Jonathan P. Baird

The scale of the wipe-out of the Republican Party was epic. Even Ron DeSantis called it “almost an extinction level event”. For the Democrats, all the winning felt novel. As an older Democrat, I have lived through many disappointing evenings. This was a night to be savored.

Still winning for its own sake is no goal. The winning has to be about enacting an agenda. If the Democrats don’t fight for a clear agenda, they could find themselves in the same position as the Republicans are now. Americans will expect the Democrats to deliver but there is a wide variance in the party about the content of what the Democratic agenda should be.

As a democratic socialist, I wanted to offer some thoughts on the way forward for Democrats. Democrats need an agenda with specificity. It is not enough to say we support affordability without further definition.

Democrats should immediately pass legislation to reverse Trump’s Medicaid cuts that are throwing millions off health insurance. They should restore the Affordable Care Act subsidies. They should reverse all the cuts to the Food Stamp program.At the same time, they should reverse Trump tax cuts to the billionaire class.

Democrats must run as economic populists against the billionaire class. That oligarchical class must be named and opposed. There is a relationship between the billionaire class making out like bandits and the working class getting screwed. One depends on the other.

We should advocate a greatly increased minimum wage, like $20 an hour. Democrats have been too passive in accepting our massive economic inequality. We need to take strong steps that show the working class Democrats support them. Democrats could advocate a 5% wealth tax on billionaires. Such a tax could finance millions of units of affordable housing and provide universal free child care for 13 million children.

I would suggest that Democrats boldly advance Medicare for all. It is not radical. Every other advanced industrial country already has a version of universal health care. If the billionaires paid their fair share of taxes, it could finance universal health care. Democrats must stop deference and solicitousness to the unquenchably greedy billionaires. Elon Musk owns more wealth than the bottom 53% of American households.

On the foreign policy front, Democrats should pass legislation that defunds the Iran War. The war is an absurdity. The skyrocketing cost of gas and food is a direct result of the war. So often Democrats have pussyfooted. Is it hard to be anti-war? If Trump doesn’t stop the war, we must take away the money financing the whole enterprise.

Also we need to abolish ICE – not reform it. It is a rogue agency that has been ridiculously over-funded. That money must be clawed back by Congress. ICE agents have killed people and faced no accountability. It appears they expect to get away with the murders of Renee Good. Alex Pretti and Lorenzo Salgado Araujo.

ICE is running concentration camps where people are held in inhumane, unconstitutional conditions. They block Congresspeople and reporters who try to investigate. ICE facilities and their conditions must be exposed. Running constitution-free zones is not the American way. Republicans have specialized in the worst cruelty and it is not simply abuse and neglect of detainees. Removing thousands of immigrants to third countries where they have no roots and no way to survive violates due process and international law.

We need to see this for what it is: the creation of a fascist police state inside the confines of our mass incarceration. This dual state is a threat to democracy. Its expansion is in opposition to the rule of law. The United States government has created a sub-system inside the legal system where lawlessness reigns.

I need to mention corruption. It is the Trump way of life and the election showed Americans were sick of it whether it was billionaires trying to buy elections or presidential self-enrichment schemes. Regulation is not a dirty word. It needs re-birth, especially around AI. Regulation of AI is commonsense because it is a matter of life and death for humanity.

Some Democrats act like addressing corruption is a distraction from the focus on affordability. I think that is wrong-headed. Unless there is some accountability, it can be guaranteed criminal behavior will be back and worse than before. Even if the Democrats cannot overcome presidential vetoes of the initiatives I am suggesting, they will at least make a record that they can run on in 2028 and 2030.

Finally, the comeback of diversity, equity and inclusion must be highlighted. Voters across 17 states elected women governors, including the first black and Native American women elected governor. We also saw the first (and possibly the second) Native American female U.S. senator, the first Muslim U.S. senator and the first openly gay male U.S. Senator. The House will have more than 100 Democratic women elected for the first time in history.

At crunch time, when push came to shove, Americans rejected Trump’s toxic fascism. We are not out of the woods as evidenced by Trump’s pick of Stephen Miller to be his new Chief of Staff but November 3, 2026 will go down in American history as a very proud day.

Book is now available in paperback, hardcover and ebook via Amazon. I am working on library and bookstore distribution. An audiobook is coming soon..

The midterm election is quickly approaching and many observers are predicting a blue wave. While no one knows in advance how the election will turn out there are many reasons to expect a Democratic sweep. A needless and stupid war, an economy that is crushing working people, skyrocketing gas prices and Trump’s boundless corruption: all point toward an across-the-board rejection of the Republican Party.

The Trump presidency has been an unmitigated disaster. It should be clear by now that Trump’s main goal has been enriching himself. Michael Wolff has said Trump hopes to pocket $20 billion from this term. When he asked Trump back in 2016 why he wanted to run for president, Trump answered that he wanted to be the most famous person in the world. This is not a person who has the slightest interest in improving the living standards of the American people.

He has presided over the moral degeneration of the Republican Party. What used to be a conservative political party has become a fascist party fueled by racism, sexism, xenophobia and Islamophobia. MAGA is a cult of personality propped up by tech billionaires and white supremacists. As their electoral prospects have faded, the Republicans go lower and lower thinking that ever more disgusting racism and sexism will advance their cause and save them.

Look at the Republican campaign directed against Michigan senatorial candidate Abdul El-Sayed. El-Sayed is a public health doctor but Donald Trump labels him a jihadist and a terrorist. Republicans falsely accuse El-Sayed of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood. They brainlessly make fun of his name. The Republican campaign has focused on Islamophobia and presenting El-Sayed as un-American. El-Sayed committed the crime of being Muslim. Republicans’ notion of freedom of religion only extends to right-wing Christians.

Then there is the racist prosecution of Congresswoman Ilhan Omar where federal agents raided her home. They took her phones, computers, notebooks and her passport and this is a member of Congress running for re-election. Trump has long sought her denaturalization and deportation even though she is a citizen. He calls her and all Somalis “garbage”. Talk about explicit racism. Who needs Nazis?

The Department of Justice is violating its long-standing policy of avoiding potentially interfering and influencing an election within 60 days of voting.

Trump has directed hate against Omar for years and she has received a multitude of death threats. Lost is the fact Omar was a child when she came to the U.S. and her deceased father completed her immigration paperwork. Do they plan to blame a child for the actions of a parent? The government had previously looked into the charge of immigration fraud against Omar in Trump’s first term and they stopped the investigation because of insufficient evidence but here we are again.

The Republican congressional candidacy of Max Miller also deserves mention. Miller is running for re-election to Congress in Ohio even though he has faced accusations of domestic violence. He has been engaged in a divorce and custody battle with his ex-wife Emily Moreno who is the daughter of Ohio’s Republican senator, Bernie Moreno.

Sen. Moreno says he holds his breath when Miller has custody of his granddaughter. He called Miller “a danger to my daughter” and said the domestic violence situation is “our hell”. In legal filings, Emily Moreno said he threw her against a wall, scalded her with boiling water and he held a gun to her head.

Domestic violence is apparently not disqualifying for Republican candidates. Considering the judgment against Trump in the E. Jean Carroll case and the fact that more than 20 women have complained about him, sexism is the norm.

Which leads to the appalling Vivek Ramaswamy ad attacking Amy Acton. Ramaswamy is running against Acton for governor of Ohio. When Acton was 12, she and her brother were removed from their home because her stepfather had sexually assaulted her. A grand jury indicted her stepfather but her mother and stepfather fled the state to avoid prosecution. Acton’s mother did nothing to protect her daughter and abandoned her. The daughter and her mother have had no contact since 1978 when she was 12 years old. The stepfather lived as a fugitive until his death in 2004.

Ramaswamy paid for and ran an ad and has continued to run an ad featuring Acton’s mother in which the mother calls her daughter a liar. The ad offers no context. Both Trump and J.D. Vance have defended this utterly indefensible ad. Raping a child is apparently of no consequence.

This is not the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan or any traditional conservative. The party is racist and sexist to the core. It allows for no deviation from whatever Trump thinks. Witness Thomas Massie or Marjorie Taylor Greene. In New Hampshire we have the candidacies of Kelly Ayotte and John Sununu. Because of Trump’s unpopularty they try to skirt him, remaining silent about his fascist ascendancy. They don’t want to alienate MAGA but their campaigns embody cowardice. They say nothing in the face of fascism and the vicious track record of racism and sexism.

The present incarnation of the Republican Party has earned total repudiation. The party is like a hydra. In this election the people need to be like Hercules. They need to slay the beast. Fascism is not inevitable.

I am very happy to announce that my book, Defiance is beautiful, is now available as a paperback and hardcover, as well as an ebook. An audiobook is also forthcoming. The book is currently available through Amazon. I am working on library and book store distribution so that the book will reach a broader audience.

I have added a number of family photos to the paperback and hardcover versions.

For those who are unfamiliar with the book, it is a memoir of my three careers as a labor/left organizer, a legal aid lawyer and lobbyist and a federal administrative law judge. The book also presents my argument for a renewed American democratic socialism.

I am very pleased the book is coming out now before our critical midterm election. Beating back MAGA fascism is a critical political goal for all progressives, Democrats, independents and Republicans who have not lost their minds. The book suggests a “unite the many to defeat the few” approach as the best way to save our democracy. Like so many, I am praying for that blue wave on November 3. Jon

Any student of fascist and authoritarian regimes knows the importance of the role of lawyer. The regimes always seek to use lawyers to justify their descent into lawlessness. The sad truth is that when fascism has emerged, most lawyers and judges have accommodated and collaborated with the fascists. Careerism, fear and conformity have all played a role. That was true in the classic cases of Italy and Germany.

The Benito Mussolini regime in Italy abolished independent bar associations and replaced them with fascist-controlled syndicates. Lawyers were required to pledge an oath of loyalty to the regime. The new legal code subordinated civil rights and liberties to the supremacy of the state.

Giacomo Matteotti, a lawyer and democratic socialist leader, courageously denounced Mussolini’s dismantling of democracy, but he was kidnapped and murdered by a fascist death squad. Some lawyers tried to uphold legal neutrality but they were forced underground. Dissident lawyers represented anti-fascist defendants in court but they faced enormous risks.

The Italian legal establishment including most lawyers, judges and law professors, worked to reshape the law to be an instrument of Mussolini’s rule. They implemented and enforced antisemitic legislation.

In Germany, the story was much the same. The legal profession never took a stand against Adolph Hitler. German lawyers facilitated the Nazis’ ability to carry out their agenda and rule, including their many antisemitic decrees. The Nazis were big on issuing decrees that suspended significant provisions of the German constitution like the right to assembly, freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

As in Italy, the German lawyers saw themselves as loyal state servants. Law became a supposed means to serve the Aryan race. In April 1933, the Nazis suspended from duty all Jewish judges, public prosecutors, district attorneys and law professors. This preceded the Nazi disbarment of all Jewish lawyers which was no small thing as there were around 18,000 Jewish lawyers in Germany then. There was no outraged public reaction. With few exceptions, the German lawyers, whatever they privately thought, went along.

What is surprising and remains little known is that there was some heroic resistance by lawyers, including Jewish lawyers, to the fascist onslaught. I wanted to highlight one German Jewish lawyer who did resist. Ernst Fraenkel, a Social Democrat and a Jew, worked as a labor lawyer up until 1938 when he had to flee Germany. His story should be better known.

Fraenkel represented political defendants in court and he won some acquittals. He was a lawyer for the Metal Workers Union. The Nazis destroyed that union but many former members of the union came to him for legal assistance. Although the Nazis tried to discourage non-Jews from getting legal assistance from Jewish lawyers, Fraenkel had a large client base from the left-wing community.

Even in the early years of the Nazi regime, criminal defense attorneys were so afraid that they barely represented their clients but that was not true of Fraenkel. He fought in court and continued his representation in the mid-1930’s, something that took great courage. Because he was a World War 1 veteran, he got an exception from the rule disbarring all Jewish lawyers. Many other Jewish lawyers were also World War 1 veterans which explained why many Jewish lawyers continued to practice law for a few years after the start of the Nazi regime.

Fraenkel raised issues other lawyers were afraid to raise. On behalf of political defendants, he questioned the validity of confessions elicited under Gestapo torture. He stuck to the facts in his cases which was a dangerous practice because it exposed Nazi crimes.

He was active in early political resistance against the Nazis, writing and distributing illegal underground pamphlets. He closely allied his resistance efforts with two non-Jewish lawyers, Heinrich Reinefeld and Werner Willie.

Fraenkel continued on until September 1938 when he was warned he was going to be arrested. He escaped to the United States. In his last years in Germany, he started to write an analysis of totalitarianism he called The Dual State. It described how a legal system became nazified. The book showed the coexistence of two systems, an older legal system alongside a new set of authoritarian rules upholding Nazi violence and political control. Fraenkel managed to get his book manuscript out of Germany in a French diplomatic pouch. He published the book in the United States in 1941.

The earlier fascist experiences suggest we look at how American lawyers are faring under our current legal incarnation and I would argue the results are not encouraging. While there are great examples of lawyers resisting the Trump regime, the American legal establishment has largely been passive. To quote the title of Jacob Weisberg’s book, Profiles in Cowardice.

The American Bar Association and the New Hampshire Bar Association pretend normalcy like nothing unusual has happened. Where to begin? January 6? ICE detentions and deportations without due process? ICE murders with no prosecutions? Big Law caving to Trump? White collar criminals buying pardons? Taxpayer-paid ads violating the Hatch Act? The list could go on and on. I barely scratched the surface.

The Bar tries to play it down the middle but what the Trump regime has wrought makes that impossible. American lawyers need to stop the passivity or we will lose our democracy. I don’t minimize what some lawyers and federal district court judges have done to stop the fascist assault but it has not been enough.
Our government is disappearing thousands of people without any due process. They act, get away with unlawful acts and dare anyone to stop them. No one has the power to shut it down. Even in the face of court orders they brazenly continue.

Democracy exists in a precarious danger zone but for the American legal establishment I would suggest complacency is the general rule. It is business as usual. The assumption must be that if we don’t talk about it, fascism will just go away. Honestly, lawyers should be screaming about the Trump regime’s legal wrecking. Instead the Bar acts like white lawyers in the South after the death of Reconstruction. Just pretend the lynchings are not happening.

Lawyers and judges could salvage their professional reputations by speaking up. As I saw on a sweatshirt at the No Kings demonstration, silence is complicity.

So many articles have been appearing about AI that it is difficult to get a handle on what about it is most important to consider. The story about the AI researcher from Anthropic who warned there is a greater than 10% chance AI could kill all humans within the decade was both scary and compelling.

The AI story that has been most underappreciated and that grabs me is the potential job loss. You might think a new technology would bring with it an array of uncompromised benefits but one outcome of AI is likely to be mass unemployment. AI could eliminate nearly 100 million U.S. jobs in a decade. That is a conclusion reached by Sen. Bernie Sanders in a report he prepared for a U.S. Senate committee last October.

AI will make many white collar jobs obsolete. More physical jobs will follow as robots replace humans. Sen. Sanders’ report offers very detailed analysis of how the job market is likely to be affected over the next decade. The report includes a ChatGPT prediction of the 20 occupations with the largest job loss. These include:

• Fast food and counter workers: 89% of the jobs replaced, an estimated 3,310,372 jobs lost
• Customer service representative: 83% of the jobs replaced, an estimated 2,462,167 jobs lost
• Laborer and freight, stocking, material movers, hand: 81% of the jobs replaced, an estimated 2,441,400 jobs lost
• Retail salesperson: 62% of the jobs replaced,, an estimated 2,372,957 jobs lost

And these are just the four jobs with the largest percentage of predicted job loss. There are many others that could put millions more out of work. I was surprised by many of the jobs where workers would lose out: home health aides, software developers, heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers, RNs’and teaching assistants.

It is not like this scenario has not already been happening. By October 2025, Amazon, which made $59.2 billion in profits in 2024 had already laid off 27,000 aince 2022 telling its staff, “We expect [generative artificial intelligence and agents] will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company”.

Leaked internal planning documents indicate Amazon’s long-term strategy is to automate up to 75% of operations by 2033. Amazon has been deploying autonomous mobile robots like Proteus (which can carry heavy carts and respond to plain-English verbal commands), touch-sensitive units like Vulcan and tote-handling systems like STARK.

It has long been a dream of capitalists to replace humans with machines. The cost-saving would be spectacular and that is not lost on the capitalist class. They would be turning capital into labor. Machines don’t complain about bosses, wages or working conditions.

There is also the reality that AI will replace new jobs that could have been created if there was no AI or AI that was deployed far less aggressively.

AI companies acknowledge that their goal is to make it easier to pay workers less. Mechanize, a start-up aiming to create artificial labor notes on its website that “the market potential is absurdly large” and points to the total income earned by workers. Artisan, another AI company, is advertising its services to get companies “to stop hiring humans”.

Where is the public discussion around the effects of AI on our working class? Congress has completely failed to initiate any discussion so it fell upon the minority party leaders like Sen. Sanders to raise concerns. Sen. Sanders and Rep. Greg Casar have introduced the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act to outlaw artificial super intelligence permanently, to pause advanced AI development and to establish a new Department of AI to regulate frontier systems and enforce safety standards. It should be clear that we cannot trust the tech billionaires to police themselves.

Sen. Sanders and Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez have also introduced an AI Data Center Moratorium Act. This measure would pause AI data center construction and hardware exports pending worker and safety protections.

More than 1300 scientists and developers from across the tech world published an open letter this last July warning that AI development is moving at a pace that makes it difficult to address and identify the risks of the technology. There needs to be an international coordinated effort to slow down the development of frontier models so that regulators can create safety guardrails around the tech.

Considering the projected economic job loss AI portends, humans might want to invoke an AI kill switch. Is massive job loss an acceptable and inevitable dimension of the tech change or is the loss being driven by greedy billionaires who are trying to maximize profits at the expense of workers? It is not Luddite to be concerned when the working class faces the elimination of millions of jobs with zero consideration for worker need. How will working people survive an increasingly jobless future where machines have replaced them?

At the same time, AI advance looks to increase the concentration of wealth and power into the hands of a few billionaires. I have not mentioned the scary surveillance possibilities of AI or the environmental harm of data centers.

AI looks to be a universal labor replacing machine. Is this the future we want? That would be a good debate. How will workers survive and make money to pay for life necessities in this future? It has been demonstrated that our crop of billionaires do not have a “share the wealth” mentality. They have exactly the opposite.

Before we forge ahead, how about a public discussion of these questions. I think it is crazy if we don’t have government regulation. The risks could not be higher. The two OpenAI models that went rogue and hacked into a real company, Hugging Face, could not be a bigger red flag.

As the mid-term election approaches, eyes gravitate to voting and the hope that Republicans across-the-board will receive the repudiation they so richly deserve. The unwanted war in Iran, the ever-increasing gas prices, the crazily-expensive cost of living, the horror show that is ICE and its agenda of racist deportations: all these items dictate a rejection of the Republican Party and their fascist leader, Donald Trump.

With such an abominable track record, it is easy to lose track of the struggle inside the Democratic Party. The Democrats have a huge opportunity to deliver for the American people but the question remains: are the Democrats up to the task and what will they deliver if the American people vote and give them the chance?

I admit I remain fearful the Democrats will blow this opportunity. The Democrats have a split identity. It is like they are two parties inside one. One party, the Establishment centrist wing, take corporate money and lacks any ideological identity. It is anti-Trump and anti-corruption but otherwise it lacks identity. Its loyalty is to its donors.

Then there is the progressive wing. Led by democratic socialists, the progressive wing has a strong platform on a wide array of issues. It tends to be youthful. It remains a minority faction although an increasingly influential one.

While it is not the central issue, the positions of the two wings of the Democratic Party around the war in Gaza have been instructive. Taking in millions in AIPAC money, the Establishment wing of the Democrats has been silent in the face of the Israeli genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza. On the other hand, the progressives have forcefully criticized Israel.

People disagree about this but I believe Kamala Harris’s failure to speak out on Gaza and separate herself from the Biden policy was a major reason she lost. Many people, especially young people, who might have voted for Democrats did not vote. Harris tied herself too much to Biden and she lacked credibility as a “change” candidate.

What we are living through now is the immiseration of our working class. Democrats have a responsibility to speak to that. I would begin with Medicare for all. Universal health care is a widely popular idea. Spiraling medical debt is a horrible and entirely unnecessary American reality. To win voters, Democrats need to be bold. Medicare for all is exactly the kind of reform they should champion.

You really don’t know what too many Democrats stand for. I would submit that in the Trump era that is dangerous.

And it is not just Medicare for all. Whether it is housing, education, jobs, regulation of AI and data centers or climate change, Democrats need an appealing platform that will directly address neglected economic needs. It is not enough to stand on being anti-Trump.

Democrats need to advocate Supreme Court reform. For many years, Democrats entirely ignored the Court. We should be pushing both for term limits and for adding four seats to the Court. It is predictable that the Court as presently constituted will block all progressive reforms the Democrats might be able to push through if they eventually regain control of the Presidency and Congress. The conservative majority of the Court is in bed with the billionaire class.

My fear is that if the Democrats are in charge and fail to deliver for the working class, they will open the door to a fascist resurgence that will be worse than the Trump regime. That is why who the Democrats will nominate in 2028 is so important. If the Democrats play it safe by nominating a do-nothing centrist, they will create opportunity for the fascist right.

Poor economic conditions are a petri dish for fascism. Immiseration of the working class will lead people to desperation. Things they might not have previously considered become allowable. Fascists like Trump thrive on and push authoritarianism and false solutions. Fascists are full of magic bullets like tariffs, $5000 checks and crypto schemes. Centrist Democrats who fail the working class are like a delivery system for fascism and its phony ideas.

Our American ruling class, especially the tech billionaires, have become so enamored of their own power that they abide gross corruption and self-dealing as normal. They all want to stay in the good graces of the regime no matter how debased it is. Our ruling class act like they are beyond any accountability and the sky is the limit as far as wealth creation for themselves.

Back in the 1930’s, Western democracies underestimated the threat of fascism and woke up to it late. In the New Yorker, the historian Beverly Gage recounts this history and shows how we were fortunate to have an anti-fascist president, FDR. We face a vastly different situation. The fascists are in control of the levers of the U.S. government. Maintaining our democracy remains a central goal and the Democratic Party is critical to that project. If the Democrats can regain power, the American people have a good chance to jettison fascism but we need a fighting Democratic Party to do that.

No one knows what ploys Trump might try to prevent an election outcome not favorable to Republicans. I submit we should not worry about things that have not happened yet. Democrats, independents and all who oppose fascism should strive for the maximum turnout possible in the mid-terms. We should also all turn out for the upcoming No Kings demonstrations on October 17. There is no preordained inevitability to our future. We need a Democratic Party up to the challenge to beat back fascism.

In his speech at the UN on September 24, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu downplayed claims of settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank saying it was the work of 150 “juvenile delinquents”. Nothing could be further from the truth.

For those who don’t know, the West Bank is a landlocked territory located west of the Jordan River. It is bordered by Israel to the west, north and south and by Jordan to the east. It is home to roughly 3 million Palestinians and 700,000 Israeli settlers. The international community widely regards the Israeli settlements in the West Bank as illegal.

Netanyahu’s UN speech entirely misrepresented Israel’s project in the West Bank. The Israeli human rights group, B’tselem, just released a devastating study that puts Israeli settler activity in a different light. B’tselem shows that Israel’s activities in the West Bank are not a collection of isolated activities. They are a single political project that is part of a comprehensive mechanism designed to dismantle Palestinian collective existence on the West Bank. The Executive Director of B’tselem, Yuli Novak writes:

“Communities are being expelled, the economy is being pushed toward collapse, and millions are living in constant fear of Israeli military or settler violence. These mechanisms work together to dismantle Palestinian collective life while entrenching a permanent system of Jewish supremacy across the West Bank. The world is watching and still failing to respond with anything close to the urgency this demands.”

To have a normal life, certain minimum prerequisites are required. People need to be able to go to work, take their children to school, attend university, go to the doctor and receive medical care, meet with family members and cultivate their land. When such activities are interfered with and blocked, life becomes difficult, if not impossible.

In assembling its report, B’tselem drew on 2000 testimonies it obtained from Palestinians since October 2023. B’tselem broke down Israel’s project into five domains.

Violence and intimidation are a central mechanism of control, displacement and dismantling. The violence is inflicted by the Israeli military, the police and armed settlers. They operate with almost complete immunity. The settler militias attack villages, farmland and grazing areas using weapons and off-road vehicles supplied by the state. The Israeli military is often present but they typically fail to prevent the violence. Between October 7, 2023 and June 30, 2026, Israel has killed 1,087 Palestinians in the West Bank.

Movement restrictions are a second mechanism of social control. People need to be able to reach their land, work, school or a hospital. Separation barriers, checkpoints, road restrictions and permit systems all restrict Palestinian movement. Settlers block roads, threaten drivers and attack Palestinians.

Economic strangulation is a third method used to dismantle Palestinian existence. Israel revoked almost all permits allowing West Bank Palestinians to work inside the Green Line. Unemployment, poverty and a decline in living standards is part of the Israeli design. Israel has prevented independent Palestinian development of infrastructure and energy development. The Israeli military bulldozed, uprooted and torched thousands of fruit-bearing trees in the occupied West Bank.

Israel has restricted every form of independent Palestinian political activity. They have imposed military rule over Palestinians on the West Bank restricting demonstrations and incarcerating activists.

A last mechanism of control is ethnic cleansing and territorial takeover. Israel and settler militias have seized huge swaths of Palestinian land. Demolition of homes and expulsion from homes are part of a project of displacement to reduce Palestinian presence and break up the continuity of Palestinian life.

B’tselem traces the elimination project to a 2017 plan developed by Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s finance minister and a member of the Defense Ministry who has powers over Israeli rule in the West Bank. Under the Smotrich plan, Palestinians have three options: abandon their national claims, accept life under Jewish supremacy, leave or face military force if they resist.

As an American Jew aware of the Jewish experience of holocaust, I am appalled to see the Zionist project degenerate into a form of extreme apartheid. There is massive denial in Israel about the crimes the Israeli state is committing on the West Bank.

The Jewish world consists of a vast array of religious and secular tendencies. The settler movement on the West Bank is largely a far right religious brand of Zionism led by fanatics who think Israel has an undisputed biblical claim to the land. Some of the most extremist factions like the Hilltop Youth advocate active displacement and exclusion of Palestinians. The idea that it is antisemitic to criticize such extremism is ludicrous.

Our media has largely failed to report the crimes Israel is committing in the West Bank. Israel has made it extremely dangerous to do reporting there. There have been many documented physical assaults on reporters by Israeli settlers and soldiers. Palestinian reporters have faced the most severe repression, getting detained and interrogated for their coverage. They risk imprisonment and worse for their reporting.

.During the Trump years, morality has atrophied in America. What is wrong is not just Israel’s elimination project, it is also the apathy displayed towards Israel’s crimes on the West Bank. These crimes need to be called out and resisted.

It is hard to imagine how our time will be remembered 100 years from now. Maybe the January 6 coup attempt will be remembered. Possibly the hatred directed against immigrants and the vicious ICE detentions and deportations will make the history books. I think what will be remembered is something more ordinary. I think the blatant corruption of the Trump regime is what will be remembered. It makes previous corruption scandals like Teapot Dome under President Harding or Watergate under President Nixon look like the minor leagues.

Trump corruption is the gold medal variety. His presidency has been a continuing story of self-dealing that constantly surpasses itself like an escalator that keeps going up. The primary goal of the Trump regime has been making money for Donald Trump and his family. Forbes says he has become $2.7 billion richer since winning the 2024 election.

One aspect of this wealth generation is the pardon economy that was featured in a recent episode of 60 Minutes. While not the biggest money maker, it epitomizes the sleazy Trump underbelly. Pardon brokers are selling pardons for exorbitant prices. The brokers are charging people anywhere from $300,000 to $3 million to get results. They want money both to put in applications and additional money later if they are successful.

No matter how noxious their crimes, extremely wealthy people who have been convicted and who were doing time in prison are buying their freedom by paying off Trump.The brokers use their right wing ties to Trump and the people around him to sell him on their clients.

Selling a government benefit is the definition of corruption. The two lobbyists who appeared on 60 Minutes, Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl, acted like their behavior selling pardons was normal and some kind of standard practice. You would not know that for 150 years the Department of Justice has played a central role in the pardon process. There used to be a pardon attorney who went through a careful investigative vetting process that looked into the merits of a pardon.

That is completely gone now. It has been replaced by a scheme rooted in wealth and connections. Money gains access to the Trump orbit and the people who can then persuade the boss. There were egregious failings in the old system before Trump like Bill Clinton’s pardon of Marc Rich and Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon but 92% of all pardons are now outside the Department of Justice. It is 100% pay for play. The wealthy and well-connected get treated differently. If they have the dough, they purchase their freedom no matter their crimes.

The previous Pardon Attorney, Liz Oyer, has written about how the pardon process used to work. The Pardon Attorney sought the views of the U.S. Attorney’s Office who had prosecuted the case, the judge who imposed the sentence, and victims of the crime. If the candidate for a pardon appeared to meet pardon criteria, the Pardon Attorney’s office did a thorough background investigation through the FBI. The Pardon Attorney would then make a recommendation to the President. While the President has broad pardon authority under the Constitution, the process was key.

It was designed to insure only truly deserving people would get pardons. When Oyer was Pardon Attorney she said 90% of those seeking pardons did not have attorneys.

Trump fired Oyer when she opposed restoring gun rights to actor and Trump supporter Mel Gibson who had been convicted of domestic battery. The new pardon system is about rewarding Trump allies and those who can pay him big money regardless of the crimes they committed.

There are many examples to cite. Trump pardoned crypto felon Changpeng Zhao whose company Binance enriched Trump family cryptocurrency. He pardoned Paul Walczak, a former nursing home executive who cheated on his taxes to finance a lavish lifestyle that included purchase of a two million dollar yacht. This pardon came days after Walczak’s mother attended a $1 million-a-plate dinner at Mar-a-Lago. And then, of course, there was Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Michael Flynn and Steve Bannon.

Trump’s pardons have wiped away massive restitution payments owed to the victims of crimes. Oyer has tracked the price of Trump’s pardons that owed restitution and fines. As of July, the cost to taxpayers and crime victims is more than $1.3 billion.

Pardons are now shrouded in secrecy. Never have they been less transparent. Just a week ago, Trump granted pardons to 30 people. The White House made no announcement of the clemency action and no list of those pardoned was released. One Philadelphia union official who was serving six years for bribery and who had embezzled $600,000 from his union was announced. After protest and publicity the White House released the names. Ordinarily in the past before Trump, the White House did a press release announcing all pardoned with the rationale for the pardons.

We do not know if Trump has secretly pardoned people. Usually the end of a presidential term is when most pardons are announced but no one knows what bribes and deals have already been cut. Considering the rampant criminality around Trump, it is likely there will be many wanting to be on the pardon list.

It remains a federal offense to pay bribes to public officials for the purpose of getting a pardon. While the President himself can claim immunity under the Supreme Court’s immunity decision, that is not true for others around him. There is a need for legislation to insure more transparency and protection against bribery.

The tragedy is that the presidential pardon power was intended to be used for mercy and for earned second chances. Under Trump, it has been reduced to a racket where the worst rich people use their wealth to buy their way out of paying for heinous crimes.