"Democrats should introduce articles of impeachment now, run on them this November, and then actually do it"

 

Democrats should be loudly calling for the impeachment of Donald Trump now, run on it in November, and then, when they take the House, actually do it. Because what he’s doing right now is not “norm-breaking,” or “provocative rhetoric,” or even the oft-quoted “Trump being Trump.” It’s an open assertion of unchecked power, limited — in his own words — only by his own “personal morality.”

Yesterday’s shocking interview in The New York Times was decisive; that isn’t how a president speaks in a constitutional republic. Instead, it’s a classic example of how a strongman, a wannabe Mussolini or Putin, speaks as he tries to reinvent the nation so the law becomes optional when it comes to him, his flunkies, and his billionaire buddies.

When asked if there were any limits on his power, he told the Times’ reporters, “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.” He added, “I don’t need international law.”

And he’s acting it out in real time, creating his own private, unaccountable, masked army (or death squad) that’s actively terrorizing American citizens and being used to punish the cities and states of any politicians who dare stand up to him or call him out.

Not to mention his petty revenges: this week, he cut off billions in childcare and other low-income funding to California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York in direct violation of the law and the Constitution because those states’ leaders had the temerity to defy him.

The Founders saw this coming. They obsessed over it and relentlessly warned us future generations about it. And they built a solution for it into the Constitution they drafted in the summer and fall of 1787: impeachment.

James Madison, in Federalist 47, cautioned that the greatest danger to liberty wouldn’t come from a foreign invasion, but, instead, from a president who turned the powers of government into instruments of personal will:

“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”

Alexander Hamilton, no radical by any stretch, wrote that impeachable offenses are those which “proceed from the misconduct of public men” and injure society itself. He hoped, in Federalist 68, that no man with “[t]alents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity” would ever reach the White House, but that’s exactly what we’re now watching in real time.

And, no, impeachment is not some “unprecedented Democratic overreach.” Republicans have demanded impeachment of Democratic presidents for nearly a century, and tried multiple times, most recently just two years ago.

— Republican legislators screamed about impeaching Franklin D. Roosevelt over his threat to pack the Supreme Court if they didn’t stop knocking down his New Deal programs.
— They floated impeachment of Harry Truman for going into Korea without a formal declaration of war.
— They threatened both John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson with impeachment over the Bay of Pigs in Cuba and the War in Vietnam.
— They introduced impeachment resolutions against Jimmy Carter over the Panama Canal treaty.
— They campaigned openly to impeach Barack Obama over his “dictatorial” executive orders and the “communist” Affordable Care Act.

The idea that impeachment is too “divisive” to even discuss now is a naked lie, and a very convenient one for authoritarian Republicans. What’s different today isn’t the tool of impeachment; it’s the target.

Trump has now made explicit what Nixon tried to pull off but failed: that his presidency exists above the law and he can freely ignore both domestic and international law. 

Nixon at least had the decency to mutter it privately, once even telling David Frost that, “Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.​” Trump has put it into public policy.

When a president claims the law doesn’t restrain him, as Trump has done — when he treats Congress’ approval as if it were optional, federal judges as if they were political enemies, treaties as inconveniences that can be gotten around or even ignored, and war powers as personal prerogatives — impeachment stops being political theater and becomes a constitutional necessity.

While I vehemently disagree with Trump’s tax cuts for billionaires, gutting USAID and other agencies, and inflammatory rhetoric (among dozens of other things), this is not about policy disagreements.

It’s explicitly about his unilaterally making war without congressional authorization, weaponizing the Justice Department against his political enemies, dangling pardons and financial opportunities for his allies but the law as vengeance for his critics, and the obscenity of his mass pardons for the criminals who attacked our Capitol on January 6th.

It’s about, in other words, a president who has told us all, bluntly, that legality and government power — including the power to execute a woman who was just driving home after dropping off her child at school — flows from his own definition of “morality,” his “own mind,” and no other source, the American Constitution be damned.

He’s asserting the “morality” of a man convicted of fraud, adjudicated a rapist, repeatedly accused of sexual assault, who gleefully takes bribes of gold, Trump hotels, and jet planes and rewards the bribers with tariff reductions, American weapons, and other benefits.

This is how Putin and Orbán transformed Russia and Hungary from democracies into strongman single-party autocracies, and Trump is eagerly following their examples (and apparently taking their regular advice).

Here’s an example of what articles of impeachment could read like, a version that could be read into the Congressional Record tomorrow:

---

Articles of Impeachment Against Donald J. Trump, President of the United States

Article I — Abuse of Power and Usurpation of Congressional War Authority

In his conduct as President of the United States, Donald J. Trump has abused the powers of his office by initiating and directing acts of war without authorization from Congress, in violation of Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution and the War Powers Resolution of 1973.

President Trump ordered and executed military actions against the sovereign nation of Venezuela, including strikes within its capital and the seizure of its head of state, without a declaration of war or statutory authorization from Congress. In doing so, he substituted his personal judgment and the desires of his donors in the fossil fuel industry for the constitutional role of the legislative branch, nullifying Congress’s exclusive authority to decide when the nation enters hostilities.

Such conduct is not a policy disagreement but a direct assault on the separation of powers. The Framers vested the war-making power in Congress precisely to prevent unilateral, impulsive, or self-interested uses of military force by a single individual.

Wherefore, President Trump has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with self-government and has committed an abuse of power warranting impeachment and removal from office.

Article II — Contempt for the Rule of Law and Constitutional Limits on Executive Power

Donald J. Trump has asserted that his authority as President is constrained only by his “own morality,” explicitly rejecting the binding force of domestic law, treaty obligations, and international legal norms ratified by the United States.

By publicly declaring that neither Congress, the courts, nor the law meaningfully constrain his actions, President Trump has advanced a theory of executive power fundamentally incompatible with the Constitution. Treaties ratified by the Senate are, under Article VI, the supreme Law of the Land.

A President who claims legality flows from personal judgment rather than law announces an intent to govern as a sovereign, not as a constitutional officer.

This conduct constitutes a profound breach of the President’s oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution.

Article III — Corrupt Use of the Justice System for Political Retaliation

Donald J. Trump has abused the powers of the presidency by directing or encouraging the use of federal law enforcement and prosecutorial authority to target political opponents for retaliation and intimidation.

The President has publicly demanded investigations and prosecutions of political adversaries while signaling protection for allies. Such conduct weaponizes the justice system and undermines equal justice under law.

This pattern of conduct constitutes an abuse of power and a violation of the public trust.

Article IV — Subversion of Democratic Institutions and Checks and Balances

Donald J. Trump has engaged in a sustained campaign to undermine the independence of the judiciary, the authority of Congress, and the legitimacy of constitutional constraints on executive power.

By encouraging attacks on judges, disregarding statutory limits imposed by Congress, and treating oversight as illegitimate, the President has sought to weaken the institutions designed to restrain executive excess.

Such conduct represents a betrayal of constitutional responsibility.

Article V — Abuse of the Pardon Power to Undermine Accountability for an Attack on the Constitution

Donald J. Trump has abused the pardon power by issuing broad clemency to individuals who participated in or supported the January 6, 2001 attack on the United States Capitol.

While the pardon power is substantial, it was never intended to erase accountability for a violent assault on Congress itself. This use of the pardon power undermines deterrence, encourages future political violence, and weakens constitutional governance.

Conclusion

In all of this, Donald J. Trump has demonstrated that he will place personal authority above constitutional duty, power above law, and loyalty to himself above loyalty to the Republic.

Wherefore, Donald J. Trump warrants impeachment, trial, removal from office, and disqualification from holding any office of honor, trust, or profit under the United States.

---

Then comes the part Democrats keep flinching from: begin a loud and public campaign for impeachment. After all, just this week he told Republicans that his biggest fear if the GOP loses control of the House is that he’ll be impeached for a third time.

Yesterday afternoon, I got one of Trump’s daily fundraising emails. This one didn’t ask if I’d yet made a donation to get my name on the list for my “tariff rebate check” like others this week and last but, instead, said (and the bold type is also bold in his email):

“Dems plan for 2026 is simple but disturbing to EVERY MAGA Republican:
1. Flip the House
2. Flip the Senate
3. IMPEACH PRESIDENT TRUMP
4. Kill the MAGA agenda permanently”

He’s not just talking about impeachment; he’s fundraising on it! Democrats, frankly, should do the same.

I realize that a conviction will never pass the current Senate (although we may be surprised if he keeps doing and saying truly crazy and offensive things), but it’s important to get this into the public dialogue and prepare the ground for next year.

That’s why Democrats must tell voters now exactly what they intend to do with power if they win it this coming November (or before, if the GOP loses any more House members).

And they need to stop pretending that through some weird magic our democracy can be preserved by silence, caution, or simply hoping that this convicted felon will suddenly discover restraint or cave to a judge’s demand.

There is a real possibility, by the way, that today a handful of Republicans in the House could decide that preserving Congress’ war powers, the power and independence of the judiciary, and the rule of law matters more than protecting one aging politician. After all, yesterday five Republicans in the Senate voted against Trump on his Venezuela oil-stealing campaign and nine in the House voted against him on healthcare. It happened with Nixon, and it can happen again.

But it won’t happen if Democrats continue to treat impeachment like a dirty word instead of a constitutional obligation.

Yes, it’ll piss off Trump’s base and rightwing media will go nuts. But his base is already filled with rage and rightwing media will do what they do no matter what, impeachment or not. Democrats need to stop cowering. So, let’s say what needs to be said without euphemism or apology:

Democrats should introduce articles of impeachment now, run on them this November, and then actually do it.

-Thom Hartmann

The Murder of Renee Good

 

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Before Renee Good was fatally shot behind the wheel of her vehicle by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, the 37-year-old mother of three had dropped off her youngest child at an elementary school in Minneapolis, the newest city she called home.

While Trump administration officials continued Thursday to paint Good as a domestic terrorist who attempted to ram federal agents with her Honda Pilot, members of her family, friends and neighbors mourned a woman they remembered as gentle, kind and openhearted.

Good, her 6-year-old son and her wife had only recently relocated to Minneapolis from Kansas City, Missouri. The family settled in a quiet residential street of older homes and multifamily buildings, some front porches festooned with pride flags still twinkling with holiday lights. A day after her death, neighbors had grown weary of talking to reporters. A handwritten sign posted to one front door read “NO MEDIA INQUIRES” and “JUSTICE FOR RENEE.”

Far from the worst-of-the-worst criminals President Donald Trump said his immigration crackdown would target, Good was a U.S. citizen born in Colorado who had apparently never have been charged with anything beyond a single traffic ticket.

In social media accounts, she described herself as a “poet and writer and wife and mom.” She said she was currently “experiencing Minneapolis,” displaying a pride emoji on her Instagram account. A profile picture posted to Pinterest shows her smiling and holding a young child against her cheek, along with posts about tattoos, hairstyles and home decorating.

Her ex-husband, who asked not to be named out of concern for the safety of their children, said Good was no activist and that he had never known her to participate in a protest of any kind. He said she was simply headed home before the encounter with a group of ICE agents on a snowy street.

State and local officials and protesters have rejected the Trump administration’s characterization of the shooting, with Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey saying video of the shooting shows the self-defense argument was “garbage.”

Video taken by bystanders posted to social media shows an officer approaching her car, demanding she open the door and grabbing the handle. When she begins to pull forward, a different ICE officer standing by the vehicle pulls his weapon and immediately fires at least two shots into the vehicle at close range. The entire deadly incident was over in less than 10 seconds.

In another video taken immediately after the shooting, a distraught woman is seen sitting near the vehicle, wailing, “That’s my wife, I don’t know what to do!” Calls and messages to Good’s wife received no response.

By Thursday, a few dozen people had gathered on the one-way street where Good was killed, blocking the roadway with steel drums filled with burning wood for warmth to ward of a pelting freezing rain. Passersby stopped to pay their respects at a makeshift memorial with bouquets of flowers and a hand-fashioned cross.

Good’s ex-husband said she was a devoted Christian who took part in youth mission trips to Northern Ireland when she was younger. She loved to sing, participating in a chorus in high school and studying vocal performance in college.

She studied creative writing at Old Dominion University in Virginia and won a prize in 2020 for one of her works, according to a post on the school’s English department Facebook page. She also hosted a podcast with her second husband, who died in 2023.

Kent Wascom, who taught Good in the creative writing program at Old Dominion, recalled her juggling the birth of her child with both work and school in 2019. He described her as “incredibly caring of her peers.”

“What stood out to me in her prose was that, unlike a lot of young fiction writers, her focus was outward rather than inward,” Wascom said. “A creative writing workshop can be a gnarly place with a lot of egos and competition, but her presence was something that helped make that classroom a really supportive place.”

Good had a daughter and a son from her first marriage, who are now ages 15 and 12. Her 6-year-old son was from her second marriage. 

Her ex-husband said she had primarily been a stay-at-home mom in recent years but had previously worked as a dental assistant and at a credit union. Donna Ganger, her mother, told the Minnesota Star Tribune the family was notified of the death late Wednesday morning. She did not respond to calls or messages from the AP.

“Renee was one of the kindest people I’ve ever known,” Ganger told the newspaper. “She was extremely compassionate. She’s taken care of people all her life. She was loving, forgiving and affectionate. She was an amazing human being.”

-from AP News, Biesecker reported from Washington and Mustian from New York. Associated Press writer Heather Hollingsworth in Kansas City, Missouri, contributed.

…Good’s killing is the ninth shooting by an immigration officer in the past four months, according to The New York Times. In September, an ICE officer shot and killed 38-year-old Silverio Villegas González in the Chicago suburb of Franklin Park. In early October in Chicago, Border Patrol agent Charles Exum shot Marimar Martinez five times. (The victim had originally been charged with assaulting federal agents, but the charges were dismissed after text messages were made public in which Exum wrote, “I fired 5 shots and she had 7 holes. Put that in your book boys.”) 

On New Year’s Eve, an off-duty ICE agent shot and killed 43-year-old Keith Porter in Los Angeles when Porter was shooting off celebratory gunfire. 

Altogether, The Trace [Reporting on Guns and Gun Violence in America - The Trace] has identified 28 incidents in which federal agents have shot someone or held them at gunpoint during an immigration enforcement action — a number approaching the roughly 30 people believed to have died in ICE custody in 2025. Noting that its number is not a complete count, The Trace report believes that fully half of these incidents — 14 of 28 — have involved shootings.

They include the shootings of three people observing or documenting ICE raids; the shootings of five people driving away from traffic stops or evading an enforcement action; and the September 30 raid on a Chicago apartment building, during which half-asleep tenants and their children were held at gunpoint. At least four people have been killed, and five others have been injured…

-from Truthdig

...Multiple reports describe how Renee’s SUV became trapped as officers closed in, shouting conflicting commands to move her car out of the way and to step out of the vehicle. One agent tried to force his way into her car, and another fired fatal shots as she tried to pull away. In that chaos, the simple truth her ex repeats that she was “just driving home after dropping off her kid at school” cuts through the spin that tries to recast a scared parent as a threat. His insistence that she was not an activist shows how fast the system will twist an ordinary commute into a justification for lethal force...​

-from The Other 98%

Senators voted 52-47 to advance a war powers resolution

Amid President Donald Trump’s admission that his intervention in Venezuela could last years, US senators voted Thursday to advance legislation aimed at blocking the president’s use of military forces against the oil-rich South American nation.

Senators voted 52-47 to advance a war powers resolution introduced last month by Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) “to block the use of the US armed forces to engage in hostilities within or against Venezuela unless authorized by Congress” as required by the 1973 War Powers Act.

The Senate will now continue debating the measure, which, if passed by both the upper chamber and the House of Representatives, would be subject to a likely veto by Trump—who has sunk two previous war powers resolutions unrelated to Venezuela.

In addition to Paul, four other GOP senators voted to advance the resolution: Susan Collins of Maine, Josh Hawley of Missouri, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Todd Young of Indiana. While lawmakers often assent during the procedural phase, only to cast ballots against legislation during final votes, at least one of the GOP senators signaled they will vote the same as they did Thursday.

“While I support the operation to seize [Venezuelan President] Nicolás Maduro, which was extraordinary in its precision and complexity, I do not support committing additional US forces or entering into any long-term military involvement in Venezuela or Greenland without specific congressional authorization,” Collins said in a statement, referring to Trump’s threats to acquire the Danish territory by force if he deems it necessary. Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) this week introduced a bill that would ban the president from any such action.

“I believe invoking the War Powers Act at this moment is necessary, given the president’s comments about the possibility of ‘boots on the ground’ and a sustained engagement ‘running’ Venezuela, with which I do not agree,” added Collins, who is facing a serious challenge for her Senate seat from candidates including former Maine Gov. Janet Mills and progressive Graham Platner, both Democrats who oppose US military action in Venezuela.

At the time of bipartisan war powers resolution’s introduction last month, Trump had not yet attacked Venezuelan territory, although he had threatened to do so, deployed warships and thousands of US troops to the region, authorized covert CIA action to topple Maduro, and ordered the bombing of boats the administration claimed—without evidence—were smuggling drugs in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean.

However, Trump dramatically escalated US intervention in Venezuela, first with a December drone strike on a port facility and then by bombing and invading the country and abducting Maduro and his wife. Asked during a Wednesday interview with the New York Times whether the US intervention in Venezuela would last a year, or longer, Trump replied, “I would say much longer,” explaining that “we will rebuild” the country “in a very profitable way,” including by “taking oil” from it.

The specter of yet another US “forever war” like the ongoing open-ended War on Terror that’s left nearly 1 million people dead in at least seven countries since 2001 has prompted the introduction of several congressional war powers resolutions. So far, none have passed.

“If there was ever a moment for the Senate to find its voice, it is now,” Schumer said on the Senate floor ahead of Thursday’s vote. “Today, the Senate must assert the authority given to it on matters of war and peace. We must send Donald Trump a clear message on behalf of the American people: No more endless wars. Donald Trump’s ready for an endless war in Venezuela, and lord knows where else. The American people are not.”

Kaine made it clear during his pre-vote Senate floor remarks that the resolution does not challenge the “execution of a valid arrest warrant against Nicolás Maduro,” which—despite experts concurring that the invasion and abduction were illegal—he called “good for America and good for Venezuela.”

However, Kaine said, given that Trump’s intervention “will go on for a long period of time,” US troops “should not be used for hostilities in Venezuela without a vote of Congress as the Constitution requires.” “No one has ever regretted a vote that just says, Mr. President, before you send our sons and daughters to war, come to Congress,” he added. However, such votes have very rarely succeeded in stopping any president from proceeding with military action.

In 2019 during Trump’s first term, the House and Senate both passed a war powers resolution introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to cut off US military support for the Saudi-led coalition’s atrocity-laden war on Yemen. Trump vetoed the measure, and senators lacked the two-thirds majority needed to override his move.

The following year, both houses of Congress passed another war powers resolution—this one introduced in the Senate by Kaine—to terminate military action against Iran. But Trump again vetoed the legislation, and the Senate could not muster the two-thirds majority required for an override. After returning to office last year, Trump ordered sweeping attacks on Iran—and is threatening to do so again.

While Trump took to his Truth Social network to blast the five Republican senators who voted to advance the war powers resolution on Thursday and Vice President JD Vance called the War Powers Act “fundamentally a fake and unconstitutional law,” progressive and anti-war advocacy groups hailed the advancement. “With this historic, bipartisan vote to prevent further war in Venezuela, Congress has begun the long-overdue work of reasserting its constitutional role in decisions of war and peace,” Demand Progress senior policy adviser Cavan Kharrazian said in a statement.

“We commend the leadership of Sens. Kaine and Paul in forcing this vote, and we thank Sens. Collins, Young, Hawley, and Murkowski for their principled votes,” Kharrazian continued. “Senators should move quickly to adopt the resolution to prevent further unauthorized military escalation and the House should follow suit.”

“Congress should also make clear, using the full force of the law, that no president has the authority to unilaterally launch hostilities anywhere in the world,” he added, “whether in Venezuela or against other countries the administration has openly threatened, including Cuba, Greenland, Colombia, and Iran.”

Jose Vasquez, executive director of Common Defense and an Army veteran, said, “The vote is a victory for the Constitution, the stability of the region, and for the veterans and military families who organized, spoke out, and refused to accept another reckless slide toward forever war.”

“By drawing this vote, Congress sends an essential message that accountability still matters and that no one person or presidential administration can send Americans to war,” he added. “Veterans will remain organized and vigilant but today shows what is possible when Congress listens to the will of the people and leans toward peace rather than war.”

Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams

For What It’s Worth by Stephen Stills/Buffalo Springfield

1966

There's something happening here
What it is ain't exactly clear
There's a man with a gun over there
A-telling me, I got to beware

I think it's time we stop
Children, what's that sound?
Everybody look what's going down

There's battle lines being drawn
Nobody's right, if everybody's wrong
Young people speaking their minds
Are getting so much resistance from behind

Time we stop
Hey, what's that sound?
Everybody look what's going down

What a field-day for the heat
A thousand people in the streets
Singing songs and a-carrying signs
Mostly say hooray for our side

It's time we stop
Hey, what's that sound?
Everybody look what's going down 

Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid
Step out of line, the man comes and takes you away

We better stop
Hey, what's that sound?
Everybody look what's going down

We better stop

Hey, what's that sound?
Everybody look what's going down…

NEW 📀 For What It's Worth - Buffalo Springfield -4K- {Stereo} 1966

Source: Musixmatch
Songwriter: Stephen Stills
For What It's Worth lyrics © Cotillion Music Inc., Springalo Toones, Ten East Music, Richie Furay Music

“The secret of rhythm- like my folk experience-is learning to Travis pick. Getting the rhythm in the thumbs, getting with the bass and getting that push beat to it. If you are using a flat pick, you can go the same way. You learn how to palm. You learn which position is the best to get the most out of a chord because rhythm is basically dividing the chord into two parts. You’ve got the bass and treble and you divide the measure up and play brmmm, chick, brmmm, chick. You’ve got to divide them up and use the damper in between. There are relatively few great rhythm players in rock. Eric Clapton, Joe Walsh is one of the greatest and Jimi Hendrix was actually a great rhythm player.   

“A lot of young kids start out being lead guitar players and consequently turn out to be terrible rhythm guitarists. One thing you must learn is how to be a good, strong effective rhythm player or you are just out of it. You’re useless to anybody else. You can play melodies all day long, but it doesn’t mean a thing if under the singing you’re going RRRRR,RRRRRR,RRRRR...BRRRRRRM..”   

-Stephen Stills- Guitar Player Magazine- January ‘76   

Stephen was highly influenced as a 14-year-old seeing Chet Atkins do a thumb picking and fingerpicking demo at a music store in Tampa, Florida in ‘59. Probably why Stephen was so partial to single-cutaway Gretsch Chet Atkins model guitars, especially the Country Gentleman guitar…

Just in from Lew Di’Tomasso: When Stephen mentions how, in so many words, rhythm players are a hard find, he played with one of the best in the business in one Paul Richard Furay. I've often isolated his parts in both the Springfield and Poco and he's a machine. You couldn't get him off the rhythm with a crane.

-FB    

When Is Systemic Poisoning Murder? Did the Petrochemical Industry Murder My Child? -by Jean-Marie Kauth

 

     

Dr. Bruce Lanphear’s latest blog asks a question I raise in my next book, Poisoning Our Children, under development with Johns Hopkins UP: when does the petrochemical industry’s knowing poisoning of the populace, of our children—with the almost complete complicity of our government—become murder?

He lays out the logic of this question: “When a corporation markets or emits a chemical it knows to be harmful, conceals evidence of its toxicity, and delays regulation for decades, what do we call the resulting deaths? Accidents? Tragedies? Externalities? Or something closer to collateral damage—losses quietly absorbed by families, communities, and entire generations so that the gears of the economy can keep turning.” He points out that though the causes of chronic disease seem slow and silent, their results are violent and vicious, on both an individual and a societal scale.    

When Katherine was diagnosed with leukemia, she was already on the brink of death, and indeed we knew of several children who bled out before they could begin treatment. They cut a hole in her sweet immaculate chest and inserted a port. They gave her the needed prednisone, and her face and tummy rounded. Every three weeks, she went for chemo—poison thrust into her veins—like she hadn’t had poison enough. Don’t get me wrong. I treasured; I loved her doctors. But that was all they could do for her. Cut to her eighth year. There was no longer anything anyone could do.

Treatment had failed. I had to try to explain to my darling brilliant daughter how slim her chances were in language that was nevertheless positive: “honey, I hope you will be the third child to survive a second transplant,” delivered with confidence and love.

Imagine having to say good-bye to your eight-year-old child, your magnum opus, your best beloved, your sensitive prodigy. You say, “sweetheart, you have been….” She won’t hear it. You can’t say it. It is so, so wrong. She lays silent and struggling for breath on the pink fairy-strewn cover of what will become her deathbed while you read aloud favorite books, she will never have time to love. You cry silent tears through Little Women, not sure she hears. One morning, very early, you wake and utter these horrific words: “I don’t think she is breathing!” Life is a grey, ashen landscape, bereft of joy and meaning. You must continue on regardless.

I just want everyone who has a child to consider this…. And consider whether that single-use plastic is so essential, whether a weed-free lawn is really worth it, whether they really need to take that vacation to Hawaii or buy that outfit on Shein. Whether we should continue to sponsor the corrupt billionaires who have captured our democracy and are destroying our planet. What would you not give up, I ask my students, to make it less likely your child will die of cancer or some other dread disease?

I personally have no doubt whatever that it was inadvertent exposures to chemicals—chemicals we deliberately strove to protect our children from—that caused my daughter’s death from leukemia. I was an excellent clinician of her insidious exposures and resulting illness. Manslaughter, homicide, murder? The word matters less to me than the carelessness with which we—distracted and diverted by the newest tech toys and Amazon buys—are providing the petrochemical industry complete impunity to kill our loved ones.

It seems to me that we may be on the brink of a rising chorus of such accusations, a rushing torrent of recognition that the emperor has no clothes, that we have been willingly sacrificing the lives of those most precious to us so that the filthy rich can grow ever filthier and ever richer. “How much money do you need? It’s never enough. When you have an empty soul, it is never enough,” UCSF’s Dr. Tracey Woodruff says. Bruce criticizes feeble regulatory efforts: “This is the anatomy of delay: a system designed to look careful while quietly authorizing decades of unnecessary harm….

We treat these [deaths] as genetic defects or private misfortunes. They are not. They are public failures—the predictable result of a regulatory system built to protect the short-term economy, not human health.” Every trace of these meager protections is currently being erased by the Trump administration, elected partly as a result of blatant billion-dollar bribes from the petrochemical and tech sectors.

It is bittersweet but important that someone as well-credentialed as Bruce Lanphear is finally pointing out the obvious: “every death from regulatory delay is a preventable death. Every chronic illness from long-ignored exposures is a form of societal negligence.” Before him came Rachel Carson and Sandra Steingraber, who said that “When carcinogens are deliberately introduced into the environment some number of vulnerable persons are consigned to death.”

I have been seeking a book contract in order to tell our part of this story since 2012, but I don’t think society was then open to hearing that message, especially not about a child. Now, the evidence is more obvious than ever. Most of my students have some story of tragedies wrought by cancer, autism, autoimmune disease, and other environmental illness—or the accelerating onslaught of climate change.

In my forthcoming book, I capture a panoply of voices that tell it like it is, including my daughter Katherine’s—age eight, but clever and clear-sighted enough to see what adults who should have been protecting her apparently did not: we are poisoning our children.

-Jean-Marie Kauth

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"What is at stake is not Greenland itself. It is the precedent its treatment sets"

 

In the recent Atlantic interview, Donald Trump reiterated that the United States “absolutely needs Greenland,” effectively renewing his push for American control or influence over the Danish territory, a stance drawing sharp criticism from Denmark and Greenland’s leaders, and which many had hoped had gone away. As Thucydides—more accustomed to the warm waters of the Mediterranean than to the icebergs of the Greenland Sea—once observed, “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” 

Trump, only a few days earlier, had reasserted his desire to take Greenland, stating that the United States “has to have” it for national security reasons, though it is no secret to say he also likes its potential for recoverable rare earths.

Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen of the Social Democrats, was pugnacious in her New Year’s speech. “Wanting to take over another country, other people. As if it were something you could buy and own. It doesn’t belong anywhere,” she said, adding ominously: “Never before have we increased our military strength so significantly.

So quickly.” Since the US action in Venezuela, Katie Miller, the wife of Trump deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, posted a provocative image on X showing a map of Greenland colored with the US flag and captioned it simply: ‘SOON.’ What baffles Danes most is the sense of pleasure that seems to be taken by Americans in all this.

As part of this renewed and worrying push, Trump has appointed Louisiana governor Jeff Landry as special envoy. Landry insists the United States is not seeking to “conquer” Greenland but merely to engage with Greenlanders.

Yet he publicly posted the following publicly to Trump: “It’s an honor [sic] to serve you in this volunteer position to make Greenland part of the US.” French president Emmanuel Macron offered a characteristically Gallic shrug: “Greenland belongs to its people. Denmark stands as its guarantor.”

Landry’s professional background is overwhelmingly domestic. He has served as a hardline conservative governor since 2024, previously as Louisiana’s attorney general, and before that as a combative member of Congress. He has no evident experience in foreign policy, Arctic security, or diplomatic negotiation with NATO allies.

For critics, this makes his selection seem bizarre. Supporters point instead to his loyalty to the president. The appointment fits a broader pattern in which political allegiance is valued over diplomatic competence. Trump’s daughter Tiffany’s businessman father-in-law has been described as a senior adviser for Africa. A son-in-law and a real-estate associate have both handled Russia.

Meanwhile, the US consulate in Nuuk is reportedly seeking unpaid interns to manage its communications channels, with the listing stating that the role involves communicating “US foreign policy priorities to a Greenlandic audience.” The symbolism is hard to miss.

Denmark has rejected the premise of Landry’s appointment outright and has indicated it will summon the US ambassador to register its objections. Do not expect a celebratory shot of Aalborg Akvavit at the meeting. Danish officials see the move as further erosion of respect for sovereignty, and it is unlikely to unfold in a convivial spirit.

Greenland’s government has also firmly rejected talk of annexation. Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen has stressed that decisions about Greenland are made in Greenland, reflecting its autonomy within the Kingdom of Denmark. Leaders in Nuuk and Copenhagen have spoken with one voice in dismissing any suggestion that Greenland’s status is somehow up for negotiation. Rarely have Greenland and Denmark appeared so closely aligned.

Yes, Greenland has long had a strong but cautious independence movement. For many Greenlanders, full sovereignty remains a long-term goal rather than an immediate demand. What has changed is not the debate itself, but the way it is now being conducted.

Recent events in Venezuela show just how fast political expectations can fall apart. Greenland is not Venezuela. Its institutions are stronger, and its alliances are stable. The point is not that the situations are the same, but that change can happen fast.

When powerful countries suggest that long-standing rules are open to change, smaller ones are forced to adjust faster than they would like. Washington’s blunt approach has had an unexpected result. It has pushed Nuuk and Copenhagen closer together, not further apart.

European leaders have been broadly supportive of Denmark’s position. Echoing a principle articulated centuries ago by Emer de Vattel—that small states are no less sovereign than great powers—senior EU figures, including Spain’s prime minister, vocal about Venezuela, and European Commission leadership, less so, have publicly defended Danish sovereignty, and criticized Washington’s bullish approach.

This has not, however, halted defense cooperation. The US State Department has just approved a potential sale of advanced air-to-air missiles to Denmark. These are valued at up to $951 million.

On the natural minerals front, the Trump administration insists its stance on Greenland reflects security concerns rather than resource ambition—a claim Danish and Greenlandic leaders strongly contest. Even if legitimate security concerns do exist, as surely, they might, the manner in which Washington has chosen to pursue them has generated suspicion rather than reassurance.

The larger question is how all this affects NATO in 2026. Not in formal treaty terms, but in trust upon which alliances depend. A cynic might see this as an opportunity for the US to weaken its involvement in an organization that some, including Elon Musk, have already suggested Washington should leave. Even without annexation, Greenland is likely to see an expanded US military presence.

The effects reach beyond Denmark. Russia is unlikely to confront NATO directly over Greenland, but it may use the dispute to portray the US as acting in an imperial manner, as it has already done in Venezuela. The situation could also be used to justify further military build-up along Russia’s Arctic coast—another example of pressure that falls short of triggering NATO’s collective defense clause.

China, meanwhile, may benefit by positioning itself as a champion of sovereignty and restraint, quietly re-engaging in Arctic scientific and economic discussions even if major investments remain out of reach. Beijing does not need bases in Greenland. Like Russia, it may simply welcome NATO disunity. Or, in China’s case, European goodwill.

The Arctic Council is likely to remain limited by Russia’s isolation and by Western countries moving security discussions to other forums. Military cooperation will increasingly happen through NATO or bilateral agreements, while environmental and Indigenous issues risk losing attention despite recent progress.

What is at stake is not Greenland itself. It is the precedent its treatment sets. Venezuela showed how quickly assumptions about sovereignty can erode once powerful states decide the rules are flexible. When that logic is applied elsewhere, pressure replaces principle and trust surrenders to suspicion. Greenland may remain Danish, autonomous, and unannexed, but the damage to the assumptions that once made such outcomes secure may be much, much harder to contain. “Stop the threats,” said Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen.

CounterPunch, Peter Bach lives in London.

 

"A lawless world of colonialism and gunboat diplomacy"

 

   

The ruling class of the United States, severed from a fact-based universe and blinded by idiocy, greed and hubris, has immolated the internal mechanisms that prevent dictatorship, and the external mechanisms designed to protect against a lawless world of colonialism and gunboat diplomacy.     

Our democratic institutions are moribund. They are unable or unwilling to restrain our ruling gangster class. The lobby-infested Congress is a useless appendage. It surrendered its Constitutional authority, including the right to declare war and pass legislation, long ago. It sent a paltry 38 bills to Donald Trump’s desk to be signed into law last year. 

Most were “disapproval” resolutions rolling back regulations enacted during the Biden administration. Trump governs by imperial decree through Executive Orders. The media, owned by corporations and oligarchs, from Jeff Bezos to Larry Ellison, is an echo chamber for the crimes of state, including the ongoing genocide of Palestinians, attacks on Iran, Yemen and Venezuela, and the pillage by the billionaire class. Our money-saturated elections are a burlesque. 

The diplomatic corps, tasked with negotiating treaties and agreements, preventing war and building alliances, has been dismantled. The courts, despite some rulings by courageous judges, including blocking National Guard deployments to Los Angeles, Portland and Chicago, are lackeys to corporate power and overseen by a Department of Justice whose primary function is silencing Trump’s political enemies.

The corporate-indentured Democratic Party, our purported opposition, blocks the only mechanism that can save us — popular mass movements and strikes — knowing its corrupt and despised party leadership will be swept aside. Democratic Party leaders treat New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani — a flicker of light in the darkness — as if he has leprosy. Better to let the whole ship go down than surrender their status and privilege.

Dictatorships are one-dimensional. They reduce politics to its simplest form: Do what I say or I will destroy you. Nuance, complexity, compromise, and of course empathy and understanding, are beyond the tiny emotional bandwidth of gangsters, including the Gangster-in-Chief.

Dictatorships are a thug’s paradise. Gangsters, whether on Wall Street, Silicon Valley or in the White House, cannibalize their own country and pillage the natural resources of other countries. Dictatorships invert the social order. Honesty, hard work, compassion, solidarity, self-sacrifice are negative qualities. Those who embody these qualities are marginalized and persecuted. The heartless, corrupt, mendacious, cruel and mediocre thrive.

Dictatorships empower goons to keep their victims — at home and abroad — immobilized. Goons from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Goons from Delta Force, Navy Seals and Black Ops CIA teams, which as any Iraqi or Afghan can tell you are the most lethal death squads on the planet. Goons from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) — seen escorting a hand-cuffed President Nicolás Maduro in New York — the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and police departments.

Can anyone seriously make the argument that the U.S. is a democracy? Are there any democratic institutions that function? Is there any check on state power? Is there any mechanism that can enforce the rule of law at home, where legal residents are snatched by masked thugs from our streets, where a phantom “radical left” is an excuse to criminalize dissent, where the highest court in the land bestows king-like power and immunity on Trump? 

Can anyone pretend that with the demolition of environmental agencies and laws — which should help us confront the looming ecocide, the gravest threat to human existence — there is any concern for the common good? Can anyone make the argument that the U.S. is the defender of human rights, democracy, a rule-based order and the “virtues” of Western civilization?

Our reigning gangsters will accelerate the decline. They will steal as much as they can, as fast as they can, on the way down. The Trump family has pocketed more than $1.8 billion in cash and gifts since the 2024 re-election. They do so as they mock the rule of law and tighten their vice-like grip. The walls are closing in. Free speech is abolished on college campuses and the airwaves. Those who decry the genocide lose their jobs or are deported. 

Journalists are slandered and censored. ICE, powered by Palantir — with a budget of $170 billion over four years — is laying the foundations for a police state. It has expanded the number of its agents by 120 percent. It is building a nationwide complex of detention centers. Not solely for the undocumented. But for us. Those outside the gates of the empire will fare no better with a $1 trillion budget for the war machine.

And this brings me to Venezuela where a head of state and his wife, Cilia Flores, were kidnapped and spirited to New York in open violation of international law and the U.N. Charter. We have not declared war on Venezuela, but then there was no declared war when we bombed Iran and Yemen. Congress did not approve the kidnapping and bombing of military facilities in Caracas because Congress was not informed.

The Trump administration dressed up the crime — which took the lives of 80 people — as a drug raid and, most bizarrely, as a violation of U.S. firearms statutes: “possession of machine guns and destructive devices; and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices.”

These charges are as absurd as attempting to legitimize the genocide in Gaza as Israel’s “right to defend itself.” If this was about drugs, former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández would not have been pardoned by Trump last month, after he was sentenced to 45 years in prison for conspiring to distribute over 400 tons of cocaine in the U.S., a conviction that was justified with far greater evidence than that which supports the charges levied against Maduro.

But drugs are the pretext. Flush with success, there is already talk by Trump and his officials about Iran, Cuba, Greenland and perhaps Colombia, Mexico and Canada. Absolute power at home and absolute power abroad expands. It feeds off of each lawless act. It snowballs into totalitarianism and disastrous military adventurism. By the time people realize what has happened, it is too late.

Who will rule Venezuela? Who will rule Gaza? Does it matter?

If nations and people do not bow before the great Moloch in Washington, they are bombed. This is not about establishing legitimate rule. It is not about fair elections. It is about using the threat of death and destruction to procure total subservience.

Trump made this clear when he warned interim Venezuelan President Delcy Rodríguez that “if she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.” Maduro’s kidnapping was not carried out because of drug trafficking or possession of machine guns. This is about oil. It is, as Trump said, so the U.S. can “run” Venezuela.

“We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country,” Trump said during a press conference Saturday.

Iraqis, a million of whom were killed during the U.S. war and occupation, know what comes next. The infrastructure, modern and efficient under Saddam Hussein — I reported from Iraq under Hussein so can attest to this truth — was destroyed. The Iraqi puppets installed by the U.S. had no interest in governance and reportedly stole some $150 billion in oil revenues.

The U.S., in the end, was booted out of Iraq, although controls Iraqi oil revenues which are funneled to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The government in Baghdad is allied with Iran. Its military includes Iran-backed militias in Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces. Iraq’s largest trading partners are China, the UAE, India and Turkey.

The debacles in Afghanistan and Iraq, which cost the American public anywhere from $4 to $6 trillion, were the most expensive in U.S. history. None of the architects of these fiascos have been held to account.

Countries singled out for “regime change” implode, as in Haiti, where the U.S., Canada and France overthrew Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1991 and 2004. The overthrow ushered in societal and government collapse, gang warfare and exacerbated poverty. The same happened in Honduras when a 2009 U.S-backed coup removed Manuel Zelaya. 

The recently pardoned Hernández became president in 2014 and transformed Honduras into a narco-state, as did U.S. puppet Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan, who oversaw the production of 90 percent of the world’s heroin. And then there is Libya, another country with vast oil reserves. When Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown by NATO during the Obama administration in 2011, Libya splintered into enclaves led by rival warlords and militias.

The list of disastrous attempts by the U.S. at “regime change” is exhaustive, including in Kosovo, Syria, Ukraine and Yemen. All are examples of the folly of imperial overreach. All predict where we are headed.

The U.S. has targeted Venezuela since the 1998 election of Hugo Chavez. It was behind a failed coup in 2002. It imposed punishing sanctions over two decades. It tried to anoint opposition politician Juan Guaidó, as “interim president” although he was never elected to the presidency. When this did not work, Guaidó was dumped as callously as Trump abandoned opposition figure and Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado. In 2020, we staged a Keystone Cops attempt by ill-trained mercenaries to trigger a popular uprising. None of it worked.

The kidnapping of Maduro begins another debacle. Trump and his minions are no more competent, and probably less so than officials from previous administrations, who tried to bend the world to their will. 

Our decaying empire stumbles forward like a wounded beast, unable to learn from its disasters, crippled by arrogance and incompetence, torching the rule of law and fantasizing that indiscriminate industrial violence will regain a lost hegemony. Able to project devastating military force, its initial success lead inevitably to self-defeating and costly quagmires. The tragedy is not that the American empire is dying, it is that it is taking down so many innocents with it.

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