It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Tuesday, July 28, 2026
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.
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.
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.
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.
Data Centers Divide Democrats in Michigan Primary
Senate candidates offer conflicting visions over the role of A.I. and corporate power
Abdul El-Sayed, left, and Rep. Haley Stevens, right, are vying for the Democratic party nomination for Michigan’s open Senate seat. (Jose Juarez, AP Photo; Tom Williams, CQ Roll Call via AP Photo)
The projects have sparked renewed civic engagement in rural areas and small towns—stories that inspire David and Goliath comparisons. Residents ignite with fury upon finding out their local elected officials have made deals in the dark to bring data centers to town. They come out in force to city council meetings, zoning hearings, and protests in an effort to confront the power of major utility companies and multinational tech corporations with billions of dollars at their disposal.
This growing opposition has forced Michigan’s elected officials to reconsider the wisdom of the state’s 2024 decision to hand out tax breaks to data center constructors.
Abdul El-Sayed, an epidemiologist and former Wayne County public health official running in the August 4 Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, tells Barn Raiser that the corporations building data centers aren’t straightforward about their development plans.
“There’s been so little transparency on the part of the corporations themselves and the part of the utilities,” he says. “It has raised the hackles of folks who’ve learned not to trust a lot of these bigger corporations when they tell them everything’s going to be okay.”
El-Sayed is locked in a fierce contest that has accentuated divides within the Democratic Party. El-Sayed, whose parents immigrated from Egypt, has pledged not to accept corporate PAC money, has called for eliminating arms sales to Israel and supports universal health care and abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Haley Stevens (D-Mich.-11) is a vocal supporter of Israel who has accepted money from corporate PACs, outside groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and has the support of party leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, a third challenger in the race, suspended her campaign July 5.
An April Emerson College poll shows data centers could be among the deciding issues in the election. Emerson’s poll of 519 likely Michigan primary voters found that a majority, or 55%, opposed data centers being built in or near their community, versus 27% who supported them. Opposition to data centers was much higher among likely Democratic primary voters, with 63% opposed versus 45% among likely Republican primary voters.
A demonstrator at an April rally in Traverse City, Michigan, holds a sign emblematic of the growing data center resistance. (Miles MacClure)
Dark money spending and support for Israel remains another flashpoint in the campaign, gaining national attention. The Associated Pressreported AIPAC and its affiliated groups have spent close to $30 million backing Stevens, which is their largest investment ever in a single race.
In January, El-Sayed released a terms of engagement proposal for data centers, which includes a guarantee for local jobs, a freeze on consumer electricity rate hikes and community benefit agreements. In recent weeks, he has shown support for a system of federal oversight and public ownership of AI companies, a proposal first advanced by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who has endorsed El-Sayed.
Stevens has not laid out any similar positions. At a Democratic primary debate in July, Stevens connected data center construction with job creation, saying it will put Michigan “on the forefront of innovation and manufacturing,” but she has also called for protecting Michiganders from data center costs.
In an email statement to Barn Raiser, Stevens wrote, “when it comes to data centers and AI infrastructure, my top priority is making sure costs don’t go up for Michigan families and that we are protecting good-paying union jobs. We cannot allow utility companies like DTE to pass new costs onto consumers while these projects move forward.”
Stevens did not answer Barn Raiser’s question regarding Michigan residents’ concern about AI potentially resulting in less jobs.
“ Part of the problem with our politics is too often corporations are buying and selling politicians in the first place. In the case of DTE, our local utility, they’ve given to 93% of state legislators,” says El-Sayed, referencing McMorrow, who eventually dropped out. DTE was McMorrow’s top donor in her 2022 state Senate reelection campaign. El-Sayed’s current opponent, Stevens, has received money from DTE since her first U.S. House reelection campaign in 2020.
McMorrow was among the 38 state senators to vote for a Senate bill that exempted hyperscale data centers from sales and use taxes on their equipment. The bill was signed into law by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) in 2025.
In hindsight, El-Sayed says a more extensive review process should have occurred before state legislators approved laws to entice data center development in the state.
“I think we should have spent a bit more time to hold the particular utilities accountable ahead of laying out the red carpet, as our state has done,” he says.
Data centers have split support amongst unions and their endorsements. The United Auto Workers (UAW), which has over 400,000 members nationwide, endorsed El-Sayed in June. In an April press conference with Bernie Sanders and other labor leaders, UAW president Shawn Fain compared AI to NAFTA because of the risks it poses to workers and communities. “The same greedy corporate power brokers today want us to believe that killing millions of jobs in the name of AI will be a good thing, and the working class knows better,” he said. Several of the building trades unions, on the other hand, view data centers as a catalyst for job creation, with many, including Plumbers Local 98 and Pipefitters, Steamfitters, Refrigeration & Air Conditioning Service Local Union 636, having endorsed Stevens.
Michigan’s chapter of the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest federation of labor unions, has not made an endorsement in the Senate race. In June, the AFL-CIO released a policy agenda for the next five years. It included demands that data centers and AI infrastructure be “built by and run on union labor,” while requiring that “data centers pay their fair share of costs and taxes” and that working-class families and communities “are protected and included every step of the way, including regulations over water and power use.”
Construction workers may be the only local residents who stand to benefit from the data center boom. A Citizens Research Council of Michigan report on data centers found that the economic benefits of data centers largely occur during the construction phase and concluded that the projects aren’t long-term drivers of economic development. In June, Bloombergreported that data centers account for 2.3% of all construction spending in the United States.
In a July debate, El-Sayed and Stevens clashed over their approaches to AI and data centers. El-Sayed reiterated his community engagement plan and added, “I think we have to be serious about the fact that these pose real dangers,” he said. “And the people who are pushing them are the richest, most powerful corporate CEOs in the history of our economy.”
Stevens did not speak directly to citizens’ concerns about AI but pledged to entice data centers to pay for utilities and rate increases. “I also want to secure Michigan being on the forefront of innovation,” she said in a statement to Barn Raiser.
Michigan state Rep. Dylan Wegela (D-Garden City) voted against the tax breaks for data centers when the Michigan House of Representatives voted on the bill in 2023. Wegela had concerns about the environmental impact of data centers from the beginning, he says, but hadn’t anticipated the magnitude of the pushback against using hyperscale facilities to drive AI developments.
“I think there are a lot of concerns with that industry right now and concerns about what the technology, unregulated as it is now, might do to working-class people,” Wegela says. “And I think that is one of the many reasons this is becoming so controversial now.”
For Wegela, data centers are an issue that unites people across party lines. “In areas that these data centers are coming to, you have these coalitions of people on the left and the right coming out to fight together against data centers,” he says. “That’s working class versus Big Tech.”
That coalition of residents was on display on a sunny Saturday morning in Traverse City, Michigan. About 40 protesters showed up to oppose data center construction across Michigan, one of several anti-data center protests that took place across the state on April 11. At the Traverse City protest, attendees brought signs decrying data centers and signs in support of Lake Michigan’s freshwater supply. Speakers voiced their opposition to AI in schools and expressed skepticism about the number of local jobs that data centers would generate.
Ryan Wagner, the Kalkaska County GOP party chair, speaks at an anti-data center rally in April in Traverse City, Michigan. (Miles MacClure)
Ryan Wagner, the Kalkaska County GOP party chair, appeared alongside Mitch Distin, who helped organize the protest and is running as a Democrat for state representative in Michigan’s 104th district.
Wagner voiced his discontent with the Make America Great Again movement after continuous campaign promises broken by the Trump administration, like financial gain for working-class Americans, and he found common ground with Democrats seeking to maintain natural resources and oppose AI companies. “I feed my kids off this land. I don’t want Big Tech to poison it,” Wagner told the crowd.
In November, a company called Rocklocker—a subsidiary of oil and gas company Reefworks—proposed building a data center in rural Kalkaska County, just east of Traverse City, on 1,440 acres of land owned by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. But community backlash was fierce. At meetings to discuss the proposal, residents didn’t buy the economic benefits claimed by Rocklocker and they were wary of the environmental impact.
“The scientific literature is abundantly clear that none of the benefits are distributed or trickle down to local communities, they’re the ones who ultimately pay the price for data centers,” Distin told the protestors. “The only people who are benefiting from this are big tech CEOs and the legislators.”
If a data center is abandoned by a company, it’s unclear who will be responsible to pick up the pieces. “What happens if the company goes bankrupt?” says Wegela. “You’ve seen factories across the state for the automotive industry and cities have been on the hook for cleaning those up or maintaining those. And I just think these are things that aren’t being talked about enough.”
“Democrats should be leading the opposition to unchecked data center growth,” says Michelle Deatrick, chair of the DNC Climate Council. “That’s not because we oppose technology, it’s because we believe growth needs to serve the public interest, it needs to serve the people, and that’s in both the short and the long term.”
One tactic used by local organizers has been to implement moratoriums. For instance, residents in Livingston County, north of Detroit, successfully pushed Howell Township to approve a six-month moratorium on data center projects, including the $1 billion, 1,077-acre data center proposed backed by Meta, which owns Facebook.
Michigan State Representative Jennifer Wortz, a Republican in the 35th District, introduced a bill in February that would place a moratorium on data center construction across the state until April 2027.
Towns, counties, cities and states across the country are deciding how to respond. An analysis from The Information, an online news source, found more than 300 bans or moratoriums across the United States. (Datacenterbans.com has an interactive map and updates a tracker on data center policy around the country.) On July 14, New York enacted the nation’s first statewide one-year moratorium on data center construction following an executive order signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul (D). Maine nearly became the first state to do so in April, when the state legislature passed a moratorium, but Gov. Janet Mills (D) vetoed the bill.
As communities sour on data center projects, they’re also turning away from AI. A Quinnipiac University poll from March 2026 found that 81% of millennials were concerned about AI. The poll also found that 55% of Americans believe AI will do more harm than good, up from 44% in April 2025.
“ I don’t know if everybody in the public space has connected that the data center and the AI fight is one and the same,” says Wegela.
In the workplace, AI is meeting resistance. Futurismreported that some workers are intentionally sabotaging their employer’s AI deployments. Fears over the direction of AI are also turning violent. In April, a Houston man traveled to San Francisco and hurled a Molotov cocktail at OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s house.
“The fear and anxiety about AI is justified,” Altman wrote on his blog in the wake of the attack. “We are in the process of witnessing the largest change to society in a long time, and perhaps ever.”
Kyle Blomquist, an architect running for Congress in Michigan’s rural 1st congressional district, says the data center tax breaks handed out by Michigan should be repealed. “I’m surprised by the fact that our state has decided to incentivize the location of data centers in the state through these various different tax abatement programs and cuts,” says Blomquist.
When Michigan first legalized medical marijuana, local governments had to set ordinances about marijuana store zoning before any business was allowed to set up shop. Blomquist says he would have liked to see a similar process play out with data centers.
Instead, the Wild West of data center growth has exposed a need for towns and counties to update their zoning ordinances. Many of the towns where data centers have been proposed have never had such large developments set up shop before.
“ I would’ve liked more caution with the data centers, more along those lines where you give the communities the opportunity to set their own conditions as to whether or not they want them located there at all,” says Blomquist. “Instead, it’s kind of a free-for-all.”
This article was originally published by Barn Raiser; please consider supporting the original publication, and read the original version at the link above.
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.
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 reportedon 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.
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.
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
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
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
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'
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)
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). Full Bio >
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