Donald Trump Is the Biggest Failure in Recent US History

At every turn, Trump has tried to erode US democracy and the good of the people during his second term.


Peter F. Crowley
Jun 30, 2026

Common Dreams


Donald Trump is the biggest failure in recent US presidential history. With the nation’s 250th birthday coming up, here’s a quick comparison to other US leaders.

He single-handedly tanked the economy with high prices resulting from tariffs and the Iran War. Trump’s defunding government agencies and scientific research, along with hyperinflation, has created an impossible job market (the uptick of unemployment nearly one percentage point over the past few years obfuscates the real job market). He has also gone after a national core value, democracy, attacking free speech whether in libraries, education, or protesting on behalf of Palestinian rights. The Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool is a clear symbol of his failed leadership: Trump tried to turn it blue for July 4th, but instead it became green with algae.

While LBJ oversaw an immoral, ruthless, and ultimately failed war in Vietnam, at least he passed civil rights legislation and poverty-reducing Great Society policies.

George W. Bush undertook a reckless war against Iraq; although unjust, one of the main objectives—to overthrow Saddam Hussein—was met, even if afterwards creating a liberal democracy failed miserably and, ultimately, led to ISIS ruling across swathes of the Middle East. Domestically, Bush governed during a recession in his first term that resulted from the dot-com bubble bursting, but he did not fundamentally attack the democratic core of United States, although the Patriot Act presaged the Trump era.

Because of Donald Trump’s monumental failure as a wannabe dictator, MAGA is fracturing and progressives are rising.

Joe Biden oversaw the post-Covid period during which inflation costs, which rose under Trump I during the pandemic, continued to rise because of international supply chain bottlenecks and the Ukraine War. He also gave the green light to the Israeli genocide in Gaza, a policy that Trump continued during his second term. However, Biden’s domestic policies and legislation included the forgiveness of student loan debt, a bipartisan infrastructure bill, and the Inflation Reduction Act, the latter of which included the largest investment in clean energy in US history.

Ronald Reagan conducted covert wars against Latin American governments and his neoliberal policies ultimately helped lead to Trump. However, his negotiations with Mikhail Gorbachev and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty were instrumental in leading to the end of the Cold War.

Barack Obama, like Reagan, got into his own covert wars, through supporting Islamist factions in the Syrian Civil War and expanding drone strikes. He also was responsible for creating chaos after his “leading from behind” regime change war against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. Yet, domestically, he passed Obamacare, which led to an additional 17 million Americans having health insurance. He also helped pull the economy out of the Great Recession.

President Bill Clinton, a scandal-plagued presidency during the pre-9/11 era, oversaw a healthy economy, but represented the Democratic Party’s embrace of neoliberalism and “tough on crime,” “super predator” policies. While flawed and foreshadowing what was to come, he would not be considered a failed president.

Jimmy Carter, a leader during stagflation and the Iran Hostage Crisis, has been perceived as a failed president. While his handling of each problem could have been improved, he did not create stagflation, which came about from a mix of high oil prices and the Fed’s stimulative economic policies. His offering asylum and medical treatment for the last shah of Iran in the US was in line with US imperial policy. Despite his crimes against the Iranian people and the new Iranian government’s demand that he be returned to Iran to receive justice, Carter refused.

Lastly, Richard Nixon, the most corrupt recent American leader before Trump, authorized the burglary to increase his chances of winning reelection and, after a cove-rup, resigned in shame. He also expanded the failed Vietnam War to Cambodia and Laos, though he had campaigned on ending the conflict. Yet, he created the Environmental Protection Agency and reestablished ties with China, though to do so turned a blind eye to Pakistan’s genocide against a nascent Bangladesh. Nixon did attempt to curtail democracy but nowhere near as systematically as Donald Trump has during his second term.

At every turn, Trump has tried to erode US democracy and the good of the people during his second term. While campaigning to end both inflation and the Ukraine War, he has not ended the war and caused prices to skyrocket thanks to his tariffs and his immoral and illegal war against Iran. He has redirected taxpayer money from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the US Agency for International Development (predicted to cause the deaths of 4.5 million children under 5 years old), and scientific and medical research to fund tax cuts for billionaires, expand the brutal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency by a factor of nine, and now seeks $1.5 trillion in Department of Defense funding (that’s $10K a year per taxpayer if divided evenly).

His Iran War caused about 3,500 Iranian deaths and 4,300 Lebanese deaths. While the US and Iran have a ceasefire, Israel isn’t abiding by it. As of this writing, Trump is still threatening the complete destruction of Iran, which is not ideal if you are honestly negotiating for peace.

From a US imperial perspective, the war has failed on every front: The Iranian regime is more powerful than ever; the Iranian population has largely gotten behind its government during the war; Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz now; Iran acts as a check on Israeli use of force in Lebanon; and the US bases, from which American forces retreated from during the fighting, may be closed in the Gulf countries and move to Israel. For those who relish in military victories, it is a loss for America.

Donald Trump may be up there as the biggest loser in history, but for now, it’s safe to say that he is the biggest failure in recent American presidential history.

There is an upside to utter failure though. While establishment Democrats have offered tepid criticism against Trump’s authoritarianism and immoral wars, progressives have made headway whether it’s the Mamdani-backed progressives winning their primaries in New York, Graham Platner winning the primary in Maine, or Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.)'s use of “genocide” to describe Israel’s systematic destruction of Gaza. Even Tucker Carlson has condemned his past Islamophobia and vociferously condemns the Israeli genocide in Gaza and the decimation of southern Lebanon and Beirut.

Because of Donald Trump’s monumental failure as a wannabe dictator, MAGA is fracturing and progressives are rising. Anti-Trump protests have broken record numbers and anti-ICE demonstrations at places like Delaney Hall are pushing back as strong as ever.

Surely, just before the 250th anniversary of the US, these are things worth celebrating.



Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.


Peter F. Crowley
As a prolific author from the Boston area, Peter F. Crowley writes in various forms, including short fiction, op-eds, poetry, and academic essays. His writing can be found in Pif Magazine, New Verse News, Counterpunch, Middle East Monitor, Galway Review, Digging the Fat, Adelaide’s Short Story and Poetry Award anthologies (finalist in both), and The Opiate. He is the author of the poetry books Those Who Hold Up the Earth and Empire’s End, and the short fiction collection That Night and Other Stories.
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Israel Killing West Bank Children at Highest Rate in Decades ‘With Virtually No Accountability’

“The system does not merely back those who pull the trigger—it effectively grants them a license to kill,” said the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem.


A Palestinian boy stands in an alleyway as armed Israeli soldiers stand guard in the occupied West Bank on June 13, 2026.
(Photo by Mosab Shawer / Middle East Images / AFP via Getty Images)

Jake Johnson
Jun 29, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

Between October 2023 and June 2026, Israel’s military killed Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank at the highest rate since 1967, according to a report published Monday by the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem.

The report, titled Unshielded Childhood, argues that “the unprecedented scale of killing of Palestinian children and teenagers by Israeli forces is the result of a reckless open-fire policy, expanded to be even more permissive than in the past, that is currently being implemented in the West Bank.” Between October 7, 2023 and June 28, 2026, Israeli forces killed more than 240 children and teenagers, with 54 killed in 2025 alone.

The report, which tells the story of each child killed by Israeli forces last year, quotes Israel’s top West Bank commander, Avi Bluth, who recently boasted that Israeli forces are “killing like we haven’t killed since 1967”—a reference to the Six-Day War in which Israel seized the West Bank. Among those killed between the start of 2025 and June 7, 2026 were two brothers—one 5 years old, the other 6—and a seven-month-old baby.

Yuli Novak, executive director of B’Tselem, said in a statement that “the widespread, unprecedented killing of Palestinian children and teenagers in the West Bank is the result of a broader Israeli policy that enables the killing of Palestinians with virtually no accountability.”

“When the military commander of the area boasts that Israel is killing Palestinians ‘like we haven’t killed since 1967,’ he is confirming exactly that: The system does not merely back those who pull the trigger—it effectively grants them a license to kill,” Novak added.

Citing fellow Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din, B’Tselem noted that “no indictments are known to have been filed in cases involving killings in the West Bank” since October 2023.

“Yet the immunity guaranteed in advance and the absence of any real demand for accountability after these crimes are committed are not confined to the legal sphere,” the report states. “They are also reflected in ‘public impunity’ that stems from the Israeli public’s indifference to the killing of Palestinian children.”



B’Tselem linked the spike in Israeli forces’ killing of Palestinian children in the West Bank to “the military’s declared easing of open-fire regulations at the end of 2021, reportedly permitting soldiers to use lethal fire against stone throwers in a departure from previous rules.”

“The new regulations permitted use of lethal fire even at individuals fleeing after suspectedly throwing stones, who no longer posed a danger—in violation of international law,” the group noted. “After 7 October 2023, the rules of engagement were further expanded, leading to another sharp rise in fatalities.”

B’Tselem’s investigation found that just two of the 54 Palestinian children and teenagers killed in the West Bank last year were armed with guns at the time they were killed by Israeli forces.

The group continued:
Thirteen were shot while throwing stones at roads or at armored Israeli forces, with no injuries reported from the stone-throwing. By contrast, at least 21 were not involved in any clashes, even when clashes were taking place nearby that included stone-throwing, hurling explosives or live fire. Regarding 12 minors, the military claimed they had tried to injure forces by throwing Molotov cocktails, IEDs ,or stones; B’Tselem’s investigation could neither verify nor refute this claim. Another teen was the object of a targeted killing. Forty-seven of the children and teenagers were killed by gunfire, and the remaining seven in airstrikes.

B’Tselem emphasized that the West Bank killings “cannot be separated from Israel’s killing of more than 21,000 Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip.”

“By allowing Israel to kill on such a scale in Gaza without consequences, the international community has effectively given it a green light to pursue the same lethal policy in the West Bank,” the group said in a statement. “As long as Israel continues to enjoy near-total impunity in the world, the lives of Palestinians—including children—will remain unprotected and exposed.”

Obliterating Gaza’s Children: The Damning UN Report

From Gaza and beyond, Israeli authorities and security forces have deliberately targeted Palestinian children. It is in line with the new Obliteration Doctrine and the topic of a new UN report.

by Dan Steinbock | Jun 29, 2026 | 

When I was working on The Fall of Israel (2024) and particularly The Obliteration Doctrine (2025), what I found most repulsive was the targeting of children in the Gaza Strip.

By late 2024, the testimonies of health professionals on location indicated that the deaths of many children in Gaza were not just collateral damage, but outcomes of deliberate, targeted actions.

The testimony of Dr. Feroze Sidhwa, a young American trauma and general surgeon who had volunteered in Palestine including the European Hospital in Khan Younis, was particularly compelling.

“I’ve seen violence and worked in conflict zones,” Sidhwa said. “But of the many things that stood out about working in a hospital in Gaza, one got to me: Nearly every day I was there, I saw a new young child who had been shot in the head or the chest, virtually all of whom went on to die.”

The statement of Dr. Sidhwa, who subsequently became one of the endorsers of The Obliteration Doctrine, was supported by dozens of other remarkable and courageous medical volunteers in Gaza. And these testimonies, in turn, have been supported by many reports of multiple international NGOs and multilateral organizations.

So, the latest report of the UN Independent International Commission is hardly new. Nonetheless, it is among the most consequential documents to emerge from the Gaza war. Its conclusion is stark: Israeli authorities and security forces have deliberately targeted Palestinian children, actions that the Commission argues constitute genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. 

The Commission’s findings

The Commission’s report concludes that the deliberate targeting of Palestinian children is not incidental collateral damage but part of a recurring pattern of conduct. In line with the Genocide Convention, it argues that such actions are a key indicator of genocidal intent because they strike at the future existence of the Palestinian people.

According to the inquiry, more than 20,000 Palestinian children were killed between October 2023 and October 2025, representing roughly 30 percent of all fatalities, while over 44,000 were injured. Even after the October 2025 ceasefire, children reportedly continue to be killed and maimed.

The Commission cites cases involving sniper fire, quadcopter drones, precision-guided munitions, and high-yield bombs used in densely populated civilian areas. It argues that the nature of these weapons systems often allowed operators to identify their targets, including whether they were children.

Israel has rejected the findings as biased and defamatory.

Regardless of political positions, the significance of the report lies in its accumulation of evidence, legal analysis, forensic testimony, and witness accounts. It represents one of the most comprehensive international investigations yet conducted on the impact of the war on children.

It is a condemnation that casts a long dark shadow over the entire Israeli war government and its international collaborators, arms suppliers and financiers. 

Children and the logic of genocide

In The Obliteration Doctrine, I showed that modern warfare in Gaza evolved beyond traditional military objectives toward the destruction of the social foundations of Palestinian existence. The Commission’s findings reinforce this interpretation.

Historically, genocide scholars have emphasized that attacks on children occupy a unique place in genocidal campaigns. The 1948 Genocide Convention identifies not only direct killing but also the infliction of conditions calculated to destroy a protected group. In Gaza, famine served the same genocidal function as starvation in the Warsaw ghetto.

Children embody demographic continuity, cultural reproduction, and collective future. Consequently, systematic violence against children has appeared repeatedly in cases later recognized as genocide, from the Armenian genocide to Rwanda.

The Commission explicitly states that targeting children attacks “the very capacity of the Palestinian people to exist and determine their future.” Its findings connect killings to broader patterns: destruction of schools, hospitals, pediatric facilities, neonatal care units, food systems, and water infrastructure.

That’s the ultimate objective: the genocide and ecocide of Palestine, its culture and children. Israel’s devastation of Lebanon follows in the footprints.

From an empirical perspective, the cumulative effect is measurable. Public-health research consistently demonstrates that childhood exposure to mass violence produces lifelong deficits in physical health, educational attainment, psychological resilience, and economic productivity.

Israel did not triumph in Gaza. Moral darkness did. 

Human cost beyond death statistics

Death tolls alone understate the catastrophe. The Commission reports more than 44,000 wounded children.

Gaza now reportedly has one of the world’s highest concentrations of child amputees. Thousands face permanent disability from burns, blast injuries, spinal trauma, vision loss, and neurological damage. Worse, Israel has often denied treatment to thousands of Gazans who lost limbs in Israeli attacks.

Research from conflicts in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Bosnia demonstrates that severely injured children often experience decades of adverse outcomes.

Rates of post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety disorders, and developmental impairments can remain elevated throughout adulthood. Educational interruptions reduce lifetime earnings. Family structures collapse under caregiving burdens.

The Commission also documents starvation, disease outbreaks, displacement, and collapse of medical services. Such conditions affect not only present survival but the health of future generations through malnutrition, impaired fetal development, and maternal health crises.

The result is not merely a humanitarian emergency. It is the systematic destruction of human development on a societal scale. 

Hind Rajab, the voice that refuses to disappear

This tragedy is symbolized by the short life and unwarranted execution of six-year-old Hind Rajab.

Trapped in a vehicle with relatives during military operations in Gaza, Hind’s desperate phone calls became known worldwide. Audio recordings captured a terrified child trapped in a car in Gaza, pleading for rescue while surrounded by the bodies of family members.

The story is depicted by a Venice-awarded 2025 docudrama by Kaouther Ben Hania about the young girl, whose desperate calls for help to the Red Crescent were recorded and went viral.

Rescue efforts reportedly failed, and Hind was later found dead. The Commission specifically references the case as emblematic of broader patterns under investigation.

Historically, certain victims become moral symbols because they crystallize a larger reality. During the Vietnam War, the photograph of Kim Phúc became such a symbol.

Hind Rajab has become one of the defining voices of Gaza because her case transforms abstraction into human reality.

Statistical discussions of thousands of deaths become impossible to separate from the image of a frightened child waiting for help that never arrived. 

High technology and moral decay

One of the most troubling aspects of the Commission’s report is the relationship between technological sophistication and ethical collapse.

Israel possesses some of the world’s most advanced military technologies, including AI-assisted targeting systems, drones, surveillance platforms, precision-guided munitions, biometric monitoring, and integrated battlefield intelligence.

In theory, such capabilities should reduce civilian casualties by improving discrimination between combatants and noncombatants.

Already in The Fall of Israel, two long years ago, I showed that precisely the reverse has taken place. Despite all the official rhetoric of “targeting,” the Palestinians in Gaza were hammered for months by indiscriminate bombing, as even the U.S. intelligence community acknowledged already in late 2023.

In line with the Obliteration Doctrine, modern technology – AI-amplified bombing, or alcocide – was not deployed to optimize precision-targeting. Rather, it was used to maximize deaths. The execution of innocent civilians, particularly children, was no longer just collateral damage, but the tacit objective.

Even as these realities became known, that did not halt bombing, which prevailed over months despite official indignation. The maximized mass atrocities slowed only when the arms transfer supply chains could no longer satisfy the demand.

The Commission concurs. It points to incidents in which advanced systems allegedly enabled more precise killing rather than greater protection. Precision technology does not inherently produce ethical outcomes; it amplifies the intentions guiding its use.

In The Fall of Israel, this was one of the central themes. Technological superiority cannot compensate for moral deterioration. States may achieve unprecedented operational efficiency while simultaneously eroding the ethical restraints necessary for legitimate military conduct.

That’s the rotting moral swamp where the international community stands today. 

The cost to Israeli society and soldiers

The consequences do not end with Palestinian victims. When perpetrators are done with their victims, they act out their moral ambivalence on themselves and their loved ones, one way or another.

A growing body of clinical evidence from military psychology demonstrates that participation in, witnessing of, or exposure to violence against civilians, especially children, can generate profound psychological injury among soldiers themselves.

This is what trauma centers in Israel know only too well (and what the government struggles to suppress from the media). The men who return from the indiscriminate killing fields of Gaza – and increasingly Lebanon – are no longer men. They are walking time bombs.

When you are expected to kill without any moral consideration, you continue killing: if not others, then yourself. Research on U.S. veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan has identified high rates of PTSD, depression, substance abuse, suicide risk, and what clinicians increasingly term “moral injury” – psychological damage resulting from participation in, failure to prevent, or witnessing acts that violate deeply held moral beliefs.

Studies consistently show that moral injury can be more persistent than fear-based trauma because it attacks personal identity and ethical self-understanding.

Prolonged occupation and repeated campaigns of collective punishment have contributed to a process of extraordinary social brutalization within Israeli society. The concern is not merely political polarization but normalization of violence. When civilian suffering becomes routine, moral thresholds shift.

History offers sobering parallels. Colonial wars in Algeria, Indochina, and elsewhere often left lasting psychological scars not only on the colonized but on the societies conducting the campaigns.

That’s what happens when the living dead return home. 

If Gaza becomes the new norm

The broader international implications may be even more alarming. If the deliberate targeting of children becomes normalized, the consequences extend far, far beyond the Middle East.

International humanitarian law depends fundamentally on protecting civilians, especially children. If powerful states can openly disregard these norms without meaningful accountability, the deterrent effect of international law weakens everywhere.

Empirical evidence suggests that impunity encourages repetition. The failures to prevent atrocities in Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur contributed to future violations by signaling weak enforcement. Conversely, successful accountability mechanisms have historically reduced recurrence.

The risks include greater regional radicalization, transnational terrorism, refugee flows, intensified great-power rivalry, erosion of international institutions, and the spread of increasingly unrestricted warfare.

In The Obliteration Doctrine, I warned repeatedly that what happened in Gaza won’t stay in Gaza. The Strip became a laboratory for new forms of warfare later exported elsewhere.

The Commission’s findings raise precisely that concern. If the systematic destruction of children, schools, hospitals, and civilian infrastructure becomes accepted in one conflict, future belligerents may invoke the precedent.

The ultimate question raised by the report is therefore not only what happened to Gaza’s children. It is whether the international community is willing to preserve the principle that children remain beyond the reach of war itself.

For if that principle fails in Gaza, it will not survive elsewhere.

The original version was released by Informed Comment (US) on June 26, 2026.

Dr. Dan Steinbock is an internationally recognized visionary of the multipolar world and the founder of Difference Group. He has served at the India, China and America Institute (US), Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (China) and the EU Center (Singapore). For more, see https://www.differencegroup.net 

‘Socialism is a winner’: Neil Duncan-Jordan and Chris Hinchliff on Socialism26

Daniel Green 29th June, 2026

LabourList 

As part of our Labour Tribes project, in partnership with PLMR, LabourList is taking an in-depth look at the different groups, factions and caucuses that shape the current Parliamentary Labour Party.

Our first in this series is on one of the newer groups to emerge, led by two MPs of the 2024 intake, Chris Hinchliff and Neil Duncan-Jordan. Their policy platform, Socialism26, has been endorsed by 32 members of the PLP, alongside the general secretaries of five Labour-affiliated trade unions.

Their “programme for change” within the party aims to restore optimism and idealism with a socialist vision for Britain, ranging from implementing the New Deal for Working People in full, reforming the tax system, bringing water into public ownership and creating a National Care Service free at the point of use.

LabourList met the pair in Duncan-Jordan’s office, which was adorned with a myriad of posters and badges from progressive causes both past and present. Among those that caught my eye were a ‘Bliar’ pin from the Iraq War, a collection of badges from trade unions, and a collection of framed posters from the Hammersmith International Brigade, who travelled to Spain to fight against the fascist revolt of Francisco Franco.

One thing I was not prepared for as I arrived for the interview was Duncan-Jordan’s love of music, as I was greeted with the sounds of Motown from a vinyl player in his office, along with a vast collection of records.

‘Trauma bonding’

Since being elected two years ago, both Duncan-Jordan and Hinchliff have become close ‘comrades in arms’, working together on many issues and having rebelled on similar causes. They both attribute their friendship to two words: “trauma bonding”.

Duncan-Jordan, MP for Poole, said:  “Our paths had crossed very briefly. I was working for the National Pensions Convention, Chris was working for Independent Age – both organisations in the older people sector. We probably only met once, very very briefly at the Pensioners Parliament in Blackpool, an annual conference of the National Pensions Convention – so it was very brief, and a very long time ago.

“We end up as brand new MPs. When you become an MP, there’s a lot of training, like induction that the party and Parliament puts on. We were in a particular session, by chance sitting next to each other. It was a behaviour code training and the woman doing the training asked if there were any questions.

“Chris put his hand up and said, ‘Can I just say, I am a bit concerned about the authoritarian nature of the PLP?’. At which point, I turned to Chris and introduced myself and thought this is somebody who I’m going to like.

“It was really useful on all those early days when you’re getting to understand how this place works to have someone you could just ring up and say what do you think about this, have you formed a view on this particular amendment or whatever.

‘An atmosphere where everyone was expected to be on the same page’

Reflecting on those early days after being elected, Hinchliff, MP for North East Hertfordshire, said there was pressure early on to conform with the party leadership and that there was little to no space for debate or disagreement.

He said: “Very early doors you’re starting to come under pressure about don’t write letters, don’t table early day motions – quite clearly trying to box you in to be perfectly honest. I suppose there was an atmosphere where everyone was expected to be on the same page. There was a real sense that the expectation was that we were all of the same faction and that we were aligned in opposing any other faction within the party. I didn’t particularly come in from a specific faction, but I didn’t feel comfortable with that notion that I was opposed to anyone who didn’t agree with the ‘in-crowd’.”

Hinchliff hit out at the “one-dimensional approach” of the outgoing leadership, which he said “refused to listen to dissenting voices and treated them as a problem and as something that should be ideally stamped out”.

View our interactive Labour Tribes guide to the Parliamentary Labour Party here

‘Concerns were seen as being disloyal, rather than trying to help avoid a mistake’

For both Hinchliff and Duncan-Jordan, this was most prominent over the issue of winter fuel.

Duncan-Jordan said: “The first we knew [about the policy] was when Rachel Reeves announced it. We were both sitting in the gallery together. I won’t tell you what we said, because it’s not repeatable.

“You’re a brand new MP, you want the government to succeed, and one of the very first policy announcements is unbelievably badly misjudged. You’re sitting there thinking I’m not going to be able to back this.

“I remember my chief whip said to me: ‘It’s not the Labour government that you might want, but it’s the only Labour government we’ve got’.”

Hinchliff described winter fuel as the government’s first and biggest misstep and added: “There had been some PLP meetings with really unpleasant atmospheres quite early on. People like Neil made a very strong case about universalist Labour values. We knew that pensions credit wasn’t going to pick up the slack and the fact this was going to play out very poorly with a large swath of the public, but that was seen as being disloyal – rather than trying to help avoid a mistake.

“That approach to concerns being raised has repeated itself multiple times over.”

‘Older colleagues came up to us and said Blair never did this’

The pair were both suspended in July last year for around four months over breaches of party discipline, including rebelling over the government’s proposed welfare cuts.

Duncan-Jordan said that their suspension was almost unprecedented in the party’s history.

“Older colleagues who’d been here for much longer would come up to us and say Blair never did this. They couldn’t believe that we’d been suspended for voting against the government on quite a Labour-type policy.

“I personally think it was a punishment beating. I think it was done to put others off making a stand. I’m absolutely convinced about that.”

Hinchliff joked: “One element that particularly tickled me was that effectively part of the reason why we were chosen to be suspended was because we’d organised within the PLP. How dare you within the labour movement be organised! What a sin, eh?”

Life as a suspended Labour MP

The duo also provided an insight into what parliamentary life is like as a suspended Labour MP.

“Some people don’t talk to you; your friends are still your friends, but others are a bit wary of being seen with you.

“I don’t think we had any conversations with the whips’ office until the phone call we had to let us back in four months later, so there was no liaison.”

Hinchliff said: “I think we kept each other sane, and I suppose I feel more sorry for people who’ve been through that process and you’re kicked out on your own – and you can see where it would have a bigger psychological impact if you’re kicked out for something you have less certainty that you did the right thing.

“That was never in question for us, and we had us being friends but also two other colleagues suspended alongside us. There was a little grouping of us who would chat, so it was never a complete freezing out entirely. You were never left on your own in the wilderness.”

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‘These are the bread and butter issues that we need to take action on’

For Duncan-Jordan, Socialism26 is not seeking to compete with any other existing group within the party, such as Mainstream or the Socialist Campaign Group. Rather, their objective is to push forward a policy platform to deliver real change for Britain.

He said: “It was quite clear to us that there was going to be a challenge at some point and the bit that we can control is not who stands, but what we ask them to do. 

“This is about giving agency and power to rank and file members, trade unionists, MPs and councillors. You need to go to any would-be leader and say ‘where do you stand on these 15 points?’ – and on the basis of how they reply to that question might determine how you vote. It’s important that people feel like they’ve got a stake in this.”

Hinchliff said that the need to deliver improvements in living standards by the time of the next election is vital if Labour is to stand any chance of remaining in government.

“There’s been quite a lot of debate, not all of it unwelcome, about the role of our values in the party and making sure we are staying true to those values and traditions. We also felt there was a big vacuum in debate for our party about what are the practical policy changes. Both Neil and I feel very strongly that people have got to feel that we’ve improved their lives come the next general election or we don’t stand a chance of keeping Labour in government.

“For us, these are the bread and butter issues that we need to take action on, regardless of who’s at the top, if we want to be winning back the trust of the public.”

‘Risk people think Labour was not that different from what came before’

Reflecting on Starmer’s administration, there are elements the pair can point to as being rooted in Labour values; such as the lifting of the two child benefit cap, employment rights legislation and greater rights for renters.

However, Duncan-Jordan said: “I think there has been timidity in other areas, which have not been quite so Labour; the winter fuel allowance, the attacks on disability benefits, things like that were distinctly in my view un-Labour.”

For Hinchliff, Socialism26 is not saying that the outgoing government is not a real Labour government.

“It’s more that there are things that we need to be doing much better on. We promised a council housing revolution – I think we are yet to see that.

“It’s been a long time since we’ve had a Labour government, and I think there’s a real risk we get to the end of this government with the housing crisis still as much as it was, energy bills still fundamentally as unaffordable, water remaining a rip-off in private hands. Unless we address those things, people are going to think Labour was not really fundamentally that different from what came before, and that really concerns me.”

Should Labour fall short and lose the next election, Hinchliff thinks historians would look damningly at the government’s decision to abandon its universalist principles over winter fuel.

“They implemented a policy largely off the back of bureaucracy Treasury views rather then the principles of their political party and triggered a huge backlash – not just because of what the policy did in and of itself, but what it told the public about who we were fighting for and whose side we were on.

“We won the general election with a landslide in terms of the number of constituencies we won, but we were never a profoundly popular party at that point in time, so we didn’t have vast amounts of political capital that we could squander. It evaporated almost immediately, and the concern has always been will the country give us another chance.”

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‘Sooner we move to National Care Service, the better’

Both Duncan-Jordan and Hinchliff were early voices in the PLP calling for Starmer to resign as leader – and are both clear that there has to be a change of direction.

Duncan-Jordan said: “Part of the reason behind our programme is to try and be part of the debate as to where we end up going [as] where we’ve been for the last two years isn’t where we want to carry on from.”

For both MPs, Socialism26’s call for a National Care Service is an area they are passionate about wanting delivered.

“There is no justification that somebody with dementia has to fund their own care, and somebody with cancer gets it funded through the NHS,” Duncan-Jordan said.

“The sooner we move to a National Care Service funded like the NHS, free at the point of delivery for those who need it, the better.”

‘People are deeply frustrated at a society that puts profit before people’

Hinchliff said that his and Duncan-Jordan’s victory in traditionally Conservative constituencies shows there is an appetite for a Labour government that pursues unapologetic socialist policies.

“If you talk to the people in those communities that I represent, fundamentally, what it always comes back to is that people are deeply frustrated at a society that puts profit before people and we need to reverse that.

“If you look at what that means in a practical sense; we have a housing system that is basically geared towards maximising the profits for shareholders, not about providing genuinely affordable housing for the next generation. We have public transport system with our buses that you only get the buses that make businesses a profit, not the bus routes that rural towns and villages need to be actually connected. The same goes for social care – you get the social care that people can pay for through their private wealth, not the social care that everyone in society needs.

“People understand that, and people reflect that back to me all the time in my conversations across the constituency. If we can express that in a Labour way and we meet the challenges with policies delivered by this government, I think socialism is a winner.”

The NDAA Proposed Merger of the US and Israeli Military Is Strategically Unwise and Inherently Unconstitutional

Section 219 creates a framework for permanent military integration that weakens American sovereignty, blurs constitutional accountability, and places the nation's independent decision making at risk.

by Dennis Kucinich and Elizabeth Kucinich | Jun 29, 2026

Reprinted with permission from The Kucinich Report.

This article is Part 2 in a three part series on the proposed merger of U.S and Israeli intelligence, military and biotechnology. Read Part 1 here.

Prior to the American Revolution being fought on battlefields, it was fought as an argument about sovereignty.

Who decides the fate of a nation? Who commands its armies? Who determines when its citizens go to war and when they remain at peace?

The Founders answered those questions with remarkable clarity. In a republic, sovereignty belongs to the people and is exercised through constitutional institutions accountable to them. Section 219 of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2027 threatens to undermine the foundational principles of our republic and our constitutional democracy.

Advocates for Section 219 describe it as a strategic partnership, a modernization of military cooperation between the United States and Israel. Yet the language of the provision reaches far beyond cooperation. It calls for the integration of military planning, intelligence sharing, technological development, procurement systems, research capabilities, and strategic operations in ways that blur the distinction between two sovereign nations.

This is not merely a policy question, it is a constitutional one.

America has alliances with many nations. We cooperate with allies. We conduct joint exercises. We share intelligence. However, there is a profound difference between cooperation and integration.

Cooperation preserves independent decision making.

Integration creates pressure toward shared decision making and shared consequences.

The Constitution was deliberately designed to prevent precisely this type of entanglement.

The President serves as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States. Congress possesses the authority to declare war. Together these provisions were meant to ensure that decisions involving American lives, American treasure, and American military power remain accountable to the American people.

Section 219 moves the nation in the opposite direction. It creates permanent structures through which military, intelligence, technological, and strategic functions become increasingly intertwined with those of another government. Even if no formal transfer of command occurs, the practical effect is to make American decision making dependent upon relationships and commitments that exist far beyond the reach of American voters.

There are at least nine reasons why Congress should reject Section 219 of the NDAA:.

1. IT VIOLATES THE COMMANDER IN CHIEF CLAUSE

Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution designates the President as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States.

Congress cannot constitutionally dilute, share, or transfer command responsibilities through ordinary legislation. The armed forces of the United States must remain exclusively accountable to constitutional authority established by the American people.

2. IT BYPASSES THE TREATY PROCESS

The Constitution provides a mechanism for creating major international commitments: treaties ratified by two thirds of the Senate.

If Congress believes permanent military integration with any foreign nation is necessary, it should present that proposal openly and subject it to the scrutiny required by the Constitution.

Congress cannot use a spending bill to accomplish what the Constitution requires to be debated and approved through the treaty process.

3. IT CREATES PROBLEMS OF AUTHORITY AND ACCOUNTABILITY

Foreign officials do not swear an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States.

Yet military integration creates circumstances in which foreign officers, planners, intelligence officials, and strategic personnel may influence decisions affecting American troops, intelligence assets, military technologies, operational planning and decisions to use military force.

The Framers established safeguards to ensure that authority over American military power remained accountable to American institutions and American voters.

Section 219 weakens those safeguards.

4. IT VIOLATES THE PRINCIPLE OF NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY

Congress cannot delegate core sovereign responsibilities to another government.

The defense of the nation, decisions involving military force, intelligence operations, and national security policy are among the most important powers entrusted to the federal government.

A nation that cannot independently determine matters of war and peace cannot truly be considered sovereign.

5. IT INCREASES THE RISK OF FUTURE WARS

The Founders understood the danger.

In his Farewell Address, George Washington warned against permanent foreign attachments that could pull the United States into conflicts not of its own choosing. His concern was not isolationism. It was independence.

Our first president understood that foreign entanglements have a way of creating obligations that gradually supersede national interests.

That warning has particular relevance today.

The recent escalation with Iran demonstrates how rapidly regional conflicts can draw the United States toward broader military commitments. Every new layer of institutional integration increases the likelihood that future conflicts involving Israel become, in practical terms, American conflicts as well.

6. IT RISKS SUBORDINATING AMERICAN INTERESTS TO FOREIGN PRIORITIES

The issue is not whether one supports Israel.

The issue is whether any foreign nation should be granted a permanent place within executive, military, intelligence, technological, and strategic structures that are constitutionally intended to serve the United States alone.

The first responsibility of the United States government is to protect the security and wellbeing of the American people. Foreign policy should be guided by American interests, American laws, and American constitutional principles.

7. IT THREATENS DEMOCRATIC ACCOUNTABILITY

When sovereignty is diluted, accountability disappears.

Citizens can no longer identify who is responsible for decisions. Power becomes dispersed through networks, agreements, and institutions beyond public control.

Democracy weakens because the connection between the voter and the decision maker is broken.

The Constitution deliberately places decisions involving war and national defense within institutions accountable to the American people. Section 219 weakens that connection.

8. IT IMPOSES ENORMOUS FINANCIAL COSTS

The United States has spent decades engaged in costly military interventions throughout the Middle East.

Trillions of dollars have been spent. Thousands of American lives have been lost. Countless civilians have perished. Yet the pressure for deeper involvement continues.

This is especially troubling at a moment when the national debt exceeds forty trillion dollars. Every additional military commitment carries a financial cost. Every escalation requires resources that must ultimately be borrowed, taxed, or diverted from domestic priorities.

Americans struggling with inflation, housing costs, healthcare expenses, and declining infrastructure deserve a government focused first on their security and prosperity.

9. IT BETRAYS THE SPIRIT OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE

The timing could not be more ironic.

As America marks the 250th anniversary of its independence, Congress is considering legislation that undermines our independence.

The Revolution was fought to secure self government. The Constitution was written to preserve it.

Sovereignty is not an outdated concept. It is the foundation of democratic accountability.

The question before us is larger than Israel. Larger than any single administration. Larger than any current conflict.

It is whether the United States will remain a nation whose military power is directed exclusively by constitutional institutions accountable to the American people, or whether we will gradually surrender that independence through permanent foreign integration that the Constitution neither contemplated nor authorizes.

A nation that cannot control its own military decisions cannot claim to be sovereign – and that is a core reason why Section 219 should be rejected.

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TAKE ACTION

The merger is timed to be voted on the week of June 29, just before the Fourth of July.

Find your member of Congress: House      Senate

It is urgent that you call your congressional representative today at 202-224-3121 and tell them to Strip Section 219 (House) or Section 1217 (Senate) from the 2027 NDAA.

Congressmen Tom Massie (R-KY) and Ro Khanna (D-CA) will offer an amendment in the House to remove Section 219. Please tell your U.S. Representative: Support the Massie-Khanna Amendment to the NDAA.

Optional telephone script for the House of Representatives:

My name is ______ and I am a constituent. I am calling to urge Representative ______ to support the Massie-Khanna Amendment and to remove Section 219 from the NDAA. Congress should defend American sovereignty, uphold the Constitution, and reject any measure that integrates the executive and military functions of the United States with those of a foreign government. Please pass my message to the Representative. Thank you.

Dennis J. Kucinich served sixteen years in the United States Congress and twice ran for President of the United States on a platform of peace, truth, and constitutional integrity. He led the opposition to the Iraq War and introduced Articles of Impeachment against President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for misleading the nation into war.