R.I.P. Curtis Flowers

Saturday was World Day Against the Death Penalty. Susan and I attended a powerful, emotional anti-DP forum at the National Public Housing Museum. The room was packed, and stories from former death row inmates Renaldo Hudson, Stanley Howard, Ronnie Kitchen, and anti-DP organizer Alice Kim were uplifting and hopeful.

Renaldo will be my guest on Hitting Left this Friday (see below).

The forum prepared me for the story in this morning’s papers about Curtis Flowers’ death. The exact cause of death is under investigation, but an attorney who represented him during multiple appeals, eventually leading to his exoneration and release from death row, said he struggled with diabetes the entire time – a condition that isn’t easy to manage in prison.

Flowers, 56, was found dead Wednesday at his family home in Winona, Mississippi, leaving behind siblings, a daughter and grandchildren. He was convicted of four counts of capital murder, but he always maintained his innocence. That led to a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case about racial bias in jury selection. Decades of legal work led to his release from prison in 2019.

In his most recent trial, Flowers was convicted for the 1996 killings of four people and sentenced to death. His lawyers appealed the conviction to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in 2019 that the former Montgomery County District Attorney Doug Evans unconstitutionally kept Black people from serving on the jury. Evans is nationally known for his documented pattern of excluding Black jurors, which led the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Flowers’ conviction.

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Flowers’ death lands in the middle of a suddenly super‑charged death‑penalty moment, and the Trump/Hegseth “livestream execution” of the Ft. Hood shooter, Nidal Malik Hasan. Curtis Flowers’ death should force a reckoning. Not just with Doug Evans, not just with Mississippi, but with the system that made his life disposable. And yet the loudest objections this week aren’t about that system at all. They’re about the livestream. Republicans and Democrats are suddenly aghast at the idea of watching an execution, while remaining perfectly comfortable with the machinery that produces one.

Flowers’ story is the death penalty stripped of spectacle — twenty‑three years of racist jury strikes, coerced witnesses, junk forensics, and a prosecutor who never paid a price. That’s what capital punishment looks like when it isn’t staged. It’s slow violence. Administrative violence. Violence carried out in courtrooms and DA offices, where no one has to see it.

* * *

And it’s not just Flowers. In Tennessee, the state is preparing to execute Christa Gail Pike for a second time after the first attempt failed — a botched lethal injection that left her strapped to a gurney while officials scrambled to fix their own incompetence. The outrage has been loud, but it’s telling: people are horrified that the execution was botched, not that the state is determined to finish the job. The moral objection is to the malfunction, not the killing.

Hitting Left — This Friday at 11 a.m. CDT

This Friday, I’ll be talking capital punishment and death row survival with Renaldo Hudson — a death row survivor, Chicago activist, and one of the clearest voices on what the death penalty actually does to people, communities, and democracy. Hudson spent decades inside Illinois’ death row before the state abolished it.

We’ll dig into how the death penalty is being revived, reframed, and weaponized — and why the bipartisan recoil from “spectacle” avoids the deeper truth: the machinery itself is the spectacle.

Tune in Friday at 11 a.m. CDT on Lumpen Radio WLPN 105.5 FM Chicago or stream at lumpenradio.com.

Weekend Quotables

Markwayne Mullin, Secretary of Homeland Security

BRENNAN: Nidal Hasan is in a wheelchair. Doesn’t the administration risk livestreaming this and making him a martyr? Couldn’t this be a risk to the homeland?

MARKWAYNE MULLIN: No one has to watch it

BRENNAN: Well then why are you livestreaming it?

MULLIN: The president is restoring American values — Face The Nation

Sister Helen Prejean

Violence against those we hate and call “enemies” seems to be a way of life for us. Killing enemies is seen as morally good, “American,” even “redemptive.” Government killings in execution chambers normalize legalized killing. The justification is that, supposedly, executions of their loved one’s killers help murder victims’ families heal. — FB

NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani

Mamdani said ICE agents involved in the Marble Hill shooting looked more like a “mass shooter” than identifiable federal law enforcement. “I believe what they have shown, time and time again, is that they view the law as a suggestion.” — MS NOW

Mahmoud Khalil, author and Columbia University pro-Palestinian activist

Khalil urged pro-Palestinian protesters in New York to keep holding Mayor Zohran Mamdani accountable, but criticized those calling him a “genocide enabler,” warning that such accusations diminish the meaning of genocide.

“That takes away so much from the word genocide,” Khalil said, comparing the accusation directed at the New York mayor to the way Israel’s supporters indiscriminately invoke antisemitism. — Drop Site News

Sen. Chris Murphy

“Donald Trump was so fundamentally unprepared for this war that within days of the war starting, our billion-dollar air bases and naval bases in the region were obliterated by the Iranians. Every single American should be furious about that.” — Face the Nation

Texas Senate candidate James Talarico

I’ve heard credible reports that Ken Paxton has a serious medical condition that causes clinical levels of cowardice. People are concerned. He’s asked me for proof of life. I’m asking for proof of spine from him. — MS Now

Steve Bannon

Bannon issues warning to voters if they vote for Democrats in the midterms: “I think you’ll see Bobby Kennedy impeached; I think you’ll see Pete Hegseth impeached. I think you’ll see subpoenas flying every day. They will look to destroy President Trump, and we’ll be bogged down for two years.” — CBS Sunday Morning segment with Ted Koppel

IF ONLY…

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I never underestimate the Democratic Party’s ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, as they did in 2016 and ‘24. Democrats lose winnable elections not because voters suddenly love Trump and the GOP, but because the party repeatedly misreads power, mismanages conflict, and fears its left flank more than it does Trump.

It’s a simple proposition, really. A united progressive movement will result in a blue wave in November. But that implies a willingness by Democratic leaders to maintain unity, to stay focused, and not turn the next few weeks into an ism-schism. I suppose the same thing could be said about some of the left sectarians as well.

DNC leader Donna Brazile couldn’t resist. In an opinion piece in the Washington Post on Monday, Brazile reassured the party’s liberal donors that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has things under control and “will not let democratic socialists turn America into a communist nation if he becomes Speaker.”

She adds:

Contrary to ridiculous fearmongering by President Donald Trump, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) will not let democratic socialists turn America into a communist nation if he becomes Speaker. And he won’t let them control the House, either.

Here is one of the most powerful Democratic leaders, sitting at the DNC table along with Jeffries, controlling the distribution of party money and resources, and actually echoing Trump’s anti-socialist fearmongering.

Brazile and DNC better keep their eyes on the prize, or they will lose the party’s youth base, which has elected progressives over the centrists time and time again in recent elections.

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The Courage to say what’s true

“The suffering did not begin nor end that day,” the mayor said, referring to Oct. 7, adding: “That suffering has intensified with every Israeli bomb dropped on ambulances waiting outside hospitals, every drone strike targeting a residential building or journalist, and every shipment of food aid turned away at a border crossing.”

Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s October 7 statement was everything the AIPAC crowd fears: courageous, factual, and honest. The pro-Israel backlash that followed was loud and faithfully echoed by the New York media. But it will ring hollow to most of Mamdani’s supporters. The argument that the speech was ill-timed on a day when Jews were commemorating the Hamas attack didn’t hold up since it was given at the same time dozens of Gazans were killed by the IDF and on a day when Palestinian olive tree farms were being set ablaze by West Bank settlers.

The real problem for them was that Mamdani dared to go where the Democratic leadership fears to tread, calling Israel’s assault on Gaza a “genocide.”

But he also left room for the mourning of the Israeli civilians killed on October 7. For this, he’s being slammed by some leftists for selling out the Palestinians. I couldn’t disagree more. I may not have phrased it the way the Mamdani did, but then again I’m not the elected mayor of the country’s most ethnically diverse city and trying to keep the war from coming home.

Mainly, the Mayor mourned the thousands more Palestinian civilians killed in Gaza. And he named the structural violence that produced the mounting death toll. That’s not radical. That’s human‑rights language, the same language used by the UN, the ICJ, and every major human‑rights organization on earth.

New Yorkers understood this long before the political machine did. His voters knew his views. They elected him precisely because he speaks plainly in human terms, refuses false symmetry, and treats foreign policy as inseparable from domestic justice. They didn’t elect a man who puts his finger up in the wind before he speaks.

And that’s why his base remains solid.

The coalition that carried him into office — immigrant working‑class neighborhoods, Muslim civic institutions, progressive Jewish anti‑occupation networks, tenant unions, DSA/WFP organizers, anti‑machine reformers, and younger voters — is not fragile as the Wall Street Journal claims today. It is not donor‑dependent. It is not built on symbolic politics. It is built on material need, structural analysis, and movement discipline. These people don’t evaporate every time the Zionist right gets angry.

Mamdani wasn’t elected by accident, and he was elected in a landslide by people who understood his politics. His coalition knew exactly who he was and chose him because of it. The machine attacking him now is the same machine he beat, and they’re still furious that he beat them.

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Bernie and Ro Khanna lead the way on Prop 40

Prop 40 is the 2026 California ballot measure that would impose a one‑time 5% tax on the net worth of billionaires living in that state, with an expected revenue of tens of billions of dollars over several years overwhelmingly directed to public health care.

You would think a wealth tax on billionaires would make Democrats swoon, right? And they are swooning, at least at the base. According to a late-September Los Angeles Times/UC Berkeley poll, 65% of the state’s Democrats back the measure.

Support for 40 also comes from healthcare worker unions (SEIU‑UHW), Bernie Sanders, Ro Khanna (D-CA), California DSA, California Nurses United, and the state Teamsters Union.

But the top of the party, from Gov. Gavin Newsom on down, opposes the measure. Only Khanna and Sanders have been willing to stump for it.

Why? My guess is that California Democratic pols, who rely heavily on wealthy tech, entertainment, and finance donors, have been told by party leaders to back off.

As you might expect, opposition mainly comes from right-wing billionaires like Sergey Brin, Peter Thiel, and other tech/finance figures — who have collectively poured hundreds of millions into defeating it. They’ve placed two other measures on the same ballot — Prop 41 and Prop 42 — designed to neutralize Prop 40 if they pass with more votes.

Economic Times reports that Brin has committed $102 million against a proposed tax that could potentially cost him around $13 billion if approved. With significant opposition funding exceeding $187 million, support for the tax stands at about $32 million. Governor Gavin Newsom and other billionaires have joined Brin in the campaign against the tax.

Prop 40 exposes the long‑running divide inside the Party. Progressives want structural redistribution (wealth taxes, Medicare for All, public investment).

Centrist Democrats prefer income‑tax tweaks, corporate‑tax reforms, and federal‑level changes, not state‑level wealth taxes that could frighten their donors. .

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“Day after day, the brave men and women of ICE are removing the worst of the worst from American communities…killers, rapists, and thieves…We are sending a very clear message: Illegal aliens are not welcome in the U.S.” — Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin

Trump has repeatedly claimed that ICE is “going after the worst of the worst.”

At his dog-whistle rallies, he speaks about the countless “dangerous criminals,” including murderers, rapists, and child predators from around the world, he says, who entered the U.S. illegally under the Biden administration. He promises to expel millions of migrants in the largest deportation program in American history to protect law-abiding citizens from the violent threats he says they pose.

But the government’s data on ongoing detentions tell a different story. The latest ICE statistics show that as of June 29, ICE had detained 57,861 people, 41,495 — 71.7% — of whom had no criminal convictions.

Compared with the U.S. population as a whole, roughly 1 in 3 American adults has a criminal record (arrest or conviction). Over 1.2 million people are incarcerated in prisons, plus 700,000 in jails. It’s the largest prison population in the world, by far.

So ICE’s detainee population is far less “criminal” than the general public. Not only that, but detained immigrants have far fewer criminal convictions than ICE agents themselves.

ICE Leadership Arrests & Criminal Charges (Documented Cases)

• James Woosley — Former ICE Deputy Director

  Charged with fraud and theft (DOJ, 2020).

  Accused of stealing government money through a kickback scheme.

  Pleaded guilty to federal charges.

• Raymond D. J. Robinson — ICE Supervisory Deportation Officer

  Arrested for child sexual abuse (DOJ, 2019).

  Charged with multiple felonies.

• Anthony J. Perry — ICE Contract Supervisor

  Arrested for rape of detainees (LA Times, DOJ filings).

  Multiple counts of sexual assault.

• ICE Officer Wilfredo Rodriguez — ICE Supervisor

  Arrested for bribery and extortion (DOJ, 2018).

  Took cash bribes to release detainees.

These are not low‑level guards — they include supervisors, field leaders, and a deputy director.

Several reports show ICE has been hiring thousands of new agents without proper vetting, lowering standards, and bringing on people with financial problems, prior misconduct, failed police academy attempts, and even falsified reports. These sources show that ICE’s “worst of the worst” rhetoric is contradicted not only by detainee data, but by ICE’s own hiring practices. The agency has been recruiting people with worse records than the supposed criminal immigrants they detain.

* * *

ICE assigns each detainee a threat level on a scale of 1 to 3, with 1 being the highest. Those without a criminal record are classified as having "no ICE threat level." As of June 23, the latest data available, 84% of people detained at 201 facilities nationwide were not given a threat level. Another 7% were graded as a level 1 threat, 4% as level 2, and 5% as level 3.

Of course, being considered a “threat” by ICE is not the same as due process under the law. The great majority of people detained by ICE with no due process have no criminal convictions. Of those who do, relatively few have been convicted of high-level crimes. This stands in stark contrast to the chilling nightmare Trump describes to support his border security agenda.

The fact is, across many towns and cities, families — not just immigrant families — say they felt safer before armed, masked ICE teams began storming neighborhoods, tear-gassing homes and schools, and grabbing people off the street and detaining them indefinitely.

* * *

Research and reporting consistently show that ICE raids affect entire neighborhoods, not just the people ICE is targeting.

• Schools report drops in attendance after raids — including among U.S.-born kids.

• Local businesses lose customers because people avoid public spaces.

• Neighbors report fear of mistaken identity, collateral arrests, or simply being caught in the chaos.

• Police chiefs in multiple cities have said ICE raids make their jobs harder because residents become afraid to report crimes or cooperate with investigations.

• Community surveys show that non‑immigrant residents often describe raids as destabilizing, frightening, and disruptive.

Their sense of safety dropped not because crime rose, but because the raids themselves introduced more fear, instability, and deaths into daily life.

Why the deportation rush?

Total ICE arrests shot up at the end of May after White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller gave the agency a quota of 3,000 arrests a day, up from 650 a day in the first five months of Trump’s second term.

Multiple October 2026 polls, including NBC/Telemundo and Reuters/Ipsos, report Trump’s approval among Latino voters at 24-27%, down sharply from his nearly 50% share in the 2024 election amid concerns over the economy, inflation, and immigration enforcement.

ICE raids have well‑documented effects that suppress Latino political participation — fear, instability, and community disruption. And on the flip side, there is a clear political connection between rising ICE raids targeting Latinos and declining Latino support for Republicans.

Isn’t it clear that one of the purposes of the raids is to eliminate Latino voters?

Here’s who they mean by “the worst of the worst”

Aminata “Amina” Seck, a 26‑year‑old Senegalese student-athlete and center for Kentucky State University, was detained by ICE on August 7 at Louisville’s Muhammad Ali International Airport while traveling with her team to an HBCU tournament.

She has no criminal record.

She has been moved between multiple detention facilities, sometimes receiving only ibuprofen for serious injuries, including an ACL tear and seizures. Seck’s family and friends haven’t been able to see her in person since she was detained.

A judge has reopened her case, meaning the removal order is no longer final. Yet ICE continues to hold her.

Why this is so egregious

—She’s a student-athlete with documented medical needs, not a threat to anyone.

—Her removal order was rescinded by a judge, but ICE is still detaining her.

—Her health is deteriorating in custody, including seizures and an ACL injury requiring surgery.

—She was detained while traveling with her team, not hiding, not absconding — literally boarding a plane with coaches and teammates.

—ICE’s own narrative contradicts itself, insisting she “overstayed” while ignoring medical evidence and the reopened case.

The best of the best?

Amina Seck isn’t just not the “worst of the worst.” She may be the best of the best — a student‑athlete, a teammate, a community member, someone whose removal order was rescinded. She has no criminal convictions, is a college athlete, and is deeply rooted in her community.

This is wrong on so many levels. Free Amina!

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Iran will cease to exist if its leaders do not sign a peace deal with the U.S. — President Trump threatened Thursday.

“No stupid rules of engagement… no politically correct wars. We fight to win, and we don’t waste time or lives.” — Sec. of War Pete Hegseth

When white phosphorus rains down…

…on Lebanese schools and children, the crime isn’t in dispute —only the willingness to name it a war crime and hold the criminals accountable.

Human Rights Watch and Harvard’s International Human Rights Clinic have verified 23 separate Israeli white‑phosphorus attacks across southern Lebanon between March and May 2026. These include airbursts over residential neighborhoods, farmland, and towns such as Yohmor and Khiam. In these incidents, children were among the injured, especially from smoke inhalation and embedded WP particles.

White phosphorus ignites on contact with oxygen, burns at >2300°F, sticks to skin, clothing, and bone, and produces toxic smoke that damages the eyes and lungs.

The Israeli offensive in Lebanon has killed at least 4,386 victims, wounded 12,407, and displaced more than 1 million others since early March, according to Lebanese authorities.

Many of Israel’s white phosphorus artillery shells are U.S.-made, and the markings documented in Lebanon match American WP munition designations. The human rights organization Medico International published a report titled “Cartographies of Destruction: Israel’s War Against Lebanon. Alongside numerous alleged war crimes, the report also documents the repeated use of white phosphorus by Israel in Lebanon. According to the report, this substance also originates from Monsanto.

Jan Pehrke of the CBG stated: “There is strong evidence that phosphorus used in the Middle East war comes from Bayer’s glyphosate production facility in Soda Springs in the United States.”

This makes Trump, Hegseth and company complicit in Israel’s latest round of war crimes.

* * *

Palestine Fest: The fourth annual festival brought together a peaceful crowd celebrating Palestinian culture in Bridgeview. It also drew the attention of a small group of far-right protesters led by Jake Lang, who clashed with a much larger crowd of counter-protesters outside a gas station near the stadium.

Lang is a far‑right activist, a January 6 rioter (pardoned by Trump) and a violent, antisemite.

Weekend Quotables

Donald Trump

“We’re gonna shove it up their ass... They are a bunch of dumb sons of a bitches.” — Ohio rally

Robert Reich

I know Rahm Emanuel. I worked with him for years in the Clinton administration, and then when he was Obama’s chief of staff. Rahm Emanuel represents everything that’s been wrong about the Democratic Party for the last 30+ years. Be warned. — The Rahm Bomb

ACLU/Amnesty Report

Thousands of pro-Palestine students were arrested on US college campuses as part of a “widespread, McCarthyite censorship and retaliation campaign,” a new report has found. While the crackdown began under former President Joe Biden, things escalated after Trump returned to power. The report describes an “ideological deportation policy” targeting non-U.S. citizens, with officials admitting that “any criticism of Israel could merit immigration consequences. — ACLU Report

Paul Krugman

And I shouldn’t omit the tragic fate of Simon Andriesz, the British banker and whistleblower, who recently died by suicide. Andriesz revealed to the Senate that Lutnick had lied about the extent of his ties to Jeffrey Epstein. Right before his death, Andriesz spoke openly about how threats to himself and his family as a result of his testimony had ruined his life. — The Banker

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Here’s the latest from Hitting Left radio

On this edition of Hitting Left, we’re joined by two legendary Chicago filmmakers — Floyd Webb and Peter Kuttner — artists whose work has shaped how this city tells its stories. Webb, known for his decades documenting Black Chicago’s cultural and political life, and Kuttner, a longtime member of the Kartemquin collective, bring sharp eyes, sharp politics, and a deep commitment to community filmmaking.

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Imperial Trump has now been given the very thing he spent two years threatening to take at gunpoint: a sweeping U.S.–Denmark–Greenland security pact that expands American military rights on the island and gives the U.S. long‑term leverage over Greenland’s strategic resources, especially rare earths. It’s all being done under the banner of “security.” This neo-colonial agreement includes a clause barring any “U.S. adversary” from making “sensitive investments” in Greenland without American approval.

The U.S. plans to open two military bases in Greenland as part of the broader deal.

Trump described the agreement as giving Washington permanent control over Greenland’s security. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen called it “a deal that [could] last forever,” while Greenland Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen said it “strengthens our shared security.”

“Last forever?” I doubt it. Nothing does.

Strengthens shared security? I doubt that too. Here’s why…

* * *

Sometimes 1 is better than 800.

The U.S. already has 800 foreign military bases, costing taxpayers upwards of $100B/year. Beyond land bases, a major part of the U.S. war strategy comes from naval deployments. The U.S. Navy operates 11 aircraft carriers, most of which spend large portions of the year deployed in regions far from American waters. About 170,000–190,000 U.S. troops are stationed on foreign soil, and roughly 60,000–80,000 are at sea on deployed Navy ships at any given time.

It’s worth asking: Why does the U.S. need more military bases in Greenland when it already has more than 800 bases worldwide? China has one foreign base in Djibouti, opened in 2017 near the Bab el‑Mandeb Strait — a chokepoint for global trade and a hub for anti‑piracy, logistics, and “far seas” naval operations.

So which number makes a country safer and more secure — 800 or 1?

My answer would be 1. China doesn’t have or need 800 foreign bases because it is not an imperialist power in the U.S. sense of the term. It doesn’t have to spend trillions on fighting endless, unwinnable wars thousands of miles from home.

Without that burden, a country can do things like this.

China just crossed a historic line: more than 1,000 gigawatts of installed solar power, making solar—not coal—the biggest part of its energy system by sheer capacity. China is advancing solar panels and power faster than any other country on earth. It now installs more solar annually than the entire U.S. has in total.

Coal still produces more electricity overall, but the direction is unmistakable: solar now covers nearly a third of China’s power base, backed by huge investments in batteries and grid upgrades.

By contrast, the U.S. under Trump is moving in the opposite direction, with federal policy centered on expanding oil, gas, and coal while rolling back support for renewable energy. His administration has halted or delayed multiple wind projects, suspended offshore renewable leases, and emphasized fossil‑fuel extraction as the core of U.S. energy strategy. The result is a widening gap: China is building a fast, flexible, solar‑heavy grid, while the U.S. is doubling down on fossil fuels.

In the end, the question isn’t abstract: what actually makes a country secure? An archipelago of 800 foreign bases scattered across the planet, each one a liability in an age of drones and precision missiles? Or a domestic capacity to build energy independence, industrial resilience, and long‑term stability?

The U.S. has spent decades equating a giant military machine with power and security. China has taken the opposite path: a strong military for homeland security, with only one base abroad, and massive investment in renewable energy at home. Security isn’t about isms or how many flags you plant overseas — it’s about how your society can grow and prosper in peace.

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We have the machinery of democracy, but we lack the habits of democracy.” — John Dewey

Chicago — The promise was simple. Give CPS parents, teachers, and community members real representation, as we tried to do with elected Local School Councils (LSCs) back in the ‘80s. We made a powerful case back then to junk mayoral control of Chicago’s schools and replace then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s hand-picked school board with a representative, elected board.

After years of struggle, we finally won. An alliance of union activists, teachers, and community-based organizations took Rahm and his machine candidates to the woodshed.

But instead, we now have a split labor movement, and an oversized school board that’s just another playground for billionaires like Rahm’s money guy, Michael Sacks, and the city’s big-money interests.

The legislation contained no campaign‑finance limits for school‑board races, making retail politics expensive. Existing political machines were eager to extend influence into CPS governance. Local board elections became high-stakes with control over a $9B school system, labor contracts, charter authorizations, and real estate decisions hanging in the balance.

A 21‑member board behaves exactly like political scientists would predict: too large to coordinate, too easy for moneyed interests to colonize, and too fragmented to produce coherent policy. Once you enlarge a governing body past the point of coherent deliberation, you don’t get “more democracy.” You get stable blocs, whip‑style politics, and outside actors (billionaires, charter school lobbyists, PACs) who can cheaply dominate clusters of seats rather than persuade a majority.

Chicago didn’t get a democratically elected school board. Chicago got a politically elected school board, which is a very different creature.

* * *

Here’s the latest…

This fall, Chicago voters are choosing members for the city’s first fully elected school board. 20 board seats are up for grabs, and voters citywide will pick a board president. Early voting starts Oct. 1.

Voters will vote for members of the city’s first fully elected school board. Every eligible Chicagoan can cast two votes (yes, two!)—one for a candidate in your school board district, based on your home address, and a second for school board president.

• Billionaire and Democratic megadonor Michael Sacks sent a cease-and-desist letter to a company paying social media influencers for videos discussing his involvement in Chicago politics, documents the Tribune obtained show.

• Mayor Johnson also told a crowd that other mayoral candidates have taken money “from AIPAC and Michael Sacks and corporate interests,” an effort to link Sacks to the pro-Israel American Israel Public Affairs Committee that does not spend money in local races.

• The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) have split their endorsements in the historic election for Chicago’s first fully elected school board president.

• SEIU Illinois State Council transferred $1.1 million to a new independent expenditure group last week, gearing up to spend big in Chicago’s school board race as the rift with its onetime ally-turned-rival, the Chicago Teachers Union, escalates publicly.

• The contribution to super PAC Brighter Futures Chicago last week came days before CTU Vice President Jackson Potter and SEIU Illinois Executive Director Anthony Driver traded blows in a social media exchange over Chicago Public Schools’ controversial budget. Driver created Brighter Futures Chicago last month.

See much democracy here? Me neither.

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Marie posts on Substack and co-hosts a radio show on WCPT 820 AM in Chicago, where she appears on a recurring segment, Ignore At Your Risk. It airs Sundays at 9:10 a.m. on WCPT 820.

* * *

Hitting Left Music for 10/18/26.

You can catch every past edition of Hitting Left at Libsyn.com, or wherever you get your podcasts. Stay connected with us on the Hitting Left Facebook page and follow my political scribblings over at Substack.com.

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I’m still struggling with the idea of banning AI in inner-city schools, especially when wealthy suburban school districts a few miles up the lakeshore from Chicago are developing a comprehensive AI curriculum that merges AI literacy with SEL and digital citizenship and treats AI as part of students’ everyday digital lives.

I understand the widespread fear of AI, especially recursive AI (which essentially learns from itself), and I share some of it. I’m especially worried about its destructive capacity and potential for misuse and overreliance in schools, as well as its use by the military, corporations, and individuals with bad intentions who put profit ahead of human needs.

But trying to ban AI is a fool’s errand. Why? Because, like nuclear energy and smartphones, the horse has already left the barn, and banning it would also cancel out its potential benefits.

Regulation and guardrails, yes, of course. We especially need to stop the uncontrolled expansion of AI data centers. Polls show data centers are widely hated. Opposing a ban on AI does not obligate anyone to accept the wildcat build‑out of hyperscale data centers that are devouring land, water, and power faster than regulators can even count them.

But I think it’s a political mistake to treat AI policy as a binary right now: ban it or let it rip. The real fight is over infrastructure governance. It’s humans working in a profit-driven economy—not machines —that are the problem. If that requires a “slowdown” in AI development, so be it, although I’m not sure what that even means.

But before we start banning AI, let’s also consider its possibilities. Artificial intelligence has great potential to revolutionize global food supplies, accelerate medical breakthroughs, help solve underdevelopment in the Global South, and exponentially scale human knowledge.

* * *

This from China’s Xinhua News Service:

China has rolled out AI-powered weed-killing machines across large farmland areas. Each machine integrates cameras, AI, and lasers. The vision system scans the plants, while AI distinguishes crops from weeds to avoid accidental crop damage. The machine has already been exported to Australia, providing large local farms with a zero-pesticide-residue weed-control solution.

I’m awed by the potential for global agricultural production, mostly free of deadly herbicides. If AI‑guided laser weeders scale globally, it’s not just an upgrade; it’s a revolution in agricultural production, because it changes the mode of weed control, the inputs farmers rely on, and the ecological consequences of farming itself.

Herbicides are a $35–40 billion global market. AI‑laser systems don’t supplement chemicals; they eliminate them. That’s the same magnitude of disruption as tractors replacing draft animals. Farm workers would almost certainly experience longer life spans, lower cancer risk, fewer neurological disorders, and dramatically fewer acute poisonings, because the primary source of occupational exposure disappears. Replacing herbicides with AI‑laser weeders would be one of the most significant occupational‑health improvements in modern agriculture. It would extend farm workers’ lives, reduce chronic disease, and eliminate the most dangerous part of their job. A major benefit could ultimately be eradicating herbicide toxins from the food chain.

Resistance

There’s no doubt that in this country, anti-herbicide technology would meet stiff resistance. In the U.S., AI‑powered, non‑chemical weed‑control would face serious opposition from chemical manufacturers (Bayer makes Round-Up), their trade associations, certain farm‑state legislators, and state regulatory bodies aligned with herbicide interests.

As for the United Farmworkers Union (UFW), I’m guessing that the union would not line up neatly with chemical‑industry resistance or anti‑AI sentiment. Their likely position is mixed — supportive of the health benefits of eliminating agricultural poisons, but cautious about job displacement and the introduction of autonomous machinery.

This matches my concerns as well.

Weekend Quotables

President Donald Trump

Trump dismissed existential warnings about artificial intelligence as a “sick conspiracy” and a “hoax,” asserting that the only guardrails the technology needs are a “strong and smart (high IQ!) president.” — The New Yorker

Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine on Moon warfare

“Our task, my friends, is to adapt right now, so the Joint Force is prepared to fight, endure, and win, in global contested environments, from the seabed to cislunar space.” Caine later repeated the thought—“today’s modern battlefield operates from the seabed to cislunar space”—but he did not clarify whether he meant on the moon’s surface. — Defense One

Gov. JB Pritzker

The Governor used a national TV appearance Sunday to sound an alarm about artificial intelligence, warning that the biggest risk may come from AI systems that eventually learn and improve on their own.

It should be noted that the Pritzker family is heavily invested in AI, and that as governor, J.B. Pritzker has overseen $430 million in state and federal‑aligned funding for AI‑related scientific infrastructure since 2020.

“We’re talking about recursive AI: that is the biggest concern,” Pritzker told ABC’s Jonathan Karl during a pre-taped interview on “This Week.” “That is that AI that essentially learns from itself and doesn’t need human beings anymore, and I think that’s what we all need to be concerned with.”

The governor said Illinois is exploring ways to use the technology to improve efficiency, including examining years of Medicaid data for potential savings. He added that he personally uses AI to check what policy measures are being proposed around the country. “I happen to use Claude,” he said.

Brett Chase

“The Metropolitan Water Reclamation District would like to sell recycled sewer water to big data centers that support artificial intelligence. Revenue could be millions of dollars a year.” — Sun-Times

More Trump: “Whoever wins AI, wins.”

“We’re leading China in AI. We’re the most sophisticated country in the world, and frankly I want to keep it that way because whoever wins AI wins.” — Reuters

President Xi

We must pursue extensive international cooperation and help Global South countries build capacity to bridge the AI and digital divides, promote sustainable development, and prevent new historical injustice in AI. China must “ensure that AI is always under human control.” — July 17, 2026 keynote at the World AI Conference

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The Great Irony

I admit, I was a little freaked out seeing Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon on the same stage. Socialists and fascists don’t often do that. I was even more surprised that they found some common ground at the Pro-Human Assembly in DC on Tuesday. But these days, nothing should surprise me.

Each warned the gathering that artificial intelligence is advancing too quickly and that technology companies should not be allowed to make civilization-scale decisions without public accountability. But that shared diagnosis should not obscure a more important difference. AI is a tool whose dangers and benefits depend greatly on who controls it.

Bannon’s political vision is a program for concentrating control in the hands of an exclusionary, white nationalist movement. Sanders’s argument, whatever one thinks of his proposed ban on superintelligent AI, was fundamentally democratic and internationalist. He described runaway AI as a problem for humanity rather than one country and called for diplomacy, public oversight, and rules that keep people in charge.

Bannon offered a different answer to the same fear — quarantine China, expel Chinese researchers from American laboratories, sever technological exchange, and act through executive power. Bannon, who took the stage directly after Sanders, called AI the defining issue of our time and laid out a nationalist approach to the technology. He said tech leaders have money and power, but not the public’s trust.

This distinction matters because authoritarianism can turn almost any technology, from nukes to drones, into an instrument of war and repression. A government that destroys independent institutions, stigmatizes minorities and immigrants, attacks a free press, and treats political opponents as enemies can use AI for surveillance, propaganda, censorship, and automated discrimination. The immediate danger is not only what a machine might theoretically someday decide. It is what powerful people may decide to do with machines while citizens are denied the means to access and resist them.

Bannon’s project has never been about “putting humans first.” His political organizing has sought to link right-wing nationalist movements across borders (a new Axis) while weakening the democratic and international institutions that can constrain fascism. A world organized around ethnic cleansing, leader worship, and permanent conflict would be less able to govern AI safely and productively.

So yes, regulate AI. Protect workers, children, privacy, and democratic elections. Demand transparency from technology companies, and preserve the public’s right to decide how these systems are deployed. But do not let legitimate fear of AI become a gateway to a politics that is even more dangerous: a politics that makes human beings less free, less equal, and less capable of holding power accountable.

Bernie is looking for love in the wrong places, because Bannon’s global fascism presents a much greater threat to humanity than does AI.

* * *

AI won’t swing the midterms but data centers might.

AI is emerging as a meaningful election issue, especially in competitive states and congressional districts. But “ban AI” is likely to be a less powerful campaign position than “control AI,” “protect jobs,” or “stop data centers.”

Voters still rank the economy and affordability far above AI on their voting issues list. AI was not among the leading open-ended responses. Moreover, 51% said neither party had an advantage on AI policy, suggesting that the issue has not yet hardened into a clear partisan voting cue.

But that survey was taken in July, and we know how fast things can shift in just a few months. The anger many local communities are feeling over the spread of data centers could become a major campaign issue in many districts.

A recent Brookings analysis cited polling in which 64% opposed building data centers at a rapid rate and 77% worried they would increase electricity rates. Candidates in both parties are now using opposition to data centers against their rivals in competitive races.

Trump’s position creates a trap for Republican candidates.

Trump is telling them to make the midterms a referendum on him—“pretend that I’m on the ballot”—while also dismissing a genuine local concern about data centers as “a hoax.”

Trump’s message to skeptical communities was blunt:

“You can’t fight it. You have to go with it.” He added: “If you don’t take all that money, somebody else is going to take it. You might as well do it yourselves.”

The pitch is politically clever because it converts opposition into fear of missing out. A town can either accept a data center—or watch another town take the jobs, tax revenue, and investment.

But that also creates an awkward political environment for Sanders’s proposed ban on artificial superintelligence. The proposal could appeal to voters who fear job loss, concentrated corporate power, and uncontrolled technological change.

Still, “ban” has weaknesses. It sounds abstract to voters and parents who may worry their kids won’t have access to technology in school if AI is banned. It also invites the argument that the United States would surrender technological leadership to China.

The most likely midterm outcome is not an election fought over a single question—“ban AI or not?” It is an election in which candidates compete over who can make life more affordable and offer a better future for their families. If Trump does indeed make the midterms a referendum on himself, all the better for Democrats.

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AI Karma?

The military use of AI targeting signals an irreversible shift towards automated battlefield decision-making that will challenge and reshape the rules and tactics of global warfare. The U.S. and Israel use AI systems — Maven, Gospel, Lavender — to accelerate targeting in Iran and Gaza, generating thousands of strike recommendations in hours.

Anthropic now says that Iran is using Claude to make targeting recommendations against U.S. Navy forces in the Middle East. The report detailed a litany of other so-called misuses of its Claude program, including a cell of Yemeni bad actors that used the program to develop targeting software for guided missiles.

So yes, there is a “karma” dimension to this story, but not in the mystical sense. It’s the strategic blowback that happens when powerful states normalize a technology for warfare, kill thousands (mostly civilians), and then discover that weaker adversaries can use the consumer version of the same technology against them.

Once AI becomes a battlefield norm, every actor feels justified using it.

Iran, Gaza, and Ukraine have become testing grounds for new weapons.

AI is now being leveraged to overcome long-standing military constraints, such as the scarcity of target identification, marking a fundamental shift in how wars are planned and executed. The conflicts also reflect a profound asymmetry in how warfare is conducted. On one side, the US and Israel have advanced AI-enabled precision targeting. On the other, Iran has responded primarily with volume-based drone and missile barrages lacking equivalent technology. However, this asymmetry is unlikely to persist as it will drive Iran and other adversaries to accelerate their own AI military development and strategies, a trend Russia and China, among others, are already responding to.

Don’t blame the machine.

The machine doesn’t choose targets, set policies, or decide who lives and dies. Humans do. When an algorithm accelerates a kill chain in Gaza, or when an Iranian operator uses a public chatbot to scrape naval data, the common denominator isn’t artificial intelligence; it’s human intelligence, human intent, and human profit incentives.

AI is a tool that reflects the priorities of the people who deploy it. Blaming the machine is a moral dodge, a way to pretend the violence is automated and therefore nobody’s fault. But a person selected every dataset, a company trained every model and profited greatly, and a government authorized every strike. The accountability is human, and it always has been.

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By Michael Klonsky

“The devastating truth is that the suffering did not end once the smoke cleared and the dust settled. People got sick because the leaders they trusted lied and told them they were safe to breathe in toxic air.” — New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani

In the space of less than 90 minutes on that late summer morning, the world changed. Nearly 3,000 people were killed that day, and the United States soon found itself mired in what would become the longest war in its history, a war that cost an estimated $8 trillion. Successive wars launched after 9/11 have killed at least 4.5 million people and displaced more than 38 million others.

The events of 9/11 not only reshaped the global response to terrorism, but also blew away the myth of American invincibility. It reshaped US immigration policies and led to a surge in discrimination, racial profiling, and hate crimes.

* * *

The smoke plume was visible from New Jersey, Brooklyn, Queens — everywhere. But visibility wasn’t the issue. The issue was toxicity: pulverized concrete, glass fibers, asbestos, jet‑fuel byproducts, heavy metals, and alkaline dust that burned lung tissue.

The core fact is now undeniable. The newly released 170,000 pages of 9/11 air‑quality records released this week by Mayor Mamdani explode the myth of Rudy Giuliani’s “heroics” on that terrible day. The Giuliani narrative after 9/11 was simple and carefully choreographed in the New York media. It portrayed a steady, fearless mayor walking the streets, telling New Yorkers to stay strong, breathing the same air they breathed. That image launched his national career, his presidential run, and ultimately his role as Trump’s consigliere.

But the records reveal that New York officials, including the Giuliani administration, received internal warnings that the air around Ground Zero was unsafe, even as they publicly reassured New Yorkers it was safe.

For 25 years, families, responders, and advocates fought to see these documents. The Mamdani administration’s release and the settlement of lawsuits brought by 9/11 Health Watch finally expose the internal record of what officials knew and when.

* * *

Giuliani’s “America’s Mayor” persona became a political pillar of the early War on Terror narrative. Israel formally condemned the attacks and framed 9/11 as an assault by “forces of evil,” language used by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to align Israel with the U.S. call for decisive counterterror action. Sharon’s framing placed Israel inside the emerging American narrative that terrorism was a unified global threat requiring extraordinary measures.

Even some on the left began calling for a “united front” with the U.S. against terrorism. It set the stage for Israel’s genocidal war of revenge in Gaza. The U.S. response to 9/11 didn’t just launch wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, it changed the world’s political vocabulary. It normalized a framework in which states could wage open‑ended war against non‑state actors, claim self‑defense against entire populations, and treat civilian casualties as tragic but unavoidable “collateral damage.” Israel absorbed that framework wholesale.

If Israel’s US-backed genocide of the Palestinians has revealed anything about the power of language, it’s that the war on terror narrative has proven to be powerful and enduring. It has enabled both states to explain the 9/11 attacks and now to justify a genocidal war in a world where “terror” is seen as an existential threat to “liberal democracies.”

* * *

The portal, available now at nyc.gov/sept11docs, features an initial release of approximately 170,000 pages of records concerning health concerns, air quality, and the City’s response to September 11th.

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The Collapse That Never Happened, Featuring Trump’s Imaginary Firefighter Beefcake Brigade

On Truth Social Tuesday night, Trump posted an angry rant attacking New York magazine for questioning his story of where he was on 9/11.

In Trump’s latest retelling of his personal 9/11 action movie, two “big strong” firefighters supposedly lifted him under the arms and carried him away from the almost‑collapsing U.S. Steel Building.

It’s a tale easily refuted by those who really were at ground zero.

And I assume that in Trump’s delusional version, these weren’t ordinary firefighters. They were shirtless bodybuilders in suspenders, glistening with patriotic sweat, ready to hoist him like a damsel in distress fleeing a collapsing tower that (small detail) never actually collapsed.

This is the Trump cult myth-making engine at full throttle, leading up to the midterms. In this genre, he’s always the central figure in world‑historical events. If a building wobbles, he’s there. If a war ends (or doesn’t), he’s the one claiming a Nobel Prize for ending it. If danger looms, he runs towards it — unless his bone spurs are acting up.

There’s a familiar rhythm to Trump’s more cinematic stories, and the firefighter fantasy fits right in. He doesn’t just place himself near history; he places himself inside a mythic frame, somewhere between an action hero and a returning messiah.

* * *

Running against Trump when Trump isn’t running…

Republicans are holding their first-ever midterm convention in Dallas this week as they gear up to defend their congressional majorities in November’s pivotal general election.

Trump is explicitly trying to nationalize the midterms around himself, and some Democrats do see strategic value in letting him do exactly that. The Dallas convention makes the dynamic unmistakable: Republicans are centering Trump because they fear low turnout when he’s not on the ballot, while Democrats believe tying every GOP candidate to a stumbling, autocratic president helps them.

I agree. If I were a Senate candidate, running in Michigan or Iowa, for example, I’d love to be seen as running as the affordability candidate against the war-maker, economy-wrecker Trump — the man who wants to abolish workers’ holidays— rather than a random Republican.

* * *

An old-school look…

What does all this have to do with Tales of Brave Ulysses?

Maybe the 60-year-old Tales of Brave Ulysses is looping in my head (no, I’m not high) because I’m thinking about a powerful, demented man who keeps casting himself in mythic epics. Cream’s Ulysses sails past the sirens, his “naked ears tortured” by sweet illusions. Trump sails past reality, his followers’ ears soothed by the same kind of irresistible, shimmering fantasy.

OK, I’ll stop now.

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Google Maps has updated its labels to refer to Lake Ontario as Lake America for users in the U.S., following an executive order signed by President Trump last week amid an escalating trade war with Canada.

* * *

The U.S. bombed Larak Island on Sunday, the official state broadcaster IRIB reported. It marked Washington’s first attack on Iran since July and raised fears of another escalation in the Israeli-US war against the country.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi accused Netanyahu of maneuvering Washington into fighting Israel’s war.

Over the weekend, Netanyahu said he had spent decades and “almost 1,000 hours” appearing on American television to push the case for military action against Iran.

“In Hebrew, Netanyahu openly crowed that he suckered the U.S. Administration into a war on Iran on behalf of Israel,” Araghchi wrote on X, describing the Israeli leader as a “serpent”. (Middle East Eye)

* * *

He heard Netanyahu right…

Speaking to a Likud audience, Netanyahu returned to one of his longest‑running self‑myths: that he personally “educated” Trump about the need to go to war with Iran.

He told supporters that:

“It took me a long time to bring the United States to recognition.”

And he credited that to his decades of media saturation in the U.S.: “I had… close to a thousand hours on American television, with the ability to influence the United States.”

He framed himself as the architect of Washington’s hardening posture toward Tehran: “I have been dealing with Iran for almost forty years.”

And he claimed credit for shifting Israel’s own security establishment: “It took me a long time to bring our security agency to deal with Iran itself and not only its missions.”

* * *

Why the US Can’t Quit Its Wars

The United States has faced questions about quitting in nearly every war it has fought since emerging as a global power after World War II. “So much of what we’ve been involved in these last several decades is really policing the empire,” said Andrew R. Hoehn, a senior analyst at RAND Corporation, a think tank that studies security matters. — NY Times

White South Africans could get $4,500 in aid if they come to U.S. as refugees.

Trump froze refugee admissions from around the world after taking office in 2025. But weeks later, he launched a program to bring South Africans of European-descended Afrikaner ethnicity into the U.S. as refugees. Despite his aggressive stances against immigration, he has retained a sweet spot for white South Africans. Throughout his second term, Trump has baselessly claimed that the post-apartheid nation is enacting a “white genocide,” circulating fake videos on social media that purportedly depict mass graves of white farmers. (TNR)

More Quotables

Maggie Haberman

New York Times White House correspondent Maggie Haberman described White House aide Natalie Harp as a “binky” amid renewed scrutiny over her role in President Donald Trump’s administration. — People Magazine

Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff

Ossoff also questioned Trump’s relationship with Harp during a campaign rally speech on Sunday. “He doesn’t want to do the job,” said Ossoff. “He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the emir of Qatar.” — People

Vijay Prashad

The war against Iran must not be understood as an isolated eruption of aggression by US hyper-imperialism. Nor can it be explained merely by the obsessions of Donald Trump, the expansionist ambitions of Israel, or the influence of the most reactionary sections of the US ruling class. The war belongs to a much wider crisis. The United States is lashing out because the foundations of its power are weakening, while its ruling class has neither the political imagination nor the social capacity to repair them. — Substack

Mr. Neocon himself, Bill Kristol

Sec. of War Pete Hegseth back in March

“Hear it from me, one of hundreds of thousands who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, who watched previous foolish politicians like Bush, Obama and Biden squander American credibility.” Those wars were quagmires, he said. The Iran war, he promised, would be different — “laser focused,” lethal, swift and “decisive.” — Press briefing

Iranian military Commander Shahram Irani

Iran’s navy is ‘alive and well’ despite Trump claims. — Aljazerra

Our gift to the war profiteers…

"The U.S. Army paid General Dynamics $533 million for an artillery factory that failed to produce a single usable shell." — ProPublica

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No, this wasn’t Colin Jost doing Pete Hegseth in an SNL skit. It was the war-mongering sot himself, the national embarrassment, and self-proclaimed Secretary of War announcing to Latin American leaders that he “only speaks American.”

But it was the kind of line Jost would deliver with that perfect deadpan and the half‑smile that says, even I can’t believe the writers let me say this on air.

Because “I only speak American” isn’t a statement. It’s a confession. It’s the linguistic cousin of “I don’t read,” dressed up as patriotism and delivered with the swagger of a man who thinks multilingualism is a communist plot.

It’s the diplomatic equivalent of Trump scrawling LAKE AMERICA across Lake Ontario and insisting the renaming would actually happen.

* * *

As of this writing: While Trump focuses on renaming Lake Ontario, he hasn’t said a word about Nepal in connection with the Gyirong/Keyrong mudslide and cross‑border disaster. Across official statements, Truth Social posts, campaign remarks, and press interactions through Thursday, there is no record of Trump referencing Nepal or the Gyirong Port disaster.

Rescue teams and military helicopters searched Thursday for hundreds of missing people along the mountainous border, where a deadly torrent of water and mud several stories high swept through communities a day earlier following a glacier collapse.

Videos of the disaster showed people running before the floodwaters swallowed them up and washed out buildings and bridges. More than 390 people were killed, according to authorities in Nepal and China, and more than 1,400 were missing, including hundreds of foreigners and pilgrims. Hundreds of others have been displaced across the Himalayan region.

The steep slopes and lush valleys below the Himalayan mountain range — home to many of the world’s highest peaks and remaining glaciers — are especially vulnerable to flooding and landslides. Melting glaciers have become more common because of human-caused climate change.

China sends rescuers

China has dispatched 111 emergency rescuers to the mudslide-stricken Gyirong Port in China’s Xizang, carrying detection, life-saving, demolition, communication, and support equipment. The mudslide that devastated Gyirong Port sits directly above Nepal’s Rasuwa District. When the debris flow broke loose, it surged southward, hitting Nepali settlements along the Trishuli River corridor.

China’s emergency agencies have been sharing hydrological data, debris‑flow monitoring, and upstream rainfall alerts with Nepal’s NDRRMA. This is crucial because the Gyirong/Keyrong cloudburst sits above Nepal’s Rasuwa District — Nepal depends on China’s upstream readings to know what’s coming down the valley.

China’s dispatch of rescuers to Gyirong Port is not just for China’s side. Beijing has formally notified Kathmandu that Chinese teams will clear the border road toward Nepal. They will coordinate with Nepali authorities if debris movement threatens the Rasuwagadhi crossing. They will share equipment or technical support if Nepal requests it. — Xinhua News Agency

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“We are giving everyone the opportunity to remedy bad behavior,” Bessent said. “Why would I want to blow up the global financial system?” — Politico

Trump’s Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent suggested he might “blow up” the entire global economy if countries continued to trade with Iran. Bessent’s threat against any country doing business with Iran — as part of a sweeping campaign to isolate the Islamic Republic — risks setting the US on a collision course with China. The latest sanctions salvo against Iran swept up businesses in China and Hong Kong. Beijing threatened to retaliate against the US and signaled it won’t back away from Iran.

This, as one of the world’s largest financial institutions quietly issues a warning of an impending catastrophic food crisis.

* * *

Back in April, a major global bank — not DSA or a left‑wing think tank — was warning that Trump’s war of choice in Iran and the resulting closure of the Strait of Hormuz were setting the stage for a global food‑inflation shock that could evolve into a multi‑year food‑security crisis.

When JPMorgan is the one sounding the food-crisis alarm, you know that Trump’s shit has hit the proverbial fan. It means that Trump has triggered a global supply‑chain disruption that is now rippling outward into food prices, fertilizer markets, and crop yields.

JPM’s warning is blunt: It’s not about a 10–20% spike. It’s about global food inflation nearly doubling — from 2.8% to ~5% — driven by a structural fertilizer shortage, not a temporary price swing.

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has disrupted the flow of nitrogen fertilizer that underpins modern agriculture. Hormuz normally carries about one‑third of the world’s nitrogen fertilizer. Add to this severe weather, including a historically strong El Niño that depresses yields across multiple continents, and the entire global food system is in danger of crashing.

Based on FAO, World Bank, and IFPRI modeling from prior crises, a shock of this magnitude would likely produce:

• 200–400 million people pushed into food insecurity

• 50–100 million pushed into extreme poverty

• 1–3 million excess deaths over 24–36 months

• 10–20 million children suffering acute malnutrition

Plus multiple regional famines in East Africa, South Asia, and parts of the Middle East.

Following talks on Tuesday between Iran and Oman, Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi said he was “hopeful we will soon announce a temporary corridor for the Strait of Hormuz and practical arrangements to restore safe navigation”.

Trump has warned Oman against cooperating with Iran, telling Fox News:

“If Oman gets in the way, we’ll bomb the shit out of them.”

I doubt it.

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U.S. and Israeli strikes killed Khamenei and other senior officials and Iranian scientists but failed to collapse the Iranian state or reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran defended itself using asymmetrical warfare, firing missiles and drones across the region. Trump’s disastrous military campaign has failed, leaving him no reasonable way out before the midterm elections besides a full retreat and ceding to Iran’s negotiating points.

Since a battlefield victory has become little more than a Trump wet dream, he’s falling back on his usual ploy, threatening friends and perceived enemies economically, from Canada to Cuba and now with Iran.

Operation Economic Outcast is Trump’s latest, desperate attempt to replace a failed military strategy with an economic siege, meant to sever every remaining revenue stream that keeps Iran’s state apparatus functioning and to place great hardships on the Iranian people. Treasury Sec. Scott Bessent calls it an “economic D-Day,” explicitly framing it as the economic equivalent of landing craft on the beaches of Normandy. Trump claims they will be the “toughest sanctions in history.”

But if the D-Day rhetoric was meant to project military strength, it has done just the opposite. It only stands in stark contrast to Trump’s earlier saber‑rattling about boots on the ground, seizing Karg Island, or opening the Strait and taking the oil by force. Those military threats never became operational plans. They were empty. The economic campaign, however, is real and will be costly both in Iran and here in the U.S.

Trump isn’t just copying Israel’s Gaza policy. He’s adopting Israel’s long‑standing genocidal doctrine of strategic deprivation to force a surrender. By threatening foreign firms, banks, shippers, insurers, and brokers who touch Iranian oil, gold, tech, aviation, shipping, or digital assets, the U.S. is also provoking a potential military confrontation with China, Turkey, and other Iran trading partners, which could turn a trade war into a hot war.

China is the decisive factor, and it won’t comply.

The U.S. can sanction Iran, but that ploy won’t work on China, which buys 80–90% of Iran’s oil exports. China is not a bystander in Iran’s economy, it is the primary buyer, primary shipper, and primary financial facilitator of Iranian crude. When the U.S. threatens Chinese banks, Chinese insurers (for tanker coverage), Chinese shipping firms (for moving Iranian crude), and Chinese brokers, it is effectively telling Beijing, “Your commercial lifelines are also subject to U.S. military‑adjacent coercion.”

Bound to fail

This strategy is bound to fail because it seeks to achieve a military objective with economic tools in a world where the target (Iran) has alternative lifelines and the main enforcer (the U.S.) no longer controls the global economic system as it once did.

It will fail because Trump just recently threatened to bomb U.S. ally Oman, and you cannot run a global economic siege while threatening to bomb the very states you need to enforce it.

It’s bound to fail because Iran’s economy is already sanctions‑adapted. Iran has spent 15 years preparing for this, including domestic production of key goods, shadow fleets of tankers, and solid trade networks with China, Turkey, Russia, and some of its Gulf neighbors.

And finally, it’s bound to fail because it lacks support here at home and in Congress. Public disapproval of the U.S. military conflict with Iran has grown significantly, with roughly 57% of Americans now opposing the war as it enters its seventh month.

Trump’s trade and sanctions wars ultimately fall back on the shoulders of American consumers with skyrocketing energy costs and instability, and likely won’t play well in November

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Big news in the Times this weekend was about another secret meeting between Hakeem Jeffries and Jared Kushner that left both MAGAs and Democrats at the base scratching their heads. It was at least the second of such back-channel meetings between the two.

The meeting was held in a private space in New York City, offered up by a mutual friend of the two men. I would bet, very rich friends. What possibly could the largely discredited House minority leader and President Trump’s son-in-law have to meet about as midterm elections draw near?

Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Annie Karni suggest that they discussed “housing, immigration and the high cost of living.” I doubt it. The meeting was unusual and sensitive, conducted through a mutual friend instead of through formal channels. That alone tells you it wasn’t about rising rents in New York.

I’m guessing it was about how to stop the socialist/progressive electoral tide and to defend Israel. That’s their common ground.

Jeffries has spent years trying to contain his party’s left flank, and he’s one of the most reliably pro‑Israel Democrats in leadership.

Kushner, who is not a government official, is still one of the architects of Trump’s Middle East policy and remains deeply involved in Israel strategy. He’s also financially benefited from the same Middle Eastern regimes he has been negotiating with on Trump’s behalf. His private equity firm, Affinity Partners, is overwhelmingly funded by billions of dollars from Gulf sovereign wealth funds, even as he has been acting as a de facto U.S. negotiator in Middle East crises.

Both men have strong ties to pro‑Israel donors and a shared interest in preventing a left‑wing foreign‑policy realignment. There’s also a shared desire to keep Israel from becoming a partisan liability

The meeting came as nearly all polls showed Republicans losing in the midterms, and revealed how members of Trump’s inner circle are strategizing about what a Democratic majority next year could look like. Jeffries, with dwindling support at the base of his own party, is looking for love in all the wrong places.

Weekend Quotables: 3 Guys Named Mark

Mark Lynch, Council on Foreign Relations

The American Middle East is finished. — Foreign Affairs

Mark Cuban

"James Talarico. Let's go. I'm a big fan. He's honest, trustworthy, he cares. He'll do the right thing as opposed to the politically expedient thing. To Texans, do what's best for Texas. You've been voting for Republicans all these years, what have they done for you?"

Cuban rarely endorses Democrats anymore. Since Harris’s 2024 loss, he’s been openly disillusioned with the party. Talarico is one of only two Democrats he praises consistently (the other is NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani). — Pivot Podcast

Mark Carney

“You’re at war when you’re attacked, and we got attacked,” the Canadian prime minister told reporters in Ottawa. — Guardian

… Plus Carlos & Chuy

Carlos Martinez

One can disagree with various aspects of Iran’s domestic politics. The question at hand is different: where do we stand in the global struggle against imperialism? Which side of the barricade are we on? Do we support a criminal war of aggression, or the resistance to it? Do we support the genocide in Gaza, or the country that has been the Palestinian resistance’s most consistent state ally for nearly half a century? — A response to The Guardian’s open letter

Jesús “Chuy” García (D-IL) at the Panamerican Congress

Garcia spoke on the climate crisis, emphasizing that it is inherently regional and inseparable from democratic and peace struggles.

“It’s their timeline we are playing with when governments refuse to act,” García added. “And as powerful corporations use right-wing allies to block meaningful reform, their advocacy is deeply entwined with the themes of democracy and peace.” — CEPR

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This morning I’m raising my coffee cup and toasting another important electoral victory for the left. This one in California, where state Sen. Aisha Wahab will serve out the rest of disgraced former Rep. Eric Swalwell's term after securing victory Thursday in a special election. Wahab defeated AIPAC-backed Melissa Hernandez despite a swell of negative ad spending by AIPAC and other outside groups. Wahab will be the first Afghan American to serve in Congress.

* * *

But the buzzkill came after reading this story in The Economist, the British journal which perpetuates the myth that lefty and progressive candidates can only lose in November.

When The Economist warns the British Labor Party about the radical left making a party unelectable, it’s hard not to hear the echo of our own leadership’s favorite cautionary tale. The magazine’s diagnosis of Labor—blaming its collapse on Jeremy Corbyn’s supposed ultra-leftism—mirrors a familiar American script in which progressives and socialists are cast as electoral poison, even as the party’s centrist establishment presides over working‑class defection, foreign‑policy hawkishness, and donor‑driven drift.

Why is The Economist suddenly sounding the alarm?

Because the story the magazine has been telling for years — that Keir Starmer “saved” Labor from the ultra‑left and permanently buried Corbynism — is being contradicted by very recent electoral reality. Not 2019. Not the 2024 general election. But the post‑landslide period, where Labor was supposed to be politically invincible and the left supposedly irrelevant.

Instead, the opposite happened.

Across 2025–26, left‑wing and anti‑war candidates have been beating Labor, humiliating Labor, or peeling off chunks of Labor’s core vote in places Starmer assumed were locked down. Independents running on Gaza, anti‑war, and anti‑austerity platforms have taken council seats in the boroughs of Birmingham, Bradford, Leicester, Manchester, Sheffield, and London. Greens have doubled their vote share in key urban wards. Progressive candidates have begun winning internal seats again. And Labor’s support among working‑class Muslim voters, once one of its most reliable blocs, has fractured dramatically.

Sound familiar?

In other words: the left is not dead. It’s re‑emerging in new forms, in new constituencies, and with new energy.

That’s the real reason The Economist is suddenly so gloomy. Not because the left is weak, but because the left is performing better than the centrist narrative allows — and because these gains expose the fragility of Starmer’s coalition and the limits of his rightward turn.

The Economist’s warning is straightforward: If Democrats in the U.S. allow their left wing to dominate the party’s messaging, they will repeat Labor’s 2019 collapse.

* * *

This comparison with Britain and Corbyn left me cold. For one thing, the U.S. left has never run the Democratic Party the way Corbyn ran Labor. The recent history of Democratic congressional defeats and the loss of the White House can only be pinned on the party leadership. The working‑class defection from the party actually began back during the Clinton era; during NAFTA and deindustrialization; during welfare retrenchment; during tough-on-crime politics; and during support for the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. None of that was left-wing.

The economic agenda of socialist and progressive candidates polls better with working-class voters than the corporate Dems’ alternatives. Working-class voters (across race) consistently support unionization, taxing the wealthy, gay rights, abortion rights, and public health care. Left positions all. The same can be said for foreign policy, where voters oppose the Democratic leadership’s support for U.S. shipping arms and billions of dollars to Israel for its doctrine of perpetual war. The polling is clear: working‑class Americans are not the culturally conservative bloc pundits imagine.

Donald Trump is still the most hated man in the U.S. (the world?). His approval numbers have taken their deepest dive so far. But the Democratic Party’s current leadership’s approval numbers aren’t much better.

That’s not the fault of the left either.

* * *

The Economist gets the story wrong because it begins with a faulty premise. Jeremy Corbyn was never an “ultra‑leftist.” He was a traditional Laborite in the lineage of Attlee and Benn — a social democrat who believed in public ownership of essential services, strong unions, and an anti‑war foreign policy. Branding him as an extremist was a factional maneuver, not an ideological assessment, and it mirrors the way Democratic leadership in the U.S. has spent years targeting its own progressive wing.

The deeper misreading is the claim that the left is responsible for the Democratic Party’s fall from grace. The working‑class defection, the foreign‑policy hawkishness, the donor‑class drift all happened under centrist stewardship. And the evidence simply doesn’t support the idea that socialists and progressives “can’t win.” The past few months of primaries have shown the opposite: left candidates can win, do win, and often outperform expectations in districts the establishment writes off as unwinnable. There is no empirical basis for the narrative that progressive nominees doom the party in November.

What is clear is that they cannot do worse than Democrats have done in recent years under the leadership of Schumer and Pelosi — a period marked by stagnation, strategic timidity, and a steady erosion of working‑class trust.

This is not to say the path to victory for leftists is assured or will be easy. Big money from AIPAC and corporate donors will be flooding the zone, and internal sectarian divisions could kill momentum before it matures. But none of that is a given. The Economist’s framing assumes the left is inherently self‑defeating. The evidence suggests the opposite. The real danger to Democrats isn’t an “ultra‑left” that exists only on the fringes. It’s a centrist establishment that fears the left more than it fears Trump, and keeps mistaking internal dissent for extremism.

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The U.S. has officially crossed $40 trillion in national debt — a Treasury‑confirmed milestone that arrived months ahead of projections and underscores a fiscal trajectory driven by tax cuts for the rich, trillion‑dollar deficits, soaring interest costs, and structural imbalances grown worse under the Trump administration.

It’s a figure that jumped another trillion in barely five months, mainly because of the war with Iran. Interest costs alone are running above $1 trillion a year, meaning we now borrow money just to pay the interest on the money we already borrowed. Deficits north of $2 trillion have become the norm, not the emergency.

The cost of U.S. overseas bases (750+), NATO commitments, and the permanent occupation posture in Korea is not only enormous, but it’s also structurally different from any other country’s military burden. The U.S. officially spent $1.15 trillion on defense in 2026, more than the next 10 countries combined.

It’s an imperialist fiscal model that feeds a massive military/industrial complex no other nation on Earth attempts.

According to the New York Times:

While the United States remains the world’s largest economy, its mounting debt load could lead investors to demand higher interest rates for U.S. bonds or raise questions about the nation’s creditworthiness, which could erode confidence in the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

Trump himself repeatedly blasted the Dems’ $20T debt mark during his first run, calling it “fiscal insanity” and using the number to attack Social Security and Medicare. GOP candidates in 2024 and 2026 campaigned on restoring “fiscal discipline,” stopping “Biden’s runaway spending,” and protecting future generations from a debt spiral.

Trump’s claims of “trillions pouring into the Treasury” from tariffs and foreign investments turned out to be wildly exaggerated or total bullshit. The U.S. isn’t getting trillions in new revenue. It’s bleeding trillions into risky foreign investments and non‑productive military adventures.

* * *

My take: I’m no economist, but I would argue that borrowing to meet human needs is not a bad thing because it creates future capacity, while borrowing for perpetual war, vanity projects, or the construction of prisons and detention centers for immigrants creates future liabilities. Take a look at China, for example.

Socialist China: China’s debt — about half the size of the US — is also enormous, roughly $21.26 trillion. But what they spend the borrowed cash on is another story. China borrows to build and expand social services. The U.S. borrows to sustain entitlements, fund global military operations, and pay interest on past debt. A big difference.

Yes — China borrows to sustain its military. But the scale, purpose, structure, and economic impact of Chinese military borrowing are fundamentally different from the U.S. model. China’s defense borrowing is much smaller than the U.S. It is also domestically financed and not dependent on foreign creditors. Most importantly, it is not tied to perpetual foreign wars.

China didn’t waste any time before dropping this cartoon video about the U.S. deficit. It’s worth a chuckle or two, through the tears.

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What kind of game is Huckabee playing?

After Israeli settlers attacked three homes in the occupied West Bank, including one owned by a Palestinian American, U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee referred to the settlers as “terrorists.”

U.S. officials have periodically criticized settler violence in general terms — but they have almost never labeled it “terror.” Huckabee’s language breaks with precedent and signals:

• A rare public rift — real or fake — between Washington and Netanyahu’s regime.

• Pressure on Netanyahu to condemn settler violence ahead of a tight election.

• A shift driven partly by the fact that a Palestinian‑American family was among those besieged.

Huckabee, an outspoken supporter of the Israeli genocide in Gaza and someone who consistently supports Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, despite them being illegal under international law, made the unusually critical comments on Thursday, as Israeli settlers besieged three Palestinian homes in the village of Qusra, including one belonging to a dual US citizen.

* * *

But before anyone mistakes Huckabee’s sudden and selective recognition of West Bank terror for a turning point in foreign policy, look at the second half of Huckabee’s sentence: the violence, he insists, comes from a “tiny minority.”

In a follow-up post on X, Huckabee stated,

“Settlers” are not the problem in Judea/Samaria (the biblical name for the West Bank). “Unsettlers” are. Very small minority who do great damage to Palestinian families & to Israel.”

But settler violence in the West Bank is not fringe. It is daily, organized, and structurally protected. Human‑rights groups have documented that more than 90 percent of cases are never investigated. Soldiers escort settlers into Palestinian villages; police decline complaints; outposts involved in attacks are retroactively legalized. There are hundreds of attacks per year, with spikes during harvest seasons and during military operations. Entire Palestinian communities face weekly raids, property destruction, arson, livestock theft, beatings, and expulsions. Settler outposts use violence as a strategic tool to seize land and push Palestinians off agricultural areas.

Back in February, Huckabee drew heavy international backlash during a Tucker Carlson Interview when discussing biblical land promises in Genesis, stating, regarding regional expansion, “It would be fine if they took it all,” referring to land from the Euphrates to the Nile. Remember, Huckabee speaks for the Trump administration, not just for himself.

* * *

So what was the purpose of Huckabee’s statement? Damage control. A Palestinian‑American family was assaulted for days — cut off from food, water, and electricity — while settlers erected tents around their home like a hostile campground.

Washington cannot credibly ignore an attack on its own citizens. Not with midterm elections coming up. Calling it “terror” signals seriousness. Calling it a “tiny minority” signals that nothing will change. It’s a controlled burn, not a shift in doctrine.

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