What happens to higher education when institutions dedicated to critical thought increasingly align themselves with the logics of war, surveillance, and national security? Unless we mount an organized resistance, we may viscerally experience the answer to this question all too soon.

We are already watching this transformation play out in both the U.S. and Canada as universities face growing pressure to align their missions, research agendas, and pedagogical practices with the values, priorities, and imperatives of a society increasingly organized around the logic of war.

Militarized policies, values, identities, and modes of governance no longer merely creep into U.S. society. Under the Trump administration, they increasingly define it. Militarization now extends far beyond the battlefield, reshaping everyday life, public institutions, and the very meaning of citizenship. War is celebrated as a moral imperative, often wrapped in the language of religious righteousness and white Christian nationalism. Due process gives way to abductions and arbitrary detention, dissent is met with threats and repression, soldiers occupy U.S. cities, and political violence is normalized through a steady stream of incendiary rhetoric and state-sponsored spectacles that glorify force, exclusion, and domination. Democratic ideals are displaced by a culture of fear, manufactured insecurity, and the belief that the nation is besieged by enemies both within and beyond its borders — largely immigrants and people of color.

In this militarized landscape, critical thought is derided, informed judgment is replaced by ideological conformity, and institutions charged with nurturing democratic agency increasingly come under attack. This fusion of militarism, toxic masculinity, religious fundamentalism, and white nationalist politics functions as a powerful form of public pedagogy, producing the authoritarian values, identities, and modes of agency that have historically provided the cultural foundations for fascist politics.

The Dangers of the “Military-Industrial-Academic Complex”

The late U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of the dangers posed by what he called the “military-industrial-academic complex.” In an earlier draft of his famous 1961 farewell address on the military-industrial complex, Eisenhower included the word “academic,” recognizing that universities could become deeply entangled with military power, corporate interests, and state security agendas in ways that threatened their intellectual independence and democratic mission.

This warning extends to countries that increasingly live in the shadow of the U.S.’s expanding warfare state and its militarized culture. For instance, against an increasingly militarized global order, the Canadian government has unveiled an expansive “Defence Industrial Strategy” backed by 81.8 billion Canadian dollars (around 60 billion in U.S. dollars) in new defense spending in Budget 2025, including 6.6 billion Canadian dollars devoted specifically to expanding the country’s defense-industrial infrastructure. The strategy marks the largest long-term expansion of Canada’s military economy since the Second World War.

What once appeared to be limited partnerships between North American universities and defense industries has evolved into a far broader transformation of higher education itself. As Canada dramatically expands military spending through its Defence Industrial Strategy, universities are increasingly being drawn into the orbit of defense priorities. Federal initiatives encourage partnerships between universities, defense contractors, and government agencies in fields such as artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, quantum computing, autonomous systems, and advanced surveillance technologies. Research funding is increasingly directed toward projects framed around national security, defense innovation, and military competitiveness. As these priorities gain influence, higher education is being reshaped by the social logics of militarization, technological control, and permanent security, altering not only what knowledge is produced but also the purposes to which it is put, raising urgent questions about the future of the university as a democratic public sphere.

Militarized knowledge production blurs the line between education and warfare, transforming universities into laboratories for the development of technologies whose ultimate purpose is often surveillance, social control, and lethal violence.

The growing use of drones and AI-driven warfare systems is not simply a military development. It signals a broader transformation in how research and knowledge are produced, funded, and valued. As universities deepen their involvement in military research, fields ranging from artificial intelligence and data analytics to robotics and cybersecurity are increasingly organized around the imperatives of surveillance, security, and warfare. AI technologies are already being deployed by state agencies to monitor migrants, journalists, activists, and political dissidents, while drones have revolutionized warfare by making it cheaper, more remote, and less accountable. Under such conditions, knowledge is not viewed primarily as a public good serving democratic life. Instead, it is increasingly organized around military imperatives of prediction, control, targeting, and domination. The result is a form of militarized knowledge production that blurs the line between education and warfare, transforming universities into laboratories for the development of technologies whose ultimate purpose is often surveillance, social control, and lethal violence.

Michael S. Sherry rightly argues that in an age in which state power is increasingly organized through militarized values and security logics, military culture now shapes not only state policy but “broad areas of national life.” As David Theo Goldberg argues, militarization no longer operates only through armies and weapons systems. It increasingly shapes culture, technology, modes of governance, and everyday life. As Goldberg observes:

The military is not just a fighting machine…. It serves and socializes. It hands down to society, as big brother might, its more or less perfected goods, from gunpowder to guns, computing to information management … In short, while militarily produced instruments might be retooled to other, broader social purposes, the military shapes pretty much the entire range of social production from commodities to culture, social goods to social theory.

The implications for higher education are profound. Militarization does not simply reshape culture, technology, and governance. It also reorganizes the production of knowledge itself, aligning university research with the imperatives of surveillance, security, and warfare while legitimating authoritarian forms of power. The rapid expansion of artificial intelligence research tied to military and surveillance applications deepens these dangers. Universities are increasingly helping to develop technologies used for predictive policing, automated warfare, mass surveillance, and forms of digital authoritarianism that blur the line between security and repression. Such developments are routinely justified in the language of innovation, efficiency, and national security, yet they raise profound ethical questions about the role of higher education in designing technologies that deepen inequality, expand state violence, erode civil liberties, and facilitate the killing of civilians, including children, in conflicts largely removed from public scrutiny.

The militarization of the university is not simply a matter of research contracts or funding priorities. It is pedagogical, cultural, and deeply political.

The militarization of the university is not simply a matter of research contracts or funding priorities. It is pedagogical, cultural, and deeply political. Universities do more than train workers; they shape civic identities, ethical sensibilities, and the capacity for democratic agency itself. When higher education embraces military partnerships and military-driven research agendas, it legitimates a worldview in which security eclipses justice, technological efficiency displaces ethical reflection, and dissent is recast as a threat rather than a democratic necessity.

How Militarization Reorganizes the Production of Knowledge

As militarization becomes woven into the fabric of political culture, universities increasingly reorganize knowledge, research priorities, and technological innovation around the assumptions of permanent conflict, geopolitical competition, and security management. In doing so, higher education normalizes the belief that militarized knowledge and military solutions should govern everyday life. Yet militarization does not merely reshape research priorities and institutional culture. It also reorganizes historical memory, civic identity, and the very terms through which democracy is understood.

Militarization also bears heavily on the production of knowledge itself. As Fintan O’Toole observes, contemporary authoritarian movements do more than expand military power; they seek to reshape historical memory and civic consciousness. Shameful histories are recast as heroic achievements, while assaults on democracy are reimagined as acts of patriotism. The Confederate rebellion is transformed from a defense of slavery into a noble cause, much as the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol is increasingly celebrated by its defenders as a patriotic uprising rather than an assault on democratic institutions. Equally troubling are efforts to remake the military itself through demands that soldiers be trained for loyalty to political leaders rather than to constitutional principles. Here, power seeks not only to command institutions but also to militarize knowledge, memory, and civic identity. Universities have a crucial responsibility to resist such distortions by defending historical truth, critical inquiry, and the capacity to distinguish education from propaganda.

As Kevin Baker notes, military solutions increasingly displace diplomacy, democratic institutions, and other civic responses to social problems. Within a culture saturated by militarism, aggression is celebrated as prevention, repression is justified in the name of security, and military force is invoked to discipline dissent and erode democratic values. Under such conditions, education is organized less around the imperatives of democratic culture than around the demands of the arms industry, surveillance systems, technological acceleration, and the national security state.

These developments become even more troubling when they intersect with the ongoing marketization of higher education. At its best, higher education functions as a democratic public sphere, a place where students learn to think critically, question authority, engage history, and imagine alternative democratic futures. Yet under the pressures of neoliberalism, universities have increasingly abandoned this mission. Education is now often reduced to job training, students are treated as consumers, faculty are deskilled and casualized, and learning is defined largely in instrumental terms. Questions about how education might nurture civic courage, ethical imagination, social responsibility, and democratic agency are increasingly sidelined in a market-driven university culture.

Yet the assault on higher education is not only economic. It is also ideological and political. In recent years, a growing chorus of liberal and conservative critics has claimed that universities have lost their way, charging that the humanities and critical scholarship have corrupted higher education through ideology and activism. Under the seductive language of “reform,” “balance,” “civility,” “institutional trust,” and “neutrality,” these critics present themselves as defenders of academic integrity while advancing a profoundly reactionary project. In some cases, liberal critics go so far as to treat “social justice” as a threat to scholarship rather than asking how power, exclusion, race, gender, class, empire, and inequality have always shaped what counts as knowledge. Their calls for neutrality, which function as a cover for depoliticization, do not protect intellectual freedom; they align with a broader assault on critical thought, historical memory, and democratic culture. They are aghast at the notion put forward by Thomas Chatterton Williams that “For humanities departments [and higher education in general] to continue to matter, they must challenge the modern world rather than accommodate it.” In doing so, they obscure the far more dangerous attacks on higher education coming from the right: censorship, book bans, assaults on DEI programs, the repression of student protest, and efforts to align universities with corporate, state, and military interests.

Critical scholarship is condemned as ideological, while militarized research, donor influence, state-directed threats of defunding, and forms of ideological indoctrination are celebrated as common sense. The real danger is not that universities have become too political, but that they are being stripped of their democratic mission and transformed into institutions that normalize conformity, surveillance, militarization, and authoritarian power. Higher education is not under attack because it has been ruined by the left. On the contrary, it is under assault by the Trump administration and a broader network of far right forces precisely because it keeps alive a dangerous truth: education is not merely about credentials, careers, or conformity to the status quo. At its best, it cultivates the capacity for critical judgment, informed dissent, compassion, and democratic agency. What authoritarian movements fear most is not ideological indoctrination but an educated public capable of questioning power, holding authority accountable, and imagining a more just future.

Militarization deepens anti-democratic tendencies. Research is increasingly tied to military applications, geopolitical competition, and outside funding rather than to the public good. Universities adopt the language of security, risk management, efficiency, and competitiveness while corporate and military values increasingly shape institutional priorities. As a Simons Foundation policy briefing warns, militarization has increasingly become a “default response” to political instability and global insecurity, reinforcing a culture in which social problems are framed through the logics of surveillance, strategic competition, and military preparedness rather than diplomacy, public investment, and democratic cooperation. As Professor Catherine Lutz notes, such actions run the risk of eroding legal and moral boundaries. In such a climate, higher education loses its civic character and becomes subordinated to the interests of the warfare state and defense industries.

As universities become increasingly tied to military and security logics, they risk abandoning their civic purpose in favor of a pedagogy of permanent emergency, one that privileges surveillance, strategic competition, and technological domination over critical inquiry, civic imagination, ethical responsibility, and social solidarity. What disappears in this militarized vision of higher education is the conviction that universities should cultivate informed citizens capable of holding power accountable rather than simply servicing the imperatives of the national security state.

Equally troubling, militarization reshapes the culture of the university itself. Militarized institutions reward conformity, secrecy, technocratic thinking, and instrumental rationality. Ethical questions about violence, disposability, colonialism, and state power are pushed aside in favor of managerial efficiency and national competitiveness. Students protesting Israel’s war in Gaza, settler colonialism, genocide, sexual violence, or war crimes are too often met not with dialogue but with surveillance, administrative repression, and policing.

The dominance of war-like values in both higher education and the wider civic culture prepares “civil society itself for the production of violence.”

In such instances, the university ceases to function as a space for critical engagement and becomes instead an extension of a broader authoritarian culture. As scholar John Gills notes, the dominance of war-like values in both higher education and the wider civic culture prepares “civil society itself for the production of violence.” In this way, universities risk becoming agents of militarized socialization rather than sites of democratic education. Such developments raise not only political and educational concerns but also urgent ethical questions about the kinds of institutions that universities are becoming and the values they choose to endorse.

The militarization of higher education raises a profound ethical question: What happens when universities enter into partnerships with military institutions while remaining silent about documented human rights abuses associated with those same institutions? Such silence is never politically neutral. It suggests that violations of human rights can be overlooked, rationalized, or normalized when carried out in the name of security, defense, or national interest.

This issue extends beyond universities themselves and raises broader questions about the responsibilities of democratic governments. As Canada, among other countries, deepens military cooperation with allies and expands investments in defense industries, it cannot exempt those relationships from ethical scrutiny. If credible allegations of war crimes, torture, collective punishment, or sexual violence are ignored in the name of strategic alliances or national security, democratic principles are hollowed out from within. Universities, precisely because they are charged with fostering critical inquiry and ethical judgment, have a responsibility to challenge such silences rather than reproduce them.

These ethical concerns become especially urgent when universities maintain relationships with institutions implicated in serious human rights abuses. The issue is particularly troubling in light of allegations regarding the use of sexual violence against Palestinians. Writing in The New York Times, Nicholas Kristof noted that while there is no evidence that Israeli leaders explicitly order rape, United Nations investigators have reported that sexual violence has become one of Israel’s “standard operating procedures” in the mistreatment of Palestinians. Other human rights organizations have reached similarly disturbing conclusions.

Such allegations also raise broader concerns about how security regimes can be used not only against occupied populations but also against those who challenge state policies. Reuters reported that organizers of a flotilla attempting to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza alleged that some activists detained by Israeli authorities experienced physical abuse and that at least 15 reported sexual assaults, including allegations of rape. Zeteo provided shocking and wrenching video testimonies from some of the activists, largely ignored by Western media. Whatever the final findings regarding these allegations, they underscore the need for independent scrutiny of security institutions and the dangers of granting them unquestioned legitimacy in the name of national defense. When accusations of abuse are met with silence rather than investigation, the boundaries between security, impunity, and state-sanctioned violence become increasingly blurred.

If universities claim to uphold principles of human rights, social responsibility, and ethical inquiry, they cannot selectively ignore such evidence when it implicates states or institutions with which they maintain research, military, or security partnerships. To do so risks transforming universities from spaces of critical inquiry into institutions that legitimate power while remaining silent about its abuses. At stake is more than the question of particular research contracts. It is the moral integrity of higher education itself.

These concerns are not confined to particular institutions or isolated abuses. They are symptomatic of a broader culture in which militarized values increasingly shape public life, political discourse, and social priorities. From sporting events and military recruitment in schools to popular films, social media spectacles, gun culture, and state-sponsored propaganda, aggression, domination, and war are normalized as features of everyday life.

Nowhere is this more visible than in the influence of Trump’s Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, who celebrates “maximum lethality, not tepid legality” and wraps militarism in the language of white Christian nationalism and religious righteousness. As Jasper Craven observes, Hegseth champions a form of “military manliness” stripped of any ethical center. Such a worldview elevates domination as a virtue, defines violence as a moral ideal, and transforms, in Craven’s words, “the Pentagon into the staging ground for an ideological religious crusade.” As these values circulate through culture and public institutions, they increasingly shape higher education itself, influencing not only what universities teach but also the forms of knowledge they produce, fund, and legitimate.

Universities cannot claim to defend democracy while simultaneously aligning themselves with industries and state policies organized for state violence, war, and imperial aggression.

At the same time, vast intellectual, scientific, and financial resources are being diverted from urgent public needs such as climate justice, public health, democratic education, and social welfare toward the expansion of military technologies and security infrastructures. In the process, the arms industry reaps enormous profits while universities increasingly risk becoming laboratories for aggression rather than institutions dedicated to civic responsibility, ethical imagination, and the common good.

Defenders of militarized partnerships insist that universities must remain pragmatic and “neutral” in securing funding and advancing national interests. But neutrality in such cases is largely a myth. Universities cannot claim to defend democracy while simultaneously aligning themselves with industries and state policies organized for state violence, war, and imperial aggression. Higher education has no legitimate ethical mandate to function as a research arm of militarized power.

Universities Must Refuse to Become Laboratories for War

The issue is not whether universities are political, but what kind of politics they embody and in whose interests they function. In an age marked by rising authoritarianism, widening inequality, climate catastrophe, and endless wars, universities cannot escape matters of power and values, and they must decide whether they will serve democracy or militarized power. Nor can educators retreat into the call for neutrality. At stake here is more than institutional policy. It is the fate of the university as a democratic institution. Few writers understood these dangers more clearly than Toni Morrison, who warned: “If the university does not take seriously and rigorously its role as a guardian of wider civic freedoms, as interrogator of more and more complex ethical problems, as servant and preserver of deeper democratic practices, then some other regime or menage of regimes will do it for us, in spite of us, and without us.”

Higher education may be one of the few public spheres left where knowledge, values, and learning can nurture radical hope, civic responsibility, informed agency, critical thinking, and substantive democracy. The struggle against the militarization of Canadian universities is therefore not merely a fight over funding priorities. It is a struggle over whether education will serve democracy or become an extension of the warfare state. Activists from groups like World Beyond War Canada and the Canadian Federation of Students are right to insist that genuine security comes not from militarism and permanent war, but from investing in education, housing, public health, and the social good.

Universities must refuse their transformation into laboratories for war, surveillance, and technological domination. At stake is whether higher education will further accommodate militarized and authoritarian power or become a crucial site of resistance, critical consciousness, and democratic possibility, one that refuses to confuse security with fear, civic responsibility with obedience, and education with the demands of war and domination. In an age when militarism increasingly shapes culture, politics, and everyday life, universities must remain among the few institutions willing to defend critical inquiry, civic responsibility, and democratic freedom against the expanding reach of the warfare state.

The climate emergency is sharply increasing the risk of crop failure in regions that produce an outsized share of the world’s staple food grains, according to a report published Tuesday that warns of “serious threats to Europe, the NATO alliance, and global stability” if cooperative resilience initiatives and other mitigation strategies aren’t pursued.

The report, “Global Breadbaskets: Food System Resilience as a Strategic Imperative,” was published by the Center for Climate and Security—part of the Council on Strategic Risks, a Washington, DC-based security policy think tank—and the Woodwell Climate Research Center, an independent nonprofit located in Falmouth, Massachusetts.

“Geopolitical fragmentation, conflict, extreme weather, and global aid cuts already strain food security. Meanwhile, climate change is increasing the likelihood of crop failures in the American, European, and Asian breadbaskets, which produce most of the staple crops underpinning global food security,” the report states.

🆕 Across India, France, and Germany, in the next decade and a half, the odds of key crops failing are set to increase by between two- and six-fold. This isn't just a food story. It's also a #NATO security story.

— Council on Strategic Risks (@councilonstrategicrisks.org) 2026-06-09T07:13:30.778Z

The publication follows an April report from a pair of United Nations agencies on how extreme heat is impacting food production and food security around the planet. The new report includes a storymap that explores climate change-driven threats to wheat, rice, and maize (corn) crops in France, Germany, and India—three of the world’s “global breadbaskets.”

The analysis’ authors note that compared with 2010 threat levels, by 2040, “the risk of a given year’s crop failing is projected to grow roughly twofold for Indian wheat and German maize, roughly threefold for French wheat, roughly fourfold for French maize, and roughly sixfold for Indian rice, with sharp increases in critical producing regions.”

Climate-driven extreme heat “not only threatens crops, but also the laborers and infrastructure that translate them into food security,” the report continues. “Extreme heat is projected to reduce the suitability of 15-40% of India’s rain-fed rice-growing regions by 2050, and to reduce physical work capacity during the average growing season to as little as 40% of 2000-era levels by 2100.”

“By 2040, southwestern France will average up to 16 additional days per year above 35°C (95°F), exceeding thresholds that reduce yields, impact grain quality, and cause heat stroke,” the paper warns. “Extreme heat also threatens to damage or disable road and rail networks critical to food transportation, agricultural machinery, civil defense, and military mobilization.”

The publication also states that global breadbasket failures in Europe “could open rifts for Russian meddling, fuel instability in key partners, and elevate food production as a geopolitical lever.”

The Council on Strategic Risks operates within the transatlantic security policy community, whose work often overlaps with NATO’s interests.

“We have plenty of examples of how crop failures can contribute to political instability, from the French Revolution to the Arab Spring,” Center for Climate and Security deputy director and report lead author Tom Ellison said Tuesday in a statement. “In today’s environment, global breadbasket failures could strain NATO priorities, prompt unrest in key countries, and upend trade relationships.”

Woodwell Climate Research Center scientist and report co-author Alexandra Naegele warned that “climate change doesn’t just threaten crop yields and grain quality—it destabilizes entire food systems, from labor and livestock to food storage and transport.”

“Quantifying these climate-driven risks is an essential step toward building resilient food systems and safeguarding global food security,” she added.

The report recommends steps countries—specifically members of the European Union and NATO—can take to mitigate risks to food security, including strengthening cooperative resilience, anticipating instability and hybrid warfare, supporting strategic and vulnerable partners, coordinating trade responses, and investing in agricultural research and development.

“Amid climate change, geopolitical uncertainty, food shocks from the war in Iran, and Russian hybrid warfare, investing in a resilient food system isn’t in competition with security—it’s a key part of it,” Ellison stressed.

Monica Caparas, a scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center and report co-author, said, “Understanding and preparing for breadbasket failures is both a national security priority and a humanitarian imperative—one that can help protect lives, reduce instability, and strengthen food resilience before a regional shock becomes a wider crisis.”

When members of The New School’s Student Senate were faced with a report detailing how Hillel International was providing material and logistical support to Israel’s atrocities in Gaza, they voted on May 1 to cut all ties with their campus chapter of the national Jewish college network and to strip its funding. The student leaders hoped the school’s administration would go on to investigate Hillel’s presence on its New York City campus. 

Instead, after an intense pressure campaign by pro-Israel groups, advocates, and elected representatives, the university’s administration is now investigating the student senators who voted to cut ties with Hillel. 

“We were hoping that the university would act on the the evidence provided by the Student Senate report about Hillel’s complicity in genocide. They are investigating us instead,” said Ryder Glickman, who is chair of The New School Student Senate and helped produce the report.  

The Student Senate acted upon the recommendations of the Registered Student Organizations (RSO) Compliance Committee, which presented a comprehensive report about the ways in which Hillel had assisted the Israeli military during its ongoing genocide in Gaza. 

The report found that students from The New School and a host of other New York City-based schools volunteered at the Israeli military’s Hatzerim Air Force Base in January 2024, as part of the Hillel on Base program. “Our students are packaging a days worth of rations to our soldiers,” stated an Instagram story by Hillel at Baruch College, the umbrella organization of Hillel at The New School, alongside a photo from the airbase, according to the report. 

The Hatzerim airbase reportedly has been used by the Israeli Air Force for hundreds of airstrikes in Gaza, with F-15s from the base dropping bombs in civilian areas. 

In the days following the publication of the report and the Student Senate vote to terminate funding to The New School’s Hillel, the university’s administration acted swiftly to discredit the findings.

“To avoid any misunderstanding, the University Student Senate does not have the authority to determine official status, funding eligibility, or the recognition of RSOs. Our Hillel chapter remains, as it always has been, in good standing, eligible for funding, and supporting Jewish life at The New School,” said an schoolwide email sent to from the university signed by President Joel Towers, Provost Richard Kessler, and Vice Provost Robert Mack. 

“By distorting a qualified student organization and characterizing it as something it is not,” the statement continued, “the [University Student Senate] is using its platform to target fellow students in a misguided attempt to hold those students responsible for the acts of governments.”

On May 3, two days after the vote, Ilya Bratman, the executive director of Hillel at Baruch College, wrote in an email to Towers and other members of The New School’s leadership that the Student Senate’s actions were “a direct attack on Jewish students.” Bratman bcc’d the Student Senate email address, and members shared the email with Prism.

“We hope to meet with you in the coming days so that you can hear directly from the students affected by this action, and so that we can better understand the university’s plan of action moving forward. The [University Student Senate] has shown no indication that it intends to step back from these egregious and deeply troubling actions,” Bratman wrote. 

The New School administration and Hillel at Baruch College did not respond to Prism’s inquiry about whether university leadership and Hillel officials had the meeting. 

Days later, on May 8, Glickman received an email, viewed by Prism, from The New School’s office of Student Equity, Accessibility & Title IX. The email said that the school was investigating him for an allegation that the Student Senate’s decision to cut ties with Hillel was in “potential violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on the basis of race, color, or national origin in any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.” The administration later clarified to Glickman that the university is investigating all student senators involved in the vote. 

External pushback

The university launched its investigation into student senators following a string of social media activity by pro-Israel groups, advocates, media, and elected representatives attacking the report. 

Glickman was called a “virulent anti-Israel activist” in an X post by Canary Mission, the secretive group notorious for doxing and targeting pro-Palestinian activists. 

A string of articles by pro-Israel publications, including The New York Post and The Times of Israel, reported on The New School administration rejecting the Student Senate vote while omitting the details and evidence found by the RSO about Hillel’s ties with the Israeli military. 

Two New York members of Congress took to social media to denounce the report. Rep. Dan Goldman—who recently marched in New York’s Israel Day parade featuring Israeli cabinet ministers who are wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes or have made genocidal statements about Palestinians—said the students were engaged in “hateful and vile antisemitism.” Rep. Ritchie Torres also condemned the vote, calling it “shameful” and “discrimination against Jewish individuals and institutions.” Goldman and Torres are heavily backed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. 

“The fact that there was such open repression and universal condemnation of the report shows that the administration’s response was coordinated with Zionist organizations accusing us of antisemitism,” Glickman told Prism. “This is extremely worrying when we made a very basic case about international law.” 

Students volunteering with the Israeli military

Hillel at Baruch, which organized trips to Israel, acts as an umbrella organization for chapters in multiple New York schools in addition to The New School, including Fordham University, John Jay College, and City College. 

“Volunteer on an IDF (Israeli Defense Force) base in Southern Israel, wear IDF uniform, give back to the community on base, and explore Israel!” reads a description about the program on Hillel at Baruch’s website.

The 38-page report by the RSO compliance committee found that Hillel at Baruch organized several trips between May 2022 and January 2025 for students to volunteer at multiple Israeli army and air force bases. Hillel International also operates the Onward Israel program which organizes internship trips for American students to Israel and facilitates volunteering opportunities within the Israeli military.

The report further found that in July 2024, another post from Hillel at Baruch and New School Hillel’s Instagram account said, “Tonight, some of our onward students had the incredible opportunity to volunteer at the Tze’elim army base, where they helped prepare a barbecue for over 700 soldiers from the Oketz, Kfir, Golani and Handasa units in the IDF.” 

Soldiers of the Golani Brigade’s 631st Reconnaissance Battalion were behind the March 24, 2025, killing of 15 Palestinian emergency responders that included Red Crescent ambulance workers in Rafah, according to an investigation by Haaretz. 

In May 2024, a BBC analysis found that 11 soldiers of the Kfir brigade were responsible for posting photos and videos of Palestinian prisoners being abused.

By registering for the Hillel on Base program, participants also automatically register for the Volunteers for Israel (VFI) program, the report found.  

“VFI is the ONLY organization that creates opportunities for American students to volunteer in Israel on IDF bases,” says a description of the program, which includes activities such as packing medical supplies and repairing machinery and equipment for military units. 

The VFI program is run by Sar-El, an Israeli volunteer nonprofit organization under the direction of the Israeli Logistics Corps, a support branch of the Israeli military, establishing direct collaboration between Hillel and the Israeli government, according to the report. 

“I am nauseated by the fact that I have classmates who have provided direct material and logistical support to genocide,” Glickman said.

According to official sources, over 75,000 Palestinians, including over 35,000 women, children, and the elderly have been killed by the Israeli military since Oct. 7, 2023—which the United Nations Human Rights Council, Amnesty International, and multiple Israeli human rights groups have concluded constitutes a genocide. Experts have estimated the actual death toll could be much higher.

A week after The New School vote, the student leadership of the Hillel chapter of Middlebury College, Vermont, voted to change its name to the Jewish Association at Middlebury, after growing demand from its members to disaffiliate from Hillel International and its activities, according to reporting by the school’s newspaper.

Editorial Team:
Sahar Fatima, Lead Editor
Lara Witt, Top Editor
Rashmee Kumar, Copy Editor

In 2018, when the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) experienced a severe Ebola outbreak, more than 30 experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), close to 20 disaster-response specialists from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and 120 additional USAID staff were on the ground attempting to manage the outbreak, according to estimates from Friends of USAID, an advocacy organization mainly made up of ex-USAID staffers. With that level of staffing in 2018, by and large, they succeeded in limiting the extent to which the disease spread.

This year, as a particularly virulent strain of the Ebola virus — the Bundibugyo strain, against which there is no approved vaccine and for which there are no medicinal cures — runs rampant in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Friends of USAID estimate there is only one CDC staffer on the ground there, along with five additional State Department personnel. There are of course no USAID workers present, since the Trump administration dismantled USAID during the purges led by the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) in 2025, summarily firing local health care contractors around the world, including in countries with extreme poverty rates such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

In addition, since Donald Trump signed an executive order pulling the U.S. out of the World Health Organization in early 2025 — a pullout that was completed in January of this year — CDC experts are no longer allowed to communicate with World Health Organization personnel. And despite a waiver having been granted for Ebola-related correspondence, in practice there has been a significant breakdown in communication between the two agencies over the past year — a breakdown promoted by the Trump administration, which recently sent out an email reminder to CDC staff not to correspond with the World Health Organization.

The consequences have already been devastating. In past Ebola outbreaks, even before mass testing of disease victims got underway, the CDC and USAID were able to tell when an epidemic was picking up steam based on on-the-ground medical observations and data about excess mortality figures. And, in response, they were able to position medical resources effectively.

In the current outbreak, the decimated remnants of the CDC were caught unawares, only finding out about the outbreak once hundreds, and possibly thousands, of people had already been infected — thus making it far more likely that this outbreak will prove particularly difficult to corral.

Because so many experts have been fired over the past 16 months, and because political overseers have been limiting what the remaining scientists can say and write, “the CDC is not really functional anymore,” Angela Rasmussen, professor of virology at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada, told Truthout. Rasmussen, who also serves as science chair for the Save America Movement, a nonpartisan organization that works to stop ongoing assaults on public health, added that the administration was no longer bothering to consult remaining CDC experts when making policy to respond to the outbreak. “It used to be an evidence-driven process and now it’s a political-driven process,” Rasmussen said.

“I equate it to having the mayor’s office taking on a fire without having a fire department or a fire hose,” Demetre Daskalakis, former director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, told Truthout. Daskalakis, who resigned last August because he was so concerned about the direction that the Department of Health and Human Services was taking under Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s leadership, says that when faced with grave public health challenges, the administration is simply resorting to “a lot of posturing, with, I think, bad consequences.”

I equate it to having the mayor’s office taking on a fire without having a fire department or a fire hose.

Faced with the twin public health emergencies of the Ebola virus outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda, alongside the hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship from which people disembarked to the four corners of the Earth, the Trump administration’s response has been, at best, ad hoc. Instead of implementing expert-driven protocols, it has leaned on its nativist instincts to simply attempt to lock the virus out. That attempt proved a colossal failure during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. And, according to Rasmussen and Daskalakis, the signs are not auspicious for it being a successful strategy against the global health crises of 2026.

For U.S. residents exposed to hantavirus, the Trump administration has ordered mandatory 42-day quarantines in a secure facility in Omaha, Nebraska — despite the fact that experts say the virus doesn’t spread easily and that home quarantine would be just as effective. For U.S. residents exposed to the Ebola virus in Africa, the response has been to refuse them entry back into the United States and to instead have them isolated and, if need be, treated in Kenya — a situation that Rasmussen and other experts say makes little sense given the huge investments made over the past decade in secure biocontainment units in the U.S. “They’re throwing evidence-based risk assessment out the window, and are trampling people’s 14th Amendment rights,” Rasmussen told Truthout. “If we’re going to take Americans’ freedom away, there should be a real basis for that — and there’s not.”

It took so long for the CDC to say anything about hantavirus or to hear from the DRC about Ebola. Relationships that took decades to build have simply disappeared.

Telling people in the U.S. that if they get exposed to the Ebola virus, they won’t be allowed back into their home country for months is, experts believe, a surefire way to discourage U.S. doctors and public health professionals from heading to Africa to try to contain the outbreak. In other words, it is a strategy all but guaranteed to make a bad situation worse.

At the same time, African victims of the disease, who could certainly benefit from access to the treatment center being established in Kenya, are being deliberately excluded from it. “There’s an equity issue,” Daskalakis says of this policy. This, too, will end up hurting public health, as the Ebola patients denied access to the Kenyan facility will, in all likelihood, end up spreading the disease further in their communities or in poorly resourced medical facilities to which some eventually may turn.

Aryn Backus, a CDC employee who has been on administrative leave for more than a year since her job was targeted by DOGE, and who is now deputy executive director of the National Public Health Coalition, told Truthout that the ham-handed U.S. response to the outbreak overseas makes it more likely that the disease will ultimately find its way to the United States. “Diseases don’t understand borders,” she said. And, without detailed international coordination, the likelihood of their spreading far and wide grows.

“We are seemingly not at the table anymore,” Daskalakis added, as he detailed the myriad ways that the U.S.’s role as global public health leader has been corroded. “It took so long for the CDC to say anything about hantavirus or to hear from the DRC about Ebola. Relationships that took decades to build have simply disappeared.”

Voters in Monterey Park, California on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved a permanent ban on data centers within city limits, becoming the first city in the US to prohibit the power-hungry facilities via a ballot initiative.

In total, the anti-data center resolution passed with 86% voter support, with only 14% of voters opposed. The resolution’s text said that a ban was necessary to “protect air quality, drinking water resources, and public health” and “prevent impacts to electricity and water rates.”

Steven Kung, a leader of the local initiative, told ABC 7 Eyewitness News that the result was “a landslide victory.”

Kung listed multiple reasons why residents in the city resoundingly rejected building data centers in their community.

“The noise pollution, the air pollution, the rise in the electricity rates,” he said, “the deal just didn’t make sense and it doesn’t make sense for most, if not all, cities data centers go to.”

In an interview with Politico, Monterey Park Mayor Elizabeth Yang predicted that her city would be far from the last to pass data center bans, noting data center projects have spurred protests across the country.

“A lot of the other cities that are facing data center proposals are going to follow suit,” said Yang. “There’s [a] bad reputation across the board, across the country, from other data centers that have been built in neighborhoods.”

Monterey Park city councilmember Jose Sanchez expressed a similar sentiment, telling The Guardian that he hoped his city would become a inspiration to others.

“We hope that other communities will use the model set by residents here in Monterey Park,” said Sanchez, “as inspiration to stop data centers from encroaching in their backyard.”

Data centers have become political lightning rods in recent months, as residents across the country object to their massive resource consumption, which is leading to a major spike in utility bills, as well as the noise pollution they generate.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) earlier this year introduced a bill that would impose a nationwide moratorium on AI data center construction “until strong national safeguards are in place to protect workers, consumers, and communities, defend privacy and civil rights, and ensure these technologies do not harm our environment.”

A poll released on Wednesday by Public First showed US residents more opposed to data center construction than any nation in the world, with just 26% of Americans registering support for building more data centers.

This opposition isn’t merely abstract, as it has caused major headaches for Big Tech firms that have been scrambling to increase their AI models’ compute power.

As The Financial Times reported on Thursday, “dozens of projects collectively worth at least $156 billion have been blocked or stalled since 2025” thanks to local opposition to their development.

Raucous applause erupted in the House of Representatives on Wednesday after US lawmakers passed a war powers resolution aimed at ending Donald Trump’s illegal war of choice against Iran—although skeptics cautioned that the measure will likely have little impact on the actions of a president who has habitually shown utter contempt for the rule of law.

House lawmakers voted 215-208, with 7 legislators not voting, in favor of H.Con.Res.86, introduced in April by Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY) and cosponsored by Reps. James Himes (D-Conn.), Adam Smith (D-Wash.), Gabe Amo (D-RI), Maggie Goodlander (D-NH), and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.).

Every Democrat present voted for the resolution, while three Republicans—Reps. Tom Barrett (Mich.), Warren Davidson (Ohio), and Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.)—broke ranks with their GOP colleagues and joined Massie in voting to approve the measure, which directs Trump to “remove United States armed forces from hostilities with Iran.”

Cheers in the House as the war powers resolution passes pic.twitter.com/nRL3eGm0Zr

— Acyn (@Acyn) June 3, 2026

“We are trapped in a war that won’t end because an incompetent president launched it thinking of only his own ego while failing to prepare for the consequences,” Meeks, the ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said during floor debate ahead of Wednesday’s vote. “Diplomacy is the only exit from this, not more bombing, not more bluster.”

The War Powers Resolution of 1973—also known as the War Powers Act—requires the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of committing troops to military action and limiting such action to 60 days, with a 30-day withdrawal period, unless lawmakers declare war or issue an authorization for the use of military force.

It’s been 95 days since the US and Israel launched their war on Iran, which followed last summer’s separate bombing campaigns by both allies. Since then, more than 3,400 Iranians—many of them civilians—have been killed and over 26,000 others wounded by airstrikes, while Iranian counterattacks have killed 13 US troops, 26 Israelis, and over 20 people in Gulf Arab states aligned with the US.

House lawmakers had tried and failed to pass Iran war powers resolutions on three previous occasions. Last month, after four US Senate Republicans helped Democrats advance one of the resolutions, GOP leadership in the House canceled two subsequent votes on the measure.

“Since President Trump’s illegal war of choice on Iran began, I have been extremely clear over and over again that Congress alone has the power to declare war,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.)—who did not vote Wednesday because she was in India due to a family health emergency—said in a statement. “This war has had disastrous effects for the American people and for the world in the nearly 100 days since Trump began it without congressional approval.”

Jayapal continued:

“Waged with absolutely no imminent threat and no endgame, this war has already killed 13 US service members and injured many more; killed thousands of civilians in Iran and Lebanon, and displaced millions more; wasted billions in US taxpayer dollars that should have been spent on lowering healthcare and housing costs for Americans; and all while causing gas prices and grocery costs to skyrocket.

“The simple truth is that the American people are paying the price for Trump’s lawlessness,” Jayapal added. “Every day that this war continues is a violation of our Constitution.”

The House just passed the Iran War Powers Resolution 215 to 208. We should have done it 2 months ago when @RepThomasMassie and I proposed it. But now we are finally closer to bringing this disastrous war to an end. pic.twitter.com/sFJbUvMqxV

— Rep. Ro Khanna (@RepRoKhanna) June 3, 2026

Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-NY) asserted that “our victory—while monumental—does not change the truth that this war never should have began, and never would have began, had the president not disgraced America and our laws to ensure that it did.”

Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) said on social media: “The American people are tired of presidents abusing their power by spending billions of our taxpayer dollars on unnecessary wars. I urge the Senate to quickly pass this bill to end Trump’s illegal war in Iran.”

Civil society groups opposed to the war applauded Wednesday’s vote, which Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the peace group CodePink, called a “total rebuke of Trump.”

People power works. ✊

The House just passed a War Powers Resolution opposing Trump’s unauthorized war with Iran. A major rebuke to another endless war fought without congressional approval.

This victory didn’t happen by accident. It happened because people across the country… pic.twitter.com/bZ5b0RBoT3

— CODEPINK (@codepink) June 3, 2026

“After 95 days of illegal war, Congress is finally enacting the will of the people, who overwhelmingly oppose President Trump’s disastrous war on Iran,” Eric Eikenberry, government relations director at Win Without War, said in a statement.

“While congressional action is welcome, it is woefully late. Congress should not have taken over three months to pass a resolution that would force Trump to end this war,” he continued. “Their delay has left millions of people struggling amidst unnecessary, unacceptable human and economic consequences.”

“Lawmakers who’ve placed their loyalty to Trump over acting to determine when and whether the United States goes to war have failed both their constituents and their constitutional duty,” Eikenberry added.

At long last, Congress has remembered its constitutional duty in matters of war and peace. It is good news for our Constitution that both chambers have now voted to invoke the War Powers Resolution and halt Trump's reckless, illegal, and unconstitutional war against Iran. https://t.co/2lTIgBuLcD

— Defending Rights & Dissent (@RightsDissent) June 3, 2026

Naveed Shah, political director of the veterans’ group Common Defense, said following the vote, “Veterans understand the costs of war better than most Americans, which is why we commend the Republicans who joined Democrats on this vote and showed the kind of courage and independence this moment demands.”

“This was an important step toward ending a dangerous war and ensuring that the American people have a voice through their elected representatives,” Shah added. “It is long past time to put guardrails on this brazen president, who launched us into an illegal war with Iran.”

Alix Fraser, vice president of advocacy at Issue One, a group dedicated to reducing the role of money in politics, said in a statement that “today’s vote is a huge win for the Constitution and for the American people.”

“The House finally had the political willpower to stand up to the president’s unconstitutional war,” Fraser added. “Americans should celebrate this massive victory, but have every right to feel frustrated that it took this long for Congress to work on behalf of the people. That must change. Our democracy will not survive if Congress fails to uphold its responsibility to check executive power at this critical juncture.”

“Every day that this war continues is a violation of our Constitution.”

Some observers noted that Wednesday’s vote is likely to be largely symbolic, pointing to Trump’s veto—and the Senate’s failure to overturn it—of a 2019 bipartisan war powers resolution directing him to end US military support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen.

Still, lawmakers and advocates urged the Senate to pass the Iran resolution to uphold the rule of law and force Trump’s hand.

“Ending this war is a moral imperative,” said Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.).

Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) implored upper chamber lawmakers to “immediately follow suit and act to end this war.”

Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-NM) posted on Bluesky: “Now it’s time to pass the Senate. The power to declare war has been with Congress. Now let’s get it done and end this war!”

Benjamin said: “Now it’s time for the Senate to act. Let’s keep the pressure on and send this resolution to Trump’s desk. No more illegal wars. No more blank checks for militarism.”

The US Supreme Court late Tuesday gave Alabama a green light to use an aggressively gerrymandered congressional map that a lower court said was “tainted by intentional race-based discrimination.”

The unsigned decision, from which the high court’s three liberal justices dissented, enables Alabama’s Republican-dominated government to replace its current congressional map, which has two majority-Black districts, with a map that the US Supreme Court struck down in 2023. That map has just one majority-Black district.

In her dissenting opinion, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that “just as Alabama doubled down on racial discrimination, the court today doubles down on chaos.”

“In addition to being wrong on the merits, the court’s decision inflicts two grave harms on the public,” wrote Sotomayor. “It debases the democratic process by upending Alabama’s entire election in the name of permitting Alabama to discriminate against Black Alabamians. It also corrodes the rule of law by rewarding Alabama’s gamesmanship and outright defiance of court orders.”

The liberal justice noted that in order to switch to the map previously struck down by the high court, Alabama election officials “will have to reassign hundreds of thousands of voters across the state to new congressional districts.”

“Three of Alabama’s counties will be particularly hard hit because they are split across two congressional districts,” Sotomayor noted. “These counties have about 600,000 registered voters between them (roughly 15% of the state’s total number of registered voters).”

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, postponed US House primary elections in the wake of the Supreme Court’s April decision in Louisiana v. Callais, which severely narrowed the 1965 Voting Rights Act’s protections against racial discrimination and paved the way for Alabama and other states to impose new maps ahead of the 2026 midterms.

“The Supreme Court’s shameful ruling allowing Alabama to move forward with a gerrymander that was drawn with the explicit intent to dilute Black voting power—as found by a panel of judges that included two Trump appointees—is an absolute affront to the founding principles of our democracy, and wipes out whatever was left of the court’s credibility,” said Marina Jenkins, executive director of the National Redistricting Foundation. “This country deserves better, and we must continue to work toward federal legislation that not only bans partisan and racial gerrymandering but also ensures that our rights cannot be undermined by captured courts.”

The ruling drew condemnation from the two Democrats in Alabama’s US congressional delegation. Rep. Shomari Figures, who was elected to the US House under the independently drawn map that Alabama Republicans are working to replace, said in a statement that “the Supreme Court has now confirmed that there is no longer a Voting Rights Act in America, and states are essentially free to discriminate against minority voters with no consequences.”

“This is a dangerous ruling that sets the state and this nation back decades,” said Figures.

Rep. Terri Sewell called the ruling “just the latest in a pattern of outrageous Supreme Court decisions that help Republicans desperately cling to power ahead of the midterm elections while diluting Black voices and erasing decades of hard-fought civil rights progress.”

“No matter how hard Alabama state officials may try, they will not succeed in silencing our voices,” said Sewell. “We will not go back to the Jim Crow era. The fight for fair representation continues.”

A trio of United Nations rights experts on Tuesday demanded that the US government “cease all threats” against Cuba and accused President Donald Trump of furthering a “disturbing trend of lawlessness” with preparations to attack the island nation; a indictment of its former president; and a protracted oil blockade that has left Cubans facing blackouts and a breakdown of their lauded healthcare system.

“Efforts to change the constitutional order of a sovereign state through threats and coercion echo colonial-era practices,” said George Katrougalos, independent expert on the promotion of a democratic international order; Zaina Jallad, special rapporteur on unilateral coercive measures; and Ben Saul, special rapporteur on counterterrorism and human rights.

The experts pointed to Trump’s declaration of what’s become known as the Donroe Doctrine, “asserting US predominance over the Western Hemisphere” through military might, and his repeated comments regarding the possibility of taking over Cuba, whose communist government, Trump has said, has turned the country into a “failing nation.”

“Statements by the US president regarding the ‘honor of taking Cuba’ reflect a deeply concerning strategy of coercion against a sovereign state,” said the experts. “This assertion is not mere rhetoric, but part of a broader strategy involving the long-standing embargo on Cuba, its listing as a state-sponsor of terrorism, the recent fuel blockade, and the imposition of coercive measures on third parties.”

Experts @profbensaul, @gkatr and Zeina Jallad express concern regarding US escalating threats, coercive measures & judicial weaponisation against #Cuba.

“Efforts to change the constitutional order of a sovereign State through threats and coercion echo colonial-era practices.” pic.twitter.com/9feklXLRuQ

— United Nations Geneva (@UNGeneva) June 3, 2026

In January, Trump issued an executive order centered around the assertion—a laughable one, according to Cuban and international officials—that the country poses an “extraordinary threat” to the US, and warned other countries to stop providing oil to the island. The Trump administration had already cut off Cuba’s main energy source earlier that month when it abducted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and took control of the country’s oil reserves.

The oil blockade—which Secretary of State Marco Rubio has recently denied the existence of—has left hospitals facing shortages of supplies and medicines, forced schools to cut hours, caused trash to pile up in streets as sanitation operations have struggled to continue, and left cities and towns across the country with just a few hours of electricity per day.

Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants who left the country for the US years before Fidel Castro took power following the 1959 revolution, has long called for regime change in Cuba and has resisted efforts to normalize US-Cuban relations.

The UN experts said the blocking of oil imports to Cuba is “part of a disturbing trend of lawlessness and contempt of multilateralism and the UN Charter. The normalization of coercion and threats of regime change undermines the integrity of the entire international legal order.”

The experts also condemned the US indictment last month of former Cuban President Raúl Castro, which they said appeared connected to the administration’s “efforts to undermine Cuba’s sovereignty” and characterized as a “misuse of domestic judicial proceedings.”

The also said that the indictment—“an instrument of coercive foreign policy”—represents “an abuse of process that violates the principles of sovereign equality and self-determination under the UN Charter.”

Additionally, the deployment of the USS Nimitz to the southern Caribbean, they said, contravenes articles 2(4) and 2(7) of the UN Charter, which, respectively, prohibit the threat or use of force and demand non-intervention in domestic affairs by the UN.

The experts called on UN member states to “refrain from recognizing or implementing measures that violate the principles of sovereign equality and non-intervention” and urged the UN Security Council and General Assembly to “urgently address the threats against Cuba as a matter affecting international peace and security.”

“A democratic and equitable international order,” they said, “requires that all states, regardless of size or power, participate on equal footing, free from undue pressure.”

In what a number of scientists suggested was the Trump administration’s latest effort to stop tracking the changing climate in hopes of convincing the public that the climate emergency isn’t happening, the National Science Foundation announced Monday that it was dismantling a crucial deep-ocean monitoring system that for years has helped researchers understand the impacts of the crisis on the world’s oceans.

The NSF said it plans to send ships this month to remove more than 900 instruments, part of a project called the Ocean Observatories Initiative. The project collects data on temperatures, currents, and the ocean’s absorption of carbon dioxide off the coasts of Oregon, Alaska, Washington, and North Carolina, as well as in the Irminger Sea between Iceland and Greenland.

A spokesperson for NSF told The New York Times that the dismantling of the initiative will help the NSF in “prioritizing support for evolving scientific priorities and emerging technologies as well as a deliberate approach to smart life cycle management within its portfolio of research infrastructure.”

The reasoning given for the shuttering of the project, said Tara Blume, a journalist at Oklahoma City NBC affiliate KFOR, was “a master class in obfuscation and doublespeak.”

Genevieve Guenther of the group End Climate Silence shared her own interpretation of why the $368 million ocean observation system is being discontinued, despite the fact that it had been set to collect data for 25 years.

“We need to track ocean currents to assess how close we are to climate tipping points that will essentially destroy the world as we know it,” said Guenther. “The GOP doesn’t want us to be able to do that. That’s why they’re dismantling ocean monitoring.”

"By dismantling such a system, we push the United States back yet again into a rear seat in global scientific leadership." https://t.co/TSKsORuTX9

— Eric Geller (@ericgeller) June 2, 2026

Scientists have used data gathered by moorings, robotic vehicles, and other instruments that transmit the information to research laboratories, to study changes in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current (AMOC), a current system that moves warm water northward and cools the Arctic and Northern Atlantic regions while absorbing carbon dioxide deep into the ocean and keeping it out of the atmosphere.

Data gathered at the observation station in the Irminger Sea has been key to understanding AMOC, which scientists fear is gradually weakening due to planetary heating and could ultimately collapse, likely causing major global weather changes.

“This is absolutely crazy,” said David Doniger, a senior strategist and attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council’s climate and energy department. “Wouldn’t you want to know if the ocean currents are changing? Wouldn’t you want to know ocean temperatures? These things affect everything from fishing to hurricanes.”

Following the announcement that the stations will be dismantled in the coming weeks, said Blume, “science gasps for breath.”

President Donald Trump has attempted several times to shut down or drastically reduce the budget of the Ocean Observatories Initiative, which costs $48 million annually to run. Congress has restored the program’s funding.

The dismantling of the program comes months after the Environmental Protection Agency repealed the “endangerment finding,” which for years had underpinned the department’s environmental regulations; after the administration closed down the National Center for Atmospheric Research, which had gathered data on hurricanes and extreme weather to help improve forecasts; and after the National Aeronautics and Space Administration released a statement on record-breaking temperatures in 2024 and 2025—without any mention of the climate crisis or climate change.

“Blinding the public to climate change won’t make it go away. It will only accelerate its profound consequences,” said clinical researcher Iris Gorfinkel.

According to the Trump administration, said historian Nick Kapur, “apparently climate change doesn’t exist if you prevent scientists from measuring it.”

This story originally appeared in Professor Richard Wolff’s Substack on May 21, 2026. It is shared here with permission.

By the end of World War 2 in Europe, that continent’s extremely violent self-destruction had killed tens of millions and wrecked many economies. Its politically dominant employer classes had driven their national governments to a clash that had produced those results. By 1945 the war’s outcome had proved far worse than many in those classes had imagined or wanted before the war. Europeans had struggled after 1917/1918 to overcome their self-destruction in World War 1. In the short span between the end of the First and the beginning of the Second World War, Europe destabilized itself via its reparations program, Germany’s staggering inflation, and then global capitalism’s worst ever collapse in 1929. The consequences of those destabilizations ramified across Europe and undermined the League of Nations effort to prevent a second world war.

In 1945, for most Europeans, the greatest urgency attached to recovery from the war. For Europe’s employing classes, more urgent still were defenses against certain immediate threats. Russia’s army had been crucial to defeating the Nazis and to forging Russia’s post-war alliances with Eastern Europe. The mass of the USSR’s military forces, potentially supplemented by those of its new Eastern European allies, struck western Europe’s employer classes as existential threats. After 1945, western Europe’s employer classes smoothly and quickly refocused their hatred from a dead Hitler to the living Stalin and to their nations’ communist parties allied to Stalin.

Western Europe’s employer classes were threatened domestically by communist and socialist political parties whose militants had often led underground anti-fascist or anti-Nazi resistances. Thereby those militants often became broadly popular leaders. Across Europe national communist parties collaborated in various ways with one another (including the powerful Soviet party). Some post-war European heads of state such as France’s Charles de Gaulle included communist party leaders in their governments. In reaction to such developments, Europe’s employer classes quickly became obsessed with the great twin dangers of “communism at home and abroad.”

A parallel development had happened across the Atlantic in the US. There the Great Depression after 1929 had provoked a mass political shift leftward by the US public. Employees in unprecedented numbers had joined industrial unions allied in the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). Tens of thousands joined two socialist parties and one communist party. Because the socialists and communists were often the militants in the CIO’s successful organizing drives across major industries, employers in the US were all the more alarmed by those successes in the 1930s and the 1940s. The CIO, socialist and communist parties also formed a far more powerful coalition within the Democratic Party than they had ever been before 1929.

The alliance between the Democratic Party under Franklin Roosevelt and the CIO-socialist-communist collaborations – the so-called “New Deal” coalition – terrified the employer class. The coalition’s key 1930s achievements included establishing the Social Security system, federal unemployment insurance, the nation’s first minimum wage, and a federal public jobs program that hired many millions of the then unemployed. What terrified the employer class even more was how the New Deal coalition paid for those achievements. It reformed the federal tax system in a sharply progressive direction. Because corporations and the rich were especially taxed, US wealth and income inequalities dropped sharply. Then in the 1940s, the same US government that took huge steps against economic inequality at home allied itself with the Communist Party leadership of the USSR (Stalin) to fight World War 2 against fascism.

By 1945, with the war over and Roosevelt dead, the US employer class had become, like its European counterpart, obsessed with the great twin dangers of “communism at home and abroad.” Parallel obsessions in western Europe and the US converged in a joint plan. Employers and their political supporters and dependents attacked Communist parties everywhere, depicting them as mere agents or dupes of a foreign power, namely the USSR. They demonized the USSR as the epitome of evil, a dark empire threatening democracy, freedom, Judeo-Christian values, religion per se, civil liberties, and so on. A Cold War was declared between the former allies, NATO emerged, and the Warsaw Pact followed as did arms races and geo-political confrontations. The US would lead NATO to “contain the Soviet threat.” The US organized alliances across other continents while locating hundreds of military bases across them. Beyond means of “containment,” the bases marked and enforced a new informal US global empire that replaced much of the old British, French, Dutch, Belgian, Japanese, and other expiring colonialisms.

“Anti-communism” ideologically unified the domestic and international strategies of the employer classes in Europe and the United States. Under that ideological banner, those employer classes mobilized their governments to collaborate with them to destroy national communist parties and the USSR. As global hegemon, the US went further. It demonized socialism and socialist parties by defining and treating them as nearly identical with their communist counterparts. It also used anti-communism as a major ideological weapon to replace formal European and Japanese colonialisms by the informal, US-dominated “rules based international order.”

The US-western Europe connection helped employer classes in both regions to repress or at least weaken their nations’ communist and socialist parties. The US moved very aggressively (as in the Taft-Hartley law of 1947) also to destroy labor unions at home and collaborated with anti-union forces across Europe. Where war-weakened Europe lost its colonies, a strong post-war US could and did rush in to integrate the ex-European colonies into a US empire. The new US empire had to be informal. It had to allow the ex-colonies formal political independence even as it subordinated them to US economic, military, and political dominance across most of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Europe sank into the role of the US’s very junior partner.

The US-western Europe connection brought the US valuable allies against the USSR. Given the military technology of the two world wars – reliance on huge armies fighting across immense terrains – Europe was a land buffer usefully located between the US and the USSR. It provided added protection to the Atlantic ocean’s water buffer. European colonialism had created a genuine world economy that the US could take over. Within that world economy’s particular hierarchy, Europeans were dominant nearly everywhere (except, of course, in the case of Japanese colonialism). Non-Europeans were integrated as subordinated people (economically, politically, culturally). As the Europeans’ formal empires gave way to the US informal empire, colonialist hierarchies persisted with the only real changes occurring at the top. There the civilian and military chiefs of the US (and their delegates) chose, elevated and enriched local elites to direct its informal empire’s development.

The Marshall Plan funded postwar Europe’s recovery in ways that also secured its subordinate role in the new US empire. Funds distributed by the US Central Intelligence Agency since 1947, by the US Endowment for Democracy since 1983, and by other public and private groups supplemented the Marshall money. The advisers who often came with the funds gave Europe’s anti-communist political parties, mass media, labor unions, academic and cultural organizations, many means to use against their domestic enemies. The post-1945 US-western Europe alliance mounted an immense, richly-funded, never ending campaign to shape and control world history. It worked well, overcoming numerous challenges, for 70 years until internal and external forces combined to end it. Now, as the US-western Europe connection dissolves, the contours of its totality and historical significance become clearer.

The relentless rise of China’s economy outgrew the economies of all parts of the US-western Europe alliance over recent decades. China thereby contributed crucially to that alliance’s dissolution. So too has China’s ability simultaneously to forge a new global economic coalition, the BRICS (initially Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa). The BRICS’ establishment and growth (with new members and partners) responded to their felt needs for mutual support and less economic dependence on the US. The BRICS passed a milestone in 2020 (downplayed in Europe and the US) when their aggregate GDP surpassed that of the G7. The former has continued without interruption to outgrow the latter through the present.

The anti-colonialism that inspired the transitions from colonies to independent nations over the last century has survived that transition. It sometimes infuses rebellions against the hegemony of the US. At other times and places it coalesces with religious movements and populist social movements. In these and other ways, it too helps shape changing patterns of global trade and investment. Ex-colonies seek and engage alternatives to trade and investment with former colonial masters in London, Paris, Berlin, etc. They form new economic partnerships with China and increasingly with other BRICS. Increasing competition and lost economic opportunities challenge western Europe, Japan and the US. They also reduce the role of the US dollar as world currency.

The Trump regime represents both the extent of that decline and extreme efforts to stop or at least slow it. Hitting nearly the whole world with tariffs, suddenly and massively without warnings or negotiations, is a desperate act. Offering subsequently to lower initially high tariff rates in exchange for tribute (foreign nations’ commitments to spend and invest $ hundreds of billions in the US) is a blunt, stark, and hostile act. That European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen accepted it is a craven act of Europe’s even more desperate submission. The war on Iran with Israel without consultation or preparation with its European and other allies, coupled with demands for massive, risky support for the US war effort, was also a desperate act. Its goal was to reverse the decline of the US empire; its result was the opposite. The decline accelerated.

The decline, still not admissible publicly in most US politicians’ discourses, nonetheless lurks everywhere in widespread feelings of lost national direction and/or impending social doom. Trump bitterly reproaches former allies like Mexico, Canada, South Korea, Japan, and, above all, western Europe. For example, he rewrites post-1945 history as a story of western Europeans, among others, cheating and abusing the US economy because weak US governments failed to resist and fight back. Trump presents his tariffs as the overdue fight back heroically ending the previous weak governments. Trump was so invested in such political theater situating him as “the strong leader,” that his sudden, rushed tariff program was intolerable even to a Supreme Court he otherwise controls.

Abducting Maduro from Venezuela, the 12-day war on Iran with Israel in June, 2025, and their longer one begun in March, 2026: these are also pieces of the same political theater. They are made-for-the-media distractions: not just from the hovering Epstein scandals or the deeply-troubled inequalities of the domestic US economy, but from the deeper threats of a declining empire. Thus a reaction formation type of neo-colonialism inspires many of Trump’s favorite distractions. So far from admitting decline, those distractions construct a US empire as strong and growing, taking over nations like Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran while planning the same for Panama, Canada, Greenland, Mexico and others. When charged with violating international law and the whole United Nations project, Trump proudly rebrands both actions as bold signs of US strength.

Now again, as in 1945, western Europe and the US find themselves at crossroads. The declining empires then were the Europeans’. Now in 2026 it is the decline of the US empire that has become both the US’s and Europe’s problem. In its desperate moves to slow or stop that decline, the US has turned on its subordinated European partners. That problem and that turning derive from the empire decline shaping this historical moment.

In Trump’s second presidency, he withdrew much of the US’s support for Ukraine in its war with Russia. This not only weakened the Ukrainian side in that war but also left a militarily underdeveloped Europe to rely even more on economic sanctions against Russia. Europe thus lost access to cheap Russian oil and gas. High energy prices resulted, drove up European export prices, and thus damaged its competitiveness. Meanwhile, China’s relentless growth miracle (fast-rising productivity and low inflation) continued its many years of outperforming both Germany’s Wirtschaftswunder and European competitiveness generally. China’s GDP growth far exceeded that of the entire West for the last few decades. Volkswagen’s crisis was so severe it seriously considered the US invitation to move its immense company to the US from Germany. Deindustrialization now deeply disturbs all of Europe’s economies.

The global economy looks increasingly like a great contest between China and the US with Europe increasingly out of the picture or merely a footnote to it. Trump’s massive tariffs on or demands for tribute from Europe combine both abandonments and assaults by the US on its former allies. NATO trembles and faces growing forces of dissolution. Trump demands European nations fund their own defenses in part because the declining US empire needs to enlarge its own military as an offset, Trump hopes, to that decline.

The Europeans are stuck in that metaphorical room whose walls are closing in on them. Their subordination is reflected in their passage from junior partners in US led Coalitions of the Willing to the 2026 Iran war that Spain and Italy have refused to join. Trump openly threatens to leave NATO. The employer classes of Europe are most worried about the combination of no more US-funded defense protection via NATO and the compensatory need to fund expanded European military spending. That will likely mean reducing European spending on its social welfare model of capitalism. Employer classes who do that risk triggering massive opposition from the left (labor unions, socialist, communist and anti-capitalist parties increasingly working together).

So far, Europe’s employer classes have tried to cope with this situation by a quasi-hysterical campaign to demonize Russia as a threat to invade and conquer its European neighbors. Europe’s current, mostly low-in-the-polls heads of state position themselves as great bulwarks against the Russian danger. This strategy aims to justify the increased spending on defense that in turn necessitates reduced government welfare spending. The latter is then rationalized as the whole society’s necessary sacrifice for safety from the Russian demon. The employer classes hope that this way of retaining their wealth, income and power will not be opposed by their working classes as the political issue of our times. The employer classes prefer that the great hyped Russian danger be the political issue.

While the Russian danger discourse might secure Europe’s employer classes a few more years of sitting atop Europe’s wealth and power distributions, it fails to address Europe’s long-term decline. That promises to continue and quite possibly accelerate because little is being done in Europe to directly oppose that continuance. Indeed, the disagreements inside Europe on whether to join the US/Israeli war on Iran coupled with fear of being singled out for retaliations by Trump heightened the competitive pandering among Europeans to curry favor with him. Such divisions have always weakened European unity. Rebuilding that unity is surely a necessary, albeit insufficient, component of any imaginable rescue of Europe from its deepening decline.

The long, uneven, and sometimes frustratingly slow historical shift from capitalist colonialism to today’s anti-imperialism undermined first Europe’s and now the US’s empires. A new crossroads beckons. One way leads toward a new Chinese global empire. Another leads toward a multi-national program of mutual accommodation, a kind of socialism with global characteristics.

On a patch of sidewalk on a busy industrial corridor in Newark, federal agents with rifles, metal batons, flak vests, and balaclavas faced off against unarmed activists with cardboard signs and a bullhorn. Detained workers could be heard on the soccer field behind the prison walls, shouting in Spanish, “¡Libertad!” (Freedom!)

Since May 22, 300 of them are on a work stoppage and hunger strike. Over video chat, one worker told the crowd outside that they had stopped eating and working for as little as $1 an hour (or no pay at all) to demand an improvement in their living conditions. “But that’s not all we demand,” he said. “We are also doing this to demand freedom. We’re not treated like people. We’re treated like animals.”

The hunger strikers are demanding to meet with the governor, the release of young and elderly detainees and all medically vulnerable people, and ultimately, freedom for all.

For months a group of activists with the ICE Out of NJ coalition, which includes the immigrant rights group Cosecha, the Catholic advocacy group Pax Christi, and the worker center New Labor, has been protesting outside Delaney Hall, a 1,000-bed privately owned detention center where immigrants, mostly Latino, are jailed without due process.

Families and lawyers of the detainees report that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and guards with the GEO Group, the private-prison contractor, have been denying them medical care, offering them food swarming with worms, and refusing them bail bond or access to their lawyers. Many were snatched from construction job sites, or still wearing their service-industry work clothes; others were taken while reporting at courthouses for green-card appointments.

“In our cases, we had already been processed, we were complying with legal requirements, and there was no order from a judge for our detention or arrest,” wrote a worker identified as Brian in a handwritten letter in early May, co-signed by 300 others with redacted names, pleading for help from elected officials. “ICE officers did not take into account the fact that there was already an immigration court date, and they arrested us during check-in appointments at USCIS [U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services] facilities.”

FROM SCARCE FOOD TO NONE

They struck because they wanted to hit their jailers’ bottom line, but they were already going without food, and their health has further deteriorated. “People aren’t eating because of the strike we are organizing and there’s no medical assistance,” said a released hunger striker named Luis to Radio Jornalera (Day Laborer Radio). Speaking with his back to the camera to conceal his identity for fear of retaliation by ICE, Luis said another detainee had become severely dehydrated and couldn’t walk. Food was already scarce or inedible, even before the strike.

When hunger strikers sought medical help at the nursing center in the prison, “they wouldn’t lend us the wheelchair,” Luis said. “We had to put in our own pills, give our own liquids with sugar and a little salt to compensate for electrolytes.” He said there has been no due process for the detentions; he was detained by ICE during a routine check-in, which doesn’t normally occur for people who have a legal case going through the immigration system. People with no criminal records have faced exorbitant fees of upwards of $50,000 for bail, or outright denials to be released on bond.

“If they freed us, we wouldn’t generate profit for this business,” Luis told the Guardian.

Nationwide, the majority of imprisoned immigrants through 2025 had no criminal records. As the American Prospect has reported, the GEO Group is raking in record profits with a federal contract valued at $1 billion. Some of these profits come from imprisoned immigrants working for little or no pay. Workers report they are coerced into participating in the government’s supposedly Voluntary Work Program through solitary confinement and other forms of torture.

The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolished slavery, with an asterisk: “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” Convicted or not, all labor has value. But what’s doubly wrong is that immigrants in ICE jails haven’t even been convicted, and are being denied due process.

VIOLENT RETALIATION

In what activists are calling retaliation, on May 28 the GEO guards and ICE agents responded to the hunger strike and work stoppage with beatings. Detainees have reported to their lawyers and families that striking units have even had the building’s ventilation cut off, while the floors in some cells are smeared with the blood of detainees.

“Right now there are ICE agents inside of Delaney Hall violently beating the hunger strikers,” Nedia Morsy, director of the nonprofit Make the Road NJ, said in a statement. “Someone will be killed if no one intervenes and shuts this down.”

Gabriela Fuentes said her husband Jose Marroquin called her around 1:30 p.m. to “say they were being beaten and pepper sprayed… This started because they [ICE] wanted to take the only person who translates for them in the unit.”

“They wanted to take him away,” she said outside the prison in a video recording. “So all of the prisoners asked to not take him away. So then agents, ICE agents came to the unit and tried to cuff him, and that’s when the confrontation started.”

She said that the detainees lifted their hands to indicate they didn’t want to fight. The guards took them to their cells. “And then there were the prisoners banging on the doors to please let them out,” Fuentes said. “My husband says there was blood in the floor and in the walls that clearly the agents now were cleaning up because they knew they messed up.”

In a statement, Fuentes said that she bolted to the prison to speak out about what was happening inside. When she got there, she saw that “one of the guys was taken by the ambulance because a guard broke his nose.”

U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials said agents responded to “to a physical fight involving detainees at Delaney Hall.” Homeland Security Secretary Markwyane Mullin has upped the ante, threatening to retaliate against sanctuary cities by pulling Customs and Border Protection officers from airports.

Even before the strike, speaking out about conditions in the prison was met with retaliation. “We have to be very careful, everything we say and do is closely monitored, at all times,” Jordi Alvarado told local news outlet NJ.com in early May. “And then, almost as if on cue, his face abruptly disappeared from the screen of the iPhone advocates had used to call him,” reported NJ.com columnist Daysi Calavia-Robertson. On the blacked out screen, a message popped up. “Call paused.” And shortly after, “Call ended.”

OFFICIAL ACTION DEMANDED

Local and federal elected officials have put out statements condemning the deplorable living conditions and treatment of detainees. New Jersey Sen. Andy Kim, a Democrat, went inside the prison on May 25, came out, joined the protestors, and got pepper sprayed. But the ICE Out of NJ coalition is demanding more action.

“Elected officials, the Governor, and the Attorney General cannot continue ignoring what is happening behind these walls,” said Jorge Torres of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network in a statement. “They must enter the facility immediately, speak directly with the people, and hold GEO Group and ICE accountable for this violence.” The detained immigrant workers have written three letters to legislators pleading for their release; they’ve received no reply.

“I have never thought Delaney Hall should open,” said New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill at a news conference on May 26. “We had a law here in New Jersey against privately run detention facilities…The fact that they wouldn’t let me in there gives you some sense that there is some ‘there’ there, and that’s really concerning to me.”

The cruel impunity is as plain as day, both inside and outside the immigration detention center. On the night of May 27, federal agents struck protesters with batons, pushing one into the path of a tractor trailer wheel, a video shows.

On Thursday after reports of assaults on detainees began circulation, some local elected officials were allowed inside the prison, but access is still limited. That same day, the New Jersey Department of Health was denied full access for an inspection.

The reports often come from the families of the detained. “We’ve been hearing from constituents who have family members inside, including a mother who is being beaten by ICE agents and an 11-year-old girl who spoke to her father inside who said that there are a lot of people inside who are bloodied,” U.S. Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman told NJ.com on the afternoon of May 28.

SOLIDARITY FUNDRAISERS

Gabriela Soto’s husband Martin Soto Hernandez was detained in January while buying diapers. He had previously been arrested for a domestic violence incident, but the charges were later dismissed and expunged, according to his lawyers. His lawyer says Soto Hernandez has lost 110 pounds: “He’s skin and bones.”

Even in his poor condition, he helped organize the hunger strike and was later transferred to a different detention camp in Elizabeth, New Jersey, on May 25.

“My husband Martin Soto got illegally detained by ICE tonight,” Soto wrote on a GoFundMe page to raise funds for her husband’s legal defense shortly after he was imprisoned. “We never fully got a lawyer for his immigration status because his court date was due for 2028… I want to be able to have a lawyer defend him so that he can stay here. His kids depend on him. His daughter knows he is her world. This is unfair what Trump is doing to this country. He’s ripping families apart and this is not fair. Please help us.”

“At this very moment, Delaney represents a dark and desolate world for those who sought to attain the American Dream,” said Gloria Guerrero of New Labor in Spanish to Labor Notes. Guerrero organizes alongside domestic workers whose husbands have been detained in ICE prisons. “Children wait for the return of parents detained by a cruel and inhumane system—locked in dungeons, treated like criminals, and stripped of every right, including the right to humane treatment,” she said.

“Yet for others, it is the greatest business venture in history—one that utterly disregards the dignity of human beings. Delaney is a Latino concentration camp where many are forced to sell themselves out of sheer necessity, shielding their faces in shame from a community that cries out: ‘Quit that job now! I am your people! I am your kin!’ Meanwhile, on the inside, others are holding fast in a strike of protest and resistance—a struggle to which we offer hope, and which we support from the outside!”

On May 24, Karam Ismael, 43, received a phone call from someone who identified himself as an Israeli army officer. The caller delivered one message: evacuate your home in 20 minutes before we bomb it. At first, he thought it was another scare tactic, similar to the messages the Israeli army used to send during incursions into neighborhoods. It was one of several calls made to residents of Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, with a warning that covered residential blocks near al-Quds Supermarket and a local UNRWA clinic. The area included dozens of homes that had not previously been bombed throughout the past two years.

Four minutes after receiving his first call, Ismael’s phone rang again. The officer told him they had 10 minutes left, ordering him to evacuate immediately and to notify his neighbors. This time, he took the threat seriously and fled with his neighbors, leaving his belongings behind.

After half an hour, quadcopter drones appeared and hovered above the residential block, followed by the fighter jets. The entire block was leveled.

This was not the first such incident in recent weeks in which the Israeli army warned entire residential areas to evacuate and then bombed their homes. The Israeli army has been following a new pattern during the ceasefire: targeting residential blocks that had not experienced a ground invasion and had not been bombed during the war, remaining intact and still sheltering their owners. Over the past week, the army appears to have escalated this approach by specifically targeting residential blocks that had previously remained undamaged.

The officer who had called Karam Ismael stayed on the line with him for more than half an hour, making sure everyone had left. When Ismael asked which house they were targeting, the officer cut him off. “That’s none of your concern,” he recalled being told. “Just inform the neighbors.”

Over the past week alone, the army struck residential blocks belonging to the Al-Kurd family in Nuseirat on May 22, the al-Khatib family in al-Bureij and the Abu Shamala family in al-Maghazi on May 23, and the al-Tawil family in Nuseirat again on May 26. In each case, the pattern that emerged was clear: civilian residential blocks with no apparent connection to military activity were bombed for the first time in the war, displacing their families for the first time as well.

The escalation comes as Israel has been openly threatening to resume the genocide in Gaza. After Palestinian factions refused a U.S. demand to disarm, rejecting conditions put forward by Trump’s envoy Nickolay Mladenov in mid-April, Israeli media reported that the army was preparing to restart operations “as early as next month.” Netanyahu signaled the same after the U.S.-Iran ceasefire, stating that Israel would now “focus on Hamas.” According to reporting by Drop Site News, Mladenov presented Hamas with a 15-point roadmap, making total disarmament a precondition for any reconstruction or Israeli withdrawal. Hamas and other factions rejected these terms as “the occupation’s conditions,” pointing out that Israel had not implemented a single one of its own obligations under the first phase of the deal: the Rafah crossing remained blocked, no reconstruction materials had been allowed in, and Israeli forces had expanded their presence deep beyond the agreed boundaries.

No more options

According to residents who were made homeless during the Nuseirat bombing, the Israeli army targeted one home, but the strike damaged six neighboring houses, rendering them uninhabitable.

Ahmad al-Kurd, 34, said that the army did not initially specify which house it intended to strike, instead ordering the entire block to evacuate. “We left our homes carrying nothing and returned to rubble, finding nothing,” he told Mondoweiss. 

Al-Kurd added that even the house that had been targeted was home to over 12 families, each comprising at least 5 people, while the surrounding buildings housed many more, totaling around 25 families.

“What did we do to deserve this?” he exclaimed. “This is happening during a ceasefire, during blessed days as we await Eid al-Adha”.

Al-Kurd also mentioned that there was no Hamas presence in the residential neighborhood. “There’s no resistance here,” he said. “There was no justification for the Israeli army to target us.”

Khalil al-Najjar, 41, a resident of al-Bureij who experienced a similar strike, told Mondoweiss that residents also received the same calls from Israeli officers.

“We ran out in fear that missiles would fall on our heads,” he said. “We couldn’t even take a change of clothes. Just what we had on our backs.” 

When they returned to the site of the bombing, they found their homes lying in ruins, al-Najjar added, leaving over 50 families homeless and without any belongings.

“We have no more options left,” he said, explaining that every school-turned-shelter in the area turned them away, while tent encampments had no room or tents to speak of. “So we’re just going to live in the ruins of our homes. What else can we do?”

‘In Gaza, even the child is wanted’

Naama Salem, 49, said that at first she saw neighbors carrying some belongings and rushing out of their homes. When she asked what was happening, they told her a call had come from the Israeli army ordering the neighborhood to evacuate within twenty minutes. 

“At that moment, I felt that the house could be bombed at any second, so I got dressed and left,” she said. “I could not even reach my ID card, which I kept in my bag beside me.”

Her daughter, a high school student, lost all of her books, notebooks, and study materials in the bombing. For the entire war, Salem’s home hadn’t been bombed. She considered herself lucky to have escaped that fate that had befallen most of Gaza’s population, and believed that the worst was behind her in light of the ceasefire. She assumed the army might strike the home of a wanted person, and that would be it.

“We never imagined that the policy of bombing whole residential blocks would return,” she said.

She added that the situation is getting worse day by day, even during the ceasefire. “Every day, there are people killed. Every day, homes are destroyed, and families are displaced. We sleep in fear of the bombing, we walk the streets in fear, and we sit with our children in fear. Fear has become a permanent guest in our homes, our hearts, and among our loved ones,” she said. “This situation is unbearable. It is more than human beings can stand.”

Khalil al-Najjar, the Bureij resident who lost his home, said he knows his neighborhood and all of its residents one by one — and that there are no members of Hamas or resistance groups among them.

There was no one wanted by the Israeli army inside the residential block, he asserted. Rather, what Israel really wants is to turn as many Palestinians in Gaza as possible into displaced and homeless people. “It’s to pressure us into leaving our homeland,” he explained.

“In Gaza, the child is wanted. The woman is wanted. The man is wanted. The elder is wanted. Even the animals are wanted by the Israeli army,” he said.

For more than a week, the nation of Bolivia has been in a state of full-on revolt.

In response to neoliberal reforms by the recently elected right-wing government led by President Rodrigo Paz, unions have launched a general strike, peasants and Indigenous peoples have set up dozens of roadblocks throughout the country, and massive marches have been held in the capital, La Paz. These are just a few expressions of a much broader social discontent, which has brought the country to a halt and stoked mass resistance to the larger project of U.S-aligned, right-wing attacks on workers and social movements in Latin America.

Joseph Bouchard, a social scientist and journalist currently in La Paz as a visiting fellow at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés, explained the diverse character of the movement. “It’s sort of a grouping of different social movements and groups that I think represents the wide spectrum within the Bolivian left,” Bouchard told Truthout. “You have teachers unions and workers unions. You have mining unions. You have just regular people joining who are not necessarily part of any movement. You have an Indigenous federation who used to be part of an anti-dictatorship movement in the 1980s. You have [former president Evo Morales’s] people … And so you have really all these groups that together add up to sort of the largest representation of the Bolivian left, disaffected voters, organized groups, disorganized groups.”

While the diversity of the movement also brings a wide range of demands, one of the most popular is for President Paz to resign, with some sectors of the movement arguing that the country should maintain a general strike indefinitely until Paz has been ousted. The level of outrage is especially profound considering that Paz has only been in office for six months.

How to Lose a Populace in 6 Months

In October 2025, Bolivia elected right-wing populist Rodrigo Paz, ending 20 years of government by the left-wing MAS (Movement to Socialism) party founded by former president Evo Morales. Paz, running on a campaign of “capitalism for all,” promised to address economic hardships plaguing the country. His campaign also benefited from the implosion of MAS, which was experiencing intense infighting from which it has not recovered.

Despite appealing to the economic concerns of the Bolivian people and positioning himself as more of a centrist than the country’s established (and much more extreme) right, once elected Paz wasted no time in carrying out attacks on the country’s workers and poor. One of his first moves was to eliminate a tax on large fortunes. He has also proposed education policies that teachers have criticized as privatization-oriented measures.

Two policies in particular have incited the outrage now rocking the country: a land privatization law and Supreme Decree 5503, which eliminated state fuel subsidies.

Two policies in particular have incited the outrage now rocking the country: Law 1720, a land privatization law which many see as a move to hand over Indigenous lands to agribusiness and other large-scale landowners, and Supreme Decree 5503, which eliminated state fuel subsidies, practically doubling the consumer cost of fuel overnight. Along with the rising fuel costs, Paz’s government has further angered Bolivians by importing low quality fuel, or “junk fuel,” as the people call it, which has reportedly damaged people’s vehicles, imposing repair costs many cannot afford.

It did not take long for the outrage to spread. Bolivia had already seen significant protests in December 2025, just a month into Paz’s presidency, but these were halted due to negotiations between the government and the country’s largest union federation, Central Obrera Boliviana (COB). Despite these negotiations the Paz administration continued advancing neoliberal reforms, further fueling outrage and forcing COB and other unions, including teachers unions, to call strikes at the start of May. Around the same time, rural Indigenous communities embarked on a long march to the capital, while other peasant and Indigenous communities erected blockades across major roads.

Despite its best efforts, the Bolivian government has not yet quashed the nationwide shutdown, though on May 26 the country’s Chamber of Deputies voted to repeal restrictions on the use of military force against protesters. Even before the vote, the state had deployed militarized forces against protesters. This repression has only further radicalized the movement, with some protesters using dynamite, rocks, and slingshots to defend themselves against the military, according to multiple sources on the ground who spoke with Truthout. Reports emerging on social media confirm this as well.

A history student at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés who spoke with Truthout described the repressive climate that the protesters are braving.

“Especially police, they have been repressing the movement with chemical agents, rubber bullets, and so on,” she told Truthout. “[The military] tried to stop the blockades which have been in the roads, but 30 minutes after they left, the blockades were rebuilt with even more people.”

The student, who is a member of the socialist youth group Combate Rojo, asked to remain anonymous due to the doxxing to which members of her organization have been subjected from the far right. She mentioned that arrests and violence have been common in the crackdown on protests.

A Challenge to the Regional Right and U.S. Imperialism

The protests in Bolivia are not merely a national issue. They have implications for a regional strategy in which the United States is relying on far-right allies in Latin America to advance U.S. interests. These interests are expressed clearly in Trump’s 2025 National Security Strategy, which names the Western Hemisphere as the administration’s top region of strategic interest. It states, “The goal is for our partner nations to build up their domestic economies, while an economically stronger and more sophisticated Western Hemisphere becomes an increasingly attractive market for American commerce and investment.”

The protests in Bolivia have implications for a regional strategy in which the United States is relying on far-right allies in Latin America to advance U.S. interests.

Paz has closely aligned Bolivia with the United States, joining the recently formed Shield of the Americas, a military alliance composed mostly of right-wing governments with the stated mission of fighting cartels. On May 21, the alliance issued a joint statement condemning the protests in Bolivia, alleging that the protesters are being led by “criminals and drug traffickers.”

Under the Trump administration, allegations of drug trafficking have been used to justify a wide range of interventionist and militaristic policies including the attack on Venezuela and kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro, the establishment of a seemingly permanent military occupation along the U.S.-Mexico border, dozens of illegal and deadly strikes on boats in the Caribbean, and a growing military campaign in Ecuador that has resulted in the bombing of a civilian farm in a rural village.

Bouchard argued that the U.S. response to the protests is a rejection of Latin American sovereignty.

“You can vote for a government and then decide you’re unhappy with what they’re doing if you feel like they’re betraying their promises or not fulfilling what they voted for,” Bouchard said. “This is how democracy works. U.S. government and right-wing allies in Latin America are basically saying that no protests are ever legitimate; if you vote for a government you’re basically supposed to accept whatever they do after.”

Several of the Latin American governments who signed the Shield of the Americas statement are likely observing the protests in Bolivia with concern that their own populations could draw inspiration from them.

The same week that Bolivian trade unions launched their general strike, Argentina and Chile saw massive student-led demonstrations against attacks on public education. Both Argentine President Javier Milei and Chilean President José Antonio Kast have been pushing their own neoliberal reforms similar to those carried out by Paz.

They know that they can bring down governments … They’ve done it before many times. These tactics work and they can get concessions.

Even in Brazil, which is currently governed by the left-wing government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, university students and municipal teachers in São Paulo have been on strike and held combative marches against austerity pushed by the state’s far right governor. While the protests in Brazil, Argentina, and Chile have not reached anywhere near the level of widespread anger expressed in Bolivia, they demonstrate a regional trend in which workers, students, and broader communities are beginning to rise up against economic strain and far right movements.

The history student who spoke with Truthout said that there are many in the movement in Bolivia who understand that their uprising poses a challenge to far more than just Paz’s agenda.

“[Protesters] mention Milei, they mention the genocide [in Gaza],” she said. “That internationalist connection to U.S. imperialism and Israel, it’s there. You just can’t hide it.”

Bouchard said that the Bolivian people understand their country’s history, and this informs how radical the movement has become and how much more radical it can get.

“They know that they can bring down governments,” Bouchard said. “They’ve done it before many times. These tactics work and they can get concessions. They know that the Paz government is quite weak, and if they use these tactics like they’ve done before they can win.”

Protests erupted on Sunday night outside of the Delaney Hall immigrant jail in Newark, New Jersey, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) moved to transfer a strike leader from the jail.

Some 300 detainees launched a hunger and labor strike on Friday in protest of the conditions at the ICE jail. On Sunday, activists and family members learned that the jail was preparing to move Martin Soto, one of the detainees who had announced the strike.

Gabriela Soto, Martin’s wife, saw ICE agents loading Martin into a van, and ran to block the van that held her husband from leaving the site. Other demonstrators joined in blocking the van from leaving the facility, and forced it back to the detention facility. Protestors formed a blockade for hours to prevent Martin Soto from being moved out of the site.

“Free Martin!” the protestors chanted. “Free them all!”

Later, around 1 am on Monday, ICE agents began to move a caravan of vehicles out of the facility, and protestors again attempted to block the vehicles from leaving. ICE agents then shoved aside protestors, pushing them against the sidewalk and against cars, and pepper sprayed at least one protestor.

A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson announced on Monday that after “ICE successfully dispersed approximately 70 agitators” it succeeded in transferring Martin to another facility.

Since the start of the hunger strike, family members and supporters have gathered outside of the detention center. Among others, a 10-year-old child spoke about her father, who is currently being imprisoned in the facility by ICE.

On Friday, Gabriela Soto translated calls from prisoners, including her husband Martin, who said, “We deal with racism, with bad conditions, with guards that do not help us…. It gets worse all the time, and they don’t treat us like people.”

The guards soon cut access to the detainees’ phones so that these calls could not continue.

People being imprisoned at Delaney began a hunger strike after signing two letters describing their circumstances and conditions.

“We feel vulnerable and, in a way, kidnapped — detained without justification — not to mention that we are being tortured physically and psychologically due to the poor food resources provided in these detention centers,” they wrote. “Families are being destroyed and separated.”

“We have seen judges in this detention center who are ready to carry out deportations and mass expulsions without properly reviewing cases,” they went on. “We live with anguish and fear of appearing in court.”

One participant in the labor and hunger strike wrote in a letter describing the conditions of the jail:

We have people sleeping on the floor for not being processed quick enough. They neglect medications for people who are in dire need of it. All of our bonds are denied and they are telling us to file habeas corpus for everyone that is in here, they constantly tell us we are a danger to society. The same judge that denies your bond is the same judge that reviews our immigration court cases and that is not fair.

Delaney opened as an ICE jail in May 2025 in a $1 billion, 15-year contract between private prison contractor GEO Group and ICE. It is the largest ICE facility on the East Coast and has faced pushback since the announcement of its opening.

New Jersey Democratic Sen. Andy Kim visited the detention center Saturday, and wrote on X that he saw inside it a “high school student crying and saying she just wanted to graduate senior year”; a woman “who had a miscarriage in the detention facility” and was “left to manage [it] all on her own”; and a “carton with the milk inside congealed solid.”

On Monday, Kim returned to the site, and said that he was pepper sprayed. “Instead of engaging with me and others about the poor conditions, ICE sent in an armored vehicle and a line of armed agents that only poured gasoline on the fire,” he wrote on X. Kim described ICE agents tackling and restraining protestors and firing pepper balls and spray into the crowd.

On Tuesday morning, the protest continued, and video footage from outside Delaney once again shows ICE agents detaining and dragging protestors.

Leqaa Kordia — a Palestinian from East Jerusalem who was arrested in Newark when meeting with immigration officials about her status and then detained for over a year in ICE jails for her Palestine activism — wrote a statement in solidarity with the Delaney hunger strikers.

“When you choose hunger over submission, you’re doing something that terrifies ICE,” she wrote on Monday. “You are proving that even when they break your bodies, they can’t break your will. You are proving that a person stripped of freedom can’t be stripped of dignity.”

“I know the conditions you’re enduring,” she went on. “The rotten food. The medical neglect. The psychological torture of indefinite limbo. I know what it took for you to look at that tray of slop and say: No more. Not until I’m free.”

A judge in Delaware—a state with more registered business entities than people—ruled Monday in favor of a small town that allows corporations to vote in local elections.

Delaware Superior Court Judge Craig Karsnitz ruled that the town of Fenwick Island, population 400, did not violate the state Constitution by permitting business entities—which make up 12% of the town’s “population”—to vote in municipal elections, as case plaintiff the ACLU of Delaware had claimed.

“What is a ‘person?’ When one cuts to the heart of this case, that is the question,” Karsnitz wrote to open his 20-page ruling.

‼️‼️Delaware Superior Court upholds a municipal ordinance allowing individuals to cast votes on behalf of LLCs, trusts, and corporations in local elections against a challenge that the ordinance constitutes unlawful vote dilution for real persons under the state constitution. aboutblaw.com/blQg

— Anthony Michael Kreis (@anthonymkreis.bsky.social) 2026-05-27T20:46:10.133Z

“According to the law, a person is anyone or anything that can initiate and be subject to legal proceedings. By this conception, any adult, corporation, or institution is a person, but a minor is not a person, a fetus is not a person, and a humanoid robot… is not a person,” the ruling continues. “This highlights that legal personhood is dependent solely on legal recognition.”

The judge noted that in 2008, the Delaware General Assembly amended Fenwick Island’s charter “to expand its voter registration rolls to allow individuals to cast votes on behalf of trusts, limited liability companies, partnerships, and corporations that own property in Fenwick.”

“Today, the overwhelming majority of legal entity property owners in Fenwick registered to vote, and on whose behalf votes are cast, are trusts,” Karsnitz added.

“I appreciate that Plaintiff may disagree with Delaware’s policy of authorizing certain municipalities to allow voting on behalf of entity property owners,” the judge wrote.

“Visions of faceless large corporations, or even HAL, controlling a small town are frightening and the stuff of science fiction,” he continued,“ referring to the malevolent artificial intelligence-powered computer in Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film version of Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. ”However, Plaintiff has not demonstrated that this policy violates the principle of one person/entity/one vote.“

“Plaintiff points to no other persuasive independent authority than the Elections Clause of the Delaware Constitution itself,” Karsnitz concluded. “And matters of policy are appropriately left to legislative bodies, not the courts.”

Fenwick Island Mayor Natalie Magdeburger told Reuters earlier this year that “a property owner who pays taxes and is subject to our ordinances should have a say in who represents them on our Town Council.”

Meanwhile, the ACLU of Delaware contends that “with over 2 million business entities incorporated in Delaware–roughly double the amount of actual people living in the state–the people of Delaware risk having their voices drowned out when towns like Fenwick Island allow corporate voting.”

Karsnitz’s ruling does not mention Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the 2010 US Supreme Court decision affirming that political spending by corporations, nonprofit organizations, labor unions, and other groups is a form of free speech protected by the 1st Amendment that government cannot restrict. The decision ushered in the era of super PACs—which can raise unlimited amounts of money to spend on campaigns—and secret spending on elections with so-called “dark money.”

While Delaware’s corporate personhood laws long predate Citizens United, numerous critics of Monday’s ruling referred to the case, including the progressive legal advocacy group Demand Justice.

A Delaware state judge just ruled that corporations can vote in local elections.

Over 200 "artificial entities" (LLCs, trusts, corporations) are now registered voters in Fenwick Island. That's 12% of the electorate.

Delaware has more corporations chartered in the state than… pic.twitter.com/YJ5EZ1F1en

— Demand Justice (@WeDemandJustice) May 27, 2026

“Corporations aren’t people,” the group asserted on X. “They don’t have kids in local schools, they don’t drink the water, they can’t be jailed for crimes, and they shouldn’t get a vote.”

Some compared Hawaii, where Democratic Gov. Josh Green recently signed legislation clarifying that corporations are not people, with Delaware.

“Hawaii made a move to rein in Citizens United,” writer Van Dennis posted on X, “and Delaware responded, ”The fuck you are.“

Trump administration cuts to grants disbursed by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) likely resulted in a delayed response to the current Ebola outbreak in parts of central Africa, former federal health officials have said.

As of Monday, at least 220 people are suspected to have died from Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Uganda. More than 500 cases of Ebola have been detected in Congo alone.

Though the virus was officially uncovered just last week, it’s believed that it had been spreading undetected for at least several weeks prior.

The Trump White House dismantled USAID last year, with the State Department absorbing its remaining necessary programs. The cuts affected billions of dollars in grant money for thousands of programs and nonprofit organizations around the world.

If left intact, some of that funding could have resulted in faster detection times for the current outbreak, former federal officials within USAID, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) told NBC News,

“What we’ve lost is speed, which is the most important thing in an outbreak like this,” said Nicholas Enrich, former acting assistant administrator for global health at USAID.

People who were once employed in programs funded by the U.S. have had to find new jobs, former CDC medical officer Daniel Bausch pointed out.

“Now they’re driving a taxi in Kinshasa or selling fruit somewhere. So this cadre of reasonably trained people that you can employ just isn’t around,” Bausch explained.

Heather Reoch Kerr, country director for the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in the DRC, also said the lack of funding is disrupting the response to the Ebola outbreak.

“Many facilities in affected areas are operating without basic protective supplies” because of cuts to USAID, Reoch Kerr said.

World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus recently addressed the outbreak, saying that health officials within the organization are prepared to tackle the situation head-on. However, “we are facing an extremely serious and difficult outbreak,” Tedros added. “It will get worse before it gets better.”

The cuts to USAID, as well as the Trump administration’s decision to exit WHO (a choice that was finalized earlier this year), will undoubtedly disrupt global health responses, like what’s being seen in central Africa right now, health experts predicted.

The cuts have “disrupted the ability for contact tracing to happen, for those preventive activities to be mounted very well,” Abraham Leno, director of government relations for the humanitarian organization Alight, told The Hill.

Other experts predicted this outcome several months ago.

“Because of these two decisions and the long-lasting consequences, lives will be lost,” said Lindsey Locks, an assistant professor of Global Health at Boston University, in an op-ed last year.

Beyond disease outbreaks, the Trump administration’s decisions will “reverse decades of progress in reducing malnutrition and hunger worldwide,” Locks said.

The administration’s moves to dismantle international health infrastructure will “weaken the shared governance architecture for outbreak preparedness and response,” Chatham House fellow Ebere Okereke wrote in January.

“The WHO’s authority has been diminished,” Okereke added, noting, “Disease surveillance depends on trust.”

“The ‘mosaic’ will be built on the principles of seeking to recruit from both the most oppressed segments and from among the most selfless. … The mosaic must immediately begin a dialogue toward building a consensus—as soon as possible—about how to best further coordinate our collective efforts.” –Russell Maroon Shoatz 

“Freedom is indivisible, or it is nothing at all besides sloganeering and temporary, short-sighted, and short-lived advancement for a few. Freedom is indivisible, and either we are working for freedom, or you are working for the sake of your self-interests and I am working for mine.” –June Jordan 

Oftentimes, powerlessness and despair lead people to turn on one another. Far too many who are scared to fight the crisis will fight their neighbor instead. The history of conquest, colonization, and capitalism is filled with examples. Like clockwork, we can always identify those who are confused, stuck, and deluded by their inability to determine where to direct their fury. In the face of vast oppression, instead of aiming for the head of their tormenters and ruling tyrants, these types blame those next to them. It’s a common reality where poverty flourishes, conflict simmers to a boiling point, and where rigid ideologues preach. In the face of fascism, there are plenty among us in the U.S. who seem doubtful about our collective power. There will need to be some level of understanding in order to overcome. Instead of a call for resentment-filled “unity” or traditional fronts, we can look to what former Black Panther, Black Liberation Army member, and political prisoner Russell Maroon Shoatz called “the mosaic” for a model of what’s possible. We will not beat back repressive power with a bunch of fragmented groups and individuals beefing over all of the nothingness they have control over.  

Perhaps nowhere throughout the Western world is the pitifulness of empty division more apparent than in the U.S. An ongoing circus of sectarian leftists continue to define themselves by pointing fingers at one another, even going as far as blaming each other for genocides, imperialism, and geopolitics that are far beyond their respective spheres of influence. This is a gross overestimation of their own relevance, size, and impact, indicating a ridiculous disconnect. After all, if you took all of the different sections of leftists (Marxists, anarchists, etc.) in the U.S., and added them together in sum, you would fail to total even half a percent of the U.S. population. That’s why I regularly use this leftist microcosm of a much larger problem to highlight the delusion we’re inundated with. As I’ve previously written, it’s a place where you can easily understand how twisted people become on self-important quests while failing to beat back all they claim to be against at home. 

Genocide is not happening because someone you don’t like posted a take you don’t agree with on their social media. Imperialism does not need the consent of a U.S. population that largely doesn’t vote because the U.S. is an oligarchy where public opinion doesn’t truly influence policy. The ruling class doesn’t need to “distract” people from the Epstein files for the same reason it doesn’t care about the public will at this point. They don’t appear to fear us much, if at all. The question remains, will we give them a good reason to? The current answer is a loud “no,” as long as people play games that have nothing to do with organizing to defeat the ruling class. This will not happen by waiting for a political party, an outside government, or a hero to do it for us. Expecting as much is an entitled U.S. mindset. It will not happen by projecting ourselves onto movements past or present that we are not part of, while pretending we represent them solely on the basis of ideological identity. It will not happen by being loud influencers on social media, pundits, or celebrities who simply react to worsening conditions for the sake of engaging their followers. Instead, we have to take the lonely and often isolating road away from all of this popular absurdity toward a better project. 

Shoatz has an essay titled “The Dragon and the Hydra.” This historical study of organizational methods examines some pitfalls of relying on highly centralized models of resistance. Shoatz lifts up successful examples throughout Black history that didn’t operate this way. In his collected works, “Maroon the Implacable,” the essay includes an end section titled “The Mosaic.” Shoatz lays out the distressing conditions similarly to what I have detailed above, writing: 

At present, there are many sectarian divisions due to racial, ethnic, gender, sexual orientation, cultural, and geographic differences. These hinder individuals, organizations, and entire communities who already interact, share many of the same concerns, are faced with similar obstacles to their well-being, and already cooperate to various degrees. But we can all come together like a “mosaic” with a goal of creating positive changes in our collective well-being.

According to Shoatz, his vision for the mosaic was more complicated than forced assimilation. He continues: 

The “mosaic” will not be an effort directed toward imposing any type of multiracial, multiethnic, gender-neutral, or conformist utopian universalism. No! The mosaic will allow individuals, organizations, and entire communities to exercise self-determination in deciding what types of social orders they choose to struggle to bring into being, while at the same time learning how to better come together with others to form societies that will be superior to the ones in which we now live. Thus, the word “mosaic” fits us in many ways. We will add to the dictionary definition by defining ourselves as “the mosaic: the movement of oppressed sectors acting in concert.”

Shoatz explains that “the ‘mosaic’ is an ideological jumping-off point that will serve all of our separate and collective interests; it can also be termed ‘Inter-Communal Self-Determination.’” In the spirit of learning from the Black Panthers—successes and failures—Shoatz presents a somewhat revised approach. After all, radicalism and praxis are living practices; you have to know more, study more, and comprehend more than one ideology or historical example in order to supersede it. You cannot “critique” what you don’t understand, haven’t read, or haven’t educated yourself about. He illustrates the better approach by drawing on a multitude of elements of Marxism, anarchism, and Leninism to reach his conclusions. The breadth of his study shows how he could suggest such a mosaic movement, and the limitations of our current situation reinforce his call. If anything, I would take his analysis a step further upon witnessing the seemingly impervious nature of doctrinaire leftism, which traps far too many in the pits of regression. As it stands, we don’t have an oppositional or even functional left. We have “leftists” and “leftism,” and there’s a difference. We’re in the midst of deterioration, but we can rise above it all and approach life with the humility needed to learn and evolve. To build a mosaic movement, we will have to grow beyond the goofiness that leftism is reduced to in the U.S. while fascism thrives. 

We don’t have an oppositional or even functional left. We have “leftists” and “leftism,” and there’s a difference.

Tunisian radical theorist and member of the infamous Situationist International, Mustapha Khayati, offered the work “Address to Revolutionaries of Algeria and of All Countries” in July 1965. He explained:

Everywhere there are social confrontations, but nowhere is the old order destroyed, not even within the very forces that contest it. Everywhere the ideologies of the old world are criticized and rejected, but nowhere is “the real movement that suppresses existing conditions” liberated from one or another “ideology” in Marx’s sense of the word: ideas that serve masters. Revolutionaries are everywhere, but nowhere is there any real revolution.

The abundance of loud, self-styled radicals talking as if they’re generals of great armies or have huge revolutionary accomplishments under their belts is utter absurdity. It is especially asinine when losses are piling up. What is there to be so arrogant about? A mosaic movement will have to break free from orthodoxy and learn through actions that bring our politics to life. 

East German communist dissident Rudolf Bahro wrote in “Socialism and Survival” that orthodoxy becomes reactionary “when a new epoch in the liberation struggle is impending, involving a fundamental regrouping of forces, and this orthodoxy then tries to push people back into the patterns prescribed by the old theoretical paradigm that must now be dialectically superseded.” He said, “We cannot wait until our old recipes start to work after all.” We are repeating past mistakes based on petty nonsense. We are regularly falling apart. If we do not want the failure of all this to keep falling on us, then we should move out of its way. We should move on to bigger, better, and more thoughtful practices. We should move toward the mosaic.

Editorial Team:
Lara Witt, Lead Editor
Lara Witt, Top Editor
Stephanie Harris, Copy Editor

On Thursday, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) finally released its long-awaited autopsy of Kamala Harris’s failed presidential campaign.

The rollout was highly on-brand for the Democratic establishment. The 192-page document seems slapped together, is full of typos, and was released only because CNN obtained a copy. In an accompanying note, DNC Chair Ken Martin said the report didn’t meet his standards, but that it was being released “because people need to be able to trust the Democratic Party and trust our word.”

In fact, the report has further eroded that trust by omitting some big, obvious reasons why Harris lost. Concerns about Biden’s age and his inexplicable decision to run for reelection are barely mentioned, and there’s virtually no analysis of the Democratic policies that might have helped propel Trump to another victory.

If one were compiling such a list, support for the Gaza genocide would presumably be near the top, but the issue is not mentioned once in the massive report.

You’ll recall that Harris never distanced herself from Biden on this question. In her first interview after becoming the nominee, she maintained the party line on Israel, reciting the usual claptrap about the country’s right to “defend itself.” Asked point-blank whether her foreign policy would differ from Biden’s at all, she said it would remain the same. That is to say, the United States would continue to send weapons to Israel while the country carried out a genocide.

A couple of months later, she reiterated her position on The View, telling the hosts that she couldn’t think of anything she would do differently. Although later in the interview she said that, unlike Biden, she would put Republicans in her cabinet.

Throughout the Harris campaign, Palestine advocates called on the former Senator to shift her position and take a firm stance against Israel’s actions.

“By taking a strong stand against Netanyahu’s authoritarian policies, the Biden-Harris administration can unify the Democratic Party and regain the trust of key voter bases, including young people, Arabs, and Muslims,” read an open letter to Harris from the Not Another Bomb coalition to Harris at the time. “This decisive action will reinforce the administration’s commitment to democracy and human rights, contrasting sharply with the far-right extremism embodied by Trump and his supporters. It sends a clear message that the Democratic Party stands for peace, justice, and the protection of all people, thereby strengthening the coalition needed to secure victory in the 2024 elections and beyond.”

She wouldn’t budge.

At the Democratic National Convention that August, the Uncommitted Movement pushed for a Palestinian speaker to be included. “The difficulty in approving even a single Palestinian American speaker among the dozens of speakers on the convention stage sends a troubling message to our anti-war voters, suggesting they aren’t truly included in this party,” explained a statement from the organization’s founders.

The request was denied.

It’s inaccurate to say the campaign simply ignored these issues. On the contrary, they leaned in from the opposite direction, embracing hawkish former House member Liz Cheney and sending Rep. Ritchie Torres to Michigan, the state with the highest percentage of Arab Americans, to tell voters that Harris would stand with Israel.

There’s a certain kind of centrist pundit who likes to wax sarcastic about the 2024 election and point out that Trump is also an ardent supporter of Israel. The inference is that people concerned about Gaza accomplished nothing by voting against Harris.

However, this brand of snark often presupposes that people fed up with the genocide actually voted. Yes, some people backed Trump because they irrationally believed that the guy currently bombing Iran was antiwar, but the actual number of people that foolish is presumably negligible. Much hay is also made over the Green Party, but Jill Stein got fewer than 900,000 votes and thus had no discernible impact on the ultimate result.

One of the biggest stories of the 2024 race is how many people stayed home.

“The most telling fact in this race is the drop in voter turnout,” wrote Mitchell Plitnick days after the election, pointing out that Harris netted millions less votes than Biden did in 2020.

“Theories will emerge, but the cause of Harris’ disastrous failure will forever be debated,” he wrote. “Still, there are good reasons to believe the Middle East in general and Gaza in particular played a significant role.”

“Nobody is going to get excited about the ‘politics of joy’ and ‘endless brat summer’ when they’re watching a kid raising his hands while he’s being burned to death attached to an IV,” political consultant Peter Feld told me at the time. “It pretty much puts an end to any of the vibes that they were trying to run on.”

“I don’t think you can explain this election without explaining the non-voters, and I think some of the post-election polling that’s come out and attempts to explain it by talking to voters is going to miss this story,” he continued. “If you haven’t spoken to non-voters, you haven’t explained the election.”

Insofar as polling exists on this issue, it backs up the assertions of Plitnick and Feld. A January 2025 YouGov survey found that 2020 Biden voters who stayed home in 2024 cited Gaza as the top reason.

If you need further proof that Gaza hurt Harris at the polls, just look at what’s happened since November 2024. Israel critics are prevailing in Democratic primaries, and groups like AIPAC have become entirely toxic, and support for Israel has plummeted to historic lows amid the war on Iran. A recent NBC News poll found that just 32% of U.S. voters view Israel positively, which is down from 47% in 2023.

It’s difficult to overstate the incompetence of the DNC, but leaving this kind of stuff out of the “autopsy” report certainly feels like much more than oversight. Officials formerly connected to Biden and Harris are openly admitting as much.

“What’s important is what’s missing, what they’re not releasing,” Harris’s former communications director, Ashley Etienne, told Politico. “It feels like what the DNC is doing is cherry-picking the parts of it that it wants to actually release, that [are] less problematic for the party going forward.”

It’s an oversimplification to say Gaza is what cost the Democrats the election. There are multiple factors in every presidential race, and many of them have nothing to do with foreign policy. However, ignoring the genocide’s obvious impact on voters is malpractice and suggests that Democratic leadership could be poised to repeat the same mistakes in 2028.

As the US Justice Department indicted former Cuban President Raúl Castro on Wednesday in what could be a prelude to military action, the Cuban government denounced the US for “cruel and ruthless aggression.”

The 94-year-old Castro, who served as Cuba’s leader until 2021 after taking over for his brother Fidel in 2008, was indicted on one count of conspiracy to kill US nationals for his alleged role in the shooting down of planes operated by the anti-Castro Cuban exile group Brothers to the Rescue in 1996, which resulted in the deaths of four Cuban Americans.

“For nearly 30 years, the families of four murdered Americans have waited for justice,” acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said as he announced the charges at Miami’s Freedom Tower. “My message today is clear: The United States and President Trump does not and will not forget its citizens.”

While Blanche described the four men as “unarmed civilians,” the Cuban government said the group had repeatedly violated its sovereign airspace and that it had warned the US government before shooting down the plane.

Declassified documents from a month before the incident show that officials in the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) viewed the Brothers’ activities as “taunting” and feared the Cuban government might shoot a plane down.

“Is a sovereign state like Cuba obligated to tolerate illegal and continuous incursions into its territory? Under no circumstances,” the Cuban embassy in the US said in a statement published on Wednesday on social media. “International law and global civil aviation conventions protect the sovereignty of nations over their airspace.”

“When formal warnings to the [International Civil Aviation Organization], the FAA, and political authorities are sustainedly ignored, the defense of borders and national security becomes an unavoidable duty for the protection of the country.”

✈️🇨🇺 MythBreakers: Exposing the Brothers to the Rescue hoax

Is a sovereign State like Cuba obligated to tolerate illegal and continuous incursions into its territory?

Under no circumstances. International law and global civil aviation conventions protect the sovereignty of… pic.twitter.com/p9UC0shT95

— Cuban Embassy in US (@EmbaCubaUS) May 20, 2026

The indictment comes as the Trump administration issues threats that have been widely interpreted as signals that another military regime change operation could soon be on the horizon, following the administration’s attacks on Venezuela and Iran already this year.

“CUBA IS NEXT! Thank you [President Donald Trump] and [Secretary of State Marco Rubio]!” cheered US Rep. Carlos Giminez (R-Fla.), one of many Miami-based politicians who have called for aggressive action by the Trump administration against Cuba in recent days.

He was responding to a video posted by Rubio on Wednesday directed at the Cuban people in which he again denied that the crippling oil blockade imposed on Cuba by Trump bore any responsibility for the economic ruin the island’s population currently faces.

After effectively cutting off Cuba’s primary supplier of oil in January when the US conducted its illegal operation to abduct Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, Trump threatened to impose steep tariffs on any country that provided oil to Cuba, scaring off its other main suppliers, including Mexico, Russia, and Algeria. Last week, Cuba’s energy minister announced that the country had “absolutely no fuel oil, no diesel.”

🇺🇸🇨🇺 pic.twitter.com/nwEePVJ1lX

— Secretary Marco Rubio (@SecRubio) May 20, 2026

But Rubio told the Cuban people in Spanish on Wednesday: “The reason you are forced to survive 22 hours a day without electricity is not due to an oil ‘blockade’ by the US. As you know better than anyone else, you have been suffering from blackouts for years. The real reason you don’t have electricity, fuel, or food is that those who control your country have plundered billions of dollars, but nothing has been used to help the people.”

He specifically laid the blame at the feet of the accused, the military-run company Grupo de Administración Empresarial S.A. (GAESA), founded by Raúl Castro in the 1990s following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The company has come to control large swathes of the Cuban economy, from hotels and grocery stores to gas stations and banks, and is estimated to control between 40-70% of Cuba’s overall economy, according to a recent New York Times report—though the secrecy of the organization makes it difficult to determine its true value.

Rubio said that the entrepreneurs running GAESA “have $18 billion in assets and control 70% of Cuba’s economy,” which was first reported by the Miami Herald last year based on balance sheets obtained from the company. But the Cuban government and other critics have disputed this figure, arguing that it actually refers to Cuban pesos, which would make its holdings closer to about $746 million.

Regardless, Rubio omitted any mention of the fact that even prior to the oil blockade enacted in January by Trump, the US still had a strict trade embargo in place against Cuba for more than 60 years, which the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America has estimated cost the country more than $130 billion since it was imposed—more than the total gross domestic product of the entire country in 2020.

Rubio said on Wednesday the US was ready to open a “new chapter” with Cuba, but that the thing getting in the way was “those who control their country.”

Rubio now full Orwellian: the total blockade that we have put on your country after decades of an embargo has nothing to do with the scarcity in your lives or the fact that we are intentionally starving your children. https://t.co/OLLHJfyo3E

— Ben Rhodes (@brhodes) May 20, 2026

In light of Trump’s persistent suggestions that he wants to “take” Cuba and “do anything I want with it,” the Cuban government described Rubio’s message as one meant to justify further US coercion.

“The reason why the US secretary of state lies so repeatedly and unscrupulously when referring to Cuba and trying to justify the aggression to which he subjects the Cuban people is not ignorance or incompetence,” said Carlos Fernández de Cossío, the deputy minister for foreign affairs in Cuba, in a social media post on Wednesday. “He knows full well that there is no excuse for such a cruel and ruthless aggression.”

Last week, the US offered to give Cuba $100 million in humanitarian assistance to deal with the crisis it has imposed through its oil blockade, but only if it agrees to “meaningful reforms” and “fundamental changes” to its government that would allow greater access to US companies.

Cuba’s current president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, contended that an easier way to alleviate Cuba’s suffering would be “by lifting or easing the blockade, as it is well known that the humanitarian situation is coldly calculated and induced.”

Update (2:00 pm ET): This story was updated to include comments from acting US Attorney General Todd Blanche following the announcement of a formal indictment on Wednesday.

Palestine defenders decried Tuesday’s announcement by the Trump administration of US sanctions targeting four nonviolent campaigners involved in the recent humanitarian flotillas that tried to break Israel’s illegal siege of Gaza.

The US Department of the Treasury said in a statement that its Office of Foreign Assets Control “is taking action against four individuals associated with the pro-Hamas flotilla organized by the US-designated Popular Conference for Palestinians Abroad (PCPA) that is attempting to access Gaza in support of Hamas.”

The sanctioned individuals are Saif Abu Keshek, a Palestinian with Spanish and Swedish citizenship and PCPA leader who helped organize and lead Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF) missions; Jordan-based PCPA president Hisham Abdallah Sulayman Abu Mahfuz; Mohammed Khatib, who is based in Belgium and is the European coordinator for Samidoun, the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network; and Jaldia Abubakra Aueda, Samidoun’s coordinator in Madrid.

This latest weaponization of US dominance over global banking and finance and tech monopolies in service of Israel follows the sanctions placed on four leading Palestinian human rights groups and 11 elected officials of the @IntlCrimCourt as well as Francesca Albanese

— Maureen Murphy (@maureenclarem) May 19, 2026

“The pro-terror flotilla attempting to reach Gaza is a ludicrous attempt to undermine President [Donald] Trump’s successful progress toward lasting peace in the region,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement Tuesday. “Treasury will continue to sever Hamas’ global financial support networks, no matter where in the world they are.”

There is no substantiated evidence that the Gaza flotillas are linked to Hamas. Meanwhile, United Nations experts, numerous national governments, human rights groups, and experts say Israel is perpetrating genocide, apartheid, colonization, occupation, and ethnic cleansing against Palestinians.

Samidoun called the sanctions—which freeze any of the targets’ US assets and ban Americans from doing business with them—“the latest manifestation of the ongoing US genocidal war on the Palestinian people” and pointed to Israel’s ongoing violent interception and seizure of GSF vessels on the high seas off the coast of Gaza.

“Today’s sanctions by the US come hand-in-hand with today’s Israeli piracy of the Global Sumud Flotilla and the Freedom Flotilla, and the abduction of hundreds of international activists at sea,” the group said in a statement. “All of these sanctions targeting Palestinian organizations, not only those targeting us, are aiding and abetting genocide.”

Since the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023, the Biden and Trump administrations have supported Israel with tens of billions of dollars worth of armed aid and diplomatic cover, including vetoes of numerous United Nations Security Council Gaza ceasefire resolutions. Total US financial support for Israel since it was founded in 1948—largely via the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Arabs—is approaching $300 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars.

Since returning to office, Trump has cracked down on pro-Palestinian activists, students, organizations, and foreign nationals. Critics—including advocacy groups, academics, and some judges—have condemned what they have called attacks on free speech, association, and academic freedom.

The Trump administration has sanctioned International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan and other numerous other ICC jurists after the Hague-based tribunal issued warrants for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. The ICC also issued arrest warrants for three Hamas leaders who were killed by Israeli attacks.

On Tuesday, far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said that the ICC is also seeking his arrest, and that he would “fight back” by ordering the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of Palestinians from their homes in the illegally occupied West Bank.

The US administration has also sanctioned independent UN Palestine expert Francesca Albanese and her family—a move that was temporarily blocked earlier this month by a federal judge who asserted that the Italian humanitarian “has done nothing more than speak.”

“Every time Palestinians and their supporters organize internationally, Washington reaches for the terrorism label to shut them down,” Isabelle Hayslip, advocacy manager at Democracy for the Arab World Now, told Al Jazeera on Tuesday. “The net keeps widening. Palestinian diaspora communities now live under constant threat of designation for demanding their rights.”