Vote “No” on Question 3

Blue is not Green: ...What, exactly, is the money for? 

Steve Ahlquist

These signs can be found across North Kingstown

(Frank Carini/ecoRI News)

Rhode Island will soon be voting on five ballot measures to borrow money for education, housing, economic development, cultural improvements, and the green economy. 

I want to focus on Question 3: a $100 million investment in the so-called Blue Economy. The question reads:

• Economic Development $100 million: Approval of this question will allow the State to issue general obligation bonds, refunding bonds, and/or temporary notes in an amount not to exceed one hundred million dollars to fund industrial facilities infrastructure improvements for economic development purposes, to fund site development and growth industry infrastructure, to be allocated as follows:
• Site Development: Provides $55 million for land acquisition or assembly, environmental remediation, infrastructure and utility installation, site preparation or development, and project investments. Eligible uses include, but are not limited to, large-scale industrial site development to create pad-ready locations and/or facilities, infrastructure improvements and investments within the Quonset Business Park, and land acquisition, preparation, and project investments within the I-195 District.
• Growth Industry Infrastructure: Provides $45 million for infrastructure, facilities, projects, and investments that support Rhode Island’s ocean, defense, life sciences, data analytics, and related industries. Eligible uses include, but are not limited to, water-based test ranges and onshore ocean- or defense-related innovation/production facilities, as well as facilities, projects, and investments that advance businesses and job growth in the life sciences.

Question 3 will almost certainly pass. As far as I can tell, every bond question sent to Rhode Island voters for approval over the last two decades has passed. [Note: A $100 million bond, paid back over 20 years at 5% interest, will ultimately cost Rhode Island taxpayers over $160 million.] But what, exactly, is the money for? 

The phrase “[e]ligible uses include, but are not limited to” is extremely broad. A literal reading of the phrase could include any imaginable expenditure. Similarly broad is the phrase, “investments that support Rhode Island’s ocean, defense, life sciences, data analytics, and related industries.” Does “data analytics” include data centers? Such an investment is certainly covered by the phrases “related industries” and “not limited to.”

The Blue Economy is bullshit

You may have heard the phrase “Blue Economy” bandied about by our federal delegation and local state and corporate leaders. The Grow Blue Partnership, a Rhode Island-based coalition of industry groups, environmental organizations, government agencies, and academic institutions, including the University of Rhode Island (URI), defines the Blue Economy as “the sustainable use of the ocean to create a resilient economy and good-paying jobs.” Which sounds great, until you realize that defense contractors make up a substantial chunk of the Blue Economy.

 

Help save farm animals

Location: 20 Elm Street, Westerly, RI

Terranova Farm Livestock Sanctuary invites you to the inaugural "First Annual Grazing and Giving Fundraiser." The sanctuary specializes in the passionate care of ruminants (like sheep and goats), alpacas, pigs, and poultry—those often-forgotten animals with nowhere else to turn.

Currently home to 100 incredible rescue animals, the sanctuary provides a haven for individuals with stories of true resilience. Partnering directly with state authorities and local animal control, TFLS steps in during severe cases of abuse and neglect.

The sanctuary also accepts complex, high-need medical cases that standard farms cannot manage, offering a vital second chance to vulnerable animals and delicate babies who otherwise wouldn't make it. Through a dedicated rehabilitation program, every resident receives the specialized medical care, nourishment, and love needed to heal—finding permanent sanctuary to spend the rest of their natural lives in peace and safety.

As a 100% donation-dependent organization, this life-saving work relies entirely on community support. Join us for a truly impactful evening to eat, drink, and bid on a fantastic array of auction items while celebrating the animals that call TFLS home. Your support means the world, and we’re excited to see you there!

Check the event website for the most up-to-date info.

URI’s 11th Guitar and Mandolin Festival takes the stage beginning Oct. 18

Here's a rundown on who will be appearing

By James Bessette 

The warm, mellow sounds of guitars and mandolins will once again blend with the cool autumn air across the University of Rhode Island campus and neighboring southern Rhode Island communities in late October.

Joao Luiz Rezende, a two-time Latin Grammy nominee and
professor at the Yale University School of Music, will be the
artist-in-residence in this year’s URI Guitar and Mandolin Festival,
and will perform on Oct. 22.
(Photos courtesy URI Guitar and Mandolin Festival)

The 11^th annual URI Guitar and Mandolin Festival will bring together the global string artist community for a weeklong celebration of music beginning Oct 18. Guitarists and mandolinists from all corners of the world, including Brazil, Peru, Australia, Costa Rica, Italy, France, South Korea, Israel, Greece and Japan, will descend upon the Ocean State to delight local music enthusiasts.

Ten performances will be held Oct. 18-25 on the Kingston Campus and the surrounding area.  Thirty notable artists, including Duke Robillard, Eliot Fisk, Jorge Caballero, Antoine Boyer, Eleonora Strino, Vincent Beer-Demander, Fabio Gallucci, Ian Coury, Jacob Reuven, Duo Sonidos, Adrian Montero Moya, URI Associate Teaching Professor, Instructor of Classical Guitar and festival founder Adam Levin and more will be featured. URI music students and alumni and faculty will also take the various stages during the festival, including at the General Stanton Inn, the URI Fine Arts Center and Edwards Hall Auditorium.

Rhode Island blues legend Duke Robillard will perform at this year’s
 festival on Oct. 18.

The seven-day festival will also offer several educational and competition programs, including masterclasses by guest artists, workshops, a guitar and mandolin competition and an expo featuring instrument makers showcasing their work. These educational opportunities will provide students a chance to learn from the best performing an array of genres, including jazz, Latin mix, classical and blues. 

The festival is a melting pot, of sorts, where aspiring artists can meet their heroes—and possibly even collaborate with them—in front of a live audience, creating a special atmosphere at the University and points elsewhere, and establishing itself as a cultural mainstay at URI, according to Levin.

“Over the past decade, this festival has become a stomping ground for artists and students alike to have a conversation, to engage one another in a relaxed environment. A student can ask an artist, ‘how can I play this passage better?’ And an artist can offer one-of-a-kind feedback into how to refine their artistry,” Levin said. 

‘No Kings’ events return to Rhode Island Saturday with a new focus: Early voting

South County Rising event starts at noon in Westerly 

By Alexander Castro, Rhode Island Current

A fresh round of “No Kings” events is happening across the state on Saturday, Oct. 17. This time around, organizers of at least 10 events planned so far across Rhode Island are emphasizing voting early.

The focus is aligned with a push by national organizers to highlight early voting and protect voting rights, Rob Vitello, the Newport Democratic City Committee’s treasurer who has helped organize previous No Kings outings on Aquidneck Island, said via email Monday.

“These are meant to be small events as opposed to a big rally/march as we’ve done in the past,” Vitello wrote.

Vitello said the Newport event will take place outside Newport City Hall from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday. The event page describes it as “a day of nonpartisan voter participation” meant to encourage early voting and ensure “every eligible voter understands their options for how to vote and has the opportunity to make their voice heard.”

Early voting starts on Wednesday in Rhode Island. The deadline to request a mail ballot is Tuesday. The General Election will take place on Tuesday, Nov. 3.

North Kingstown’s event will take place on the sidewalk outside 80 Boston Neck Road, with organizers describing it as “a hyper-local gathering site where neighbors can double-check their voter registration, locate polling places or ballot drop boxes, organize rides to the polls, and connect with voter protection networks ahead of the November 3 midterm elections.”

“Our communities, our rights, and our future are shaped by the choices we make at the ballot box,” Jennifer Lima, the president of Transformative Action for North Kingstown (TANK), which is organizing the town’s Saturday event, said in a statement. “Don’t leave your vote to chance.

TANK is also encouraging attendees to bring a non-perishable donation for the North Kingstown Food Pantry.

The No Kings rebrand is national, with many of the events subtitled “Vote Early.” Compared to the mass protests of earlier No Kings events, the new emphasis is on helping voters with registration, understanding options and making a voting plan — in contrast to the colorful, raucous rallies that began last summer.

In Providence, the first rally drew roughly 3,000 people in June 2025, while organizers estimated more than 30,000 attended a second rally outside the Rhode Island State House last October. Those October numbers weren’t independently verified, although Providence police estimated as many as 20,000 people attended another State House demonstration in March.

No events were listed on the No Kings site for Providence as of Monday.

National organizers could not immediately be reached for comment Monday, but an autoreply email contained an FAQ detailing the retooled approach as “the critical next step in our strategy.”

“This is an urgent, massive day of voter participation and election protection,” the email stated. “We’re going to turn people power into voter power while also building a network of election defenders.”

“October 17 is a celebration, an orientation, and an activation — all designed to drive mass early vote participation and build the nationwide capacity we’ll need to ensure the countless efforts to undermine our elections are met with the overwhelming nonviolent people power needed to defeat them,” the email continued.

Here are where No Kings events are planned for Saturday

Rhode Island events listed as of Monday include:

The More Ultra-Processed Food People Ate, the Higher Their Risk of Disease and Death

Eating ourselves to death

By BMJ Group

Ready-to-eat meals and heat-and-serve snacks have become increasingly common in diets around the world over the past few decades. As people eat more of these heavily processed products, researchers have been trying to work out whether there is a safe amount to consume and where the risks to long-term health might begin.

A large pooled analysis, published in the open access journal Family Medicine and Community Health, found that higher consumption was linked to greater risks of several chronic diseases and death from any cause. Across 51 studies involving 8,819,894 adults, the risks generally rose with the amount eaten.

Richmond calculates the cost of their share of proposed Chariho elementary school project

Richmond has published its fiscal breakdown for the $116 million Chariho elementary school bond on the November ballot

Kelly Lockhart, an AI avatar used by Uprise RI to scan public records and then prepare articles like these. For more on how this is done: How a Rhode Island meeting becomes a story | Uprise RI

Charlestown would need to increase its tax rate by thirteen cents. Source: The Pipeline, Charlestown town government.

Richmond property owners face an estimated 5.03% tax increase under the proposed school bond, though the town's published figures carry slight accounting discrepancies.

When Richmond voters open their ballots on November 3, they will confront a regional school proposal that has been reworked, downsized, and sent back to the ballot box. But for local property owners, the decision ultimately narrows to two practical questions: what will the project cost, and how much of that burden lands on their tax bills?

Richmond officials released the town's official fiscal impact breakdown for Question 6—a regional ballot referendum authorizing the Chariho Regional School District to borrow up to $116 million for elementary school construction. The figures give the town its first detailed projection of its expected debt payments and property tax adjustments before next month's vote.

Is LORIB still challenging South County Democrats in the General Election?

Both of Charlestown’s state Senate seats have LORIB-endorsed candidates

By Will Collette

LORIB has pushed for anonymous money for its candidates

Brewed Awakenings owner Dave Levesque of Narragansett took a big gamble this year, setting up 40 – yes, that’s forty – political action committees (PAC), one for each Rhode Island municipality plus a statewide PAC. They all bear the name “League of Rhode Island Businesses (LORIB)” and all of them were tasked with defeating liberal Democrats, especially women legislators in South County.

Levesque ran “Democrat in Name Only (DINO)” candidates in nine districts statewide. Levesque plunked around $20,000 into each campaign, using his galaxy of PACs to “bundle” the funding and evade the Rhode Island campaign finance legal limits on such donations - $2000. 

Sex crime defense lawyer Leah Boisclair, Levesque’s DINO challenger to Charlestown’s state Representative Tina Spears, received funding from at least 20 of Levesque’s 40 PACs.

Levesque also encouraged MAGA conservatives to donate to his PACs at amounts below the $200 per PAC limit that triggered disclosure of their identities.

Despite all the money Levesque put into these nine DINOs, they all lost, often by huge margins. In Charlestown, Boisclair lost to Tina Spears by a margin of 82% to 18%.

After this beating, is Levesque still in the game? After all, he still has candidates in many General Assembly in the November 3 General Election. Both of Charlestown’s state Senate seats have LORIB-backed candidates, and popular Democratic South County women face LORIB challengers.

Both of Charlestown’s two state Senate seats feature a LORIB-endorsed candidate.

Senate District 38

Our incumbent state Senator Victoria Gu

Let’s start with Senate District 38 that stretches from Westerly through the bottom half of Charlestown and into South Kingstown. Incumbent Senator Victoria Gu (D) is seeking a third term based on her outstanding record. She faces MAGAnut Westin Place (R-LORIB) for the third time. Victoria cleaned the floor with Place in the last two elections.

There’s no reason to think Place’s chances are going to be any better. 

The most recent campaign finance reports filed by Sen. Gu and Place for the period ending Oct. 5 paint this picture of the race in its final month.

Westin Place goes into the final month with $6300 in the bank. Victoria has $48,229. She raised $54,704 in the last quarter compared to Place’s $7,929. Place’s fundraising total includes his first and only payment from Dave Levesque’s LORIB Narragansett PAC of $2,000. Contrast that with the $20,000 LORIB threw into Leah Boisclair’s pathetic effort to unseat Rep. Tina Spears.

Without LORIB’s promised support, Place has had to rely on major donations from the state and local Republican Party and the gun lobby.

Senator Gu has a solid, positive record, a strong volunteer campaign team, and a huge cash advantage. She’s compiled one of the most comprehensive lists of legislative achievements I’ve seen in a long time. And she diligently reports on these and other matters of public interest in her frequent email constituent reports.

Place has none of that. Indeed, other than being a MAGA guy who doesn’t like Democrats, I really don’t know what he actually stands for other than the usual MAGA talking points he used throughout his recent “debate” with Victoria. CLICK HERE to read the transcript. When you read his answers to what he calls “those extremely confusing questions,” you can see he is clearly out of his depth.

He also has no record of public service or civic engagement except for running against Victoria every two years. In 2024, he wrote a letter to the Westerly Sun saying his main issue was lack of transparency in government.

Well, Westin, how about some transparency in your campaign finances? His filings with the Board of Elections show page after page of $50-$100 donations without any identification of the donor, all listed as “Aggregate-Individual.” I am guessing these checks ran through Dave Levesque’s money laundry but who – beside Place – knows. Victoria’s finance reports, by contrast, identify every donor, even those who kicked in as little as $10.

At the end of the debate, Place falls back on trying to red-bait all Democrats with the Democratic-Socialist brush and claims that this election is all about the MAGA fight for “freedom” which he claims is typified by “Providence.” His solution: “I’m going to go up there as a voice to say Providence can suck eggs.” Oh sure, that’s going to help him deliver for the people of Charlestown, Westerly and South Kingstown.

Senate District 34

Elaine Morgan

Speaking of sucking eggs, this is district that includes the northern half of Charlestown, Richmond, Hopkinton, Exeter and a piece of West Greenwich. Since 2014, Sen. Elaine Morgan (R and MAGA before there was MAGA) has been the state senator and she’s running for a sixth term. In 2020, she signed a pledge of support for term limits, which apparently does not apply to her.

Instead of delivering for this district, Morgan has done something in almost every year she’s been in office to embarrass the voters of District 34, starting with her call in her first year to put refugees from the war in Syria in concentration camps.

Several of her stunts have made national news, such as her more recent stunt where she “raided” an innovative temporary housing for the homeless project in Providence, falsely claiming she was an accredited agent of Elon Musk’s DOGE.

She has been busted for campaign finance fraud for using her campaign finances as her personal funds. She blamed her use of the money for groceries, restaurants and beauty salon visits on her late husband.

Sam Wilcox. Photo by Steve Ahlquist

She has a lively and able opponent in Democrat Sam (Samantha) Wilcox, President of the Richmond Town Council. 

In 2022, Sam led a slate of Democrats who ousted the MAGA Town Council majority that had been taking Richmond deep into the culture wars. Under her leadership, sanity and civility was restored to town government.

Is she the one who can bring sanity and civility back to Senate District 38? Let’s look at the numbers.

I noted after the September 9 primary that even though neither Sam nor Morgan had a primary opponent, it’s worth looking at how many members of their base voted for them anyway. While the vote counts only show people registered to one of the two major parties (and the largest bloc of voters are unaffiliated), we saw Sam receive 2,732 Senate District 34 Democratic votes compared to only 1,114 Republicans who voted for Morgan.

Since Charlestown has usually voted by large margins against Morgan in the past, Sam’s prospects going into November 3 look good.

The campaign finance reports also show an edge for Sam Wilcox.

Morgan’s finance reports are predictably messy. In the third quarter, she had to file numerous amended filings apparently to correct mistakes. One such example caught my eye: in one filing, she listed a $250 donation from Arrowhead Dental co-owner Dr. Bruce Gouin but then in amended filings, she showed $250 refunded to Dr. Gouin, replaced by a $250 donation from his spouse and Arrowhead co-owner Dr. Christine Benoit.

Note: Dr. Gouin's name is misspelled.

Other donations from anonymous individuals listed under “aggregate” were subject of several revisions. There was an entry labelled “Aggregate PAC” that showed $350 coming in and an apparent refund of $250. I suspect Morgan be getting another visit from the auditors from the RI Board of Elections.

In the most recent filing for the period ending October 5, Morgan shows a fundraising total of $7,124 with only one $500 LORIB check issued by the LORIB Hopkinton branch, but not the $20,000 windfall Leah Boisclair received. Morgan has a cash balance of $12,791.

Sam Wilcox raised $7,797 for the same period and shows a cash balance of $13,007.

On the merits, the two Democrats who want to represent Charlestown in the RI Senate as far and away so much better than their MAGA Republican rivals. Their campaign finance reports are much more thorough and transparent than their rivals and show that their support is largely more local.

District 38 voters have another sensible way to judge who they want in the state Senate: ask yourselves what Elaine Morgan has done since 2014 that's made your life better.

Remember: Early and mail-in voting starts this week. I hope this information helps you make better choices.

Just another Tuesday

Annual HopArts tour is back, Oct. 17-18

 

1) Ashaway Free Library, 15 Knight Street, Ashaway
2) Crandall House, 188 Main Street, Ashaway
3) Clark Library, 7 Pinehurst Drive, Carolina
4) Carolina Pottery, 3 Carolina Main Street, Carolina
5) Carolina Fiber Center, 4 Carolina Main Street, Carolina
6) Quilted Treasures, 23 Wendy Lane, Carolina
7) Ramshead Pottery, 323 Switch Road, Richmond
8) Post Office Studio, 335 Canonchet Road, Rockville
9) Hartman Studio, 275 Fenner Hill Road, Hope Valley
10) Langworthy Public Library, 24 Spring Street, Hope Valley
11) Captivating Notions, 978 Main Street, Hope Valley
12) Village Place Studio, 999 Main Street, Hope Valley
13) Pond Studio, 5 Lakeside Dr Ext, Hope Valley
14) Rick Devin Ltd, 1054 Main Street, Hope Valley
15) Shaw Gallery, 7 Corey Trail, Wyoming

URI Theatre’s ‘Proof’ explores family, grief, value of women’s voices

Production’s two-weekend run starts Oct. 16

By Paige Monopoli

The cast and crew for URI Theatre’s “Proof” gather together in advance of their play’s production starting Oct. 16. “Proof” offers URI students and audiences a chance to consider what we owe our families, how we measure intellectual achievement and what it means to truly see another person.

When Jimmy Calitri returned to University of Rhode Island Theatre Department to direct David Auburn’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Proof,” he knew he was taking on a story with more than intellectual depth.

For Calitri, who first discovered his passion for directing as a URI undergraduate, the play’s exploration into family, grief, caregiving, mental illness and gender equality offered an opportunity to create the kind of intimate, thought-provoking theater he values most. Unlike the large-scale musicals he often directs, “Proof” is a four-character drama; one Calitri was eager to take on because of the depth of its material.

At mealtime, the order of what you eat matters - carbs go last

Olive oil before carbs blunts early blood sugar rise in mice

By Kyoto University

Edited by Swati Mestri, reviewed by Robert Egan

Olive oil administered before carbohydrates elicits early
glucagon and GLP-1 responses that act in a partially redundant
manner and, with involvement of vagal pathways,
slow gastric emptying and attenuate the early post-meal glucose.

In treating diabetes, postmeal elevation of glucose levels is an important therapeutic target. Existing clinical studies indicate that eating vegetables, protein or fat before carbohydrates can moderate a postmeal rise in blood glucose, pointing to the potential of meal sequencing as a simple and sustainable dietary strategy.

Scientists have often attributed the benefits of this strategy to slower gastric emptying and greater secretion of incretin hormones, such as GLP-1, that decrease blood glucose levels. However, the roles that gut and pancreatic hormones, as well as neural pathways, play in this process have remained less understood.

This motivated an international team of researchers to investigate how the timing of fat intake influences glucose levels, hormone secretion and gastric emptying. Their study is published in the journal Diabetes.

"Our group has long been interested in practical dietary approaches that people can continue in everyday life," says corresponding author Daisuke Yabe of Kyoto University. "Meal sequencing is appealing because it merely changes how a meal is eaten rather than requiring people to avoid entire food groups."

Oct. 17: NO KINGS rally in Westerly

 

From South County Rising:

MEET US IN WESTERLY FOR A VOTE EARLY RALLY & MARCH!!

JOIN US at the municipal parking Lot at 14 Canal St Westerly, RI at Noon where we will talk about how important it is to get out and vote early!!

Kids Always Welcome!! There will be a children's book reading during the Rally, location to be determined. Watch for updates!

We'll be joined by Resistance singers and musicians to launch our March on the sidewalks around Wilcox Park after the rally! We'll have drums to borrow & lots of music. Bring your voices, instruments and music!

For those who want to opt out of the march, feel free to post up at the Town Hall or Post office with your signs after the rally!

Parking for the post office located in the small municipal lot next to the post office or behind, or on street. Parking for the town hall located on street & the public garage next to the Pizza place.

Bring your signs and messages to VOTE EARLY!! And invite your friends & family! Let's get the message out that YOUR VOTE HAS POWER!!

We decide who represents us. We decide what comes next.

For more than a year, millions of people have come together to reject the idea that power belongs to kings, billionaires, or politicians who believe they are above the people and the law.

Now, we are taking the next step, turning people power into voter power. Unlike previous No Kings actions, No Kings: Vote Early, is not purely a protest. Instead, on October 17th, it's a day of nonpartisan voter participation: we are bringing our community together to make a plan to vote early and ensuring every eligible voter understands their options for how to vote and has the opportunity to make their voice heard.

No Kings: Vote Early events are nonpartisan and are designed to increase participation from all eligible voters.

A core principle behind all No Kings events is a commitment to nonviolent action. We expect all participants to seek to de-escalate any potential confrontation with those who disagree with our values and to act lawfully at these events. Weapons of any kind, including those legally permitted, should not be brought to events.

Can America Recover From Trump-World?

If we actually survive it, recovery will be long and hard

Stephen Eric Bronner in Common Dreams

Much can be said about Donald Trump, but it is impossible to say that he has “done nothing.” This boorish, megalomaniacal, unpredictable, and frighteningly ignorant real-estate salesman has transformed his country by unleashing an avalanche of executive orders, edicts, institutional transformations, legislative shifts, and policy changes. 

Whether the nation can recover its democratic roots should not be taken for granted despite its institutional resilience and civic culture.

Trump-World is about more than Trump the president and demagogic ruler of the Republican Party. MAGA stands on tradition. Its base is rooted in the same backward classes, with a similar authoritarian and fascist ideological outlook as its right-wing extremist forerunners such as the “know-nothings,” the KKK, “America First!,” McCarthyism, and the White Segregationist Councils. 

Whatever the president’s decline in poll numbers, his mass base isn’t going anywhere and its racist, xenophobic, chauvinistic, and anti-working class beliefs are firmly entrenched. A reactionary sword of Damocles still hangs over a Democratic Party torn between a sclerotic mainstream and an exuberant faction of democratic socialists. 

Republicans collapse the former into the latter and then attack this essentially “center-left” political organization as “liberal,” “socialist,” communist, “Marxist,” and “anarchist,” even as Trump followers haven’t a clue what these words actually mean.

For a forest to recover from a fire takes more than planting a few new trees. Rolling back what amounts to a domestic counterrevolution is a daunting task, and it is easy to be misled. It is not a matter of the next election or putting together a grab bag of issues that will leave the public as confused as it was before, but a readiness to change institutions, reorient economic policy, and refashion foreign policy by highlighting three or four crucial points in each domain.

Trump has issued over 500 executive orders in 2025-2026 alone. These now touch upon virtually every aspect of everyday life. Every progressive social movement with a marginalized constituency has come under attack through legislative and often coercive means. 

Public lands have been privatized, coal has been promoted while wind and solar energy projects have been shut down. Agencies such as the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Homeland Security have been “weaponized;” indeed, between the beginning of June and the end of August 2026, more than 150,000 arrests were made by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Meanwhile the “leftist” departments of education, environmental protection, and health and human serves have been gutted. Other regulatory agencies have been purged, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Legal gambits have insulated the presidency from criminal indictment, legal harassment of critics and “enemies” has become an everyday occurrence. 

The press has been intimidated, television shows have been canceled, and academic freedom is on the ropes. The threat to democracy is real and the nation’s fabric is fraying. Drastic changes to the tax codes favoring elites and the top 0.1% have contributed to the greatest upward shift in wealth in American history. 

Unions have been banned from 40 federal agencies, collective bargaining agreements are imperiled, and worker health programs have been eviscerated. The new imbalance of class power is fixed, if not set in stone. Everything associated with the “New Deal” of the 1930s, and the “Great Society” programs of the 1960s is hanging by a thread. 

With the Trumpist counterrevolution, the whole has become more than the sum of its parts, and everyday people find it difficult to process this avalanche of reactionary measures or the dangers that they pose. A mixture of political frustration and disorientation that provides fertile ground for nostalgia associated with the 1950s, when America was seemingly admired by the whole world.

US foreign policy has changed for the worse as multilateralism has surrendered to “America First!” Indeed, reference to the isolationist and quasi-fascist movement of the 1930s with the same name is not coincidental. Trump has identified the American national interest with his own. 

His personal enrichment by $2.6 billion in 2025-2026 occurred in concert with constantly fluctuating positions on the Russia-Ukraine War, the Iran War, NATO, the European Union, and Canada. The rule of thumb: Where cash is not to be made, support is not to be given. 

The United States has reneged on all major climate treaties. Aid to the United Nations, UNICEF, the World Health Organization, and the world’s most vulnerable nations has been cut to the bone. Trump has signed a sweeping bill imposing sanctions on Russia while simultaneously negotiating new “business deals” before the conflict ends, thus contradicting his previous warnings. 

His on-again, off-again imperialist threats to turn Canada into America’s 51st state, “protect” Greenland and Denmark, “run” Venezuela’s oil industry, create a “Gazan Riviera” (presumably based on Trump company investments), exploit Ukrainian minerals, sign a bill with sweeping sanctions and set up hotel deals in Russia, constitute the mix of personal and institutional goals that provide the president’s zigzag approach with a certain logic.

Trump’s foreign policy has no need for a state department, which has essentially been hollowed out along with the experts necessary to create prudent policies. Our president values the personal touch, and he is not above blackmail, threats, intimidation, bluster, and childish tantrums to get his way. None of this has worked. 

Trump has alienated NATO and the EU to Russia’s delight. Relations with Canada are at their lowest point amid a bitter tariff war. America’s squandering of military sources and diplomatic setbacks have left Taiwan and South Korea feeling increasingly uneasy as Chinese military actions linger in the background.

Trump’s record of failure is astonishing. After all the grandiose claims, mediation efforts to end the Russian-Ukraine War are stalled, policy toward Israel is an embarrassment, Venezuela has the same authoritarian regime, Iran’s geopolitical importance has actually increased, and there are rumblings about charging the United States with war crimes. 

Trump’s attempts to intimidate China have failed, the tariff offensive is tottering, and the president’s charismatic charm apparently hasn’t prevented North Korea’s “supreme leader” Kim Jong Un from further nuclear testing. Never has the moral and symbolic standing of the United States been lower, and never has it shown itself so incapable of distinguishing between democratic friends and authoritarian enemies.

“America First!” has turned into America last. Reversal of discrete policies is possible, restoring checks and balances is more difficult, and reigning in the charismatic presidency is likely. But this ignores the forest for the trees. Trump-World is more than the sum of its parts, and the avalanche of policies and edicts makes the counterrevolution difficult to process and threatens to overwhelm the ability of critics to prioritize their responses. 

MAGA will offer ongoing opposition to progressive forces and, in response, they must forward a rational and radical agenda of their own. This calls for shifting away from Trump, the insufferable person, and focusing on Trump-World’s devastating attack on the welfare state, neofascist battle against civil liberties, cultural parochialism, and xenophobic-imperialist foreign policy. That is what it will take for the United States to recover from its decade-long trauma—and even then...

Stephen Eric Bronner is Board of Governors distinguished professor emeritus of political science at Rutgers University and executive director of the “Independent Experts’ Peace Initiatives.”

Oh, all right

Happy Thanksgiving, Canada!

 Not to mention the US could have done this instead of buying from Russia and screwing Ukraine: