successful resistance struggle must be comprehensive and at the same time embrace a vision that is unified, democratic, and equitable,” [9] says Giroux: A tall order. One that is “both political and pedagogical.” (Pedagogy refers to teaching, methods and strategies used in education.). Grioux calls for “democracy in exile” a concept that he defines in the book’s Conclusion but that infuses his commentary made throughout the book.

We need a new vision that refuses to equate capitalism and democracy, normalize greed and excessive competition and accept self-interest as the highest form of motivation. We need a language, vision, and understanding of power to enable the conditions in which education is linked to social change and the capacity to promote human agency through the registers of cooperation, compassion, care, love, equality, and respect for difference.” [10]

Resistance

Right now in L.A., a city under siege because of the high-handed arrest and deportation of especially immigrants of hispanic origin by ICE that has of course met the resistance of many people. Trump has called out California’s national guard although he is unauthorized to do so and has then sent troops to L.A. as the people of L.A. continue to resist with national support. “Democracy in Exile” organizing is taking place as documented by Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now! on August 11, 2025. On the one hand attorney generals nationwide met regarding L.A. to discuss their existing legal actions and their determination to plan more. These attorney generals may be considered a’”community’ in that they share the common thread of their work and in this case of shared vision.

On the other hand, on the ground in L.A. a group called Union del Bario from its smaller base organized many collaborative organizations. Recently they were able to film a young woman getting arrested by ICE. Eventually they got her released with a call-in that was local in L.A. but also went out nationally. Over 500 people responded.

This type of organizing, “a resurgent act of witnessing and moral outrage [that] will grow and provide the basis for a new kind of politics, a fierce wind of resistance, and a struggle too powerful to be defeated,” what Giroux calls “democracy in exile,” is able to take many forms by many seemingly unrelated groups of people.

The two examples juxtaposed on Democracy Now! are, although quite different, valid forms of resistance and are also collaborative within their scopes of influence. And now, in 2025, such collaborative community groups of many backgrounds are forming and growing in both local and national forms with an overall goal of restoring a functioning democracy. International groups are also challenging and influencing governments worldwide, especially in regard to the genocide in Gaza/Palestine.

Yet another recent example is the Miccosukee tribe in Florida. They have won a temporary lawsuit to halt construction of “Allegator Alcatraz,” a federal ‘concentration camp’ to hold deportees, on the grounds that no environmental impact statement (EIS), as required by federal law, has been conducted and that their tribal lands are threatened. Their tribal cultural center was recently burned to the ground:

The tribe is concerned about the facility’s potential impact on their ancestral lands, sacred sites, traditional hunting grounds, and other areas of cultural significance. They also fear environmental degradation, including potential pollution of water resources and impacts on endangered species like the Florida panther.

Radical Democracy

Those who believe in a radical democracy must find a way to make this nation ungovernable by the powers that currently claim governing authority. Small-scale defiance and local actions are important, but there is a more urgent need to mobilize through a comprehensive vision and politics that is capable of generating massive teach-ins all over the United States so as to enable a collective struggle aimed at producing powerful events such as a nationwide boycott, sit-ins, and a general strike in order to bring the country to a halt. The promise of such resistance must be rooted in the creation of a new political movement of democratic socialists, one whose power is grounded in the organization of novel political organizations, unions, educators, workers, young people, religious groups and others who constitute a progressive base.”[11]

Conclusion
Democracy in Exile

“The concept of democracy in exile is grounded in community building, economic justice, and a discourse of critique, hope, social justice and self-reflection.”[12]

Ever the educator, Giroux asks, “What role could a resuscitated critical education play in challenging the deadly neoliberal claim that all problems are individual when the roots of such problems lie in larger systemic forces?”

He also asks what role universities might play. Sadly, many universities have capitulated to restrictions of free speech around genocide in Gaza/Palestine as Trump blackmails them by threatening to withhold federal funding necessary for research and other programs and insists they punish students and faculty who decry the genocide.

Giroux calls upon leaders of the past for inspiration; often they sre Black because their resistance to white supremacy and oppression in the U.S. was/is bold and fearless. He quotes Frederick Douglas:

It is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocracy of the nation must be exposed; and the crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.

Giroux continues: “The political oppression of our times requires that we work together to redefine politics and challenge the pro-corporate two-party system.”

As a warning, he has included the words of James Baldwin’s letter to Angela Davis:

Some of us, white [red, yellow] and black, know how great a price has already been paid to bring into existence a new consciousness, a new people, an unprecedented nation. If we know and do nothing, we are worse than the murderers hired in our name. If we know then we must fight for your life as though it were our own−which it is−and render impassable with our bodies the corridor to the gas chamber. For, if they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us in the night.

“In the end,” Giroux says, “there is no democracy without informed citizens, no justice without a language critical of injustice, and no change without a broad-based movement of collective resistance.”[13]

It is possible to see if you open your eyes that Trump and his cohorts and the Trump administration with their fascist authoritarianism are trying to destroy the paths to informed citizens, to the use of language for truth to expose hypocrisy and lies and replace them with justice, and to the formation of a broad-based collaborative movement of collective resistance. They continue their attacks on Social Security (now to be called a Federal Benefit program even though every bit of money received has been earned by recipients in their working years), Medicare, Medicaid and SNAP (money for food) as well as cultural organizations like the Smithsonian where they are demanding that any artwork that is negative about Trump and the Trump administration be removed.

Now nationwide. and also to some extent worldwide. we are in the throes of resistance and creation, refusing to accept authoritarian fascist government with the creation of broad-based collective resistance.ß

Henry A. Giroux is a renowned American and Canadian scholar, cultural critic, and public intellectual, widely recognized as a founding theorist of critical pedagogy in the United States. He is known for his work in public pedagogy, cultural studies, youth studies, higher education, and media studies. He currently holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest and is the Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy.

Sue Ann Martinson is the editor and publisher of Wings of Change.

Notes

[1] Henry A, Giroux, American Nightmare: Facing the Challenge of Fascism (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2018) p,40

[2] Ibid. p. 41

[3] Ibid. p.35

[4] Ibid, p.33

[5] Ibid, p.22

[6] Ibid. p. 27

[7] Ibid. p. 287

[8] Ibid .pp. 291-92

[9] Ibid. pp. 297-99

[10] Ibid. pp. 303-04

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid. p. 310

[13] Ibid. pp. 321-23

August 14, 2025
Glenn Greenwald with Marianne Hirsch: Stephen Miller’s BLATANT CENSORSHIP LIES Debunked

“How can you have university course where ideas are not up for discussion or interpretation.”

Her reaction to sanctions on free speech in Columbia University are commented on by Jewish Holocaust scholar Marianne Hirsch.

Glenn Greenwald with Marianne Hirsch: Stephen Miller’s BLATANT CENSORSHIP LIES Debunked

Her reaction to sanctions on free speech in Columbia University are commented on by Jewish Holocaust scholar Marianne Hirsch as she questions what is clear censorship and a shutdown of free speech in regard to academic freedom in teaching on campus. In being forced to agree to the IHRA restrictions imposed by the Trump administration in order to receive important federal funds, Columbia, as well as other colleges and universties, has accepted these restrictions on free speech in regard to Palestine/Israel.

Hirsch comments: Columbia is “no longer a place of open inquiry.”

“How can you have university course where ideas are not up for discussion or interpretation.”

She has stated that she may resign, in which case she would be joining scholars from other universities, some of whom are Jewish (as is Glenn Greenwald).

In addition “antisemitism” mandatory training is being demanded for American students by pro-Israel groups at US colleges and universities

In the meantime an estimated 300,000 pro-Palestine protestors turned out in Sydney, Australia in the latest major demonstration. In the UK although now declared a “terrorist” act to protest the genocide in Palestine, protesters from the continue to risk arrest in daily protests.

This is a clip from our show SYSTEM UPDATE, now airing every weeknight at 7pm ET on Rumble.

You can watch the full episode for FREE here: https://rumble.com/v6wwl7s-system-upd…

Now available as a podcast! Find full episodes here: https://linktr.ee/systemupdate_

Join us LIVE on Rumble, weeknights at 7pm ET: https://rumble.com/c/GGreenwald Become part of our Locals community: https://greenwald.locals.com/

RELATED

“Let Gaza Live”: 50 Jewish Peace Activists Arrested Protesting Sens. Schumer, Gillibrand for Vote to Keep Arming Israel Democracy Now! August 1, 2025

Prof. Rashid Khalidi Slams “Crushing Repression” at Columbia, Cancels Course over Trump Settlement. Democracy Now! August 4, 2025

“It Is Our War”: Palestinian American Scholar Rashid Khalidi on U.S. Complicity in Gaza Genocide. Democracy Now! August 4, 2025

Sign Up for Updates

Please join me on Wings of Change. It’s only the beginning as we still have so much work to do as many activists and organizations make plans for the upcoming years. Wings of Change is pleased and excited to be a part of that work through education, information, and inspiration.

Updates Sign-up

Never miss news articles on current issues and Sue Ann’s blog! Sign up here for an email notice of new posts from Wings of Change.

Email

August 13, 2025