People Keep Dying in ICE Custody. 13 Democrats Back a Bill to Abolish the Agency.

At least 53 people have died in ICE custody since President Donald Trump’s return to office.

By Mike Ludwig ,

  Truthout

July 23, 2026

Congresswoman Delia C. Ramirez is joined by Sonimar Maria, the sister of Jesús Manuel Arenas-Silva, a Venezuelan immigrant who was detained on July 13 and died in ICE custody two days after, to demand that members of Congress pass the H.R. 7190, The Melt ICE Act, on July 23, 2026, in Washington, D.C.Office of Rep. Delia Ramirez

Jesús Manuel Arenas-Silva was at home in Georgia with his family on July 9 when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents came to arrest him. Sonimar Maria, Arenas-Silva’s sister, said her family implored the agents not to take the 45-year-old Venezuelan, mentioning his medical needs, but ICE did not listen to their pleas.

Flanked by progressive House Democrats and speaking in Spanish to reporters at a Capitol Hill press conference on July 22, Sonimar said ICE agents also ignored her family’s request to let Arenas-Silva take his medication with him. Arenas-Silva required four different medications for a medical condition, Sonimar said, but ICE allowed him to bring only one to the remote Irwin County Detention Center in rural Georgia.

“Jesús Manuel later told me on a phone call that ICE did not give him the medication he needed,” Sonimar said in a translated statement. “He went without medication during his detention until he tragically died in ICE custody on July 13 … I am 100 percent certain that he did not receive proper care.”
Arenas-Silva died while being transferred from Irwin County Detention Center to the Folkston ICE Processing Center, a roughly 100-mile drive. He was found unresponsive five days after he was arrested, according to ICE. At least 53 people have died in ICE custody since President Donald Trump returned to office and launched a mass deportation campaign led by adviser Stephen Miller, making the past fiscal year the deadliest in the agency’s history.

Additionally, at least 30 people have been shot in public or in their homes by federal immigration agents during Trump’s chaotic crackdown, and 11 have died, including multiple parents and two United States citizens. Sonimar is calling for an independent investigation into her brother’s death, but the Trump administration has consistently erected barriers to accountability for both the deadly shootings and the deaths in ICE jails.

“He was a loving son, brother, and uncle, a caring and hard-working man who came to this country to seek better opportunities,” Sonimar said of Arenas-Silva, adding that she came to Washington, D.C. to seek justice for her brother so that other families do not have to endure similar trauma.

Some Democrats are pushing for structural changes to put an end to the violence enacted by ICE, which has been emboldened under policies set by Trump and Miller. At a House Judiciary Oversight Subcommittee hearing on conditions in ICE jails on July 22, Democrats slammed the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress for spending billions of dollars to build immigrant jails and recruit poorly trained federal immigration agents while slashing funding for health care and food assistance.

Progressive House Democrats are going a step further than simply questioning ICE’s tactics and bloated budget. They propose abolishing the agency altogether and redirecting its funding to safety-net programs that can help people navigate a spiraling affordability crisis.

“Americans are demanding members of Congress pursue more than training, more than reform, and more than bare-minimum policies,” said Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Illinois) a July 22 press conference. “They are demanding that no other family suffers the pain of deportation or death at the hands of DHS’s immigration enforcement.”

In January, Ramirez introduced H.R. 7190, or the Melt ICE Act, which would dismantle ICE by ending the Department of Homeland Security’s authority to surveil and jail immigrants. The legislation would also redirect enforcement funding toward federal housing and health care programs to provide services for people impacted by the immigration crackdown, as well as groups that support migrants and households with noncitizen family members.

“The billions of dollars that funded ICE should be given to the communities who suffered under their reign of terror.”

“ICE agents are murdering people in the streets, tearing families apart, abducting our neighbors, and locking them in cages,” said Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Democrat from Michigan and co-sponsor of the bill. “ICE must be abolished — full stop. The billions of dollars that funded ICE should be given to the communities who suffered under their reign of terror.”

In the past month alone, ICE agents shot and killed two unarmed fathers in their vehicles while they were driving to work: Immigration agents killed Joan Sebastian Guerrero on July 13 in Maine and Lorenzo Salgado Araujo on July 7 in Texas. Both men were reportedly not initial targets for arrest and were pursued by Trump’s immigration officers in vehicle stops that civil rights activists suspect are clear-cut cases of racial profiling. Guerrero, a husband and father of a 3-year-old, was reportedly killed by an ICE agent who was recently recruited despite a well-documented history of violence and abuse.

On July 22, Juan Jairo Coronilla Durán was fatally struck by a semi-truck in Florida while fleeing ICE agents. Coronilla Durán had a tourist visa and was visiting family in the U.S. while on vacation from Mexico. An advocacy group assisting Coronilla Durán’s wife said she thought “he was very afraid, and that’s why he ran away.” Ramirez echoed that, adding Coronilla Durán likely ran away out of fear of being arrested and detained in one of ICE’s notorious jails and prison camps, where people are dying at a record rate.

“He did what my brother would have done, he did what your sister would do, he did what your mother would do if she was stopped by ICE and looked a certain way — he ran away,” Ramirez said. “He was afraid they would take him to a private detention center where he could die in days and never see his family ever again.”

A recent ramp-up of enforcement is impacting citizens and noncitizens alike as recently deputized and heavily armed federal agents raid homes and target random people on the street to increase Trump’s deportation numbers. A review of 1,200 incidents involving ICE and its partners by the American Civil Liberties Union found the tactics being deployed are causing civil rights violations at a “scale and severity without precedent in our nation’s recent history.”

Ramirez reminded fellow lawmakers that Congress created ICE and the Department of Homeland Security only 25 years ago following the 9/11 attacks and can be dismantled just the same.

“I know that people are saying, ‘You are radical, you want to melt ICE’; people are asking, ‘What is going to happen with detention?’” Ramirez said. “I say to people: Look at our history, and we had a Department of Justice that handled all of our immigration cases until 2003, and I want to remind people that people were not dying the way they are dying right now.”

So far, only 13 Democrats have co-sponsored Ramirez’s Melt ICE Act: Tlaib, along with Representatives Yvette Clarke (New York), Ilhan Omar (Minnesota) Yassamin Ansari (Arizona), Nydia Velázquez (New York), Adelita Grijalva (Arizona), Jesús G. “Chuy” García (Illinois), Valerie Foushee (North Carolina), Ayanna Pressley (Massachusetts), Summer Lee (Pennsylvania), Danny Davis (Illinois), LaMonica McIver (New Jersey), and Sylvia Garcia (Texas). Ramirez suggested that most of the signatories are people of color.

“To all of our white allies in Congress, this is the moment to join the movement to melt ICE,” Ramirez said. “I want to see your last names here, too.”

The Melt ICE Act has virtually zero chance of passing while the GOP holds a majority, but the bill represents an important political Rubicon for Democrats as their base pushes for change in the midterms.

As the elections approach in November, Republicans are deploying a familiar strategy of casting Democrats as radical “communists” who want to defund law enforcement. In reality, the party’s establishment has consistently provided plenty of funding for police, including in the years following the nationwide outbreak of protests against racist police violence in 2020 that called for defunding police.

Republicans painted the entirety of the Democratic Party as supporters of the “abolish ICE” and “defund the police” movements anyway, and establishment figures and pundits often mention those movements in their discussion of their electoral losses in 2024. However, Republicans are now on the back foot. Trump is deeply unpopular, with his approval ratings on the economy and immigration plummeting since taking office.


About half of all U.S. adults now support abolishing ICE, including 73 percent of Democrats.

A YouGov poll released on July 21 found that about half of all U.S. adults now support abolishing ICE, including 73 percent of Democrats. Only 40 percent somewhat or strongly oppose eliminating the agency. News of ICE killings appears to be reaching voters, with 60 percent telling pollsters they heard about ICE shooting and killing people in the last week.

In a July 21 letter to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, more than 100 progressive state lawmakers, city council members, and politicos from his home state of New York demanded that Democrats in Congress come out in support of abolishing ICE. After Joan Sebastian Guerrero was killed by ICE in Maine, the debate over abolishing ICE became central to a much-watched Senate campaign in the state, with Democratic hopeful Troy Jackson recently confirming that he supports dismantling the agency.

Maine Gov. Janet Mills, a moderate Democrat, wrote in a July 15 letter to the state’s congressional delegation that the “violence has to end” before more gunshots shatter a windshield and another family loses a loved one.

“ICE needs to be fundamentally reformed, and if not, then it is time to abolish it,” Mills wrote.

As Ramirez pitched the Melt ICE Act again this week, a coalition of immigrant rights groups launched End the ICE Age, a campaign to dismantle ICE as an agency and pressure Democrats to co-sponsor the Melt ICE Act.

“People are dying in ICE detention at a record-breaking rate, ICE agents are tearing families apart and shooting people on the streets, making people less safe, and causing chaos wherever they go — whether in Minneapolis, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston, Biddeford, or beyond,” said Setareh Ghandehari, the advocacy director at Detention Watch Network. “Make no mistake, we are witnessing a watershed moment.”

25 States Sue to Stop Admin’s FEMA Restrictions Over Election Overhaul Demands

The Trump White House is “threatening to jeopardize public safety,” one state attorney general said.

By Chris Walker ,

Truthout

July 24, 2026

A Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) sign is displayed at their headquarters on May 30, 2026 in Washington, DCKevin Carter / Getty Images


More than two dozen states have filed a joint lawsuit seeking to prevent the Trump administration from limiting disaster relief funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) if they do not comply with the president’s demands on election systems changes.

Twenty-five states plus Washington, D.C. filed the suit in federal court in Rhode Island. The suit argues that rules imposed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), conditioning potential FEMA funds on burdensome election reforms, violate the Administrative Procedure Act, as well as spending rules laid out in the Constitution.

The administration is claiming that the changes are needed to prevent election fraud and address supposed vulnerabilities in election systems, citing President Donald Trump’s baseless conspiracy theories regarding his loss in the 2020 presidential election to former President Joe Biden.

Among other changes, DHS has told states they must:Use handmarked paper ballots instead of voting machines;
Use a federal database (one that has a high error rate) to search for noncitizens within voter rolls;
And hand over personal information of voters to the federal government.

A spokesperson for FEMA claimed that the move is legal, asserting that “election security is national security,” thus allowing the president to withhold funds to states that won’t take the matter seriously.


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Democratic state attorneys general involved in the lawsuit have blasted the administration for its overreach.

“The Trump Administration is threatening to jeopardize public safety by unlawfully withholding billions in critical funding,” Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said in a statement.

Neronha continued:


This Administration is using the safety of Americans as collateral by attempting to bully the states into relinquishing their constitutional right to enact policies and laws that best serve their residents.

“They won’t get away with it,” he added.

“We’re back in court to ensure that these funds are distributed as Congress intended, not conditioned on an unlawful political agenda. Public safety should never become a bargaining chip,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said.

While Trump’s false claims of fraud have caused a significant number of Americans to doubt the outcomes of elections (culminating in the attack on the U.S. Capitol building by a mob of Trump loyalists on January 6, 2021), a majority of voters still have faith in the election process.

Only 26 percent of Americans believe Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was “rigged,” while 52 percent say it was not, according to a recent Economist/YouGov poll.

In a separate question, 69 percent of Americans said they are either “very” or “somewhat” confident that the 2026 midterms will be counted accurately. Only 30 percent said they couldn’t be sure.

Michigan's Haley Stevens’s Palantir Consultant Scandal Draws Attention to Her Record on ICE

 Democratic Senate candidate Haley Stevens’s campaign has also been marked by $30 million in support from AIPAC.

By Sharon Zhang ,

 Truthout

July 24, 2026

Rep. Haley Stevens speaks during a House Democrats' news conference in the Capitol on Thursday, February 6, 2025.Bill Clark / CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images).

Up until this week, House representative and Democratic Senate candidate Haley Stevens’s campaign shared a mutual consultant with far right tech surveillance company Palantir, new reporting reveals, bringing renewed attention to Stevens’s record on ICE as she faces a contentious race against Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan.

Drop Site News’s Ryan Grim reported on Thursday that the consultant, Caitlin Legacki, was consulting for Stevens’s communications outfit while also “secretly” consulting for Palantir. Legacki was “one of Stevens’ key spokespeople,” as local outlet Michigan Advance wrote.

After Grim reached out to the campaign for comment on Legacki’s dual appointment, they terminated her and said that Stevens was “unaware” of her work for the tech giant. Legacki is also a senior fellow at conservative Democrat-aligned think tank Third Way, Grim reports.

The campaign also replied with a statement touting Stevens’s record on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Palantir has been central to ICE and the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) mass deportation efforts. Among other collaborations, ICE granted Palantir a $30 million contract last year to build out a surveillance program to track the movements of immigrants.

“Haley believes ICE is out of control, putting Michiganders in danger, and needs an immediate overhaul. That’s why she’s voted against giving them another cent without serious reforms, including prosecuting any ICE agents who commit crimes and abuse their power, forcing ICE agents to wear proper ID and prohibiting them from wearing masks to conceal their identities, and taking away their $75 billion slush fund,” the campaign said.

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However, Stevens has previously come under fire for her record on ICE. In February, Stevens visited a Michigan ICE jail where an immigrant who was being detained, Nenko Gantchev, died. After the visit, she praised the facility for employing women — a comment that was mocked online.

“Of note, there is female leadership here, and there are women who walked with us today and explained, on the intake process, how important it is to treat people with humanity,” Stevens said, Michigan Advance reported at the time. “And that obviously really stuck out to me, because some of the things that we are witnessing before our eyes, in our neighborhoods, in our streets, is really a lack of humanity.”

Stevens has also been criticized for being one of 75 Democrats who voted for a resolution that expresses “gratitude to law enforcement officers, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel,” after an attack at a mall in Boulder, Colorado last year.

“Congresswoman Stevens said she’ll stand up to ICE, all while she took talking points and advice from a compromised corporate apologist now revealed to be a key advisor in Trump’s deportation machine,” said a spokesperson for El-Sayed’s campaign, Roxie Richner, in a statement. “Perhaps it’s why Stevens voted to thank and fund ICE. Abdul has been clear and consistent on his stance since 2018: Abolish ICE.”

Stevens — who was first elected to Congress by primarying incumbent Rep. Andy Levin with the help of AIPAC, in 2022 — is locked in a fierce race against former public health official and progressive candidate El-Sayed.

AIPAC has poured nearly $30 million into backing Stevens in the race, making it the pro-Israel PAC’s largest-ever investment into a single race, and amounting to nearly double the Democratic National Committee’s entire war chest for 2028 so far, Grim pointed out this week.

Gaza’s Streets and Markets Have Become Dumping Grounds for Medical Waste

With its waste disposal infrastructure destroyed, Gaza is experiencing a growing health and environmental crisis.

By Eman Abu Zayed ,

Truthout

July 24, 2026

People walk and drive along a road beside large piles of debris at the destroyed Firas Market in Gaza City, on December 9, 2025. The public market, one of Gaza City's oldest and busiest commercial hubs, has been left buried under rubble and waste after widespread destruction from Israeli strikes and the collapse of basic municipal services.Eyad Azam / Middle East Images / AFP via Getty Images

Just a few hundred meters from Al-Ma’madani Hospital in the center of Gaza City lies Firas Market, which has turned into a site for heaps of mixed garbage as medical waste accumulates alongside household trash, commercial trash, and rubble remnants.

The piles stretch across the market and between buildings, suffocating the city with choking odors and rising dust, right next to passersby and vendors at work. With rising summer temperatures, these heaps turn into hotspots for methane and ammonia gas emissions, worsening air quality and impacting the small, besieged city’s climate.

Cars pass alongside the piles, and children navigate through them searching for reusable scraps, while silent anxiety seeps into Gaza’s pollution-laden air. The situation reflects not only a sanitation crisis but also a breakdown in the urban safety systems that once regulated waste disposal and protected public health.

Before the current war, Gaza’s waste management system faced significant challenges, but waste collection vehicles were nevertheless operating across Gaza’s municipalities, and waste was transported to main landfill sites. Even though Gaza struggled to consistently meet international standards for sanitation, there were still basic procedures in place for managing medical waste through health authorities and relevant institutions. The war has severely disrupted all of these systems.

Yousef Al-Qudra, who holds a leadership position concerning solid waste management in Gaza, tells me that the council has operated with almost no resources since the war began. He adds that all facilities and equipment were destroyed, completely halting sorting, transport, and treatment.

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The continuous exposure to mixed waste has begun to reshape daily life in the area. Residents report difficulty breathing, increased insect activity, and a growing fear of contamination. Firas Market used to be a commercial hub and has gradually transformed into an informal dumping ground.

On a street corner, sanitation worker Omar Al-Sharif pulls his metal cart filled with bags labeled “medical waste.” He says tiredly: “This waste isn’t ordinary; it contains needles, blood tubes, and surgical bags. We collect it every day amid the crowd, and no one provides us with protective gear. Just one prick could kill us.”


“This waste isn’t ordinary; it contains needles, blood tubes, and surgical bags. We collect it every day amid the crowd, and no one provides us with protective gear. Just one prick could kill us.”

His statement reflects a wider systemic failure in occupational safety. Workers handling hazardous materials are often exposed without gloves, masks, or proper containment tools, increasing the risk of infection and long-term health complications. Medical waste, which should be strictly controlled, is now part of daily street collection routines.

Inside a nearby hospital, a hospital cleaning worker, Rana Abu Salim, stands before a corridor filled with trash bags, pointing to the warning symbols on them: “Before the war, we carefully sorted medical waste, each type in its own container. Today, we put it all in one bag because the containers disappeared and equipment was destroyed. This is dangerous for patients, workers, and the public outside as well.”

Her testimony highlights the collapse of hospital waste management protocols. Under World Health Organization guidelines, medical waste is classified into several main categories — including infectious waste, sharps, pharmaceutical waste, nonhazardous or general waste, and more — each requiring specific handling procedures. The loss of this system increases the probability of cross-contamination and hospital-acquired infections.

A few meters away, at a market near the hospital, vegetable vendor Khaled Al-Hassan lays out his goods on a small wooden table, holding a damp tissue to his nose to reduce the smell. “Every day, new bags are dumped in front of the market and rot quickly. Customers flee, and we live in unbearable odors. At night, trucks come and unload waste here as if it’s an official dump,” Al-Hassan tells me.

Economic consequences are now visible: Vendors report reduced sales, declining customer flow, and loss of livelihood. The degradation has directly affected informal markets that depend on daily foot traffic.

Next to him, taxi driver Fadi Abu Saleh stands by his car stuck in traffic, pointing at the bags in the middle of the road: “People walk over them, cars run them over. If just one contaminated bag bursts, the danger spreads to everyone,” he tells me. “This is in the middle of the market, in plain sight, not isolated.”

Transportation routes are also affected. Roads partially blocked by waste slow down emergency services, increase accident risks, and expose commuters to biological hazards.

Here, we see another face of the war. With medical waste treatment systems halted and equipment destroyed, the Gaza Strip has become an open environment for pollution and epidemics, amid the absence of sustainable solutions or safe disposal mechanisms.

Samir Al-Batran, an official with the department monitoring wastewater and medical waste at Gaza’s Ministry of Health, tells me that what is happening can only be described as simultaneous administrative and environmental collapse. He acknowledges the ministry bears responsibility for part of the current shortfall in monitoring but links it to comprehensive destruction and Israel’s ongoing siege.


“We realize that dumping waste in random pits isn’t a solution, but it’s the only option left in the absence of alternatives or international support.”

Before the war began in 2023, there was an integrated system for medical waste disposal, starting with sorting within health institutions, moving on to storage and transportation, and ending with microwave devices that neutralized pollutants. Today, all of this has collapsed; there are no tools, resources, or oversight capacity.

“We know the risks, and we realize that dumping waste in random pits isn’t a solution, but it’s the only option left in the absence of alternatives or international support,” the official at Gaza’s Ministry of Health adds.

Experts warn that the lack of controlled disposal leads to long-term soil contamination. Toxic liquids from decomposing waste seep into underground layers, threatening agricultural land and groundwater resources on which Gaza heavily depends.

Hala Al-Masri, a displaced woman from Gaza City now living in Khan Younis, points to a pile of waste near her tent: “The smell is unbearable, and insects are everywhere,” she tells me. “My children suffered rashes and infections; the doctor said it’s due to polluted air and water. We live meters away from a dump.”

Such testimonies show the direct health consequences on displaced families. Skin diseases, respiratory issues, and gastrointestinal infections are increasingly reported in overcrowded displacement zones.

Human rights researchers argue that the environmental crisis is no longer just a technical issue but a violation of fundamental rights. The destruction of sanitation infrastructure undermines the right to health, dignity, and a safe environment under international humanitarian law.

Hamed Al-Sayed, 30, one of the residents affected by the deterioration of sanitation and waste management services, tells me: “The problem is no longer only the presence of waste or sewage. We are now living among these conditions without clear solutions. The smells, insects, and accumulation of waste have become part of our daily lives.”

He added: “Before, there were services responsible for collecting waste and trying to manage the problem. Now, the situation is different. Many services have stopped or become extremely limited, leaving people more exposed to health risks.”

Hamed told me these conditions have particularly affected children and displaced families: “Children are among the most affected because they move and play in the same areas where waste and contaminated water are present. We are afraid of diseases, but we do not have many options.”

His testimony shows how the collapse of waste management and sanitation services has transformed from a public service problem into a crisis affecting people’s basic rights, including the right to health, a safe environment, and human dignity.

In Deir al-Balah, a third temporary dump was established in the Al-Baraka area, where medical waste from nearby health centers and hospitals mixes with household trash.

Human rights and environmental activist Bilal Abu Zaid emphasizes that accumulating medical waste near residential areas threatens the right to health, environment, and life.

He warns that toxic gases and harmful liquids seep into soil and groundwater, causing long-term ecological damage. Environmental degradation is no longer localized; it is spreading across densely populated zones.


The destruction of sanitation infrastructure undermines the right to health, dignity, and a safe environment under international humanitarian law.

“Medical waste accumulating near residential areas is not only an environmental problem; it is a direct threat to people’s fundamental rights, including the right to health and to live in a safe environment,” Abu Zaid told me. “When medical waste is mixed with regular waste and authorities lose the ability to manage it safely, the risks do not remain limited to disposal sites. They extend to communities through pollution and the spread of diseases.”

Abu Zaid warned of the long-term consequences, saying: “The environmental damage caused by these conditions could continue for years, because the contamination of soil and groundwater affects ecosystems and the health of future generations.”

Moreover, decomposing medical and organic wastes release greenhouse gases, contributing to localized warming and the worsening heat wave conditions already being experienced in vulnerable urban areas.

In Gaza, war is not just a humanitarian tragedy; it is a complex environmental and climatic crisis. The accumulation of untreated waste symbolizes a deeper collapse of infrastructure, governance, and environmental protection systems.


This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

Eman Abu Zayed

Review

The Odyssey Challenges the Right-Wing Myth of a “Golden Past”

The new film pushes back against MAGA attempts to use a fetishization of the ancient world to legitimizing bigotry.

By Nicholas Powers , 

Truthout

July 25, 2026

The cast of The Odyssey attends the premiere of the film on July 14, 2026, in New York City.

Mike Coppola/Getty Images for Universal Pictures

Editor’s Note: This article contains spoilers.

Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey opens with a shot of the bard Demodocus — played by rapper Travis Scott — hitting a staff on a table for a beat. The movie then cuts to Sinon, an Achaean soldier in front of the Trojan Horse, who is played by transgender actor Elliot Page. Later, the hero, Odysseus (a somber Matt Damon) confesses that he is a war criminal. The blood on his hands stopped him from coming home.

The new film, which turns Homer’s epic into a critique of the West, started drawing the ire of right-wing critics before it even hit the screens. This version of The Odyssey calls out racism. It calls out patriarchy. It exposes the human cost of war and denounces the military machismo that Homer and the modern right-wing “manosphere” celebrate. It corrects the failure of empathy in the 8th century BCE epic. We are lucky to have a version of the Odyssey that portrays the real conflict within the story: how a scared and wounded man tries to heal his humanity so he can come home.
Don’t Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth

In the film, Trojan soldiers on horseback gallop across a beach to the Trojan Horse, a giant statue, half-buried in sand. They see the scared soldier Sinon, who says the Trojan Horse is a peace offering. Hardened by war, they kill Sinon but wheel the statue into the city. In its belly, Odysseus and his men wait for nightfall to open Troy’s gates for their army to bring death and destruction.

Nolan’s The Odyssey cuts back and forth across time. In this way, Nolan is loyal to the structure of Homer’s poem, which tells scenes in flashbacks. The center of gravity is Odysseus, long-bearded, trapped on an idyllic island by the nymph Calypso (played by an ethereal Charlize Theron). She drugs him with a lotus flower that causes amnesia. Bit by bit, he remembers his journey after the Trojan War. He recalls his arrogance at guiding his men on a quick sail home. He got them lost and killed. Struck by guilt, he eats more of the memory-erasing lotus.

Memory is key in this movie. Memories of war are how a son, Telemachus (a stoic Tom Holland), learns of his father, Odysseus, and in turn learns how to “become a man.” Memories of war are also how Odysseus accepts the blood on his hands. At the high point in the film, the effects of the lotus fade. He remembers the sacking of Troy. Fire eating stone. Soldiers hacking people like butchers working sides of beef. Odysseus wanders around, stunned at the gore and death. Finally, he snaps out of it, and says to Calypso, “I didn’t want to go home.”


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I read Homer’s Odyssey. I taught Homer’s Odyssey. I can tell you that however soul-stirring and epic it may be, it is written for the elite ruling class.

Nolan’s The Odyssey centers the inner conflict of a war veteran struggling with trauma. When Damon’s Odysseus returns to his castle in Ithaca, disguised as a beggar, he talks with his wife about the horror of war. Nolan’s focus is not original; in 2024’s The Return, actor Ralph Fiennes also played an Odysseus wracked by grief and guilt. Fiennes said in an interview it was “an antiwar film.” In that version, Penelope (played by a steely Juliette Binoche) yelled at him, “How many men did you kill? How many women, raped?”

I read Homer’s Odyssey. I taught Homer’s Odyssey. I can tell you that however soul-stirring and epic it may be, it is written for the elite ruling class. Homer’s Odysseus in no way shows how violence maims men’s souls. But as Damon’s Odysseus walks numb while Troy burns, you can imagine it not as Troy but as Tehran after U.S. and Israeli attacks, or Baghdad during Desert Storm, or Ukraine after Russian missile strikes.
Make Patriarchy Gross Again

In this new recasting of The Odyssey,feminist critiques also abound. The film shows the pressure of patriarchy on women characters such as Penelope (an embattled Anne Hathaway), Circe the witch (a haunting Samantha Morton), and also the unnamed women cut down by soldiers. The tragedy is that the film’s critique can only go so far to the degree that it remains loyal to the source material. Homer’s original, beginning to end, reaffirms male supremacy.

Mother and son fight over the future. Telemachus urges Penelope to marry. He pleads with her that this way, he can maneuver to the throne. She snarls at him, “I have sat on the throne for years! I have experience but none of it matters as much as the bristle on your beard.” She storms off, the point made that she is the most capable leader, but in a patriarchy, her young son has more authority than she does.

The sharpest feminist critique comes at the hands of a witch. During a flashback, Odysseus remembers sailing to island. His men are hungry and spot a farm house. They run to it and the grey-haired Circe, a witch in disguise, feeds them meaty broth that casts a spell. In a deliciously lurid scene, she reshapes each man into a pig, like a sculptor working wet clay. When Odysseus comes, he knows she is a witch. She accuses men of being animals, led by “base instincts” who rob and rape and kill. Only after Odysseus threatens to kill her sister, whom she transformed into a raven, does she reverse the spell, changing the pigs back into his soldiers. Bitterly, she says, “Back into your disguises.” Male self-image is a mask hiding their animal nature.

The Right-Wing Freak Out

Right-wing critics ripped their hair out over this film before it even hit theaters. They hated that Nolan actively diversified the cast. They saw it as evidence that this was a “woke” Odyssey. Once again, their argument goes, liberals stole another piece of culture from them and ruined it.

Exhibit number one: the rumor that Elliot Page would play Achilles. (Not true —again, he played Sinon the soldier.) MAGA critics discovered that Page was cast and got it into their heads that he was Achilles, the most famous warrior in all of literature. Achilles was played like a beefcake calendar model by Brad Pitt in 2004’s Troy. The idea of a transgender actor supposedly “desecrating” Achilles masculinity drove them to create AI videos showing Page as Achilles getting easily killed or stumbling over his shield.

Meanwhile right-wing critics also derided the casting of Black actor Lupita Nyong’o as Helen of Troy as historically inaccurate. Really, they were grasping for an excuse to vent racism. Elon Musk called her casting an “insult.” Right-wing personality Matt Walsh posted on X: “Not one person on the planet actually thinks that Lupita Nyong’o is ‘the most beautiful woman in the world.’” Again, the racist AI videos came, one showing Black actor Samuel L. Jackson as Helen of Troy, implying Nyong’o was ugly.

The fight over who owns history is the fight over legitimacy. Whoever owns the past owns the future.

What spurred this right-wing freak out? A fetish for a “golden past.” Seen through the right’s political lens, the past is a time of law and order, in which natural roles in gender and class were strictly observed, which led to social harmony. In this illusionary past, the best ruled and the inferior obeyed. Professor Curtis Dozier dissects the right’s obsession with antiquity in his 2026 book, The White Pedestal: How White Nationalists Use Ancient Greece and Rome to Justify Hate. He argues that the ancient world is a mirror in which racists can see themselves, legitimized by academic prestige, and that history reflects their values. He summarized the right’s use of history in a New Books Network interview:


Look, this society, ancient Greece and Rome, which you respect and believe is a high point in human civilization, they excluded foreigners from citizenship. They excluded women from political rights. They regarded outsiders as a dangerous threat. They practiced eugenic measures. Plato said if any deformed infants are born, they should be taken away and put into a dark place and never seen again.

The fight over who owns history is the fight over legitimacy. Whoever owns the past owns the future. It is a fight you see in the reactions to Zack Snyder’s 2006 movie 300 compared to Nolan’s 2026 The Odyssey. Snyder’s Spartan warriors, lean and muscled, were idealized men. 300 became the war cry of the MMA-glorifying, manosphere-participating, testosterone-advocating MAGA man. Like Dozier said, it gave their male fantasies a fake Ph.D. in history. It gave them license to attack empathy and women’s rights and diversity.

Home, Sweet Home

The reaction to Nolan’s The Odyssey gives me hope. Yes, it’s flawed. Yes, Nolan’s loyalty to the text forces him to miss more daring interpretations. Yes, the theme of trauma as the obstacle to Odysseus coming home is overwhelmed by the spectacle of violence. In the end scene, it’s obvious the film relishes in Odysseus massacring the suitors. Even so, at the end, the old king exiles himself so his son Telemachus can rule Ithaca with clean hands, saying that Zeus’s Law (basically, the Golden Rule) means Odysseus must leave again, so that peace can come.

In part, Odysseus chooses exile because earlier in the film, he realizes that he was wrong. Everywhere he stopped, he was told about the “people from the sea” who came and stole and killed and ravaged. They broke Zeus’s Law. They brought darkness. Odysseus, in a moment of clarity, says: “We were the sea people. We were.”

In a time of war and poverty and global warming, we need this version of The Odyssey. We need to see a war veteran learning how to heal in order to belong again. The U.S. has committed so much violence in its short 250-year history. We have suffered from it and also sometimes caused it, and we feel lost. But we can get home. We have to recognize our complicity in the chaos we decry. We have to see the blood on our hands, clean it off, and then hopefully, when we reach out for forgiveness, we’ll receive it.

This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

Nicholas Powers
Nicholas Powers is the author of Thirst, a political vampire novel; The Ground Below Zero: 9/11 to Burning Man, New Orleans to Darfur, Haiti to Occupy Wall Street; and most recently, Black Psychedelic Revolution. He has been writing for Truthout since 2011. His article, “Killing the Future: The Theft of Black Life” in the Truthout anthology Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? coalesces his years of reporting on police brutality.

CNN torn apart for claiming outrage over Trump’s MISOGYNIST attack on its reporter

President Donald Trump takes the lectern to deliver remarks at the WHCA Dinner at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in Washington, D.C., July 24, 2026. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Thomas Kika

July 27, 2026 

ALTERNET

CNN took a beating online this week, as various commentators called out the network for its participation in the White House Correspondents' Dinner (WHCD) after reports emerged that its "leadership was furious" over comments President Donald Trump made attacking its journalists.

The latest WHCD took place on Friday evening, having been delayed when a gunman attempted to carry out a shooting at the previously scheduled event. CNN had a notable presence at the dinner, with anchor Wolf Blitzer presenting an award to Wall Street Journal reporters who uncovered new ties between Trump and Jeffrey Epstein. Trump also took aim at anchor Kaitlin Collins during his address that night, comparing her appearance to that of Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender influencer who has been the target of considerable right-wing outrage, with the remark being criticized as both misogynistic and transphobic.

On Monday, Semafor released a new report noting that CNN staffers were "livid" about Trump's attack on Collins, with some leaders at the company reportedly considering "scaling back" its involvement in next year's dinner or "skipping it altogether." The outlet had previously committed to attending the event to celebrate the work of its reporters and to avoid seeming like they were making a political statement by opting not to attend.

Given CNN's participation in the event, and the hand it had in boosting its profile this year, several prominent users across social media raked the network over the coals in response to the report, suggesting that they should not have attended it at all, as well as for their extensive coverage of Trump overall.

"They ought to be furious at themselves for sustaining the dinner with their attendance," journalist John Harwood wrote in a post to X.

Responding to Harwood's post, Canadian journalist Annie Dufour shared her own reaction to the WHCD from Friday.

"From Canada, this was painful to watch as a journalist," she posted. "American Media has fallen short of its role as a pillar of democracy. Complacent. Coy. Accommodating. A Vichy Press, almost. When it should have been unyielding, brave, and bold. You reap what you sow."

"They should scale back their coverage of the lunatic president who spewed all of this hate at Kaitlan and CNN. And journalism as a whole," journalist Sophia A. Nelson posted.

"They were also shocked to discover that gambling is going on at Rick's Cafe in Casablanca," journalist Brian Lowery posted, referencing a scene from a classic film to suggest that Trump's diatribe should have been an obvious outcome.

Whistleblower explains the real reason Trump wants to use a nuclear weapon

Nick Hilden

July 27, 2026

ALTERNET

Over the course of his war with Iran, President Donald Trump has made inflammatory remarks that many have suggested implied his intention to use nuclear weapons. Now a whistleblower from his first term warns that he “watched Donald Trump talk about nuclear weapons like they were presidential toys,” and that “he may be closer to playing with them than you think.”

This is according to Miles Taylor, who served as deputy chief of staff at the Department of National Security during Trump’s first administration, at the time famously penning an anonymous article revealing the existence of a resistance movement working within the White House. On Monday, he published a new piece explaining why Trump has a “fixation” with using nuclear weapons.

“Last week,” writes Taylor, “the president told Axios he was ‘close’ to ordering a ‘massive attack’ on Iran … The threat had the same ominous feel of his April comments that ‘a whole civilization will die tonight.’ It was an insinuation that he possessed super powers — and might break the world’s nuclear taboo to end the stalemate.” The pause didn’t mean the war was off, however, and Trump told Axios why he thought the war had to continue: “They haven’t received enough pain yet.”


“Not enough pain,” notes Taylor. “I’ve heard rhetoric like that from him before. And it wasn’t about Iran.”

“Back in 2017,” Taylor explains, “Trump judged that the only way to bring North Korea to heel was to make it suffer. He tweeted furiously at ‘Rocketman’ Kim Jong-un and promised ‘fire, fury and frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before’ if the hermit kingdom didn’t meet his demands. That was Trump’s first wink-nod to the fact that he possessed an arsenal of nuclear bombs and was ready to use them. Kim answered by threatening to fire missiles at Guam and testing a nuclear-capable missile that could strike the U.S. mainland.”


Taylor says the situation escalated so rapidly that Defense Secretary James Mattis began preparing DHS officials for an all-out nuclear war. “For the first time in the Department of Homeland Security’s history, we ran exercises for a potential real-life nuclear strike on American soil, because frankly, we couldn’t rule out that our own president might take us into such an apocalyptic situation.”

According to Taylor, the president’s motivation was simple: “Trump wanted to see something blow up, and the rest of us built contingency plans around that desire. Thankfully, he didn’t launch nukes at North Korea. But General Mattis also isn’t at the Pentagon anymore. ‘Pistol Pete’ Hegseth is.”

Taylor asserts that “Trump’s nuclear fantasies go way back. When he was a candidate in 2016, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough said a foreign policy adviser had come away from a briefing with Trump rattled, because Trump asked, three separate times, some version of the question: ‘If we have nuclear weapons, why can’t we use them?’ Candidate Trump also told The New York Times he wasn’t sure it ‘would be a bad thing for us’ if Japan built its own nuclear deterrent against North Korea, and he told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that Saudi Arabia should have nukes, too, ‘absolutely.’” And “since then, Trump has toyed with nuclear weapons more openly and more recklessly than any American president ever entrusted with the stewardship of the bomb.”


Now, amid an “unresolved war with Iran,” warns Taylor, “you get the picture of a president who’s just one mood swing away from putting his finger on the proverbial red button.”

Taylor says that Trump’s motivation is not difficult to grasp, writing, “Donald Trump has spent his entire presidency on a power quest, always hunting for the next most powerful thing he can do. And nuclear weapons are at the top of that list. To say that he’s ‘toying’ with extreme powers is probably the wrong phraseology. He’s addicted to power. Very much like it’s an intoxicant. When his own chief of staff, Susie Wiles, told The Atlantic that her boss had an ‘alcoholic’s personality,’ it wasn’t a mere slip of the tongue. That’s how everyone who’s served the man has come to see him … He has an uncontrollable, pathological, junkie-like urge to power.”

“If deploying troops to seize foreign leaders and raining missiles on other nations isn’t cutting it anymore,” Taylor concludes. “I worry about where the quest leads next. I’ve written before about how close Trump got to using the bomb the first time. Let’s not forget what Trump reportedly absconded with after he left the presidency: U.S. nuclear secrets. Back in office, the fixation has returned.”

Arkansas whites-only community sues UK media giant for defamation

(Screenshot/Sky News)

Matthew Rozsa

July 27, 2026 

ALTERNET

The owners of an Arkansas whites-only community that critics have described as “evil and reprehensible” is now striking back by suing a British-owned broadcaster for defamation.

“The men -- Eric Orwoll, Peter J. Csere and Scott Hallowood -- seek $2.7 million in punitive and compensatory damages from the broadcasters over a July 21, 2025, documentary on the community near Ravenden,” Arkansas Online reported on Monday. “The group says Sky UK doctored a photo to create a ‘whites only’ sign on a tree and that the sign doesn't exist, as well as attributed to them a comment made on X stating, ‘We started a Whites only community,’ when the comment was posted on an account they do not control.”

Orwoll, Csere and Hallowood filed the suit in a U.S. District Court in Little Rock in which they claimed they suffered from the supposedly defamatory claims.

"We don't know whether we're going to win or not," Csere explained during a July 23 podcast. "We do think we have a very good case." Orwoll and Csere said they also plan on filing suits against other groups and people.

"As promised, we're going on the offensive," Orwoll argued. "There are lots of people who have behaved in unwise ways."

In their Arkansas residential project, known as Return to the Land, the three men purchased tracts of land and planned on dividing it up among like-minded people who did not want to be in an area where Blacks, Jews and other minorities were told they were not welcome.

“The men claim the broadcast includes a photo of a sign tacked to a tree on the community's property that says ‘Whites Only,’” Arkansas Online reported. “They deny that any such sign has existed on the property and say Sky UK doctored a photo of the Return to the Land logo to produce the image.”

They added, “They also claim that interviews done by Sky UK's reporters were edited in a misleading way, selectively choosing responses from Orwoll without context and qualifications.”

Last year The New York Times reporter Debra Kamin reported that President Donald Trump’s policies have emboldened people like the Arkansas racists to act in ways that are technically illegal.

“Racism is, as you know, definitely not anything new. But definitely ‘why now’ is because there is a feeling among the architects of this community and the people who created it that they can get away with it now, because even though the laws obviously very explicitly make it illegal to discriminate, a lot of things that we took as rules and norms just a few months ago no longer really apply,” Kamin wrote. “They feel that at the highest levels of government, they will be allowed to do this.”

Reporting on the community last year, Wired's David Gilbert argued that “the online histories of the group's leaders tell a different story” than their claims to being peaceful. “Members have espoused virulently racist and antisemitic views and repeatedly praised Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party. One of the leaders says he is currently under criminal investigation in Ecuador. (Return to the Land President Eric) Orwoll himself has spoken about the coming of a second Hitler and praised KKK leader David Duke."

Gilbert added, "He is also closely aligned to an international network of far-right influencers, extremists, and white supremacists, including Thomas Sewell, a neo-Nazi living in Australia who was the founder of a group that influenced the Christchurch, New Zealand, shooter. Despite this, the Return to the Land community has been lauded by far-right influencers and has already raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations."

Trump admin rubber-stamps absurd plan to make sky '100 times brighter'

(REUTERS)

Jim Hightower 

July 27, 2026 

COMMON DREAMS

Executives climbing the corporate ladder to the top seem to lose IQ the higher up they get.

That might explain why John Deere's top corporate bosses have imposed an astonishingly stupid policy on America's farmers. For years, they've decreed that while a farmer "technically owns" a tractor or other John Deere product, the owner is prohibited from making any repairs when the machinery breaks down, stalls out, etc. Instead, owners must call an authorized Deere dealer to fix what most farmers could handle by themselves.

The monopolistic profiteer refuses to make its repair manuals available to customers or local repair shops, so ... gotcha.

But in 2020, Walther Schweitzer rallied with other mad-as-hell farmers and ranchers to rebel. The Montana rancher's tractor had gone kaput in hay baling season -- but, "no," said a Deere dealer, a technician is not available; and "no," you can't have access to the diagnostic computer to do it yourself. So, he had to wait weeks before Deere finally got his tractor running -- a fairly basic job worth about $600 ... but they billed Walter nearly $4,000.

That's what's called "a monopoly fix." But they messed with the wrong farmer. Schweitzer, president of the Montana Farmers Union, mobilized grassroots pressure from five states, forcing federal officials to sue Deere. This month, Deere's aloof executives settled that suit, finally letting its farm customers take charge of the equipment that -- hello! -- they own!

Schweitzer points out that this landmark win over the arrogance of Deere executives is just one stepping stone to a right-to-repair law for all products. To help push this right forward, go to repair.org.

IGNORANCE + ARROGANCE + POWER = LUNACY

Some presidents are known as uplifting orators; our present president is known for petulant putdowns.

Periodically, Trump discovers a new pejorative that he considers clever, so he wears it out attacking his endless list of enemies. His current favorite is "lunatic," hurling the slur at women reporters, most foreign leaders, all Democrats, protestors and ... well, everyone who offends him.

But if he wants some real lunatics to belittle, why not that menagerie he's appointed to top government positions? Such as Brendan Carr, Trump's FCC attack dog who keeps yapping that he's going to abolish NPR.

Failing at that, Carr has now gone from silly to ridiculous, pushing a phantasmagoric scheme that truly is lunacy. It comes from some Elon Musk proteges who apparently noticed that our planet gets dark as night falls. Eureka, they exclaimed, we need to "light the night!"

Why? Well, they say, to illuminate all city streets and rural roads, make crops grow faster and stuff like that. But how to generate the light? Easy, the geniuses explain: mirrors.

They want government support to deploy a global network of orbiting space mirrors that could reflect sunlight onto Earth's rotating dark areas. Lots of mirrors -- the schemers propose to put 50,000 in our skies by 2030, with each of the largest ones shining as bright as 100 full moons!

Nothing could go wrong with that, right? Bedazzled, Carr didn't ask. Instead, with no public input, he just rubber-stamped an initial launch of this "novel technology," blandly assuring us that "harms are unlikely to occur."


To oppose this lunacy, connect with the American Astronomical Society: aas.org

Is the US Ready for Radical Change?

Political scientist, political economist, author, and journalist C. J. Polychroniou believes that radical change is difficult but still possible in today’s United States, even though he realizes there is a strong anti-democratic tradition standing in the way.

(L-R) U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Michigan Democratic candidate for Senate Abdul El-Sayed, and US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) greet the crowd after El-Sayed spoke at The People V. The Powerful rally at the Detroit Opera House on July 18, 2026 in Detroit, Michigan.
(Photo by Sarah Rice/Getty Images)

C.J. Polychroniou

Alexandra Boutri
Jul 28, 2026

Common Dreams

The US is the richest country in the world, yet an international outlier on many measures. Among industrialized nations, the US spends a lower percentage of its GDP on public social expenditure, has no universal healthcare system, union density is at an all-time low, and the average American’s standard of living is in decline, as “nearly half of US households can’t make ends meet.” Of course, delusional President Donald Trump continues to say that the US is the “hottest country in the world.” Is the US, however, ready for radical change? After all, isn’t there evidence that Americans are losing faith in capitalism and that socialism is gaining ground among voters?

Political scientist, political economist, author, and journalist C. J. Polychroniou shares provocative thoughts on these issues in an interview with the French-Greek writer and journalist Alexandra Boutri. Polychroniou believes that radical change is difficult but still possible in today’s United States, even though he realizes there is a strong anti-democratic tradition standing in the way and regards the Democratic Party itself as the graveyard of radical change undertakings.

Alexandra Boutri: Recent polls indicate that capitalism is in trouble in the US, as there is a growing loss of faith in the system, apparently even among Republicans, while socialism is gaining mainstream appeal. So, I want to start this interview by inquiring about your own impression regarding political and ideological trends in the United States. Indeed, is the country on the verge of radical change?

C. J. Polychroniou: I am now old enough to take any talk of radical political change with a grain of salt. That being said, there is no doubt that the US version of capitalism has been an utter failure for the majority of Americans. In contrast to European or Asian versions of capitalism, capitalism in the US has always been structured around what we might call the Sopranos version of doing business, which is the Trump administration’s way of actually running the whole country today. But Trump aside, what kind of civilized society denies its citizens access to universal healthcare, tuition-free higher education, guaranteed long-term parental leave, 4-6 weeks of guaranteed paid vacation, and robust unemployment benefits? The US does!

Only the pathetic leadership of the Democratic Party stands in the way of Trump’s inevitable fall and disgrace.

The younger generations in the US seem to have awakened to the realization that the US economic system is brutal and thus detrimental to their well-being, even if they may not have an alternative socioeconomic system in mind that they would like to see instituted. They have indeed taken notice of the fact that the US is the only industrialized nation in the world without a universal healthcare system and that the standard of living has declined to the level of developing countries. Truth be told, even if North America remains the wealthiest on average, the quality of life in many European countries, which are, of course, still fully capitalistic, is superior to the US. There are stronger social safety nets and greater work-life balance in capitalist Europe than there are in the capitalist United States of America.

Which countries are best on women’s well-being? According to the latest Women, Peace and Security Index, European countries occupy all nine of the top positions while the US ranks 31st, below countries like Serbia and Malta. So, we do need to take into account different versions of capitalism. In that context, it is safe to say that many Americans have finally awakened to the realization that the US version of capitalism sucks! Anything more than that, however, is open to speculation. Socialism is gaining ground, but the challenges of building a unified socialist movement on a national scale and having a socialist political party that can contest power at the federal level are enormous in the United States of America.

Alexandra Boutri: Is the rise of socialism in the US the reason why Trump is reviving the boogeyman of communism?

C. J. Polychroniou: Absolutely. However much of a shallow man Trump happens to be, he is nonetheless a mastermind politician who has the pulse of today’s Republican voters. He is the greatest bullshitter of the modern age, but that’s only because of his audience. He knows how to stir fear. He also knows that he can normalize cruelty because his fanatical and racist fanbase simply loves it. Have his policies worsened economic conditions in the country to the point that even some of his own followers are beginning to doubt him? He only has to raise the volume on culture wars and then becomes again, in the eyes of his own supporters, the nation’s savior. Of course, such tactics have an expiration date even for the most popular authoritarian leaders. Look, for example, at what happened to Viktor Orbán in Hungary. After 16 years in power, even his own core supporters grew tired of his cronyism and corruption. I believe we will see something similar happen to Donald Trump and to the Republican Party, perhaps as soon as this coming November, in spite of how deeply the anti-democratic tradition has entrenched itself in all branches of government. In the end, only the pathetic leadership of the Democratic Party stands in the way of Trump’s inevitable fall and disgrace.

Alexandra Boutri: Are you also saying that the Democrats have been responsible for Trump’s rise to power?

C J. Polychroniou: Of course, and it was the Democrats, with their ability to destroy trust in government by siding themselves utterly and shamelessly with major corporate and financial interests, that rolled out the red carpet for Trump’s arrival on the nation’s political scene. The country had been moving further and further to the right since the early 1980s. In fact, the percentage of Americans identifying themselves as moderates had been declining since the Clinton years. Democrats still talk about Bill Clinton’s achievements, such as turning deficits into surpluses and making the economy more globalized, but his policies ushered in a new era of inequality while he transformed the welfare state by ending social policy. Essentially, the welfare state was dismantled under the Clinton presidency and was largely replaced in turn by volunteerism.

Neoliberalism (embraced by both parties in the US) and cultural relativism (a late obsession of liberals and segments of the left) have been at the core of the political turn to the far right in the US. The main point, though, is that the Democrats failed to advance a meaningful alternative whenever they found themselves in power. The Obama administration also had the chance to make a meaningful impact on the future of the country but opted, instead, to align itself with the status quo on all major issues, both on the domestic and foreign front. The Biden administration did make some progress on economic policy, mainly thanks to pressures from the progressive wing of the party, but failed miserably on foreign policy. As to why Kamala Harris lost to Trump, that’s an issue that will forever be debated.

Alexandra Boutri: In a recent campaign speech in Michigan, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said that the Trump administration is “hellbent on tearing down in four years what it took this country 250 years to build.” What did she mean by that, and how likely is it that she will be the Democratic 2028 nominee?

C. J. Polychroniou: Naturally, the country has made progress over the past 250 years. Don’t you think it would have been unnatural if it hadn’t done so? But how do we measure progress? Wars existed in the past, and it appears that war will never end. By the same token, we have taken major steps toward protecting individuals against discrimination on the basis of sex or gender, but economic inequality is greater today than it has ever been in the modern era, while women, people of color, and minorities continue to face economic disadvantages. In any case, it is beyond dispute that Trump is destroying whatever social and economic progress has been made so far. He is a wrecking ball, an unhinged sociopath, but one who is still being treated as America’s savior by something like close to 40% of voters. That’s simply mind-boggling, but it says something noteworthy about the persistence of a particular component of American political culture—one that rests on possessive individualism, anti-intellectualism, and the paranoid style. Richard Hofstadter addressed some of those aspects of American political life long before the rise of Trumpism. But we need to add racism, as it also remains a profound component of American political culture.

If popular struggles succeeded in introducing a universal healthcare system in the US, well, that would definitely constitute radical change in terms of how the nation has decided to deal with the well-being of its citizens.

I don’t know if Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will decide to run for president in 2028. I hope she does. Recent polls indicate that she is more popular with Democratic voters than the likes of Pete Buttigieg, Gavin Newsom, and Kamala Harris, none of whom offers hope for a brighter future, although any one of them would be an improvement over Trump. What I do know, though, is that if AOC does decide to run for president in 2028, not only will she have at least half of the country react with extreme fear and paranoia attacks, but she will encounter massive opposition from the Democratic establishment itself. In 2016, the Democratic National Committee derided the Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) campaign. I expect something similar will happen to AOC. The current leadership of the Democratic Party is the graveyard of radical change in the US.

Alexandra Boutri: What would constitute radical change in today’s United States?

C. J. Polychroniou: That’s a very important question, and I’m glad you raised it. Political, economic, and even sociocultural settings must be taken into account whenever we speak of demands for radical change. Take something like universal healthcare. Almost every country in Europe has universal coverage, and it can also be found in many countries around the world. But in the US there has always been staunch opposition to universal healthcare policies by powerful private entities like the health and insurance industries. If popular struggles succeeded in introducing a universal healthcare system in the US, well, that would definitely constitute radical change in terms of how the nation has decided to deal with the well-being of its citizens. No question about it. Radical change should not imply the transformation of a country’s entire system of government. That would constitute a revolution. Even then, we would need to distinguish between a political revolution and a social revolution. For instance, the American Revolution was a political, not social revolution. It did not alter the fabric of society; it did not change wealth distribution and left the class system intact. On the other hand, the French Revolution that began in 1789 and the October Revolution of 1917 in Russia were truly social revolutions in that they transformed property relations and changed radically the class systems in both countries.

Alexandra Boutri: Today’s left focuses too much on cultural issues without really challenging capitalism. Indeed, in the recent past, issues like multiculturalism and even certain variants of feminism have functioned like ideologies of capitalism. In addition, some segments of the left have a knack for spreading ideas that are either not well thought out or simply impractical. For instance, and I believe this also captures your own sentiments, I find talk about “degrowth” and “wealth tax” schemes that fail to address the dynamics of unfettered capital accumulation while making in addition ludicrous claims that their implementation would solve the climate crisis as rather wishy-washy responses to capitalist crises and thus by no means game-changing strategies. My question then is this: What sort of new ideas would qualify, in your view, as game changers for the contemporary capitalist environment in the United States?

C. J. Polychroniou: I have already mentioned universal healthcare. In any case, it would be rather easy for anyone, I think, to simply suggest ideas to improve the state of the US economy and to create a better society but that would be meaningless if the ideas themselves weren’t accompanied by concrete steps and specific policy proposals on how to erect alternative socioeconomic arrangements. But we need expertise for that to happen. That being said, a new project has been launched by the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst called Game Changers: Economic Policies for a Working America. It’s a project that was conceived of and is being directed by Gerald Epstein, a world-leading progressive economist who also happens to be PERI’s co-director. The issues addressed range from health and the environment to trade and finance. The policy briefs produced by different economists contain the sort of policy proposals that are desperately needed for rewriting the rules of the US economy in a manner that caters first and foremost to the needs and interests of American workers. I recommend everyone interested in progressive ideas on how to create a fairer, greener, and sustainable US economy to study some of the policy briefs that have been posted on PERI’s website.



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C.J. Polychroniou
C.J. Polychroniou is a political economist/political scientist who has taught and worked in numerous universities and research centers in Europe and the United States. His latest books are The Precipice: Neoliberalism, the Pandemic and the Urgent Need for Social Change (A collection of interviews with Noam Chomsky; Haymarket Books, 2021), and Economics and the Left: Interviews with Progressive Economists (Verso, 2021).
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