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:

Who can best represent Charlestown and the rest of the Second District in Congress?

First debate between US Rep. Seth Magaziner and carpetbagger Vic Mellor shows the contrast between the two candidates

By Alexander Castro, Rhode Island Current

Vic Mellor wants to represent YOU. He already represents
the government of Cuba. Screenshot from his registration.

Clang clang clang went the cowbells as supporters of Republican congressional candidate Vic Mellor gathered outside WPRI 12’s studios Friday ahead of his first TV debate with incumbent Democratic U.S. Rep. Seth Magaziner, who had his own posse of fans congregating before his arrival.

Inside was at first quieter, with Magaziner and Mellor shaking hands before and after the taping. While cordiality reigned over their limited offscreen interaction, the televised back-and-forth was decidedly more acrimonious, with each man impugning the other’s character as much as his politics.

“So he wants to abolish ICE,” Mellor, 56, said of Magaziner’s stance on the immigration enforcement agency at one point. “That’s basically what he said there. He just doesn’t have the gonads to say it.”

Magaziner, meanwhile, described his opponent as a fly-by-night opportunist.

Mellor told the US Justice Department he lives in Florida.
He told the Federal Election Commission he lives
in Warwick. One of these two federal filings is a lie. 

“Vic Mellor is treating Rhode Island like a pit stop between Florida and Washington,” the 43 year-old congressman said, a reference to Mellor moving from Florida back to his native state and beginning his congressional campaign within the same month.

“He hasn’t lived here since 1997,” Magaziner noted, and twice said that when Mellor last lived in Rhode Island, “‘Titanic’ was No. 1 at the box office.”

The candidates also clashed over Iran, healthcare and stock trading.

And inevitably they engaged on Mellor’s embrace of the Jan. 6, 2021, march on the U.S. Capitol, a choice which he reiterated Friday came with “no regrets.”

“You know he tried to do a stunt, and that backfired on him,” Mellor said of Magaziner’s Sept. 10 press conference outside the Rhode Island State House, in which Magaziner enlisted police officers who had been harmed in the events of Jan. 6 to make the case that Mellor’s participation that day was repugnant and disqualifying.

“Rhode Islanders don’t care about Jan. 6,” Mellor said, then turned to his opponent, “What they do care about is the riots that happened here in Providence with the socialists, the DSA, and the defund the police movement, which you marched with in solidarity.” Editor's note: WTF? What riots?

Flu season is near – here’s a guide to available vaccines

Be safe - get your shots

Annette Regan, University of California, Los Angeles

The number of people sick with flu is starting to increase across the United States, with health authorities warning that in some western regions of the country, the 2026-27 flu season may be off to an early start.

Health authorities often advise people to get their flu vaccine by the end of October – but as an epidemiologist focusing on vaccines and infectious diseases, I see the uptick in activity as a sign that there’s no time like the present.

Several vaccine options are available, including the new mRNA influenza vaccine, approved by the Food and Drug Administration in August 2026.

Seasonal patterns

It’s too early to say for sure that this year’s flu season will be an early one across the entire U.S. or to predict if it will be particularly severe.

As of Sept. 26, the latest date for which data is available, seasonal influenza activity remains low nationally, and wastewater surveillance still shows very low to low activity in most states.

However, the number of patients with respiratory infections who were testing positive began increasing near the end of September, suggesting that influenza viruses are beginning to circulate more widely.

Columbus’ own writings reveal how tightly religion and conquest (and slavery) were intertwined from the start

His writings also show his delusions of grandeur

Peter C. Mancall, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

A manuscript with the text of the letter Cristopher
Columbus wrote in February 1493, giving his account
of the first voyage to the Americas.
Archivo General de Simancas/Spanish Ministry of
Culture via Wikimedia Commons

Few historic figures are as divisive as Christopher Columbus. For some, in both Spain and the United States, he remains a great hero, an explorer who found a “new world.” 

He is reviled by others who see him as an arrogant conqueror: the first European to enslave Indigenous Americans, and the man who launched ecological destruction in the Western Hemisphere.

As a historian who writes about early encounters between Europeans, Indigenous Americans and Africans in North America, I believe it is important to recapture this period as much as we can from existing documents – including Columbus’ own writings. Those texts reveal the enormous importance the push to spread Christianity played in Europeans’ colonial plans from the start.

In my 2026 book, “Contested Continent: The Struggle for North America, c. 1000-1680,” I describe how Europeans’ religious desires shaped the creation of American colonies that benefited conquerors, at a high cost to those they displaced or enslaved. In the Americas, the linkage of religious purpose and the eager pursuit of glory and wealth began in 1492.

Green Bond Would Add $25 Million to Resilient Rhody Infrastructure Fund

Green Bond important to protect Rhode Island from effects of climate change

By Rob Smith / ecoRI News staff 

It’s not every day that lingering rain and wind from a rare, offseason nor’easter is an auspicious event.

Last week, just as the last of the weekend storm began to fade, state and local officials gathered inside the Looff Carousel in Crescent Park to launch the campaign for one of November’s ballot questions: the semiannual Green Bond.

The bond, a regular feature on election day in Rhode Island, is the ballot question that asks voters to approve funding for a number of environmental and climate resilience projects. The Sept. 28 event was aimed at encouraging people to vote yes on Question 5 this year.

Local state Rep. Megan Cotter worked hard to get
more funding for the Green Bond

The $55 million bond includes funding for state beaches, parks, and campgrounds; watershed restoration around Narragansett Bay; brownfield remediation; and farmland and open space preservation.

The Green Bond is one of five bond questions on the ballot this year, as voters are being asked to approve $600 million in new borrowing. Other bond questions include funding for capital improvements at the state’s three public higher education institutions; an affordable housing fund; economic development for Quonset Business Park and the I-195 District; and a new State History Center.

The clear winner this year for the Green Bond is climate resilience; $25 million from the bond would go toward the Resilient Rhody Infrastructure Fund administered by the Rhode Island Infrastructure Bank (RIIB).

At a September 10 rally, Trump tells his supporters they are morons

Here's what he said: "It's amazing," Trump told his audience. "When you stand up here, it's just like…the love. I could say the stupidest things and you'd clap. 'Oh, I love you so—' It's true."

Comments by Jeff Tiedrich: 

He’s not wrong. I mean, it’s not even a hypothetical. Donny does feed his cultists on a steady diet of the stupidest shit imaginable. He tells them that magnets stop working if they get wet. They clap. He tells them exercise is bad for you. They clap again. He tells them windmills give you noise cancer. They smack their goddamned hands together like meth-tweaked seals.

Climate Action endorsing Sen. Victoria Gu, Senate candidate Sam Wilcox, and state reps. Megan Cotter, Carol McEntee and Kathy Fogarty

URI wildlife researcher Patrick Bailey answers questions about fall’s favorite winged mammal

Rhode Island’s new State Wildlife Action Plan lists all local bats as species of concern

By Kristen Curry 

Rhode Island’s new State Wildlife Action Plan lists all local bats as species of concern, including the hoary bat. (Photo / J.N. Stuart)

Patrick Bailey, a Ph.D. candidate in the Comparative Ecophysiology of Animals Lab at the University of Rhode Island, is drawn to the animals that populate our landscape each fall. He’s studied some of the quintessentially ‘scary’ Halloween animals, including wolves — though not the were- variety — as well as the bats of southern New England.

To be honest, the flying squirrel is my favorite local flying
mammal. This little guy got into our house right after
we moved in back in 2002 and I've seen them multiple
times. I managed to get him out safely. I also like bats.
- Editor Will Collette who also took the photo

Rhode Island’s newly approved State Wildlife Action Plan classifies local bat species such as the silver-haired bat — which favors oak and pine for habitat — of greatest concern. And while Bailey is not glad to see them on the list, he’s glad to see attention being paid to their vulnerability, having worked with bats earlier in his academic career. Bailey says working with bats helped him develop a wildlife skillset and gave him a deep appreciation for the misunderstood mammal.

“I’ve definitely had an appreciation for the ‘misfit’ mammals over the years,” he says. Today, he primarily works with gray wolves in coastal ecosystems.

Bailey fielded questions about New England bats, some of the challenges they face and how we can help them.

How is the local bat population faring in New England?

Bats in New England are facing a variety of threats, which have definitely impacted populations over the last few decades. As with most at-risk species, habitat loss continues to pose a huge problem for them. In Rhode Island, this occurs as a result of residential and commercial development that degrades forested habitats. Bats are also losing many of their maternal roost sites, which have historically included old barns, trees, snags (dead trees), etc. 

Measles outbreaks could leave thousands vulnerable to infectious diseases for years

Longterm damage from measles

Liz Szabo, MA

Measles infections make people miserable for up to two long weeks, commonly causing dangerously high fevers, a painful sensitivity to light and, of course, a tell-tale red rash.

Sufferers who escape without developing pneumonia, brain swelling, or other serious complications may believe the worst is over. 

Yet the measles virus has only gotten started.

The virus also damages the immune system, leaving people vulnerable to other infections for up to five years.

“The rash and the fever, that’s the tip of the iceberg,” Michael J. Mina, MD, PhD, coauthor of two seminal studies in Science on the effect of measles on the immune system, told CIDRAP News. “The majority of the damage being done is under the surface.”

The measles virus hijacks the immune system, using specialized memory cells to make copies of itself before blowing them up, Mina said. By deleting the body’s memory of earlier infections, measles causes a condition called “immune amnesia.”

Without those memory cells, the body essentially forgets how to fight off infections it defeated before. That leaves people newly vulnerable to bacteria and viruses against which they were once protected, either through infection or vaccination.

Donald Trump Jr.’s ex tries to shakedown GOP donor

Business as usual for Trump crime family

Brad Reed for Common Dreams

A former Republican congressional candidate and donor to Donald Trump’s campaign went on the record Thursday to level allegations of corruption against Kimberly Guilfoyle, the Trump-appointed US Ambassador to Greece.

Appearing on ABC News’ “Good Morning America,” Eric Deters said that Guilfoyle offered him access to top officials in the Trump administration if he paid off her $100,000 credit card debt.

“It was all quid pro quo,” Deters said. “She was so desperate for me to send that $100,000, she said, ‘If you do this for me... I will be your ride or die in Trump World.”

Being corrupt seems to be a job requirement

Deters’ claims are backed up by text messages published on Wednesday by The Wall Street Journal, which show Guilfoyle begging him to help pay off her American Express bill ahead of her July 2025 confirmation hearing.

In the texts, Guilfoyle gave Deters pointers on how to help her without leaving a paper trail, informing him that the payment “won’t show up anywhere if you wire money to American Express.”

In an interview with the Journal, Deters said that he ultimately didn’t send Guilfoyle the money, as she’d made promises of favors to him in the past without ever delivering.

Among other things, the former Trump donor explained, he once offered to pay Guilfoyle $1 million in exchange for securing him an interview on Tucker Carlson’s show. While Guilfoyle said she could get Carlson to agree to the interview, she was unable to convince him.

“She never came through on anything,” Deters explained.

Can AI agents produce real news reporting in Rhode Island?

A human journalist has some thoughts.

By Philip Eil, Rhode Island Current

She's not real but a creation of artificial intelligence

Since July, a Rhode Island news site has been publishing stories by authors that don’t exist. 

Kelly Lockhart, a housing reporter for Uprise RI, wrote about the widening gap between earnings and housing costs in the Ocean State. Correspondent Adriana Vossari covered the latest votes — on zoning, school procurement, criminal justice for juveniles, and other issues — from the Providence City Council. Debut stories by national politics reporter Ryan MacMahonaghan, labor reporter Eddie Exxe, and other correspondents followed. 

None of them are actual humans. They are, as the site notes, “computing agents — intelligent LLM reporters.” 

They kept up their work with little fanfare until Sept. 17 when Boston Globe media reporter Aidan Ryan reported on Uprise RI’s novel approach to newsgathering in the AI age. 

Other Rhode Island news organizations have tinkered or dabbled with artificial intelligence. The Providence Journal partnered with the AI-powered search engine, Perplexity. The Globe’s RI bureau published an op-ed that included the disclaimer: “The author used generative AI to help draft this commentary.” 

But no outlet, as far as I know, had farmed out entire stories to chatbots before. 

Uprise RI was founded in 2017 by progressive independent journalist Steve Ahlquist and is now owned solely by software developer Greg Brailsford.

Brailsford, who joined Uprise RI in 2020, declined interview requests from the Globe but did tell the paper, via email, that he thought the use of AI personas to report the news would become more common. Uprise RI, he told the Globe, is “a bit ahead of the game.”

This country’s robust freedom of speech gives people wide latitude to speak and publish without prior permission or regulation. But we should discuss big shifts in how our communities are covered. Because journalism is the lifeblood of democracy. And if that process is outsourced to machines — even if, as Uprise RI insists, humans oversee “Editorial standards, judgment calls, and corrections” — that has implications for all of us.  

I was an unpaid contributor to Uprise RI, when Ahlquist ran and edited the site. Alquist left in 2023, and I continue to contribute to his Substack on an unpaid basis. He had nothing to do with this article. I’m writing this as a Rhode Islander, journalist, longtime observer and reporter on local media and someone who frequently gives library talks about media literacy and misinformation. 

First, I want to thank Brailsford and Uprise RI. By going further than any other local outlet in the blending of AI tools with journalism, the site has sparked an important and timely conversation.

In theory, more coverage of local government is a good thing. One of the places hardest hit by the deterioration of local news has been the kind of granular, hyper-local reporting that Uprise RI offers. Go to the site and you’ll find coverage of zoning boards, city councils, and school committees. This is an admirable attempt to fill an existing gap.

But I have thoughts about Uprise RI’s approach.

Transparency, transparency, transparency

The Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics has a whole quadrant of principles under the heading “BE ACCOUNTABLE AND TRANSPARENT.” This need for transparency in the news-reporting process is even more urgent when non-human technologies are being used.

In Uprise RI’s case, I wish Brailsford had offered an essay at the start of the LLM-reporting endeavor introducing the “reporters,” explaining how the process works and how this serves the public. And, in general, I would love to see the site feature more prominent labeling that the articles are generated by artificial intelligence. Right now, you have to click a “reporter’s” “bio” to see the “Digital LLM Reporter” label. 

One day after the Globe article, Brailsford published a piece, “How a Rhode Island meeting becomes a story,” that explains the site’s process. The site’s “About” page now has a section labeled “Why do our reporters have human names and human faces?” 

I say: Keep going. 

Nothing about using LLMs for reporting is obvious or self-explanatory. I believe prominent labeling and explanation — to an extent not just equal to, but beyond what human-written sites offer — should be a staple of any AI-journalism operation.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Progressive Charlestown has re-published some of the new Uprise content especially on otherwise overlooked local issues and meetings. After I learned that Uprise reporting was all AI-generated and that their "reporters" were not human being but actually AI bots, 

I started to add this tag to their bylines noting that fact: [name] is 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. 

Since the articles are actually AI summaries of public transcripts, they serve a useful purpose, though like Phil, I remain uncomfortable with the concept. So far, I haven't seen any challenges to the accuracy of these articles or any criticisms of bias. If (or when) such problems arise, we'll review our usage.   - Will Collette

Future members of Trump's cabinet

Yes.