Tag: Donald Trump

  • “They’re Fascists”: Silicon Valley Journalist Gil Durán on “The Nerd Reich” Takeover of U.S. Politics

    “They’re Fascists”: Silicon Valley Journalist Gil Durán on “The Nerd Reich” Takeover of U.S. Politics

    Protesters demonstrate outside the Palantir offices in New York City [Eduardo Munoz/Reuters]

    When Silicon Valley says it is ‘‘moving fast and breaking things,’’ the world interprets the chaos as a necessary cost of innovation. Gil Durán reveals something far more sinister: a decades-long campaign to replace elected governments with corporate rule.
    —Simon and Schuster [Publisher]

    Full 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 Anjali Kamat, as we bring you Part 2 of our conversation with Gil Durán, author of The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy.

    Gil Durán, in this Part 2 of the discussion, just start off by talking about: What is tech fascism?

    GIL DURÁN: Tech fascism is like classic fascism in most respects. It’s a cult of grievance and self-victimization that seeks to return to a mythical greatness by purging its demonized enemies, using propaganda focused on law and order, gender and sexuality, in order to impose a permanent hierarchical structure on the world. This hierarchy is what they consider the moral order of the world. And in their idea, it’s basically that rich white men should rule the world and the universe, and that’s the things — the way things should be.

    AMY GOODMAN: It’s very interesting. At the end of his presidential term, President Biden warned about the tech billionaires. Talk about what he said.

    GIL DURÁN: In his final speech as president, Biden said that the democracy was in danger from what he called a tech-industrial complex that had become radicalized and powerful and that was rising in our midst. And it’s not clear why he waited ’til his final speech to warn everybody, because this thing was growing in plain sight for a few years.

    But I start my book with that, because I want people to understand this is not just one journalist with a newsletter saying this. This is something that the president of the United States declared in his final speech, clearly intending to warn people about what was coming.

    And a few days later, Elon Musk stood behind the presidential seal at an inaugural event for Trump and threw a Hitler salute. And we’ve seen the rest of this regime, since then, follow these terrifying, scary contours of history, with masked, armed goons roaming around targeting immigrants, people being prosecuted for protesting, etc. So, I think that the president’s warning was important, but it came far too late.

    ANJALI KAMAT: Yet many of these same tech billionaires had supported President Obama before. What changed their mind and sort of cemented this fascist turn?

    GIL DURÁN: It was in their interest at the time, because Democrats had power.

    And, look, no one should be happier than the tech billionaires. They have won our system. They have all the money. They have tremendous influence and power. A lot of these guys, like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel and David Sacks, they’re immigrants. They weren’t even born here. They came to our country, and they became massively successful and wealthy.

    And now they’re full of anger, and they feel like it’s not enough, and they want more. And with Trump, they see now, in their own self-interest, or so they think, the opportunity to completely change how our country works, to disrupt democracy. This is largely what venture capitalists do: They bet on disruptive technologies that can provide a massive return of some kind in terms of profit. And they’ve bet on Trump and on fascism as a way to destroy democracy and make sure billionaires don’t have to worry about other people and the threat of the vote in the future. That’s very much the project they’re working on.

    AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the men who stood behind President Trump, and how unusual it was, in his second inauguration.

    GIL DURÁN: Definitely. You had Mark Zuckerberg, who had previously banned Trump from Facebook, at his inauguration. You had the head of Google, Sundar Pichai, there. You had Elon Musk, which is really no surprise; Jeff Bezos, who for many years seemed like a heroic guy to some people, the guy who was going to save The Washington Post, and now it’s become the opposite of that. The Washington Post editorial page, which in normal times would be a watchdog against corruption and excess, is now a lapdog for Donald Trump’s regime.

    AMY GOODMAN: Of course —

    GIL  DURÁN:  And — yeah.

    AMY GOODMAN: — it was Bezos who intervened when they were going to endorse Kamala Harris, and said there would be no endorsement.

    GIL DURÁN: Yeah, that’s where it started. And we’ve seen the results since then. It’s hard to even recognize the Post. I mean, there are good reporters there on the news side still, but the editorial page has become a complete lapdog for Donald Trump. And this is how that works, that it’s money chasing power, and power chasing money.

    AMY GOODMAN: So, for example, how did Zuckerberg change?

    GIL DURÁN: Zuckerberg is just doing what he thinks is in his own self-interest. I see Zuckerberg largely as a follower. The thing to keep in mind about Zuckerberg, though, is that the first major investor in Facebook was Peter Thiel. Wherever you look in the story of how Silicon Valley billionaires have become radicalized against democracy, you find the influence of Peter Thiel lurking not far away.

    If Kamala Harris had won the election, we would see an entirely different behavior out of these people. You know, they would be promoting diversity and putting people of color in important positions and espousing progressive values. But now the mask is fully off, and we see what these people truly are. You can’t go this hard in favor of an authoritarian regime and expect to ever recover your reputation. So they’re kind of locked in now, which makes them desperate and, I think, makes them more dangerous.

    ANJALI KAMAT: And who do they turn to for inspiration? Who are the world leaders in other countries that inspire them? And they’ve also set their sights beyond the United States, as well, their projects in Honduras, in Greenland.

    GIL DURÁN: Yeah, I mean, they love authoritarianism, because it’s more — especially authoritarianism that is open to capital investment, where you can buy what you want. I mean, it was Mark Zuckerberg who asked the dictator of China to name his child, and he refused. I mean, this is bizarre behavior from a tech CEO.

    In Honduras, though, they’ve created this project called Próspera, which is supposed to be this new territory, a wannabe nation where they make their own rules, laws and regulations. And you’re starting to see this idea pop up in different parts of the world. There’s one now being built in Kazakhstan, where the government plans a crypto megacity.

    And this comes from this same group of ideas, which some call the “network state cult,” this idea that we should invest in creating new territories that will become independent countries in the 21st century and give all of these billionaires escape routes when their prophesied apocalyptic collapse of democratic nations takes place.

    And Trump himself has promised to build 10 new “Freedom Cities” in the United States. These would be new private cities built by corporations on federal land. It was part of his 2024 platform. And what was interesting to me in my reporting was that, though people like Politico and others reported superficially that Trump had promised to build these cities, no one has ever explained: What’s a Freedom City? Why do we need Freedom Cities? And where does the idea come from? It comes from these crazy, radical Silicon Valley network state ideas.

    AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about Peter Thiel both as founder of PayPal, but then Palantir, and the role Palantir has played, how it’s been used by militaries, domestic and foreign, for example, to spy on people?

    GIL DURÁN: What’s interesting about Peter Thiel is that for many years people described him as a libertarian. But for most of the time that Peter Thiel’s been in the public eye, he’s actually been a government surveillance and military intelligence contractor through Palantir, a company named after this all-seeing stone wielded by an evil wizard in The Lord of the Rings. And Palantir has quickly become one of the most well known and, I’d say, most hated tech companies in the country, because it’s being embedded in the military, in intelligence, in ICE operations, and as part of this massive surveillance apparatus coming out of Silicon Valley that is now partnering with an authoritarian regime.

    And something interesting about Peter Thiel, back in 2010, he gave a speech in which he said government was fundamentally evil. And this guy, he’s talking to a group of libertarians. He’s a government surveillance contractor, which is about as far away from the libertarian idea as you can get.

    And so, what you see is a group of men who opposed government until they saw the chance to claim government power for themselves. And Palantir is raking in billions of dollars in government contracts under Donald Trump as Silicon Valley pumps billions of dollars into the Trump family. It’s a tower — technology has proved to be a weapon of mass corruption in Washington. If you look at how much the crypto cartels are spending in our elections, they’re now the biggest spender in politics. Ten years ago, they weren’t even in existence in the political game.

    AMY GOODMAN: And explain what they are.

    GIL DURÁN: Yeah. Crypto? Crypto is a fake, digital, wannabe currency that’s mostly useful for scams, human trafficking, drug trafficking and crime, and gambling. And a very small percentage of Americans use crypto, less than 20%. Pew reported a few years ago it was 14%. But they are now the biggest moneyed force in American politics, basically holding our political system hostage by promising to spend tens of millions of dollars against any politician who dares to challenge crypto and doesn’t support crypto in any way. This would be like if a drug cartel suddenly entered American politics and threatened anybody who refused to legalize cocaine or heroin. This is what we’re watching here. Yet it’s become completely normalized.

    AMY GOODMAN: And how does President Trump and his family fit into that picture?

    GIL DURÁN: President Trump spent years describing crypto as a scam against the dollar. And on the day he returned to the White House, he became a crypto billionaire. And he is now the country’s crypto-bro-in-chief. His entire family is cashing in with bitcoin mining, with coin scams. Even Melania had a coin, that sucked money out of dummies and then enriched the Trump family. So, it’s amazing. At one point, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump family’s fortune had increased by $5 billion thanks to crypto. But because crypto’s so scammy and volatile, it’s now down to about 1.2, I think, in today’s news reporting.

    ANJALI KAMAT: I want to go back to Palantir. You were banned from X for criticizing Palantir? Can you talk about what happened?

    GIL DURÁN: In April, I was banned from X for criticizing Palantir’s manifesto, that they published, as fascism. I just said ”TLDR: Fascism,” Too long, didn’t read: Fascism.” But that follows a weird trend. The year before, Facebook banned links from my newsletter from being posted. And when I asked why, a representative said it’s because I write about the network state and I criticize tech figures, which was an amazing thing for a rep from Facebook to say. And after that got media attention, they reversed it. I was also banned by X when Elon Musk first bought it.

    And right now YouTube is threatening to take down my little podcast, because I’m being targeted by a campaign of false copyright claims, which is a tactic that’s emerging now. You can pay people, often emanating out of India, to just file constant copyright strikes. And YouTube’s answer to this problem is to just remove your channel permanently. And by Saturday, we’re supposed to be offline. So, I think my book is upsetting some people.

    AMY GOODMAN: You know, ABC reported last week that a Trump-appointed national bank regulator granted a wing of the Trump family’s crypto business conditional approval to establish a bank charter, opening the door to larger clients and potentially heightened profits. The decision marks the first time in U.S. history that a company owned by the sitting president’s family has been granted bank status.

    GIL DURÁN: A weapon of mass corruption, that’s what crypto is. We are basically living right now in a crypto banana republic. And it’s not clear why any Democrat or any Republican, for that matter, who loves this country is supporting crypto, taking crypto, legitimizing crypto. If you look at the history of crypto, it is openly designed as a way to undermine government authority and power. It was seen by cypherpunks as a way to escape from democracy, from rules and from law. So, why now do we have the president and his family starting a crypto bank, going into cryptocurrencies? You know, people are losing millions and billions of dollars to these scams. And, you know, it used to be that crypto was only useful for drug dealing, human trafficking, gambling and crime. Now it’s being used to buy power in order to break the country. And I think there has to be a real reckoning with the role of this pernicious technology, that is so — I mean, the corruption is so staggering, it’s almost hard to explain in words.

    AMY GOODMAN: So, the question is: Where does government fit into this picture? You quoted President Biden’s last speech, warning about the tech-bro-industry complex, the technology-industry complex, or TIC. But what are Democrats doing right now in Congress? And what are Republicans doing?

    GIL DURÁN: Largely not going after the Silicon Valley oligarchs who are behind Trump. You know, a lot of people are attacking Trump and criticizing his family, criticizing Vance. But we don’t see a lot of direct criticism of these billionaires who are enabling the entire thing. The way I look at it, Donald Trump is being paid billions of dollars to do these things, right? When’s the last time we had a president make billions of dollars while in office? This is direct transfer, including from foreign governments that are buying into and investing in his companies to curry favor.

    I think we need to see Democrats speaking directly against billionaire power, against tech billionaire power, against the crypto takeover of our country. You see all these Democrats trying to say, “Oh, AI innovation, Silicon Valley innovation.” Those are outdated talking points. Silicon Valley is no longer about innovation. Silicon Valley is about fascism and a race to control the future. And that future will not be good for most people. And it’s the job of our elected officials, especially on the Democratic side of things, to stand up for the people.

    There are a few people doing it. You see Bernie Sanders, James Talarico, Jasmine Crockett and others who have spoken directly to this, Chris Murphy, Ron Wyden. But people like Gavin Newsom and others are suspiciously avoiding any critique of Silicon Valley. And I don’t think we can have that going forward. People are waking up to this threat. We see it all across the country. And we need politicians who match the energy of the people, or we need those people to be the new politicians.

    ANJALI KAMAT: We’re seeing this massive movement against data centers, right? Across the country, people are opposing data centers. What’s happening in Silicon Valley? Is there some resistance to this massive takeover and this kind of ideology?

    GIL DURÁN: A little bit. Nothing too noteworthy. Most of the resistance is coming from communities that are being targeted by data centers, that are being targeted by Palantir surveillance and fascism aided by ICE. You see people resisting and rising up. There are also movements like Purge Palantir, which is boycotting any company that has Palantir products, raising awareness of the role of this company in our government, and putting a lot of pressure on the company. Same thing is happening to Flock surveillance, where people are starting to militate against putting these Big Brother facial recognition, license plate recognition cameras in every aspect of our lives.

    So, you see people waking up to that. And it’s not just Democrats, by the way. It’s also Republicans and independents. And it’s also people who are not activists. It’s people who are just becoming activated by the threat of this alien invasion of our country by these surveillance-mad, power-hungry billionaires. And it’s pretty inspiring to watch. It’s the grassroots, and I think the politics are going to have to catch up with that.

    AMY GOODMAN: As we begin to wrap up, what is missing from the whole debate around artificial intelligence?

    GIL DURÁN: The question is why we are pursuing this idea that we have this dangerous technology that is going to kill all of our jobs and potentially wipe out all of humanity. This is the marketing of the AI industry itself. And why is that being made to seem inevitable? I don’t think it’s inevitable at all. I think we have the right to reject this dystopian future that’s being imposed on us. How does it make sense to destroy our economy to enrich a handful of oligarchs who are already wealthy and whose wealth has driven them insane and hasn’t made them very happy?

    You know, we have this problem where it’s becoming a competition between democracy and capitalism, and which one is more important. You know, even before the tech bros came along, we were destroying the planet for a handful of fossil fuel companies. How does that make any sense? There has to be a different way to do this.

    And the same thing with AI. AI is being marketed as this destructive, terrifying force, and we all have to invest in it and adopt it or else. And I don’t think it has to be that way, and I think people need to push back harder on a policy level and stop trying to ingratiate themselves to the AI moguls, which is largely what’s happening now. Even the best politicians among us are playing along with this idea that this is an intelligence, which it’s not, and that this is inevitable, which it’s not.

    And so, I think we need to backtrack a bit and get off of this idea, and question the narrative that we have no choice except to bow down to this AI god these guys claim to be building, that it’s a religion. It’s a myth. It’s not real. I don’t think LLMs are completely useless. I think there’ll be some good applications for AI.

    ANJALI KAMAT: Explain what LLMs are.

    GIL DURÁN: Large language models, like Claude, etc. I don’t think these things have to be useless. I just don’t understand why they have to eat everything. They don’t. This is — this is the marketing for the investors. This is convincing people that you have to spend trillions of dollars on this, so we can create this massive thing that will then suck all of the value out of the economy and render every worker useless. This is absurd, it’s ridiculous, and it’s an apocalyptic cult.

    ANJALI KAMAT: You know, you’ve been spending time reading the statements and writings of all of these figures. What scares you the most?

    GIL DURÁN: What scares me is that you can be as anti-American and anti-democratic as Peter Thiel and still be a government contractor with investment from the CIA. I mean, Palantir was created with investment from the CIA. And I worked in government for many years for Democrats. I worked for Senator Feinstein when she was chair of the Intelligence Committee. And it boggles my mind that you can say that kind of stuff and believe these radical things and still be that deep in our intelligence infrastructure. I have a lot of questions about what went wrong there. I mean, to get into government, you have to pretend like you never smoked marijuana, and here you are smoking the most anti-American, anti-democratic dope in the world and becoming a billionaire off of government contracts. That’s what scares me.

    How did no one catch this? You know, trying to talk about what’s happening to our country without talking about these tech fascists is like trying to explain 9/11 without talking about al-Qaeda. This cult of dangerous billionaires has a very pronounced idea of what our future is, and it’s not going to have democracy in it. And I don’t understand how they got this far, this fast. Nobody — and even today, most people in the media and the political establishment aren’t really addressing it. And I hope my book can help change that.

    AMY GOODMAN: The name of the book is The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy. The author, Gil Durán. To see Part 1 of our conversation, go to democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Anjali Kamat. Thanks for joining us.

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  • The United States of Betrayal, by Nick Turse

    BETRAYAL

    Turning on our allies has always been the American way.

    The United States of Betrayal

    By / The Intercept / Tom Dispatch /

    Trump Adds to America’s Lethal Legacy of Treachery

    Who can even remember it now? That giddy moment less than five months ago when President Donald Trump called on the Iranian people to rise up and take on the ruling regime. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. America is backing you with overwhelming strength,” Trump promised on February 28. “This is the moment for action. Do not let it pass.”

    THE TRUMP SALUTE
    Photo: Getty

    Like a million Trump pledges before it, it was part bluster, part bullshit. Last week, Trump admitted as much, stating he knew the Iranian opposition had no chance against the ruling regime. “Nobody is gonna take over. They have no guns, and the other side has machine guns,” he said at the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey. “They can’t take over because they’re dead.” This was not, however, just a routine Trumpian lie; it was also part of a grand American tradition.

    They say baseball is America’s national pastime, but you could make a solid case that it’s actually betrayal. Washington loves nothing more than to sell out its friends, betray its partners, leave its allies in a lurch, and call people into the streets and then abandon them to slaughter.

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    In an interview with the Washington Post on the Iran war’s first day, Trump said that “freedom for the people” of Iran was the goal of the conflict. It never was. But what would be lost in luring Iranian activists into the streets — aside from Iranian lives?

    This type of lethal double-cross has been America’s stock-in-trade since its infancy — and has continued across the globe no matter the conflict, era, or president.

    During the American Revolution, most Native peoples viewed America’s colonial rebels with skepticism and attempted to remain neutral or sided with the British. But some placed a bet on the revolutionaries, assuming that they would be rewarded with fair, if not preferential, treatment in the event of a win by the colonies. They were, in the end, wrong to assume their allies would act honorably.

    The Oneida, for example, split from most of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy — the Mohawk, the Onondaga, and others — who allied with the British. “There would have probably been a lot more death for the Continental Army,” according to Heather Bruegl, a public historian and citizen of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin who noted that the Oneida altered the tide of the war by breaking the famine at Valley Forge.

    Even the Pentagon lauds the Oneida Nation, noting its “support for American independence saw the Continental Army through its lowest point in the Revolutionary War” but admitted that while Congress offered thanks, “that gratitude did not always translate into equitable treatment.” This is nothing but a mealy-mouthed reference to the fact that at the end of the Revolutionary War, the Oneida Homelands were estimated at between five to six million acres of land but were reduced to just 32 acres by the early 1900s.

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    The Lenape people also threw in with the American rebels, signing a treaty that pledged their backing to the nascent United States in exchange for protection and the creation of a 14th state, governed by Native Americans. The agreement fell apart within weeks. As the official State Department history puts it:

    First, the Lenape leader White Eyes died. While American officials insisted White Eyes died from smallpox as the cause, evidence indicated members of the [colonial] militia murdered him, and the circumstances remain unclear to this day. This act showed the Lenape that the Americans did not value nor honor the importance of kinship alliances.

    Despite a failure by the Americans to protect Lenape lands, some Lenape warriors nonetheless assisted the Continental Army and a delegation went to the Continental Congress to attempt to repair the pact. But the Americans made no effort to salvage the agreement and said the Lenape had broken the treaty. Worse still, in 1782, Pennsylvania militia massacred a neutral, pacifist Christian Lenape community in Gnadenhutten, bludgeoning 96 unarmed people to death. Thirty-nine of those killed, many with a hammer to the back of the head as they prayed for mercy, were children.

    Deception and Disloyalty

    Still, it wasn’t until the 20th century that America hit its stride, selling out allies at an unbelievable clip. Approximately 250,000 Filipinos joined the U.S. military, for example, and fought for America during World War II. Washington promised them the same health and pension benefits as their American counterparts, a pledge that was even reaffirmed at the close of the war. But then Congress passed and President Harry Truman signed the Rescission Act of 1946 that said that the service of Filipinos “shall not be deemed to be or to have been service in the military or national forces of the United States or any component thereof or any law of the United States conferring rights, privileges or benefits.”

    Also during World War II, the U.S. Office of Strategic Services, a forerunner of the CIA, armed, trained, and supported a guerrilla force in French colonial Vietnam fighting the Japanese and their French quislings. In 1945, with the Japanese defeated, the top local OSS agent — the charismatic Ho Chi Minh — proclaimed Vietnam’s independence, using the words of the U.S. Declaration of Independence as his template. “All men are created equal,” he told a crowd of half a million Vietnamese in Hanoi. “The Creator has given us certain inviolable rights: the right to life, the right to be free, and the right to achieve happiness.”

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    The Vietnam War Is Still Killing People, 50 Years Later

    Ho thought his allies would back him. He was wrong. They instead turned on Ho and his comrades, funded the French reconquest of Vietnam, and spent the better part of the next three decades propping up an ever more corrupt and repressive rump state in South Vietnam while advising, arming, training, and funding an allied South Vietnamese military, and fought a long, destructive war against revolutionaries in the South and Ho’s North Vietnam that left millions dead, wounded, or displaced.

    Eager to turn the conflict over to the Potemkin state they fostered and extricate the U.S., President Richard Nixon pledged to re-enter the war with the “full force” of American power, to induce the despotic South Vietnamese government to sign a 1973 peace agreement with the North. Two years later, the U.S. ignored this guarantee and abandoned South Vietnam and millions of allies, collaborators, and hangers-on.

    No single moment sums up this betrayal better than an incident recounted by Stuart Herrington, a counterintelligence officer who spent 30 years in the Army. Herrington made a vow to hundreds of Vietnamese who crowded onto U.S. Embassy grounds in Saigon on the final day of the U.S. evacuation in 1975. “Nobody is going to be left behind,” he assured them. One of the 420 Vietnamese who was there remembered his words: “I promise me and my soldiers will be the last ones to leave the embassy.” Herrington promised them that a large helicopter was coming to rescue them and then excused himself to go “take a leak.” Scurrying off into the shadows, Harrington slipped into the embassy building and onto a helicopter, abandoning those to whom he’d just given his word.

    BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - APRIL 22: Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory, Francesca Albanese delivers a speech during the Global Sumud Parliamentary Congress in Brussels, Belgium on April 22, 2026. Bringing together lawmakers, representatives of political parties and public institutions, UN rapporteurs and prominent figures from around the world, the congress has begun as the Global Sumud Flotilla that set off for Gaza on April 12 continues its journey. (Photo by Dursun Aydemir/Anadolu via Getty Images)

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    Noah Hurowitz

    A U.S.-backed military regime in neighboring Cambodia also crumbled in 1975 and was abandoned to face the genocide of the Khmer Rouge. A proxy army in neighboring Laos was similarly discarded in the 1970s. Decades later, surviving troops and their families were still in hiding and on the run. “We want America to give us a place to live,” Va Chang, a then-60-year-old veteran found in the jungle in the mid-2000s told a reporter. “If the Americans don’t want to do that, they should drop a big bomb on us and end our misery.”

    Prior to a 1956 uprising, the CIA air-dropped leaflets into Hungary with messages like “The regime is weaker than you think.” János Rainer, director of Hungary’s 1956 Institute Foundation, said, “Hungarians clearly got the impression that, in the event of a rebellion, the U.S. would support them effectively.” But the U.S. stood aside as the Soviet Union crushed the uprising, killing and wounding almost 20,000, imprisoning 13,000, and executing 229 others following trials, according to one count. The writer Tamás Aczél, who fled to the U.S. in 1956, wrote that Hungarians had been naive to put their faith in U.S. calls for “liberation” in Eastern Europe, writing: “[W]e learned what we didn’t know — that the West had written off these countries and only their propaganda machines pretended otherwise.”

    In an even more egregious exercise, the CIA trained and armed Cuban exiles, landing them at the Bay of Pigs in 1961. The counterrevolutionaries were promised ample air cover — “the sky will be yours” — and led to believe they would be supported by 15,000 American troops. But the invasion of Cuba went south quickly, President John F. Kennedy canceled a second round of airstrikes, and the exiles ran out of ammunition, were pushed back into the sea, and were abandoned. Grayston Lynch, a CIA operative who participated in the landing, recounted that he called two American destroyers on the scene for help but was told by the captain of one: “My orders are not to become involved.”

    While the U.S. has betrayed people the world over, one group stands preeminent in the sheer amount of American treachery. “Nothing in this world is certain except death, taxes, and America betraying the Kurds,” wrote Jon Schwarz for The Intercept in October 2019, recounting eight instances from the 1920s to that very moment when the U.S. used independence-seeking Kurdish peoples to further American aims and then cut them loose.

    One of the most craven of these instances was a Nixon-era plot with then U.S.-allied Iran to use the Kurds to bleed the then-Soviet-aligned Iraqis.

    Once the Kurds outlived their usefulness, however, U.S. aid was then cut and the Iraqi military killed thousands as the Kurds begged for help. As a congressional report later admitted, “Even in the context of covert action ours was a cynical enterprise.” But Secretary of State Henry Kissinger shrugged at the slaughter, explaining “covert action should not be confused with missionary work.”

    As the U.S. bombed Iraq during the Gulf War in 1991, President George H.W. Bush called on “the Iraqi military and Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands, to force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside.” Both Shias in southern Iraq and Kurds in northern Iraq answered the call, expecting U.S. military support. It never came, Hussein stayed in power, and some 20,000 Kurds and up to 60,000 Shias who rose up were slaughtered by the Iraqi military.

    More than a decade later, another failed U.S. war in the Middle East fostered the rise of the Islamic State group and the creation of a brutal caliphate across a wide swath of Iraq and Syria. Between 2014 and 2017, Kurdish-led forces dismantled this quasi-state for the U.S. But after 93 percent of Iraqi Kurds voted for independence in 2017, America was nowhere to be found. Within weeks, Iraqi federal troops and Iranian-backed Hashd al-Shaabi militias launched a coordinated offensive. The Kurds lost the city of Kirkuk, the Nineveh Plains, and roughly 40 percent of the territory their fighters had held. Washington offered no military response and no assistance — not even a diplomatic protest to the government in Baghdad. Then in 2019, President Donald Trump withdrew U.S. troops from northeastern Syria, opening the door for a Turkish invasion of the very land the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces had taken from ISIS at the cost of more than 20,000 lives.

    Hundreds of thousands of locals also served alongside U.S. troops, diplomats, intelligence officers, and contractors during the failed Afghan War. Despite 20 years of Americans mouthing the phrase “shohna ba shohna” (“shoulder to shoulder” in Dari), it meant very little. In the chaotic 2021 U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, most Afghans who fought on the side of the U.S. and its coalition partners were left behind as the Taliban retook the country.

    But even those who made it out have been abandoned. In April, the Trump administration floated plans to send Afghan allies stranded at Camp As Sayliyah in Qatar to the Democratic Republic of Congo. While that plan was reportedly shelved, rumblings of casting them to the winds elsewhere remain. And in May, the Department of Homeland Security formally ended Temporary Protected Status for roughly 10,000 Afghans who fled after the Taliban’s return to power.

    “We made a promise to those who helped America in our time of need, and it’s wrong to turn our backs on them,” Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., a member of the House Armed Services Committee and a combat veteran who fought in Afghanistan, said last month, noting that they will likely face torture, persecution, and even death if they are returned to Afghanistan.

    — Nick Turse, editor of TomDispatch.

    If you haven’t yet, sign up to receive TomDispatch in your inbox here.

     

  • Trump Sells Dominance. Americans Get Invoices, by Mary Geddry

    Trump Sells Dominance. Americans Get Invoices, by Mary Geddry

    Trump Sells Dominance.  Americans Get Invoices.

    The Iran war bill comes due, the World Cup gets a phone call, and voters start asking what the strongman act actually costs.

    Editor’s Note: Excerpts from a longer article. View Mary Geddry’s full post  here as a .pdf.

    PICK UP THE TAB

    Fresh off hijacking the nation’s 250th birthday celebration for his own personal aggrandizement, Trump has now managed to taint the World Cup before Team USA even takes the field against Belgium. The flags go up, the bunting comes out, the cameras roll, and then somewhere behind the curtain the phone calls begin.

    This is Trump’s America, sadly, where every shared space eventually becomes a private transaction. A national birthday becomes a campaign stage, a soccer match becomes a favor call, and a rulebook becomes a suggestion. A beloved global tournament becomes one more venue for the old familiar sequence: grievance, access, pressure, reversal, victory lap.

    Having dragged the World Cup into the White House favors office, Trump is off to meet with NATO leaders. What could possibly go wrong, other than the alliance, the postwar order, Ukraine policy, European defense planning, and the remaining shreds of America’s reputation?

    Originally posted on Substack:

    Wings of Change is entirely reader supported.
    Wings invites you to subscribe.
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    In this critical time hearing voices of truth is all the more important although censorship and attacks on truth-tellers are common. Support WingsofChange.me as we bring you important articles and journalism beyond the mainstream corporate media on the Wings of Change website and Rise Up Times on social media. Donate now to sustain Wings of Change.

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    Join us on Wings of Change

    We still have much work to continue to do as many activists and organizations address current threats to our democracy and unjust actions against people of color and are making plans for the upcoming years. Wings of Change is a part of that work through education, information, and inspiration.

    Sue Ann Martinson, Editor Wings of Change

    “We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions
    to participate in the process of change.
    Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people,
    can transform the world.”
    — Howard Zinn

  • Minneapolis, MINNEAPOLIS! by Susu Jeffrey

    Minneapolis, MINNEAPOLIS! by Susu Jeffrey

    Minneapolis, MINNEAPOLIS! 

    The unprecedented ICE surge has the hallmarks of an occupation in some neighborhoods, as masked and heavily armed agents drive around in large SUVs, tussle with protesters and observers, and break into people’s cars and houses to make arrests.  —Axios

    By Susu Jeffrey / Original to Wings of Change / March 2, 2026

    What an honor when The Nation nominated Minneapolis for the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize! The initial butterfly-in-the-stomach thrill dissipated with the thought of what President Trump would do (next) if we got his award. The revenge-dealing, super bully apparently stays awake imagining schemes on his social media site while we make new signs for the next NO KINGS demonstration and grocery lists for shut-in neighbors.

    NO HATE, NO FEAR! IMMIGRANTS ARE WELCOME HERE!
    In Minneapolis hard times make good neighbors. If we want to eat tomatoes or reroof our buildings we need to pay local people willing to do the work. The law of economics requires low wage, compliant workers in Minneapolis like every other American city. We need childcare, eldercare, healthcare, farm workers, meat packers, independent restaurants and all the oil that lubricates western society where the dream of a richer future is the hook.

    The Americana rainbow of Minneapolis is like “Eat Street,” (Nicollet Avenue and 26th Street) where Alex Pretti was shot to death by federal agents. My favorite restaurant is across the street from the people’s Alex Pretti memorial. They serve Vietnamese pho soup and cream cheese wontons or you could go donuts-coffee and local bands, Mexican, Vietnamese-French-bread sandwiches, Greek, Middle East, Malaysian, pizza or burgers and fries. Minneapolis has the population of a stew, a toothsome mix of ingredients harmonizing in one pot.

    Why Minneapolis?

    Why did President Trump decide to sic ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and Border Control (Customs and Border Control) on the Twin Cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul? Minnesota is the state that ranks 28th among the 50 United States hosting “illegal aliens”? Trump has a perfect zero political success rating here; he does not study history (for example George Floyd) and he has difficulty separating his ego from reality.

    Since the 1934 truckers strike where two people were shot dead by zealous enforcers (sound familiar) the Minneapolis model of citizen support for everyday people’s rights has echoed across the nation. The appalling executions of Renee Good and Alex Pretti caused Gov. Tim Walz to label the president’s agents “untrained, aggressive” and noted that Trump “picked the wrong state to make an example of.” (CBS nightly news). This comment from the vice-presidential candidate who charmed his way through the 2024 campaign like a fatherly and practical human being who doesn’t lie.

    Part of the Minneapolis social scene is political activism. Minneapolis-based peace groups were associated with the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize nomination for the Campaign to Ban Landmines and the 2017 prize to ICAN, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.

    Furthermore Minnesota has the highest voter turnout in the nation. The midterm elections are coming up in November this year. Statistically the president’s party loses congressional seats in the midterms.

    Since December 1, 2025, the 3,000 Gestapo agents of Operation Metro Surge made 4,000 arrests (they had a 2,000 per day quota) which the existing incarceration and judicial systems could not process. Among the innocent victims were two Native American children (to which rez would they be extradited), 5-year-old Liam Ramos in his blue bunny hat, and an Asian man wearing handcuffs, boxer shorts and plastic slip-on shoes in minus 9-degree weather who lived in a house formerly occupied by a man already in prison.

    ICE Agent Who Shot Renee Good Self-Deports

    Jonathan Ross and his second wife
    Image: Daily Mail

     

     

    Masked agents remove several large storsge boxes from Jonathan Ross home
    Masked agents move household items from the Ross home. Image: Daily Mail

     

    Agent Ross, 43, of Chaska, Minnesota, an upscale southwest Minneapolis suburb, fled his half-million-dollar home with his family after shooting Renee Good to death on January 7. He was quickly identified. Two nights after Ross killed Renee Good a Special Response Team in masks was seen removing boxes including electronics and family photos from Ross’s home. Ross told neighbors he was a biologist. Neighbors described him as a hardcore MAGA supporter. His father labelled him a “conservative Christian.”

    The last words Renee Good spoke was to tell Ross “I’m not mad at you” while he circled her car making a video. Then there were shots and Ross is heard saying “f—ing bitch.”

    Renee_Good_DHS_agent_perspective

    Renee as captured by Ross’s camera just before he executed her. Image Wikipedia

    “They had guns. We had whistles,” said Renee Good’s widow.

    On the night of February 17 the Renee Good sidewalk flower bedecked memorial between 33rd and 34th Streets on Portland Avenue South was sprinkled with gasoline and set afire. A volunteer night guard discouraged the arson vandals, preventing damage from spreading.

    Church, State, Media and the Public React

    Catholic Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin of Newark, New Jersey called ICE a “lawless organization” and remarked on the importance of human dignity in a televised Christiane Amanpour interview. Pope Leo XIV urged people to “fast from violent language,” especially during Lent and Ramadan.

    National Public Radio’s 1A program (1-1-2026) noted the frequency of the president’s people “ignoring judicial orders. The Trump administration doesn’t follow laws they don’t like.”

    So pooh-pooh to the laws of God and the State. Still, most of us await the arrests of Jonathan Ross and Texas-based Border Patrol agents Jesus Ochoa, 43, and Raymundo Gutierez, 35, for the first-degree murders (intentional killing) of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

    What is To Be Done?

    Vote.

    ICE’s budget has metastasized from $10 billion to $85 billion. “They have the kind of budget you would give to a standing army to fight an actual war,” David Miller wrote on Facebook. Miller advocates “neighborism.”

    Congress controls the budget, “the power of the purse.” Congress can also impeach. Trump was impeached twice during his first term.

    First Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives for “incitement of insurrection” of the January 7th rebellion in and around the Capitol building which was thoroughly filmed. However our 100 U.S. senators failed to reach the required 66 votes getting just 57 votes for inciting an insurrection.

    Then the state of Georgia impeached Trump for his post-election interference: “I just want to find 11,780 votes….” But that effort was dismissed by the Department of Justice  policy of avoiding to prosecute a sitting president.

    On January 28, 2026, the FBI seized those 2020 ballots from the Biden/Trump Fulton County Georgia elections warehouse even though they had been counted and recounted three times, by hand and by machine. Trump’s inability to accept his failed reelection bid bodes ill for the upcoming 2026 midterm elections. It is a nutter world when black and white paper proof translates into Alice in Wonderland technicolor.

    In reality it’s another practice run by Trump at not believing our lying eyes. Here are the videos, here are the ballots. Minnesota is a voting state. Voting is a form of neighborism.

    It feels good to vote, especially in overwhelming numbers, and you get one of those little red I VOTED stickers.

    Voting feels like I-AM-DOING-SOMETHING:

    I AM — SOMEBODY (A chant made famous by Jesse Jackson)

    It is the next step after 100,000 people marched against Operation Metro “Siege.” The crowd was so dense an American flag-carrying friend said it almost felt claustrophobic.

    The comb-overs, Trump, Putin and Netanyahu, plan to divide up the world with their bombs and guys in masks with guns. Look again at those old men hiding their shiny pates, white-knuckled trying to hold onto their fictions. America has been multicultural since the Vikings and the Conquistadores invaded. What would baseball be without immigrants?

    George  Floyd, Renee Good, Alex Pretti

    George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis policeman Derek Chauvin put him in prison for 22.5 years and that was for “unintentional” murder, murder two. The murder one, intentional killings using three bullets for Renee Good and nine or ten bullets to execute Alex Pretti are proof of intention.

    “Democracy is stronger than fear,” says Minnesota state Sen. John Hoffman, who survived an eight-bullet assassination attempt. Hoffman has just returned to his seat in the state capitol.

    Wings of Change is entirely reader supported.
    Wings invites you to subscribe.
    To subscribe: Join us on Wings of Change

    In this critical time hearing voices of truth is all the more important although censorship and attacks on truth-tellers are common. Support WingsofChange.me as we bring you important articles and journalism beyond the mainstream corporate media on the Wings of Change website and Rise Up Times on social media. Donate now to sustain Wings of Change.

    Access is always free, but if you would like to help:
    A donation of $25 or whatever you can donate will bring you articles and opinions from independent websites, writers, and journalists as well as a blog with the opinions and creative contributions by myself and others.

    Join us on Wings of Change

    We still have much work to continue to do as many activists and organizations address current threats to our democracy and unjust actions against people of color and are making plans for the upcoming years. Wings of Change is a part of that work through education, information, and inspiration. Here in Minnesota we are particularly targeted by the Trump regime with ICE immigrant law enforcement illegally arresting and deporting our neighbors who are mostly people of color. In spite of promises to withdraw ICE, the arrests continue. Other cities have been targeted as well, and they will try to target more to fill the detention centers they are building all over the country.

    Sue Ann Martinson, Editor Wings of Change

    “We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions
    to participate in the process of change.
    Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people,
    can transform the world.”
    — Howard Zinn

  • Nobel Prize-Winning Economist Joseph Stiglitz Slams Trump’s Myths About Tariffs, Affordability

    Nobel Prize-Winning Economist Joseph Stiglitz Slams Trump’s Myths About Tariffs, Affordability

    Nobel Prize-Winning Economist Debunks President Trump’s Tariffs

    Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz responds to Donald Trump’s State of the Union address on Tuesday, when the president repeatedly touted his tariffs as saving the country money and boosting the economy. Stiglitz says Trump’s “lies” about tariffs can’t erase the truth about how they have raised costs for most U.S. residents. “It is estimated the average family is paying somewhere between $1,000 and $1,700 in extra money because of the tariffs,” says Stiglitz. “His policies have failed.”

    Transcript

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

    This is Democracy Now!, Democracynow.org, the War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. During his State of the Union, President Trump repeatedly hailed his economic record over the past year. He also openly criticized the Supreme Court again for striking down his global tariffs in a decision that’s having major implications on the global economy. Less than half, four of the nine Supreme Court justices, attended the speech. This is part of what Trump said.

    PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Everything was working well. Countries that were ripping us off for decades are now paying us hundreds of billions of dollars. They were ripping us so badly, you all know that. Everybody knows it. Even the Democrats know it, they just don’t want to say it. And yet these countries are now happy and so are we. We made deals. The deals are all done and they’re happy. They’re not making money like they used to but we’re making a lot of money. There was no inflation, tremendous growth. And the big story was how Donald Trump called the economy correctly and 22 Nobel Prize winners in economics didn’t. They got it totally wrong. They got it really wrong. And then just four days ago, an unfortunate ruling from the United States Supreme Court, it just came down. It came down.

    PEOPLE: [applause]

    PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Very unfortunate ruling.

    PEOPLE: [cheers and applause]

    PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: But the good news is that almost all countries and corporations want to keep the deal that they already made. Right, Scott? Knowing that the legal power that I as president have to make a new deal could be far worse for them. And therefore, they will continue to work along the same successful path that we had negotiated before the Supreme Court’s unfortunate involvement.

    So despite the disappointing ruling, these powerful country-saving — it’s saving our country, the kind of money we’re taking in — peace-protecting — many of the wars I settled was because of the threat of tariffs, I wouldn’t have been able to settle them without — will remain in place under fully approved and tested alternative legal statutes, and they have been tested for a long time — they’re a little more complex but they’re actually probably better — leading to a solution that will be even stronger than before.

    Congressional action will not be necessary. It’s already time-tested and approved. And as time goes by, I believe the tariffs, paid for by foreign countries, will like in the past substantially replace the modern-day system of income tax, taking a great financial burden off the people that I love.

    PEOPLE: [applause]

    AMY GOODMAN: We are joined now by Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize-winning economist, Columbia University professor, former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers. Professor Stiglitz is also currently the chief economist of the Roosevelt Institute. His latest book just out in paperback this week, The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society.

    Professor Stiglitz, welcome back to Democracy Now! Your response? You were among the signatories, the economists who have signed a letter against the tariffs. Talk about the president’s State of the Union and his argument for tariffs and against the Supreme Court. Two of his own appointees ruled against him.

    JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Well, the speech was characteristic of Trump — lies, misleading statements.
    I was with a group of a large number of Nobel Prize winners who predicted that he would be bad for the economy and we were right. The tariffs are paid by Americans. They’re not paid for by the foreigners. He says they didn’t have any effect on inflation. We saw inflation was going down, and if we compare where inflation would have been with where we are today, it is estimated the average family is paying somewhere between $1,000 and $1,700 in extra money because of the tariffs.

    The irony is he said it was going to bring back manufacturing jobs. Manufacturing jobs are down in the United States in 2025 when they were up under President Biden. He doesn’t talk about that. In fact, last year was one of the slowest growth in jobs ever in recent memory, about a quarter of what it was under President Biden. And interestingly, most or more than 100% of the jobs that were created were in the healthcare sector, nothing to do with his tariffs at all.

    AMY GOODMAN: Trump said in the past, “We have the most people working in history.” What is the state of unemployment, of livable employment, the overall economy?

    JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Well, when the economy — more people in the country? Yes, there are going to be more people working. That’s true. The fact is that labor force participation has not gone up. The unemployment rate has gone up a little bit, not a lot. But what is striking is how weak the job market is. As I said before, we have not created very many jobs, less than a quarter of what we had created under President Biden. And anybody with friends trying to get jobs knows what a difficult labor market today’s labor market is.

    AMY GOODMAN: I want to go back to President Trump speaking last night.

    PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Now the same people in this chamber who voted for those disasters suddenly use the word “affordability,” a word — they just used it, somebody gave it to them — knowing full well that they caused and created the increased prices that all of our citizens had to endure. You caused that problem. You caused that problem.

    AMY GOODMAN: “Affordability,” Professor Stiglitz. We are speaking to you here in New York. Of course the new mayor Zohran Mamdani sent the message to people all over the country, especially those who are considering elected office or to diehard politicians, senators, congressmembers, that affordability was the word, was the issue people are most concerned about. What about President Trump mocking it?

    JOSEPH STIGLITZ: I think he is mocking the American people when he mocks the issue of affordability. The reason people worry about affordability is things are not affordable. And the other way of putting it is that their real incomes adjusted for inflation are down. Now, one of the striking things about what President Trump has done, he talked about this tax cut, the biggest tax cut in history. He was wrong about that. As a percentage of GDP, it doesn’t even rank near the top.

    But where it does rank at the top is that it was the most regressive tax cut. That is to say the benefits went to the millionaires, the billionaires, the corporations, and those at the bottom paid the price. They paid the price with almost a $1 trillion cut in Medicaid. That was why the Democrats had insisted on the government shutdown. They said, “You can’t do that! That’s not right!” That you would be giving a tax cut for billionaires and asking the poorest Americans not to have adequate healthcare in a country where healthcare has been so bad, so bad that life expectancy even before the pandemic was on the down.

    AMY GOODMAN: Your final comments, Professor Stiglitz, coming off of what’s considered one of the longest State of the Unions, an assessment of this country, in modern history?

    JOSEPH STIGLITZ: Well, long speeches like that reminds me of Castro and other demagogues who just love — they get the platform and they just talk and talk and talk. But I think the striking thing is that in spite of the tariffs that were supposed to bring back manufacturing jobs, manufacturing jobs are actually down. And in spite of the tariffs that were supposed to eliminate the huge trade deficit in goods, the trade deficit in goods is actually up. So his policies have failed even in the areas where he — in the objectives that he set forth. So, yes, his speech was filled with misleading statements, with lies. We’ve come to expect that. But in the core aspect of his agenda, the numbers show that he has dramatically failed to do what he promised.

    AMY GOODMAN: Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize-winning economist, Columbia University professor, and former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers. Professor Stiglitz is also currently the chief economist of the Roosevelt Institute. His new book just out in paperback this week, The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society.

    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

    Rep. Summer Lee on Boycotting Trump Speech, Jesse Jackson, Voting Rights, “Endless Wars” & More

    Wings of Change is entirely reader supported.
    Wings invites you to subscribe.
    To subscribe: Join us on Wings of Change

    In this critical time hearing voices of truth is all the more important although censorship and attacks on truth-tellers are common. Support WingsofChange.me as we bring you important articles and journalism beyond the mainstream corporate media on the Wings of Change website and Rise Up Times on social media. Donate now to sustain Wings of Change.

    Access is always free, but if you would like to help:
    A donation of $25 or whatever you can donate will bring you articles and opinions from independent websites, writers, and journalists as well as a blog with the opinions and creative contributions by myself and others.

    Join us on Wings of Change

    We still have much work to continue to do as many activists and organizations address current threats to our democracy and unjust actions against people of color and activists and make plans for the upcoming years. Wings of Change is a part of that work through education, information, and inspiration. Here in Minnesota we are particularly targeted by the Trump regime with ICE immigrant law enforcement illegally arresting and deporting our neighbors who are mostly people of color. In spite of promises to withdraw ICE, the arrests continue. Other cities have been targeted as well, and they will try to target more.

    Sue Ann Martinson, Editor Wings of Change

    “We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions
    to participate in the process of change.
    Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people,
    can transform the world.”
    — Howard Zinn

  • Democracy Now! ENDANGERMENT FINDING: Trump’s EPA Guts Key Rule

    Democracy Now! ENDANGERMENT FINDING: Trump’s EPA Guts Key Rule

    Trump EPA Scraps Endangerment Finding, Landmark Climate Regulations

    Democracy Now! February 11, 2026

    In a victory for the fossil fuel industry, a set of Obama-era rules that required the federal government to regulate the emissions of six greenhouse gases is being reversed by the Trump administration. The changes would undo the legal basis of the fight against global warming, as well as remove industrial reporting obligations and roll back emissions standards for cars and trucks. Environmental engineer Gretchen Goldman helped author those emission standards while working for the Department of Transportation under the Biden administration. Now as the president of the Union of Concerned Scientists, she says their repeal will not only increase what drivers pay at the pump but also set U.S. innovation back on the world stage. “We’re really seeing the abdication of U.S. leadership on climate, and that has huge implications, both for our immediate ability to reduce heat-trapping emissions globally. . .but also in terms of our standing and contribution in the world.”

    Transcript

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

    AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.

    We turn now to the Trump administration’s sweeping rollback of climate change policy. On Thursday, the Environmental Protection Agency plans to overturn its own conclusion that greenhouse gases endanger public health and cause global warming. Known as the endangerment finding, the Obama-era rules from 2009 required the federal government to regulate the emissions of six gases, including carbon monoxide and methane, which are released from the burning of oil, gas and coal. The Trump administration’s reversal of this decision would undo the legal basis of the fight against global warming and remove emissions standards for cars and trucks and reporting on obligations for power plants and industries. The EPA’s draft version the new rule says the endangerment finding overstated the risk of heat waves and underplayed the benefits of increased carbon pollution.

    In a post on X on Tuesday, the EPA Secretary Lee Zeldin wrote, quote, “This week, we make history. Getting ready to join President Trump to announce the single largest act of deregulation in the history of the USA,” unquote.

    For more, we go to Washington, D.C., where we’re joined by Gretchen Goldman, president and CEO of the Union of Concerned Scientists, also an environmental engineer, formerly worked on environmental policy in the Biden White House and at the Department of Transportation.

    Gretchen, thanks so much for being with us. Talk about the significance of what’s happening now.

    GRETCHEN GOLDMAN: It’s quite significant, and it was quite devastating to see, even though we expected that this was coming. The impacts of this action will be vast, both in terms of our immediate ability to protect people from the harms of climate change, economic harms, health harms, and also in terms of our ability to meet U.S. climate goals, to meet global climate goals.

    And this is all happening with time that we don’t have. We know we need to swiftly and dramatically reduce heat-trapping gas emissions now, as year after year we see devastating harm from climate-driven extreme weather events. And this is now something we really need to take action on, and so it’s quite devastating to see this week.

    AMY GOODMAN: The Trump administration initially attempted to undermine the science behind the endangerment finding. And again, for people to understand, explain exactly what that is and what that report was, based at the Department of Energy.

    GRETCHEN GOLDMAN: As part of their broader attacks on climate science and climate action, the Trump administration secretly convened a group of climate contrarians under the Department of Energy to produce a report that reiterated many of the long-debunked climate denial talking points and tried to pass it off as a science-based report. We won in court, the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Environmental Defense Fund together. We won, and the administration disbanded that group of climate contrarians and have had to turn over more than 100,000 pages of documents related to that. We’re seeing that they are being slowed down by these efforts and our ability to push back.

    AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about President Trump’s personal connections to fossil fuel executives and how exactly that is affecting what is expected to be announced on Thursday, again, what many are calling the single — including Zeldin, the single biggest attack in U.S. history on federal authority to tackle the climate crisis? He calls it the single largest deregulation act in U.S. history.

    GRETCHEN GOLDMAN: This is their holy grail. They’ve been focused on this for a long time, because the reality of climate change and its impacts are very inconvenient if you’re someone who wants to give handouts to the fossil fuel industry and wants to ensure that these industries can continue polluting communities across the country. And so, we’re seeing them really take steps to give handouts to connections to the fossil fuel industry and others. And that’s harming communities, especially Black and Brown communities, where we know already face disproportionate impacts and harms from toxic air pollution.

    AMY GOODMAN: This comes a month after President Trump pulled the U.S. out of the UNFCCC — right? — the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Talk about the significance of these two acts together.

    GRETCHEN GOLDMAN: We’re really seeing the abdication of U.S. leadership on climate, and that has huge implications, both for our immediate ability to reduce heat-trapping emissions globally, as we know is desperately needed, but also in terms of our standing and contribution in the world. The U.S. has long exhibited climate leadership in terms of innovation, in terms of reduction in emissions and in terms of providing that urgency around what we need to do to take action on climate change. And this, unfortunately, is going to set us back a long time in terms of that diplomacy, those international relationships and the U.S.’s ability to help lead the world in taking action on climate change.

    AMY GOODMAN: Karoline Leavitt, the White House press spokesperson, emphasized auto standards being an area where regulation will be rolled back. You used to work, Gretchen Goldman, at the Department of Transportation. Can you talk about emissions standards and what’s been achieved by these standards, and the incredible effect of a rollback?

    GRETCHEN GOLDMAN: I was at the Department of Transportation working on climate and transportation issues, and so this is very devastating to me personally, as well. Under the previous administration, we issued the strongest standards to reduce dependence of cars and trucks on fossil fuel, and this was saving people money at the pump. It was helping us with climate emissions reductions, and it was reducing toxic air pollution in communities. It was one of the strongest climate actions that this nation has taken. But now, tomorrow, it’s expected to be announced that they’re repealing those standards, and that’s going to set us back. It’s going to cost consumers more money, and it’s really going to stifle innovation and our ability to meet the moment and reduce climate emissions everywhere.

    AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you very much for being with us, Gretchen Goldman, president and CEO of the Union of Concerned Scientists, speaking to us from Washington, D.C.

    RELATED

    “Destroying Knowledge”: Michael Mann on Trump’s Dismantling of Key Climate Center in Colorado

    On Monday, February 23rd, once again, Democracy Now! will be celebrating our 30th anniversary at the historic Riverside Church here in New York City. Guests will include Angela Davis and Naomi Klein; Maria Ressa, the journalist who won the Nobel Peace Prize; Michael Stipe, the singer, the songwriter, the activist; the jazz legend Wynton Marsalis; the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mosab Abu Toha; V., the renowned playwright; Hurray for the Riff Raff; and so many more. Go to democracynow.org for details and to get tickets. The seats are filling up fast.

    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.

    From Al Jazeera: Trump Climate Rollback

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     Join us on Wings of Change. We still have much work to continue to do as many activists and organizations address current threats to our democracy and unjust actions against people of color and activists and 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. Here in Minnesota we are particularly  targeted by the Trump regime with ICE immigrant law enforcement illegally arresting and deporting our neighbors who are mostly people of color.  

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    “We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions
    to participate in the process of change.
    Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people,
    can transform the world.”
    — Howard Zinn

  • Robert Reich: On War

    Robert Reich: On War

    Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more

    Trump’s War Footing

    His foreign and domestic policies are becoming one and the same, and their purpose isn’t complicated.

    Friends,

    At the same time agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol are swarming into Minnesota and other states and cities, Trump is planning bombing raids on other countries.

    Domestically and internationally, he is putting America on a war footing.

    ICE is reportedly investing $100 million on what it calls “wartime recruitment” of 10,000 new agents, in addition to the 20,000 already employed. Its recruitment is targeting gun and military enthusiasts, people who listen to right-wing radio, who have gone to Ultimate Fighting Championship fights or shopped for guns and tactical gear, live near military bases, and attend NASCAR races. It’s calling for recruits willing to perform their “sacred duty” and “defend the homeland” by repelling “foreign invaders.”

    Meanwhile, Trump has announced that he’ll ask Congress for a $1.5 trillion defense budget for the next fiscal year — a 66 percent increase over the 2026 defense budget Congress just authorized.

    There’s coming to be no difference between Trump’s foreign and domestic policies.

    Both are based on the same eight maniacal ideas:

    (1) Might makes right.

    (2) Law is irrelevant.

    (3) America is at war with the world’s “radical left,” who are defined chiefly by their opposition to Trump.

    (4) Fear and force are better weapons in this war than hope and compromise.

    (5) The U.S. stock market is the best measure of Trump’s success.

    (6) Personal enrichment by Trump and other officials is justified in pursuit of victory.

    (7) So are lies, cover-ups, and the illegal use of force. (Trump is invincible and omnipotent.)

    These ideas are at such fundamental odds with the norms most of us share about what America is all about and how a president should think and behave that it’s difficult to accept that Trump believes them or that his White House thugs eagerly endorse them. But he does, and they do.

    Rather than some “doctrine” or set of principles, they’re more like guttural discharges. Trump is not rational, and the people around him trying to give him a patina of rationality — his White House assistants and spokespeople — surely know it.

    The media tries to confer on Trump a coherence that evaporates almost as soon as it’s stated. The New York Times’s breathless coverage of its recent Oval Office interview with Trump — describing his “many faces” — is a model of such a vapidity.

    According to the Times, Trump “took unpredictable turns” during the interview. But instead of seeing this unpredictability as a symptom of Trump’s diminishing capacities and ever-shorter attention span, the Times reported it as “a tactic he embraces as president, particularly on the world stage. If no one knows what you might do, they often do what you want them to do.”

    Attempts to show inconsistencies or hypocrisies in Trump’s domestic or foreign policies are fruitless because they have no consistency or truthfulness to begin with.

    Nor is it possible for the media to describe a “big picture” of America and the world under Trump because there is nothing to picture other than his malignant, impulsive, unbridled grandiosity all the way up and all the way down.

    Trump has unleashed violence on America’s streets for much the same reason he has unleashed violence on Latin America and is planning to unleash it elsewhere: to display his own strength. His motive is to gain more power and, along the way, more wealth. (On Sunday, he even posted an image referring to himself as the “Acting President of Venezuela.”)

    “Policy” implies thought. But under Trump, there is no domestic or foreign policy because it is all thoughtless. It is not even improvised. It is just Trump’s ego — as interpreted by the toadies around him (Miller, Vought, Vance, Kennedy, Rubio, Noem) trying to guess what his ego craves or detests, or fulfilling their own fanatical goals by manipulating it.

    We must stop trying to make rational sense out of what Trump is doing. He is a ruthless dictator, plan and simple.

    All analyses of what is happening — all reporting, all efforts to understand, all attempts at strategizing — are doomed. The only reality is that an increasingly dangerous and irrational sociopath is now exercising brutal and unconstrained power over America and, hence, the world.

    Trump is putting America on a war footing because war is good for him as it is for all dictators.

    War confers emergency powers. It justifies ignoring the niceties of elections. It allows dictators to imprison and intimidate opponents and enemies. It enables them to create their own personal slush funds. It distracts the public from other things (remember Jeffrey Epstein?).

    War gives dictators like Trump more power and more wealth. Period.

    What are your thoughts? TO robertreich@gmail.com

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    What you can do to stop ICE’s mayhem

    Robert Reich
    Jan 16, 2026

    Wings of Change is entirely reader supported.
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    Join us on Wings of Change

    In this critical time hearing voices of truth is all the more important although censorship and attacks on truth-tellers are common. Support WingsofChange.me as we bring you important articles and journalism beyond the mainstream corporate media on the Wings of Change website and Rise Up Times on social media

    Please join me on Wings of Change. It’s only the beginning as we still have so much work to continue to do as many activists and organizations address current threats to our democracy and unjust actions against people of color and activists and 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.

    Access is always free, but if you would like to help:
    A donation of $25 or whatever you can donate will bring you articles and opinions from independent websites, writers, and journalists as well as a blog with the opinions and creative contributions by myself and others. 

    Sue Ann Martinson, Editor Wings of Change

    “We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.”
    — Howard Zinn

  • Update: Trump Declares Emergency Powers as Republicans Push Back | George Will

    Update: Trump Declares Emergency Powers as Republicans Push Back | George Will

    UPDATE JANUARY 12, 2026

    The Supreme Court has refused to grant Trump total immunity. Discussion of what this action means and how it stands with the US Constitution and its effect on democracy in a bipartisan ruling.

    Something unusual is happening inside Washington — and it’s not coming from the opposition. In this video, we break down the growing internal revolt inside the Republican Party as lawmakers begin pushing back against Donald Trump’s expanding use of power.

    Something unusual is happening inside Washington — and it’s not coming from the opposition. In this video, we break down the growing internal revolt inside the Republican Party as lawmakers begin pushing back against Donald Trump’s expanding use of power. From emergency declarations to congressional resistance, this is a behind-the-scenes political showdown that goes far beyond daily headlines.This analysis explores why Republican senators are drawing new lines, how constitutional checks like the War Powers framework are suddenly back in focus, and what this moment reveals about leadership, authority, and accountability in modern American politics. Rather than partisan outrage, this video focuses on process, power, and the long-term consequences for governance.

     “In the end 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.”

    —Henry Giroux

    RELATED

    Wings of Change is entirely reader supported.
    Wings invites you to subscribe.
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    In this critical time hearing voices of truth is all the more important although censorship and attacks on truth-tellers are common. Support WingsofChange.me as we bring you important articles and journalism beyond the mainstream corporate media on the Wings of Change website and Rise Up Times on social media  Access is always free, but if you would like to help:
    A donation of $25 or whatever you can donate will bring you articles and opinions from independent websites, writers, and journalists as well as a blog with the opinions and creative contributions by myself and others. 

    Sue Ann Martinson, Editor Wings of Change

  • DN! Special Report on Venezuela: U.S. Abducts Maduro, Trump Says “We Are Going to Run” Oil-Rich Nation

    DN! Special Report on Venezuela: U.S. Abducts Maduro, Trump Says “We Are Going to Run” Oil-Rich Nation

    Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez host breaking news coverage on U.S. forces attacking Venezuela and seizing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

    We speak to Venezuelan reporter Andreína Chávez in Caracas as well as professors Miguel Tinker Salas and Alejandro Velasco.

    RELATED

    Jeffrey Sachs: The US is a violent regime

    Glenn Greenwald: Trump Bombs Venezuela, Removes Maduro

    Ben Grosscup, The Money They Stole (from Venezuela): a song about US economic warfare

    “The Money They Stole” –Troops are banging at the door –Will they dare to start a war? –Venezuela faces its gravest hour –Since Bolivar fought the Spanish power –Fishermen have been burned and drowned –By orders of a man donning a crown –Peddling sinister fentanyl lies –Posting snuff films of the people who die –And if you wonder what’s the empire’s goal –Just follow the money they stole . . .

    Wings of Change is entirely reader supported.
    Wings invites you to subscribe.
    Join us on Wings of Change

    In this critical time hearing voices of truth is all the more important although censorship and attacks on truth-tellers are common. Support WingsofChange.me as we bring you important articles and journalism beyond the mainstream corporate media on the Wings of Change website and Rise Up Times on social media  Access is always free, but if you would like to help:
    A donation of $25 or whatever you can donate will bring you articles and opinions from independent websites, writers, and journalists as well as a blog with the opinions and creative contributions by myself and others. 

    Sue Ann Martinson, Editor Wings of Change

  • Donald Trump talks peace but he is a man of war, by Simon Tisdall

    Donald Trump talks peace but he is a man of war, by Simon Tisdall

    Today an illegal coup in Venezuela, but where next? Donald Trump talks peace but he is a man of war.

    / The Guardian / January 3, 2026

    ‘This is the world we now live in – the world according to Donald Trump.’  Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

    The world will be anxious, and rightly so. For a man so bent on a peace prize, Trump appears to revel in conflict.

    The overthrow and reported capture by invading US forces of Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela’s hardline socialist president, will send a shiver of fear and consternation around the world. The coup is illegal, unprovoked and regionally and globally destabilising. It upends international norms, ignores sovereign territorial rights, and potentially creates an anarchic situation inside Venezuela itself.

    It is chaos made policy. But this is the world we now live in – the world according to Donald Trump.

    The direct attack on Venezuela marks an extraordinary, dangerous assertion of unfettered US power and comes in the same week that Trump threatened military strikes against another unpopular anti-western regime: that of Iran. It follows months of escalating US military, economic and political pressure on Maduro, including lethal maritime attacks on the boats of alleged drug traffickers.

    Trump claims to be acting to prevent illegal narcotics flowing into the US via Venezuela and to halt an alleged influx of “criminal” migrants. In an echo of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, he is also accused of coveting Venezuela’s huge oil and gas resources – suspicions reinforced by repeated, illegal US seizures of Venezuelan oil tankers.

    But Trump’s primary motives appear to be personal animosity directed at Maduro, and a desire to revive the 19th-century Monroe doctrine by creating a US sphere of influence and dominance throughout the west.

    Regional leaders, including Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, who has clashed with Trump in recent months, greeted the coup with outrage and alarm; not least, perhaps, because they fear they too could become victims of Washington’s aggressive new hegemony. Cuba’s leftwing government has particular cause for concern. It relies heavily on Venezuela’s regime for cheap energy and political and economic support.

    Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, has made no secret of his wish to see regime change in Havana. In Panama, too, anxiety levels will be running high. Trump has previously threatened military action there, over control of the Panama canal. Indeed, the reported capture of Maduro recalls the 1989 US invasion of Panama and the toppling and arrest of its then dictator, Manuel Noriega.

    Authoritarian, anti-democratic regimes around the world will be carefully watching Trump’s next steps, as will Washington’s democratic allies. Iran condemned the coup. It has good reason to be fearful. But Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, may not be totally displeased by the defenestration of his Venezuelan ally.

    Trump’s unprovoked resort to violence is not so very different from Putin’s actions in invading Ukraine. Both have illegally attacked a neighbouring country and sought to remove its leadership. For China’s Xi Jinping, whose forces were last week practising military action against the “separatists” of Taiwan, Trump has just set a precedent he may one day gladly follow.

    Trump’s coup is of great concern to Britain, the EU and western democracies. They should, and must, unequivocally condemn it. It directly challenges the rules and principles of the international order they hold dear. The US has once again ignored the UN and traditional methods of addressing inter-state grievances. And it is acting with apparently scant regard or thought for what happens next in Venezuela.

    The Caracas government has been decapitated, but other senior members of the regime appear still to be in place. They are urging resistance and, potentially, retaliation against the US. There are unconfirmed reports of civilian casualties. If a power vacuum develops, public order could collapse, sparking civil war or a possible military coup. And it is unclear whether the latest US military action has ended, or may escalate further.

    The idea that exiled opposition leaders, such as the 2025 Nobel peace prizewinner María Corina Machado, will swiftly return and that full democracy will now be restored is naive. The coming days will be critical. And it’s all down to Trump.

    Trump’s reckless action should finally lay to rest his always misleading characterisation of himself as a “global peacemaker”. It’s high time Keir Starmer and other European leaders publicly recognise him for what he is – a global warmaker, a universal menace.

    Each time he blunders noisily into conflict zones, such as Russia-Ukraine or Israel-Palestine, setting deadlines, issuing ultimatums, picking favourites and monetising misery, the quest for just and lasting peace is set back.

    Little wonder peace is elusive. And bizarrely, even while posing as a disinterested peacemaker and non-interventionist, Trump simultaneously wages war on the world. The US conducted record numbers of air strikes in the Middle East and Africa last year, surveys show.

    Since returning to office a year ago, peace-loving Trump has bombed Yemen, carelessly killing numerous civilians after loosening rules of engagement; bombed Nigeria, to counter-productive effect; bombed Somalia, Iraq and Syria; and bombed Iran, where he mendaciously exaggerated the success of US strikes on nuclear facilities. He even refuses to rule out bombing Greenland, a sovereign territory of Nato ally Denmark.

    What’s going on inside Trump’s head? A benign interpretation is that in matters of war and peace, he has no idea what he is doing – no strategy, no clue – and makes up policy as he goes, depending on how he feels.

    The sinister interpretation says he knows exactly what he’s at, that more and worse is to come. Like previous second-term presidents who ran out of road domestically, Trump finds the world stage offers greater possibilities for the exercise of power and ego. He is building a legacy in blood.

    Trump’s irresponsible, dangerously erratic behaviour is getting measurably worse. His Venezuela “success” may encourage him to attempt more and bigger, unhinged outrages. Like Mark Antony minus the toga and brains, he struts and preens, cries havoc! and lets slip the dogs of war.

    Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator.

    Wings of Change is entirely reader supported.
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    In this critical time hearing voices of truth is all the more important although censorship and attacks on truth-tellers are common. Support WingsofChange.me as we bring you important articles and journalism beyond the mainstream corporate media on the Wings of Change website and Rise Up Times on social media  Access is always free, but if you would like to help:
    A donation of $25 or whatever you can donate will bring you articles and opinions from independent websites, writers, and journalists as well as a blog with the opinions and creative contributions by myself and others. 

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