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Opinion
When Weddings Become Battlefields, the Laws of War Begin to Fray
The US strikes on a wedding in Kuhestak and a school in Minab expose a larger test: whether the laws protecting civilians constrain powerful states as well as their adversaries.
Sep 08, 2026
On September 1, a US airstrike hit a family compound in Kuhestak, southern Iran, as women and children gathered for a wedding celebration. At least five people were killed and dozens more injured. Associated Press reporters who visited the town documented extensive damage and civilian suffering. Reuters later reported that imagery, debris, and weapons assessments were consistent with a direct hit by a US munition, while US officials said the incident was under review. The immediate facts matter. But the larger question is already unavoidable: What happens to the laws of war when civilian spaces repeatedly become part of the battlefield?
The significance of Kuhestak extends beyond the number of casualties or the identity of the weapon. The deeper danger is what incidents like this can do to the norms meant to limit warfare. If homes, schools, hospitals, wedding gatherings, or refugee sites are repeatedly treated as tolerable consequences of military necessity, the distinction between battlefield and civilian life begins to lose practical meaning.
International humanitarian law was designed precisely to prevent that erosion. Its rules do not make war safe, and they do not prohibit every attack that may harm civilians. They do, however, require parties to distinguish between civilians and military objectives, prohibit attacks expected to cause excessive incidental civilian harm in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated, and require feasible precautions to minimize civilian loss. The principles of distinction, proportionality, and precaution are not political preferences. They are the legal architecture intended to preserve a minimum boundary between military necessity and human life.
International law rarely collapses in a single dramatic moment. More often, norms weaken when exceptional conduct is repeated, defended, or left without meaningful scrutiny.
That distinction matters when assessing the US position as well. Washington says it does not target civilians and that its operations in southern Iran were aimed at military infrastructure, including air-defense, communications, and maritime assets. The Associated Press reported those stated objectives alongside the civilian toll in Kuhestak. Under the laws of war, the existence of a legitimate military objective can matter greatly. Civilian casualties, by themselves, do not automatically prove an unlawful attack. But that is precisely why transparent investigation is essential: Was the target properly identified? Were the expected civilian risks assessed? Were feasible precautions taken? And was the anticipated military advantage sufficient to justify those risks?
Kuhestak is especially troubling because it follows another catastrophic episode in the same province. On February 28, a strike hit a school in Minab. In March, Amnesty International said its investigation found US forces responsible for the attack, which killed 156 people, including 120 children, and concluded that the United States had failed to take all feasible precautions to avoid civilian harm. Amnesty called for a transparent and thorough investigation and accountability for those responsible. Minab therefore cannot simply be treated as an unresolved rumor in the background of the current war.
Seen together, Minab and Kuhestak raise a deeper concern. One catastrophic civilian strike may be explained as a failure of intelligence, targeting, weapon performance, or judgment. A pattern of incidents, however, raises a different question: whether civilian protection is being pushed too far to the margins of operational decision-making. The danger is not only the immediate loss of life. It is the gradual normalization of exceptions.
If civilian protection becomes a principle honored only when convenient, the damage will not stop with one town or one conflict.
International law rarely collapses in a single dramatic moment. More often, norms weaken when exceptional conduct is repeated, defended, or left without meaningful scrutiny. Each time a serious civilian-harm incident is absorbed into the routine language of war without transparent findings or accountability, the practical force of the rule diminishes. What is described today as an exceptional mistake can become tomorrow's accepted risk.
Some will argue that this concern overstates the implications of incidents that occur in a high-intensity conflict. War is chaotic. Military assets may be located near civilian areas. Information can be incomplete, and even precision weapons cannot eliminate human error or unintended harm. Those points are real, and international humanitarian law itself recognizes that civilian casualties can occur even in attacks directed at lawful military objectives.
But acknowledging the realities of war is not the same as accepting the erosion of its limits. The law matters most precisely when military pressure is intense and operational decisions are difficult. If the protections owed to civilians become flexible whenever the strategic stakes are high, then their universality becomes conditional on power, geography, and political convenience. A rule that constrains only weak states, while powerful ones receive the benefit of endless exceptions, is not a universal rule for long.
The consequences would reach far beyond Iran. The laws of war function only if states expect them to apply across conflicts and regions. A standard weakened in the Middle East will not remain neatly contained there. Future belligerents in Europe, Africa, or East Asia can point to conduct tolerated elsewhere and demand the same latitude for themselves. Selective enforcement does more than produce unequal justice; over time, it changes what governments believe they can do.
A rule that constrains only weak states, while powerful ones receive the benefit of endless exceptions, is not a universal rule for long.
The appropriate response, therefore, is not to prejudge every disputed strike or to assume that every civilian death proves a war crime. It is to insist on independent, transparent, and verifiable investigations; publication of meaningful findings; and accountability wherever violations are established. The United States should be held to the same standards it expects other states to observe. The same standard must apply to Iran, Israel, and every other party to an armed conflict. Universality is the point.
The question raised by Kuhestak is ultimately larger than one wedding, just as Minab was larger than one school. It is whether the international community still believes that even in war there are people, spaces, and rules that military necessity cannot simply sweep aside. If civilian protection becomes a principle honored only when convenient, the damage will not stop with one town or one conflict. What will have been weakened is the boundary that keeps war from becoming limitless—and once that boundary disappears, no nation can assume that its own civilians will remain safely on the other side of it.
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Working People Are Fighting Back, Because That's What We Do
We need to hold lawmakers who make working people suffer to enrich the already wealthy accountable.
Sep 07, 2026
My mom worked harder than anyone I know. She wanted a good life for us. It was a hard life—I remember the Christmas she had to pawn our gifts to pay the light bill—but she made it special for us.
Now I have two kids of my own, and I want them to have every opportunity that other children have.
The landscape is tough out there. Like many Americans, I can’t afford childcare, and finding work that accommodates my need to care for my young children is hard. With inflation, the little income I have doesn’t go nearly as far as it used to.
I’m grateful to have assistance with food, housing, and healthcare through our social safety net programs.
Food programs like SNAP (also known as “food stamps”) and WIC (that’s the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children) have literally saved our lives when we’ve been hungry. I wouldn’t be able to feed my children without them. And thanks to Medicaid, we have healthcare.
But I’m sick with worry about the cuts to SNAP and Medicaid that are barreling my way. The so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” slashed these programs last year so lawmakers could slash taxes for corporations and the wealthy, and some of the worst cuts will take place after this year’s midterms.
The uncertainty is causing so much stress. The first change I noticed is they cut off my eyeglasses subsidy. What’s next? Meanwhile, the cost of living keeps going up and up, outpacing wage gains for me and countless others. Our SNAP benefits cover much less than they did a year ago, and that’s before potential cuts take effect.
I feel like I’m waiting for a bomb to drop on me and my kids, and I’m not the only one.
“The average minimum-wage worker must work nearly 116 hours per week, nearly three full-time jobs, to afford a two-bedroom rental home,” the National Low Income Housing Coalition reports. That’s the truth—my own sister works three jobs and still has to live with roommates.
Lawmakers are telling us we can’t have healthcare now unless we work, even in areas with low wages. Yet those making the laws enjoy free government-socialized healthcare and high wages.
They say SNAP benefits can’t be used for a cake or soda for my child’s birthday. Yet no one would stop the wealthy from using their $1 trillion in tax cuts under the “Big Beautiful Bill” to buy their kid a yacht.
Poor and low-income people deserve to be happy too. We deserve healthcare, food, housing, and even a child’s small birthday party. It feels like we’re being punished for working regular jobs—and like lawmakers want to keep us down so we don’t fight back against this inequality.
But we are fighting back.
I’ve started attending our local town hall meetings and hearing the stories of injustice and poverty. I started volunteering with a non-profit organization in my community. I help get goods to people in need, even as I am also in need, because that’s what we do. Poor and low-income people help each other out, because we understand what it’s like to see our kids go without while we work our fingers to the bone.
But we can’t do it alone. We need to demand from lawmakers that instead of cutting our healthcare, food, and housing benefits, we need to expand them to meet the great need in this country. We need a livable wage so we can afford market rent and rising food prices.
And we need to hold lawmakers who make working people suffer to enrich the already wealthy accountable.
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The New Red Scare Is a Dangerous Distraction From the GOP's Failures
The attempt to revive the McCarthyist witch hunts of yesteryear is, at its core, a reaction to the working-class rightfully demanding its fair share of the economic pie.
Sep 07, 2026
familiar spectre is haunting the nation—that of communism. Or so one might conclude from the Republican Party’s increasingly frantic rhetoric.
Following a string of wins by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) in congressional primaries from New York to Colorado to Michigan, even reaching as far as Florida, the GOP is dusting off an old refrain.
“Communism is on the ballot this November,” warned House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) at a press conference. President Donald Trump has gone further still, calling communism “the biggest threat to our nation there is, maybe since our founding.”
At first glance, this reads like little more than election-year theatrics. The candidates provoking such alarm are, on the whole, hardly the revolutionaries their critics imagine.
But, try as they might, no amount of fearmongering, surveillance, or censorship will dampen the working person’s dream for a more dignified life, one where their labor is compensated fairly, their dollar stretches further, and their children inherit a secure future.
Many of the policies promoted by today’s democratic socialists fall comfortably within the lineage of the New Deal: strengthening labor protections, expanding access to healthcare, greater investment in public infrastructure, and so on.
That House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) would liken their ascendance to “a nightmare… a trail to certain death,” ought to strike any person of sound mind as patently absurd.
Yet dismissing such a frenzied reaction as mere campaign-season hyperbole risks overlooking what it actually reveals: staggering insecurity.
If the political establishment had any real confidence in their track record, they wouldn’t need to manufacture so much anxiety around their opposition.
It is precisely because they can feel their grip on the public’s trust slipping that they have resorted to reviving the McCarthyist witch hunts of yesteryear—an effort that extends well beyond incendiary speeches.
Last year, President Trump issued National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), directing federal agencies to expand policing of social movements linked to “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity,” among other ideological strains, ostensibly to “identify and prevent potential violent activity.”
NSPM-7 has, in turn, become the legal backbone for an aggressive crackdown on dissent, seen in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issuing “warning notices” to those who have criticized the actions of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), whether that be through social media posts or email correspondence.
Recent reporting even uncovered a sweeping probe, dubbed “Operation Puppet Master” by DHS, into a number of left-wing groups in Minnesota after the killings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti by ICE and Border Patrol agents, respectively, earlier this year.
The probe included, among other things, the subpoenaing of financial records from various labor unions and nonprofits, as well as “spying operations conducted by undercover agents who posed as activists and surveilled community activities.”
It is little wonder that such egregious actions have since been compared to COINTELPRO, J Edgar Hoover’s illegal pet project designed to infiltrate, surveil, and discredit civil rights and anti-war activists who caught the ire of the federal government.
This, paired with the White House creating its own blacklist of journalists and influencers on its official “Media Offenders” page, many of whom are cited for such severe transgressions as “Left-Wing Lunacy,” suggests that the hysterical talking points GOP leadership have taken to heart are the vehicle for a broader crusade of political repression.
Such heavy-handed surveillance is undoubtedly born out of a deep-seated panic among those in power. This latest Red Scare is, at its core, a reaction to the working-class rightfully demanding its fair share of the economic pie.
The rise of the DSA, and of the left-wing ideas it propagates, owes much to the fact that its members speak plainly about the financial woes of the everyday person.
Take, for instance, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has striven to take an honest accounting of the financial hardship faced by New Yorkers, and in turn offer tangible remedies like free childcare and a rent freeze.
In contrast, Trump administration officials are desperate to pull the wool over the eyes of the people, with Kevin Hassett, director of the National Economic Council, recently claiming that the economy “looks amazing,” despite nearly 80% of voters feeling otherwise.
In fact, public confidence in capitalism broadly has fallen to 54%, according to Gallup polling released last year, the lowest level since the organization began tracking the question. At the same time, socialism commands comparatively steady support, especially among Democratic voters, roughly two-thirds of whom view it favorably.
The generational divide is even more striking. A survey conducted by YouGov and the Cato Institute found that 62% of Americans under 30 hold a favorable view of socialism, while 34% say the same of communism. Of course, each of these labels mean different things to different respondents, but the overarching trend is difficult to ignore.
For many Americans, especially those on the younger side, capitalism is synonymous with constraint, and it’s not hard to see why.
While billionaires’ assets have surged to preposterous heights, the cascading inflationary shocks of war have steadily eroded workers’ purchasing power.
Cornerstones of the American Dream have been priced out of reach for working families, with 62% of Americans now viewing homeownership as unrealistic.
Meanwhile, more than 40% of American households have persistently struggled to cover the cost of basic necessities on their current income.
Yet, rather than confronting the economic frustrations driving millions of Americans to question the status quo, the Trump administration has chosen to paint a target on the backs of those who offer the public a meaningful alternative.
But, try as they might, no amount of fearmongering, surveillance, or censorship will dampen the working person’s dream for a more dignified life, one where their labor is compensated fairly, their dollar stretches further, and their children inherit a secure future.
And it is for this reason that yet another Red Scare is an altogether futile, albeit dangerous, distraction meant to blind us to the real struggle of our time: the fight against a rigged economy.
If those in power must conjure ghosts to terrify the people, it is surely because their earthly defenses are failing.
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Want to Fix the Economy? Triple Union Membership
Tripling union membership would raise the pay of the median worker by more than $7,700 a year, or nearly $270,000 over a 35-year career. That’s enough to more than cover the cost of sending two children to a four-year public university.
Sep 07, 2026
This Labor Day, workers across the country are sending a clear message: They want a greater voice on the job. A near-record 71% of Americans approve of unions, and surveys show over 50 million nonunion workers would join a union if they could.
At a time when many are struggling to afford basic necessities, it’s easy to understand why. Through unions and collective bargaining, workers have more power to win higher wages, better benefits, safer working conditions, and a fairer share of the wealth they create. Unions help build a strong middle class, reduce inequality, narrow racial economic disparities, and boost participation in our democracy.
Yet only 1 in 10 US workers are in a union today—a sharp decline from the more than 1 in 3 workers who belonged to a union in the 1950s. That drop did not happen because workers stopped wanting or needing unions. It happened due to relentless attacks on unions and collective bargaining, and lawmakers’ failure to fix the broken labor laws that have allowed those attacks to succeed.
The consequences have been enormous. As union power has declined, workers have seen less of the gains from the economic growth they have helped create. Since 1979, productivity (how much average value workers produce in an hour of work) has grown 2.8 times as much as pay for typical workers.
This Labor Day, let’s recommit to putting more power in the hands of working people.
New Economic Policy Institute research makes clear just how much working people stand to gain by rebuilding union power to 1950s’ levels.
Tripling union membership would raise the pay of the median worker by more than $7,700 a year, or nearly $270,000 over a 35-year career. That’s enough to more than cover the cost of sending two children to a four-year public university, for example. Crucially, both union and nonunion workers would see these gains because stronger unions raise standards across the labor market.
Scaled across the workforce, tripling union membership would shift an estimated $1.2 trillion to the pockets of working people every year. This is enough to reverse roughly one-third of the increase in inequality since 1979.
Stronger unions are also good for businesses and the broader economy. When workers earn more, they have more money to spend in their communities, strengthening consumer demand. Businesses would benefit from lower worker turnover, higher productivity, and workers who have a greater stake in the success of their workplaces.
Tripling union membership won’t be easy, but it’s far from a nostalgic pipe dream. It will take continued nationwide organizing and decisive policy action that makes it easier for workers to unionize. Federal lawmakers can start by passing legislation that expands collective bargaining rights, closes loopholes in existing law that allows employers to suppress worker organizing, and holds employers accountable when they violate workers’ labor rights. Further, state lawmakers should provide all public-sector workers with collective bargaining rights and repeal so-called right-to-work laws that weaken workers’ ability to organize and bargain collectively.
This Labor Day, let’s recommit to putting more power in the hands of working people. That means giving more workers the freedom to organize. And it means setting an ambitious goal worthy of the moment: tripling union membership and building an economy that works for working people.
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Working People Must Recognize the Reform Limits of Our Economic Model
Our business model results in chronic exploitation, deprivation, and immiseration that cannot be eliminated by reform; the organization, production, and distribution of goods and services must be transformed into a democratic model.
Sep 07, 2026
Last March, I wrote an essay providing evidence of the inherent exploitation and undemocratic constructs in our economic model burdening working people.
This essay compliments that work and will show a fundamental reason why our economic model is structurally limited by attempts to reform it.
History
Our economic model is plagued with a history of periodic recessions and depressions.
That history is recorded by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). Recessions and depressions are clinically presented as normal components of the “business cycle.” The NBER does not report the chronic instability and destruction of communities and working people’s lives by the “business cycle.”
Political democracy demands economic democracy. We have statutes, laws, regulations, and rules to protect the common good. Why not apply the same principles to the relations of production?
Many economists, psychologists, and journalists have attempted to rationalize the chronic crisis in our economic model. These fanciful assertions are thoroughly inadequate. As Leo Huberman chronicled in Man’s Worldly Goods, some experts actually attributed the chronic crises to radiation from the sun or the path of the planet Venus.
Despite rapid advances in technology and financial instruments, chronic crises remain inherent in our economic model.
Competition is a significant component that contributes to these crises despite the stifling dominance by a few giant corporations in most industries. That structure contains one essential component which plagues all businesses.
It is the tendency of the profit rate to fall.
Profit Rate Basis
The tendency of the profit rate to fall is the basis of why our economic model cannot be meaningfully reformed.
The owner of a business must convert the expenditures that initiate and maintain the business into a profit. Profits are what remains after a business pays all of its costs.
Simply, the profit rate shows how many cents of profits are retained from every dollar earned. It is more important than aggregate profits because it measures efficiency of a company in comparison with other businesses.
A decline in the profit rate forces businesses to close doors and decimate the lives of their employees across states and communities.
Business Basics
The following is a simplified explanation of why profit rates tend to fall:
The process begins by establishing a business. The owner must allocate resources for primary expenditures (CapEx) to acquire space, a plant, machinery, tools, hardware, software, technological advances, and raw materials. This includes legal registrations, licenses, permits, and financial services.
The business owner must then add another cost which are secondary expenditures.
Secondary expenditures (OpEx) consist of wages or salaries paid to the employees who do the mental or physical work with their labor power. This creates profits for the owner including extra profits. Extra profits are what remains for the owner once wages or salaries are paid to the employees.
It is imperative that the owner continually spend more resources in primary expenditures for the business. This is due to competition with other business owners.
Primary Expenditures Increase
For the owner, the cost of primary expenditures usually increases as costs for goods and services increase. These increases can be the result of monetary policy, growth of the economy (GDP), corporate price gouging, misplaced tariffs, or a scarcity of certain goods.
Some products may even see a temporary drop in prices due to technological advances.
However, the supply of goods and services that comprise primary expenditures invariably rises to the dismay of business owners.
Cost of living calculations also present data that strongly supports the assertion that primary expenditures for owners will never decrease in our economic model.
Primary expenditures are required to increase the amount of the product or service created by the employees.
The owner might consider borrowing funds from a financial institution to pay for primary expenditures. This can be problematic because financial institutions may decline to lend the money or advance at a glacial pace to finalize a loan.
The reason why the owner must continually increase spending on primary expenditures is directly related to the profit rate.
Profit Rate
The profit rate is obtained by dividing the total primary and secondary expenditures by the extra profit. (Multiplying by 100 converts a decimal into a percentage).
Example: Suppose the employees created $100 worth of total profit and are paid $40 in wages. That means the extra profit is $60.
Add the primary expenditures to the secondary expenditures and divide by the extra profit. In this example, the profit rate is 60%.
Now to show the tendency of the profit rate to fall, increase the primary expenditure to $60. Suppose there was a sale on tools at Home Depot and the owner purchased $10 worth of tools by transferring funds from the secondary expenditures to the primary expenditures.
The profit rate is now 55%. This is a significant drop despite the profit amount remaining the same. The owner increased the primary expenditures by transferring funds from the secondary expenditures.
The owner’s increased spending on primary expenditures in the form of new tools or machines may maintain the extra profits. They may even increase the production of each employee. The product or service may then be sold as less expensive. This is wonderful for the owner, but the crisis remains driven by competition.
Temporary Remedy
Other business owners are captured in this business model. Competition from other businesses drives the accumulation of primary expenditures and a decrease of secondary expenditures. This decrease results in cuts to employees’ wages, salaries, or job losses. A falling rate of profit means outside investment is less likely to occur signaling a crisis for the owner.
The owner must either increase primary expenditures to increase profit rates to compete with other businesses or increase secondary expenditures to allow employees to maintain themselves and their families.
The owner cannot do both. It is an inherent contradiction.
The remedy for the owner is to freeze or offer insufficient wages or salaries in order to maintain extra profits for the business. Without a militant union to fight with the employees, owners will deny employees’ requests for fair compensation and benefits.
The tendency of a profit rate to fall leads to the eventual closing of the business or the business moving to a location without employee rights, union rights, or environmental regulations.
Real Remedy
Thus, our business model results in chronic exploitation, deprivation, and immiseration that cannot be eliminated by reform. Working people's lives and their families are severely damaged, often forever.
The organization, production, and distribution of goods and services must be transformed into a democratic model.
One version of this model can be seen in the Mondragon Corporation in Spain. It is a highly successful conglomerate created in 1956 by a Roman Catholic priest. It is based on democratic principles that are agreed on by the employees.
Economist Richard Wolff wrote that the important questions of what and how we produce are fundamental to the economy of any country. “Where” to produce as also a question within the organization of an economy. The employees who create the profits must have a voice in the production process. A democratic construct can vary according to the model selected but must begin at the ground level.
Transition to a Democratic Economic Model
There are several methods that might serve as a guide to how such a transition may be realized in our economic model:
New companies may be based on the principles of worker cooperatives. Also, when a company fails, it must first offer the employees an option to purchase it. Lastly, owners who are retiring must offer the employees the first opportunity to purchase the business.
A transition to a democratic economic model must begin by political parties actually representing working peoples’ interests. Many progressives assert that democratic socialists must win elections as the way to dominate governments at local, state, and federal levels. They assert that democratic socialism may be realized by means of evolution, not necessarily revolution.
If progressive critics are able to dominate the government, it could pave the way for a transition to a democratic socialist model with American characteristics. Since our history is replete with democratic goals and objectives; a transition would be less problematic.
Political democracy demands economic democracy. We have statutes, laws, regulations, and rules to protect the common good. Why not apply the same principles to the relations of production?
Implementing a democratic model will be met with an avalanche of ruthless, corporate lies to deceive and frighten working people.
Progressives have historical lessons to learn from the failures of countries that attempted a form of socialism to replace the miserable economic conditions inherent and inevitable in our economic model.
There are many forms of socialism that can be realized.
The former USSR is a petri dish of such failures. Government must work to organize economic production democratically from the ground up, not from the top down that doomed the Soviet model to largely failure.
The government under democratic socialist control will transition to a new economic model that will facilitate the positive development of various components of our culture. The voice of working people will make the economic decisions rather than a handful of spiritually vapid, wealthy oligarchs. These oligarchs ignore Christian, Jewish, Islamic and Buddhist literature that advocates for various forms of democratic socialism.
Polls from The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Gallup, and Fox News demonstrate that Americans are increasingly discontented with our economic model.
Working people can and must do better for themselves and their families. Recognizing the limits of economic reform is a beginning.
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Cancel Thanksgiving? A Progressive Guide to Handling the Holidays
Matt Witt’s new book Make Holidays Your Own encourages creative rethinking of family gatherings and community practices on major holidays.
Sep 07, 2026
It’s a good thing that labor journalist and author Matt Witt was not running for governor of Wisconsin this year like Democratic Socialists of America candidate Francesca Hong.
Democratic primary rivals and Republican opposition researchers would have badly distorted the message of Witt’s new book Make Holidays Your Own (Common Ground Press). It encourages creative rethinking of family gatherings and community practices on major holidays.
In their effort to discredit Hong, her foes in both parties created what The New York Times called a “social media kerfuffle” over old posts dissing Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, and Halloween.
The outspoken state legislator and former restaurant owner from Madison lost her August 11 primary despite polling very strongly beforehand. Given the annual sense of foreboding that overtakes millions of Americans when tense family reunions draw near in late November, Hong’s past call for Thanksgiving to be “canceled”—because of its connection to “colonialism”—probably had its local fans.
Sometimes the development of alternative celebrations—such as the reclaiming of May Day by the modern day, more immigrant-influenced US labor movement--can lead to two opportunities to picnic, protest, and march, rather than just one!
Under fire on the campaign trail, Hong did concede that bringing people together around a table can be “a good thing.” But, according to the Times, she also courted controversy by “questioning the value of Valentine’s Day and Christmas trees.” So not only Wisconsin turkey farmers, but gift card sellers and Christmas tree growers—if sufficiently miffed—might have voted instead for the moderate Democrat from Milwaukee, David Crowley, who won the primary.
And even if Hong had prevailed, according to the Times, she faced the challenge of winning over voters like John Wilson, a 61-year old pharmacist from Platteville, Wisconsin, who usually “leans Democratic.” However, when asked whether he favored Hong or US Rep. Tom Tiffany, the Republican running for governor, Wilson chose the latter because “you have to take people at their word” about serious matters like Thanksgiving.
Tiffany has strong views on holidays too; in 2021, he was one of 14 House members who voted against making Juneteenth Day a federal holiday, which won’t be popular with African-American voters statewide.
Just A Few Days Off
In the future, left-leaning candidates can avoid even momentarily distracting flaps like this by reading Matt Witt’s book—hopefully, before pulling the trigger on Twitter, in a moment of pique. The few paid days off that most Americans get to enjoy should not be cancel culture targets, when, as the author argues, they can be celebrated in ways “more historically accurate, meaningful, inclusive, and fun,”
In Make Holidays Your Own, Witt offers much creative advice about dealing with Turkey Day, Mother’s Day, Memorial Day, Veterans Day, the Fourth of July, and eight others; his focus is on countering their crass commercialization, historical baggage, stultifying traditionalism, or exploitation by the right.
See, for example, the garish 250th birthday party staged on July 4 of this year in Washington, DC by the White House and its corporate funders. While no doubt critical of that, Abdul El-Sayed, the successful Democratic Senate primary winner in Michigan is definitely tip-toeing around the issue of fireworks on the Fourth.
As the Times notes, “He has deleted a number of videos and posts where he floated the idea of abandoning fireworks on Independence Day.” El-Sayed’s press spokesperson is now reminding voters that he “is the former captain of his high school football team, loves Michigan football on Saturdays, and celebrates the Fourth of July with fireworks like the next Michigander.”
In other words, he’s an all-American guy! As Witt explains: “In every culture, holidays matter. They come with a message and symbols—with a story that reinforces a certain way of looking at society and passes on certain values to the next generation.” According to the author, what’s good about remaking holidays, in ways that send a different message, “is that you don’t have to convince everyone in your community who doesn’t agree. They can celebrate however they want and so can you.”
A Labor Day History Lesson
And sometimes the development of alternative celebrations—such as the reclaiming of May Day by the modern day, more immigrant-influenced US labor movement--can lead to two opportunities to picnic, protest, and march, rather than just one!
As a former communications director for the United Mine Workers, Teamsters, and Service Employees International Union, the author delves, most informatively, into the political agenda behind the creation of Labor Day, as a counter to nascent working-class internationalism in the late 19th century.
Readers will learn that it was a corporate Democrat president—rather than any anti-union Republican—who first tried to erase the memory of May 1, as an international workers holiday born in the USA, and replace it with an end of summer day off out of step with the rest of the world.
To add insult to injury, May 1 then got officially rebranded, during the McCarthy era, as Law Day—although nobody, even corporate lawyers, get time off for that. Yet, thanks to multiple MAGA threats to the “rule of law” since President Donald Trump got reelected, more than 1,000 California bar members used their lunch hour to stage a first-time ever May Day-style protest in downtown San Francisco.)
As Witt recounts, massive demonstrations seeking shorter working hours occurred in Chicago and other US cities on May 1, 1886; when repeated on May Day four years later, workers in “dozens of countries in Europe and Latin America also held rallies and marches to support the eight-hour day demand.”
Thereafter, much to the alarm of “robber barons” here and abroad, May 1 protests became “an annual event for workers all around the world” and an expression of cross-border solidarity between labor radicals of varying stripes.
Forget May Day?
By 1896, however, a business-backed resident of the White House named Grover Cleveland needed a “sop to unions.” He had, after all, just called out federal troops to crush the Pullman strike organized by the American Railway Union, a pioneering alternative to craft unionism led by future Socialist Party presidential candidate Eugene Victor Debs (who was jailed for his role in the strike).
At Cleveland’s request, Congress declared that workers should be given a day off, every year, on the first Monday in September so, as Witt notes, “Actions taken by US unions would not be coordinated with their counterparts in the rest of the world.”
“Today, Labor Day is a paid holiday for about 3 in 4 workers in the US. Ironically, the lowest paid workers are the least likely to have the day off with pay. That includes non-union workers in food service, retail, hotels, agriculture, delivery, and janitorial services, as well as part-time workers, or those whose companies claim are ‘independent contractors’ rather than employees.”
On the holiday counterprogramming front, the good news is that May Day (as noted above) has made a major comeback over the last two decades. There is also “the shining example of the transformation of Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day as now observed in many cities and states.”
Thanks to the efforts of progressive veterans’ groups like Veterans for Peace and Common Defense, at least some commemorative events on Memorial Day and Veterans Day now focus on peace and justice issues, rather than uncritical celebration of past wars.
In his chapter on Martin Luther King Day, the author suggests a range of activities that “can be about the movement and not just the man.” (This is advice that venerators of Cesar Chavez are taking, but only belatedly, after recent revelations about his history of sexual abuse while president of the United Farm Workers.)
Witt reports that all proceeds from his book are going to Rethinking Schools, a “national nonprofit organization that supports social, economic, and environmental justice teaching at a time when the very idea of public education is under attack. Rethinking Schools’ materials have been used by tens of thousands of educators and have reached millions of students.”
Let’s hope that Make Holidays Your Own also gets into the hands of many educators who have to come up with fresh ideas for in-school celebrations of holidays, that cannot be cancelled even in blue states. But, of course, don’t want their personal creativity in the classroom (or pet peeves) unleashing a conservative backlash of the sort that did not help Hong.
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I Spent 32 Years Caring for Children and I Still Can't Afford to Retire—I'm Not Alone
The work that our families run on often happens where no one can see it. This Labor Day, as midterms near, I'm thinking about what it will take for the people who do that work—and the people who depend on it—to finally be counted.
Sep 07, 2026
What does it say about this country when you can work for more than 40 years and still can’t afford to stop?
I am 66 years old and have spent over 30 years caring for children across the South. When 2024 drew to a close, I tried to retire. I thought I had put in enough time to set myself free from the labor of surviving this economy.
But, as I worried, I couldn't afford it. The price of everything was increasing, including bread, and I realized I had no choice but to return to work within six months of my retirement.
You can tell workers like me that we should have saved more, planned better, chosen a better path toward our retirement. But here’s the problem many domestic and care workers encounter: You cannot save money you never had. When wages barely cover housing, groceries, medicine, and everything else life throws at you, retirement is less like a plan and more like a luxury. In 2025 (the year I was supposed to be retired), early educators had a median wage of $34,980. Other domestic workers, like house cleaners make an estimated median wage of $34,650, and home care workers in 2025 had a median annual income of $22,429. These wages reflect the reality that domestic workers overall are three times as likely to live in poverty as other workers.
With seven children and 18 grandchildren, I do not want another generation of women in my family to inherit a country’s economy where caring for others means giving up their own security.
I come from a legacy of domestic workers. My grandmother, Big Momma, was a Certified Nursing Assistant. My mother was a housekeeper. I became a childcare worker. Three generations of Black women in my family have cared for other people.
We are part of a much longer history, and that is why this work has never paid what it should.
In 1881, 20 Black laundresses organized a movement that grew to nearly 3,000 members and won better wages after striking. Nearly a century later, Dorothy Bolden organized domestic workers across this same city and founded the National Domestic Workers Union of America. Bolden understood that better working conditions and civic power went hand in hand and even made voter registration part of the strategy to organize domestic workers.
When this country finally wrote basic protections into law, such as the right to organize, a minimum wage, and a path to retirement, domestic workers and farmworkers were left out of these protections. That was intentional. Much of that work was done by Black women in the South; leaving it unprotected was no accident. A multigenerational legacy later, we are still living with the consequences these gaps created.
It’s why a person can care for children for over 32 years and still not be able to afford to retire. We didn’t fail to plan; our work was just kept out of sight and out of the protections other workers won.
For most of my career as a childcare worker, children knew me as Miss Cathy. If one of them came to me crying because they were being bullied or something was wrong, I would tell them, "Miss Cathy is going to get to the bottom of it." And trust that Miss Cathy always did.
I adore my work and the children I care for. But loving your work should not require sacrificing your own security.
Or your health.
I have Graves’ disease—a disease that is twice as likely to impact Black women—and often, we face delayed diagnoses and advanced symptoms because of healthcare disparities. For years, I managed it by going to quick clinics when I could afford them and, most of the time, went without care when I couldn't. It was ironic: I was spending my days making sure other people's children were cared for while struggling to afford consistent care for myself. It was not until I turned 65 and qualified for Medicare that I finally had access to health coverage. And even that coverage is at risk.
But this essay is not meant to share all of the challenges I face in care work. No, I am writing this to emphasize that I am no longer the exception. We, as working-class people, have become the rule.
Across the United States, retirement is slipping out of reach for working people of every kind. Wages have not kept up with the cost of the roof over our heads, a simple doctor's visit, a full grocery cart, or care of any kind. More and more people are working into their late 60s, 70s, even 80s, not because they want to, but because stopping simply is not an option. For me, I work until God tells me to stop. The insecurity I’ve referenced has always shadowed domestic workers, and now it’s reaching the rest of the working class. My story reflects the lives of so many working people.
But domestic workers are building a constituency around care: domestic workers, family caregivers, parents, and everyone who understands that care is not some niche issue. It is part of whether a family can afford to live and whether the people who provide that care can afford to grow old, in my case, preferably with a crisp beverage on a beautiful beach.
The economy and affordability are on people's minds. It’s the only thing that’s on my mind. My bank account tells me that things are expensive.
For Black women like me, the right to be heard was never simple. Our grandmothers cleaned other people's homes and were told their voice did not matter in their own country. My father, who raised my siblings and me in 1960s Memphis, taught us that sitting out of the civic process was not optional; he refused to be invisible, and engaging with elected officials was a way to ensure that.
And it is not only domestic workers who have a stake in this. Every family with childcare needs, every person with an aging parent or disabled loved one at home, all of us who will need care someday—we all deeply depend on this work. When we make that care visible, when we insist that it be counted and prioritized, we are looking out for one another.
I want the people in elected office to hear that childcare lets parents go to work, that home care lets people live with dignity, and that we, the people who do that work, should be able to retire from it one day.
Domestic workers are more than our labor. We are neighbors, parents, and grandparents.
With seven children and 18 grandchildren, I do not want another generation of women in my family to inherit a country’s economy where caring for others means giving up their own security.
My grandmother cared for people. My mother cared for people. I spent 32 years caring for children. We have done our part.
This Labor Day, I want the people who represent us—and the country we have spent our lives caring for—to show us they will do theirs.
And if they don't, Miss Cathy is going to get to the bottom of it.
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Gaza Is Still Waiting to Bury Its Dead
Recovering the dead has become a final test of human dignity
Sep 06, 2026
In every war, there is supposed to come a moment when the guns fall silent and families carry their dead to the cemetery.
In Gaza, that moment has still not fully arrived.
Nearly three years into the war, thousands of Palestinian families are still waiting—not to learn whether their loved ones survived, but for the chance to recover what remains of them from beneath collapsed homes and buried streets.
Many families know almost exactly where their relatives are: beneath a particular building, under a collapsed staircase, behind layers of concrete too heavy to move by hand. Across Gaza, rubble is no longer only evidence of destruction. In many places, it is also a grave.
There should be no disagreement over one principle: The dead have a right to be recovered and buried with dignity, and families have a right to know where their loved ones lie.
The urgent humanitarian question is therefore not only how many people were killed. It is how many are still waiting to be recovered, identified, and buried.
On August 4, 2026, Gaza held a mass funeral for 112 members of the al-Hassayna and Abu Sharia extended family. Their remains had been recovered from homes destroyed in Gaza City’s Sabra neighborhood in November 2023. For nearly three years, their families had waited to bury them.
That funeral was a warning about what time does to the dead—and to those left behind.
The longer remains stay beneath collapsed buildings, the harder identification becomes. Decomposition advances. Bones separate. Personal belongings are displaced. Forensic evidence deteriorates. Gaza’s forensic capacity also remains severely limited.
For families, identification is not a technical detail. It is the difference between a missing person and a known grave. It is the ability to perform a funeral, visit a burial place, and begin mourning with certainty rather than suspicion.
For relatives, the waiting is its own form of suffering. Some families return again and again to the same ruins, pointing to the place where a bedroom, kitchen, or stairwell once stood. They are not asking for certainty about survival; they are asking for the basic certainty of a grave. Until recovery happens, mourning is suspended between memory and rubble.
There are legal consequences as well. Without formal recovery and identification, families can face prolonged uncertainty over death registration, inheritance, guardianship, and other civil matters. A person may be gone in every human sense and still remain unresolved on paper.
The physical challenge is enormous. A 2026 damage and needs assessment by the United Nations, the European Union, and the World Bank estimated that the war had generated more than 68 million metric tons of rubble in Gaza. Some debris are contaminated by unexploded ordnance, asbestos, and other hazardous materials.
Recovering the dead is therefore not a matter of sending people into ruins with shovels. It requires excavators, cranes, fuel, protective equipment, forensic teams, DNA identification capacity, safe humanitarian access, and protection for civil-defense and rescue workers.
Heavy machinery is not a luxury. It is the difference between a body remaining beneath concrete and a family finally being able to bury its dead.
In July 2026, the United Nations Development Programme and the European Union launched a €15 million initiative to support emergency debris removal and strengthen Gaza’s capacity for the dignified recovery and identification of human remains. It is important, but the need is far greater than any single project.
That is why debris removal must treat the recovery of human remains as a central humanitarian priority, not as an afterthought to reconstruction. Sites where people are believed to be buried should be mapped and handled carefully, with procedures for documenting remains, preserving evidence, and notifying families. Rebuilding Gaza cannot mean building over the missing.
What is required now is neither complicated nor impossible.
Humanitarian teams need safe and unhindered access to recovery sites. Excavators, cranes, fuel, spare parts, and specialized equipment must be allowed in without delay. Forensic capacity must be expanded, including DNA identification and proper preservation of remains. Civil-defense, rescue, forensic, and humanitarian teams must be protected.
These are not maximalist political demands. They are the minimum requirements of human dignity.
People will continue to disagree about politics and the future of this conflict. But there should be no disagreement over one principle: The dead have a right to be recovered and buried with dignity, and families have a right to know where their loved ones lie.
A bulldozer should not become a diplomatic bargaining chip. A crane should not require a political breakthrough. Reaching the body of a child should not become another battle.
Civilization is measured not only by what it builds for the living, but by the dignity it preserves for the dead.
Open the crossings and humanitarian routes. Allow the heavy machinery and forensic equipment in. Protect the teams recovering the dead. Give families the chance to bury their loved ones.
Because even after war has taken a life, it should not be allowed to take away a name, a grave, and a final goodbye.
Human dignity does not end with death.
Let Gaza bury its dead.
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You Know Exactly Who Is Torching the Earth and Loving It
Given how the US president has been going out of his way in these years to increase the use of fossil fuels while, among other things, trying to shut down new sources of wind power and solar energy, who wouldn’t be sweating?
Sep 06, 2026
Let me not quote him once in this piece. We’ve already heard all too much from him, don’t you think? And president of the United States though he may be, he doesn’t deserve to be quoted, not given what he has to say.
It’s true that, in my lifetime, we’ve had all sorts of strange, sometimes deeply disturbing presidents. Believe me, Richard Nixon was no fun. And neither was Ronald Reagan or even, in our very own relatively recent moment, the aging Joe Biden. But nothing like him was ever even conceivable... not until, of course, he happened.
I hardly need to say it, but he—and unfortunately on this planet of ours right now, I really can’t help mentioning him again and again and again, can I?—should be considered the summary of what decline has long meant for great powers, personified in a fashion that may be historically unique for a nation that, not so very long ago, was arguably unique in its global reach and power. Phew, that sentence exhausted me!
Indeed, historically speaking, it’s certainly been rare beyond words (though I swear that won’t stop me from writing this!) to experience such an imperial decline—especially of the greatest power on Earth, possibly ever—both summoned up by and summed up in a lone individual, a single leader, a uniquely mad (and, mind you, not simply as in angry) man.
Consider it beyond remarkable that, in 2024, almost 50% of the American voting public (49.8% of them to be exact) opted to put YKEW back in the White House to do his—and it couldn’t be a more appropriate word, given our world—damnedest to turn this planet into a hothouse of the first order.
If a single poll sums him up in this singular moment of ours, perhaps it’s the latest AP-NORC one. It indicates that about 72% of Americans think this country is indeed heading in “the wrong direction,” while only 26% (and what in the—yes!—world can possibly be going through their brains at this moment?) think it’s heading in the right direction (wherever on this ever stranger planet of ours—or do I mean theirs?—that might be).
And talking about the wrong direction in which the president of the country that, not so long ago, was certainly the greatest power ever is sending us, hook, line, and sinker—whoops, I meant not to mention him again and yet there I went! It seems that I just can’t help myself, nor can I evidently finish this sentence—and honestly, can you blame me on this planet of ours?
Okay, I give up. How can I help myself (or anyone else) when it comes to HIM?
After all, what world can any of us imagine living in anymore, other than his? And given that world, maybe what I actually meant should have been a little more emphatically stated than what I wrote above. After all, to put it mildly (or do I mean wildly?), he’s taking us in the wrong direction, hook, line, and—no, not sinker but stinker (though he is indeed sinking us and this planet, too, in a big-time fashion). And yes, the president who told the world at the United Nations last year that climate change was nothing short of a “con job” and a “scam” seems to be distinctly in the process of preparing to burn down this very world of ours (or do I mean his?).
It’s Getting Hot, Hotter, Hottest
Oh, and only recently, to change the subject for a moment from You Know Exactly Who (or YKEW), a French tourist died after his vehicle became stuck in the mud in the all too aptly named Death Valley National Park in southern California, where the temperature was—and catch a breath before you read this!—116°F! (And mind you, that valley has been setting its own heat records in recent years.)
Now, given the location, you might think that was a one-of-a-kind situation in a deeply desertified stretch of this planet, but if so, think again. As it happens (to flip lands for a moment), on that tourist’s home continent, Europe, according to The Guardian, there have already been an estimated at least 35,000 “excess deaths” attributed to four stunning heatwaves that started in May this summer. Worse yet, when the records for the whole season are in, that number—god save us!—could still rise significantly as parts of that continent continue to go up in flames in a radical fashion. And don’t for a moment think that the idea of this planet being increasingly on fire is just a metaphoric image. As The Guardian also reported, “Wildfires are projected to burn 39% more of Europe by the end of the century even in the best-case scenario for stopping the planet from heating, a study has found, unless action is taken to manage them better.”
And mind you, in some strange fashion, we’re undoubtedly just at the beginning of all this. Oh, and keep in mind as well that we’re not just talking about temperatures on land. I’m sure you’ll be amazed to know that, as The Guardian again reported, ocean temperatures have similarly been soaring of late. In fact, believe it or not, ocean waters set a new temperature record in August (even though the highest ocean temperatures are usually in March or April).
Nonetheless, you shouldn’t find that particularly shocking, since more than 90% of the heat trapped by carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel burning enters those very oceans. As environmentalist Bill McKibben reminded us recently, “Since our planet is 70% ocean, it’s a pretty good gauge of how hot the planet is getting. And what it shows is that in all the decades we’ve been measuring, it’s never been hotter.” And mind you, “42% of the world’s ocean area is now experiencing a ‘marine heatwave.’”
Phew!... I’m already sweating!
What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
In some sense, given what we human beings are doing to this planet and given that the president of the greatest power on Earth, YKEW himself, has been going out of his way in these years to increase the use of fossil fuels while, among other things, trying to shut down new sources of wind power and solar energy, who wouldn’t be sweating?
When it comes to the literal destruction of this planet, however, it seems clear that YKEW simply loves it. He couldn’t, for instance, be more enthusiastic about the scores of new AI data centers being set up (or soon to be set up) across this country (not to speak of the world) that will be powering themselves with immense quantities of—oh, yes!—fossil fuels and so pouring ever more carbon into the atmosphere nationwide (and undoubtedly globally, too). As The New York Times reported, for instance, when a new data center in El Paso, Texas, is completed, “It could emit as much planet-warming carbon dioxide in a year as 360,000 gasoline-powered passenger vehicles, each driven for the average distance logged by American drivers in a year.”
Under the circumstances, what could possibly go wrong?
So, among other things, expect to feel ever hotter on this distinctly broiling planet of ours and consider it beyond remarkable that, in 2024, almost 50% of the American voting public (49.8% of them to be exact) opted to put YKEW back in the White House to do his—and it couldn’t be a more appropriate word, given our world—damnedest to turn this planet into a hothouse of the first order.
And although we’re still months away from December 25 (though don’t count on snow), consider all of that his Christmas present to our children and grandchildren. I’m thinking, of course, about a planet whose major power, led by You Know Exactly Who (YKEW himself!), is giving the phenomenon of imperial decline historically new meaning by working all too efficiently to take the planet down with him.
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Data Centers Are Spreading, But So Is Popular Resistance
The real race appears to be for tech companies to build data centers in as many communities as possible before residents can stop them.
Sep 06, 2026
These days, it seems as though there are new data centers being proposed and built everywhere.
Tech companies have long relied on these gigantic server warehouses to process massive amounts of digital data. But a race to develop AI, championed by President Donald Trump, has fed a sharp surge in construction.
The problem is, no one really wants to live near one. Three-quarters of Americans surveyed in August say they oppose data centers. That’s up from 42% a year earlier.
Data centers use up lots of land—largely in rural America. They use inordinate amounts of water for cooling, eat up power and pollute our air, and generate heat in an already-warming climate. So anyone concerned with their most basic needs—land, water, air, electricity, and the climate—is justifiably concerned about data centers.
The good news, Meyer says, is “there has been tremendous grassroots pushback and opposition to data centers in all parts of the country.”
Data centers are also physical symbols of the way in which AI companies are gambling away our economic stability.
“They are pushing to move as quickly as possible, to throw as much money at this as possible, basically offering open bribes to governments at all levels—local, state, and federal—to get these things approved and built,” Thomas Meyer, deputy political director at Food & Water Watch, told me.
Even mainstream economists are warning about a massive “AI bubble,” which could take the entire system down with it when it bursts. (South Korea, where that bubble may already be bursting, offers a real warning to the United States.)
The good news, Meyer says, is “there has been tremendous grassroots pushback and opposition to data centers in all parts of the country.” Meyer’s organization is one of hundreds that have joined the newly formed Stop Data Centers Coalition, which unites local fights against data centers in urban and rural areas across the country. Many of these struggles have enjoyed varying degrees of success.
What’s really needed is a national moratorium on data centers, as outlined in a letter to Congress signed by the coalition’s partners.
Partisan gridlock in Congress, and President Trump’s full-throated support of AI companies, stands in the way of a national ban for now. But this spring, environmental organizations defeated a bill called the “Protect American AI Act” that would have carved out environmental loopholes for data centers.
Meanwhile, activists are pushing ahead at the state and local levels.
Residents in Maine pushed legislators to pass what would have been the first state-wide moratorium on data centers earlier this year (although Governor Janet Mills vetoed the bill).
The fight against data centers fared better in New York, where state lawmakers passed a similar moratorium. Gov. Kathy Hochul, who has championed AI technology, has yet to sign the bill. But in the meantime, she signed an executive order issuing a one-year pause to allow time to develop regulations. “We are still pushing her to sign that bill because it’s a bit stronger than the executive order,” said Meyer.
Meyer pointed out that more than a dozen states are considering similar moratoria, and bans have already taken effect in many local communities. “Several hundred places have enacted moratoriums of different kinds of shapes and sizes,” said Meyer—including Sarasota County in Florida, and the cities of Minneapolis and Spokane. Monterey Park, California, stands out for being the first in the nation to enact a permanent ban passed by voters.
Trump unashamedly centers industry talking points in his executive order, casting data center construction and AI technology as a “race” to be won. But the real race appears to be for tech companies to build data centers in as many communities as possible before residents can stop them.
And that’s exactly why we need a moratorium.
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Trump's DHS Is Preparing To Engage In Voter Suppression and Intimidation
The Trump administration is desperate. They will do anything—regardless of how illegal or unconstitutional—to subvert the will of people and remain in power. Yet, with the stakes so high, we cannot allow ourselves to be intimidated.
Sep 06, 2026
On September 1, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told reporters that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents could be deployed to polling sites across the country. He remarked, “The only reason why we would be at polling places is if there is a threat to that polling place or we’re serving a warrant on someone that we have been actively tracking down.” Later that day, DHS doubled down on this point. In a statement, the department said that, while ICE is not “planning operations targeting polling locations,” the agency conducts “intelligence-driven targeted enforcement, and if an active public safety threat endangered a polling location, they may be arrested as a result of that targeted enforcement action.”
Missing from those statements, however, is that this “intelligence-driven” enforcement would be based on DHS’ explicit and baseless efforts to amplify President Donald Trump’s election fraud lies. In July, Mullin said, “We will scrub all election records, looking for illegal aliens and those who are ineligible to vote, including those that somehow voted, yet they were deceased.” At the time, he also threatened to withhold federal election-related aid to states that failed to comply with the Trump administration’s probe.
That same month, DHS issued a statement alleging that over 250,000 noncitizens are illegally registered to vote in California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Nevada. According to DHS employees and officials familiar with the situation, those numbers were wildly inflated. For instance, while DHS claimed that there were close to 16,000 noncitizens on Nevada’s voter list, it only managed to provide state officials with information on 185 voters. DHS failed to disclose what data they used to match those voters to noncitizens.
This is unsurprising. As the Brennan Center for Justice reports, empirical studies, state investigations, and work by journalists have consistently found that cases of noncitizens voting are exceptionally rare. Moreover, claims made by Republicans and their media allies to the contrary have been repeatedly shown to be false.
These extreme measures also point to just how afraid Trump is ahead of the midterms.
The reality is that Mullin’s DHS is actively trying to fabricate a pretext for ICE to be present at polling sites, regardless of how illegal it would be. 18 U.S.C § 592 directly prohibits any deployment of military personnel or “armed” federal agents “at any place where a general or special election is held.”
To that end, Mullin is exploiting every resource available to him. On September 1, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) reportedly launched “a coordinated criminal voter fraud surge initiative to pursue investigative leads, conduct field interviews, and support timely prosecutorial review,” according to a federal guidance reviewed by CNN. HSI offices in Washington, Wisconsin, Missouri, Georgia, California, Pennsylvania, Nevada, New York, and Connecticut are expected to take investigative action from early September through mid October. While HSI ordinarily focuses on crimes like human trafficking, drug smuggling, and child exploitation, it has been repeatedly tasked with investigating voter fraud in Trump’s second term. In February, the White House directed the agency to determine if any naturalized citizens voted or registered to vote prior to becoming citizens. HSI has also been directed to coordinate with US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to issue removal proceedings for noncitizens suspected of or linked to voter fraud.
ICE is also currently seeking vendors to handle “and secure delivery of publicly available voter registration files and voter history files to support Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) fraud detection and data segmentation activities.” To be clear, as J.B. Branch, the director of Federal AI Governance and Technology Policy for Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division, notes, “Publicly available does not mean ‘fair game’ for unlimited government surveillance.” He continues, “There is an enormous difference between a voter record sitting in a state database and the federal government aggregating millions of those records, cross-referencing them against other government and commercial databases, and using algorithms to generate investigative leads about individual Americans.”
That contract would be worth between $2-5 million according to an acquisition forecast document published by DHS on August 31.
This latest data grab is one of several coordinated efforts by ICE and the Trump administration to undermine voter eligibility. A procurement record from July indicated that ICE planned to pay Thomson Reuters, a major data broker firm, $125 million for access to its CLEAR database, which includes “peoples’ names, addresses, Social Security numbers, ethnicity, social media posts, and geolocation information,” to help the agency investigate voter fraud.
On September 3, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), along with individual voters, filed a motion asking a federal judge to block the Trump administration’s plan to compile state-by-state lists of people it deemed eligible to vote—“State Citizenship Lists”—and publish them online. The basis for this project is an executive order Trump signed on March 31. While a lower court blocked several key provisions from going into effect in 33 states and Washington, DC, the Supreme Court stayed the injunction in August, thus paving the way for the plan to be implemented nationwide. This, despite the fact that the Constitution clearly dictates that only states and Congress—not the president—have the power to control US elections.
All of these escalating efforts so close to the midterms point to one undeniable truth: DHS is readying itself, on behalf of the Trump administration, to engage in nationwide voter suppression and intimidation this November.
These extreme measures also point to just how afraid Trump is ahead of the midterms. On August 21, he told supporters that if Republicans lose, he will be impeached. Several Republicans, including House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA), have recently echoed this "warning."
And they are right to be afraid. Democrats are favored to take back control of the House and possibly win control of the Senate. If this happens, Congress should immediately impeach Trump and put him, as well as everyone who enabled his corrupt administration, on trial for their many crimes.
The Trump administration is desperate. They will do anything—regardless of how illegal or unconstitutional—to subvert the will of people and remain in power. Yet, with the stakes so high, we cannot allow ourselves to be intimidated. This country cannot afford two more years of unchecked Trumpism. While there is still time, we must continue to advocate for progressive candidates as well as calling out and challenging every effort by Republicans to steal our elections.
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