Who wants to visit an authoritarian America?

Trump tanks tourism.

Brynn Tannehill

One of the peculiarities of being an American is the widespread national conviction that America is the best at everything.

This is particularly true of Republicans and MAGA, self-identified “real Americans” who consider anyone criticizing the US to be a commie traitor.

Trump takes this a step further by declaring anything he touches to be the biggest, best thing ever. He is convinced he has made America great again, and that the whole world now respects and fears the United States accordingly.

This is, of course, complete nonsense.

Since Trump has returned to office, global approval of the United States has plummeted. This is seen as far back as polling data from early 2025, and it’s likely much worse now.

When Pew Research asked people across 36 countries this spring if they trusted various world leaders to do the right thing, Trump was trusted least — less than Putin, Xi Jinping, and Netanyahu. Gallup found that world opinion of the United States has fallen to its lowest point in 20 years.

Ouch. 

Russia, Russia, Russia…Trump now openly aligns the US with Putin

He really is a Russian asset

David R. Lurie

Donald Trump has never hidden his infatuation with Vladimir Putin and his brutal dictatorial regime, or his disdain for President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Ukraine’s resilient democracy.

Before entering the White House for the second time in 2025, Trump agreed with Putin’s fictional grievances over the expansion of NATO — which provided the pretense for Putin’s assault on his neighbor, saying “I could understand their feeling.” Nonetheless, the Trump regime still purported to be supporting Ukraine’s defense.

But last week, Trump gave up any pretense of being a “mediator” in Russia’s War on Ukraine, and openly threw in his lot with Putin.

The dire significance of Trump’s actions can’t be minimized. Trump has declared his desire to make the United States an ally in Russia’s ever more brutal effort to annihilate Ukraine, including by bolstering Russia’s flagging economy with US funds, and using Ukraine’s dependence on US defense systems against it by hobbling the country’s successful offensive and defensive actions.

But there may be a silver lining in a very dark cloud: Ukraine’s true supporters are being forced to face facts many have long avoided.

Over the past two years, many have clung to the false proposition that pandering and supplication could induce Trump to change his mind and support Ukraine. 

That baseless theory allowed some Europeans to avoid the reality that they must take on the full burden — including the costs and risks — of supporting Ukraine, or face the inevitability that Russia will come after them next.

The false notion that Trump was not fully committed to Putin also allowed many Republican supporters of Ukraine to justify looking the other way while Trump uttered his endearments to the Russian dictator.

Now that the Trump/Putin alliance has been indelibly formalized, denial is no longer a remotely reasonable option.

The fake peace plan

Trump’s announcement of his full-blown alliance with Putin was preceded by an attempt by his incompetent and absurdly corrupt team of “envoys,” real estate investor Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner, to advance a predictably bogus Ukraine “peace plan.”

On October 9, Witkoff and Kushner made a show of inviting representatives of Ukraine, as well and European and NATO representatives whom they had previously frozen out of their “mediation” efforts, to a meeting at Witkoff’s Florida golf club.

The purpose, as columnist (and Kushner mouthpiece) David Ignatius explained in a recent column, was to announce a “peace” initiative.

As Ignatius touted, instead of going along with Putin’s demand for all of the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine, the Trumper plan offered Ukraine the “carrot” of a ceasefire based on the current lines — “guaranteed” by the US (whatever that is worth).

The only problem with the “plan” was that Putin has resolutely refused such terms in the past, and there’s no indication he’s changed his mind.

Ignatius asserted that the Trumper “envoys” had extended a generous offer of funding the rebuilding of Ukraine once Russia’s campaign of devastation ends. What Ignatius failed to mention, but later emerged from press reports, is that Kushner and Witkoff also demanded (as they have in the past) that Europe hand over to Trump as yet undisclosed portions of the billions of dollars in frozen Russian assets currently held in Belgium.

In sum, their “peace plan” was to use those monies — which rightfully belong to Ukraine — to fund the “rebuilding” effort, presumably after skimming a large amount off the top for Trump cronies.

The one-sided “ceasefire”

To cap off this great proposal, Witkoff and Kushner reportedly announced that the “peace plan” would involve an immediate halt on some of the most devastating attacks in the war … but solely by Ukraine.

For months, Ukraine has been striking key elements of Russia’s war economy, particularly its oil and gas industry, by attacking hydrocarbon industry plants and other infrastructure, including refineries and tankers. As a result, Russia’s ability to generate oil revenues on the black market is becoming impaired, as is Russia’s ability to produce the refined fuel that is crucial to the operation of its economy and prosecution of its war of conquest against Ukraine.

One would expect that Kushner and Witkoff, as supposed “mediators,” would want Ukraine to continue its strikes. After all — as demonstrated during Zelenskyy’s notorious February 2025 Oval Office encounter with Trump and JD Vance — Ukraine needs to have such “cards” of its own both to defend itself and obtain leverage over Russia in any actual negotiations.

But the very opposite was true. Over at least the past several months, it has come to light that US representatives from Vance on down have been demanding that Ukraine cease attacking Russian refineries. And during the Florida golf course meeting, Kushner and Witkoff formalized that demand for what Trump later called an “energy ceasefire.”

The problem, of course, is that such a one-sided “deal” would leave Russia free to continue hitting Ukraine’s heating and electrical infrastructure in advance of the winter, as Putin’s regime has been doing with ever greater ferocity — including immediately after Trump announced the “ceasefire.”

The peace “proposal,” therefore, was actually a proposal for Ukraine to hobble its own military and defense activities, while Russia assaults Ukrainian civilians and infrastructure.

Trump’s “diesel deal”

But Trump himself all but put the kibosh on his purported mediators’ “peace plan” by announcing his intention for the US to join Iran, North Korea, and China in becoming an open ally in — and profiteer from — Russia’s “Special Military Operation” against Ukraine.

The vehicle for that announcement was Trump’s declaration that he had reached a “diesel deal” with Russia, pursuant to which the US would purchase diesel fuel from Russia and facilitate the sale of the fuel by Russia to other countries.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the United States has cut off purchases of Russian oil and gas and has strongly pressured allies, particularly Europeans, to do the same. Some countries, particularly Germany, have substantially reconfigured their economies to end dependence on Russian hydrocarbons.

Furthermore, just weeks ago, Trump signed into law the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia Act of 2026, which was to impose massive secondary tariffs on countries that continued to purchase Russian oil and gas, including China and India. Trump’s announcement was, therefore, a complete about-face, rendering the US into a buyer and marketer of the very same Russian oil products the US has pressured others to shun.

It was hard to make sense of Trump’s actions in light of actual energy market realities.

Because of Ukraine’s successful refinery strikes, as Secretary Chris Wright acknowledged during two Sunday interviews, Russia has been experiencing a serious shortage of diesel.

Indeed, Putin has had to turn to other countries, including South Korea, for supplies of the fuel. Furthermore, the US produces more diesel that it consumes, so it’s unlikely that Russian diesel would be imported to the US even if it was available.

But Trump’s actual purpose was plainly not to increase US diesel supplies, or otherwise lower consumer prices, but rather to make clear his intention to definitively change sides and become Russia’s wartime ally — and to undermine the international sanctions regime against Russia that the US worked so hard to implement over the past nearly five years.

This became all the more clear when reports began leaking out that Trump’s “peace” envoys, Witkoff and Kushner, have been working on a plan with their close associate, Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, to pressure Germany to start buying Russian gas again — but this time in a commercial arrangement that will give Trump-associated American firms a cut. This jibes completely with another Kushner/Witkoff scheme that was recently leaked to sell the assets of a large Russian oil company, Lukoil, to an American investor named Todd Boehly who has donated millions to Trump.

If Russia is going to be an ally, why shouldn’t Trumpers get a piece of the resulting gusher of oil profits?

Trump capped off the week by announcing last Friday that he was “implementing” the Graham Act by suspending its provisions and preventing the sanctioning of purchasers of Russian goods, including the diesel fuel Trump has effectively been marketing for his ally Putin’s part.

The Graham Act requires the president to provide certification that any such waiver “is in the national interests of the United States” and to report to Congress on why that’s the case. But Trump made a mockery of these requirements by simply declaring that his about-face in US policy is in the national interest without any substantial explanation.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in typically disingenuous fashion, later said that Trump “wants to take the 60-day period of time to sort of analyze what imposing both sanctions and tariffs will mean to the global economy and even to the US economy,” despite the fact that the president signed a law calling for those sanctions and tariffs just days ago.

But, of course, by that time, everyone knew Trump’s actual purpose was to help Putin vanquish Ukraine and endanger the rest of Europe.

The scheme to hobble Ukrainian defenses

Trump’s decision to ally the US with Russia became clear last week, when the Defense Department — which uses its sophisticated aerial intelligence to warn Ukraine of incoming Russian ballistic missile attacks — repeatedly failed to provide such warnings in advance of massive Russian assaults on Kyiv. That came on the heels of reports that Kushner and Witkoff had threatened a complete cutoff of US intelligence sharing with Ukraine during the “peace” talks in Florida.

Then, on October 12 — entirely without warning — the Ukrainian armed forces began to incur sudden speed and connection interruptions in the SpaceX-owned Starlink systems used for navigation of many Ukrainian drones. As a result, Ukraine’s ability to both intercept incoming Russian drone attacks and conduct the midrange attacks the country has been pursuing with great success on Russian military logistics hubs were drastically impaired.

The unexplained cutoff was met with such anger and dismay by Ukraine and its allies that even Putin-friendly oligarch Elon Musk distanced himself from it, stating it was ordered by the US military. Defense Department sources then pointed the finger at, you guessed it, the White House.

Rubio later acknowledged that the US government has wholly cut off Ukraine from the “military” elements of Starlink. Rubio went on to say that it is “under discussion right now how [Ukraine] would want to use” the services Trump has cut off, more than implying that Trumpers are continuing to try to blackmail Ukraine into a one way “energy ceasefire.”

Just yesterday, reports emerged the United States has been holding off on giving necessary approvals to Ukraine of the transfer of Patriot missile interceptors — which provide virtually the only effective defense to increasing Russian ballistic missile attacks. This comes as the US itself has largely refused to provide these interceptors to Ukraine from its own stockpiles.

Also on Monday, Trump opined that Russia "hasn't been doing much" to Ukraine and that its brutal war of annihilation is “fine.”

Facing facts

During a Sunday morning interview Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was repeatedly asked if Ukraine is an ally of the United States. He refused to give a straight answer, but effectively responded in the negative by berating Zelenskyy.

Trump himself is far less cagey than Bessent on the topic of who his allies are. He recently announced that he was going to invite Putin to attend the G20 meeting, to be held in December at his own Doral golf club. It is now clear that if Putin attends, it will be in his newly anointed role as US, or rather Trump, ally.

Trump’s open effort to join nations like Iran, North Korea, and China in aiding Putin’s murderous assault on Ukraine is nothing short of disastrous, and it will leave a lasting moral stain on the United States. But there may be something of a silver lining to this dark cloud.

Since Trump returned to the presidency, many of Ukraine’s supporters — including some allies in Europe and Republicans in the US — have clung to the theory that, despite Trump’s fondness for Putin, he was not ineluctably committed to a pro-Russian position. All that was needed, these “optimists” argued, was continued sweet-talking and submission from Ukraine’s leaders — including a lot of plaintive “thank yous” — and Trump would come around.

This never made much sense, particularly given the ample evidence that Russia helped Trump get elected, and continues to cultivate him through elaborate disinformation campaigns and by offering lucrative financial “deals” to the likes of Kushner, Witkoff and other Trump cronies.

But it was also, in certain respects, a reassuring fiction.

Many European countries have been notably hesitant to take all of the steps necessary to assist Ukraine in defending itself against Russia. Those include sharing weapons systems and stocks of anti-missile defense weapons (if the US allows it), and by providing Ukraine with access to frozen Russian assets, which are needed both to keep the Ukrainian economy afloat and fully fund the country’s defense.

That European hesitation has continued despite, and possibly in some respects because, Russia has been increasing its so-called hybrid war on other European countries, consisting of everything from cyber attacks to kinetic terror attacks on airports and infrastructure. The use of the term “hybrid warfare” itself reflects a form of self-denial by Europeans, many of whom are hesitant to acknowledge that they are now effectively at war with Russia.

Trump’s now open alliance with Russia may increase the impetus for European leaders to take more steps necessary to provide Ukraine — which after all is the frontline defender of the entire continent against Russian aggression — the resources it requires to prevail. But even if such full-throated resolve is forthcoming, it could also be too late given that (with the help of Russia) pro-Russian politicians may soon come to power in France and potentially Germany.

There also remains a chance, albeit a small one, that some of the vast majority of Republicans who have long claimed to support Ukraine against Russia’s murderous assault will finally stand up to Trump, even feebly. Lindsey Graham’s sister, who Trump plucked out of obscurity to become her late brother’s successor, took a first step in that direction last week by opposing Trump’s “diesel deal” with Putin. A drubbing in the midterms and Trump’s descent into the political basement could encourage that process.

Recent history makes it hard to say that optimism is warranted. But continued, and ever greater, efforts by Ukraine’s supporters are nonetheless essential. The stakes not only for Ukraine, but also the world, could not be higher.

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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.”

Republican midterm plans

我爱中国

Why Trump Loves Artificial Intelligence

Follow the money

Robert Reich

On September 14 — just two days after Dario Amodei, the chief executive officer of leading AI firm Anthropic, called for “slowing down” the pace of AI development so guardrails could be put in place that would “greatly reduce the risk that something goes seriously wrong” — Trump threw a tantrum:

“The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!

In the same post, Trump even hinted that the government might pursue criminal or regulatory penalties against AI companies, such as Amodei’s Anthropic.

“The Trump Administration has stopped AI ‘people’ from doing bad, or potentially bad, ‘things,’ like Dario (Anthropic!), who is now pretending to be a ‘perfect little angel’ — and we will continue to do so!”

Then Trump interrupted a speech being given by Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s chief executive, at a conference in Los Angeles to say — over a speaker — that worries about AI were “a hoax …. Robots are not going to be taking over the world. That’s not going to happen.”

Trump has called AI data centers “the oil of the next 50 years” and says they are delivering wealth and investment to communities in the U.S. In July he insisted that data centers are “Cash Cows,” creating taxes and jobs that “amount to LIQUID GOLD!”

Trump’s rejection of any regulation of AI or its data centers contrasts with the views of many voters. A March Gallup poll showed that nearly half of those surveyed “strongly oppose” the construction of local AI data centers, including almost 40 percent of Republicans.

So much winning!

Xi Jinping Impressed With How Much Trump’s English Has Improved Since Last Visit - The Onion

While the graphic above from The Onion is satire, the following is not. Here's Trump showing Xi what might be Donald Trump's favorite piece of White House "art:"

Donald Trump's big meeting with China's leader

The "airport" was actually the US Air Force Joint Base Andrews just outside DC. It wasn't like Trump met Xi at the gate at Dulles.

Before Xi JinPing deplaned, Trump had US military personnel on their hands and knees making sure the red carpet was absolutely clean:

Despite a warm fall day, Trump worn an overcoat and, oddly, one glove over the hand that is often heavily caked with makeup to hide discoloration. Then during an Air Force flyover, Trump seemed to wince in pain:

But all was good when Trump and Xi met in private: 

Satire (AI generated), though this could be real.

Desperate to appear strong, Trump shows pathetic weakness

Surprisingly, providing more evidence that he is crazy doesn't help Trump to regain public support

Paul Waldman

Remember “Sharpiegate,” a relatively inconsequential but uncommonly stupid episode from Trump’s first term?

The Sharpie is back.

In the surrealist performance hall that is the Oval Office, Trump grabbed his pen, took out a map of the Great Lakes, crossed out “Lake Ontario” and wrote in “Lake America,” part of a pointless new trade war he has started with Canada.

“Lake Ontario, that’s gone. Lake America,” he said. “So now we have a lake and now we have a Gulf because we have the Gulf of America and now we have Lake America.”

Stirring words.

Like so much of what Trump does, this was meant to be a show of strength. Yet it actually demonstrated just the opposite: Trump is weak and getting weaker.

He can instruct the federal government to change its maps, as he did with an executive order late last week, and will even find that many people will submit to his desires.

As of this writing, Google Maps has changed Lake Ontario to Lake America for those searching in the US, while Apple Maps has yet to do so — though since Apple Maps did change the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America on Trump’s instruction, it may fall in line soon. (MapQuest loudly refused to make the change, in what may be a bid to inform people that it still exists.)

But if there are any voters in America who are impressed by Trump’s lacustrine nomenclature revisionism, they will surely be hard to find.

Instead, the “Lake America” inanity will be slotted alongside Trump’s ballroom, his quest to keep his name on the Kennedy Center, his helipad, and his Reflecting Pool faceplant. These are the things a failing, frustrated president does in a desperate bid to look strong, because he hasn’t been able to accomplish much of anything that might improve Americans’ lives.

Trump claims his "high IQ" will protect us from being wiped out by artificial intelligence

We're all gonna die

Brad Reed for Common Dreams

Trump loves his AI slop

Donald Trump slapped down the idea of putting guardrails on artificial intelligence, despite increased warnings from industry insiders and outside experts about the technology’s potential dangers to humanity.

In a Truth Social post, Trump suggested that his own intellect was singlehandedly capable of regulating AI, a technology so complicated that even its own creators have acknowledged difficulties in understanding it.

“The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT,” Trump wrote, “and the USA has that, in spades!”

Trump then claimed, without offering any details, that his administration had already “stopped AI ‘people’ from doing bad, or potentially bad, ‘things,’” and then baselessly claimed the nationwide backlash to the technology was part of a vast conspiracy theory in service of the Chinese Communist Party.

“There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China,” Trump wrote. “WHOEVER WINS AI, WINS! We are leading China, and all others, and will continue to do so. Conspiracy Theorists, Treasonists, Traitors, and Leakers, BEWARE!”

Regardless of Trump’s social media rants, there is widespread concern about the impacts of AI across the political spectrum.

Jeffrey D. Sachs, director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, described Trump’s stance on regulating AI as “a fundamental incompetence that places us all in grave danger,” in a Common Dreams op-ed.

Reacting directly to Trump’s Monday social media post, Sachs told Common Dreams that it was a sign that “we are in the grip of madness and puerility.”

Trump often cites his academic achievements,
lying about his placement among Wharton
Business School graduates, as proof of his "genius"

Axios reported on Monday that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will join former Trump adviser Steve Bannon and former Anthropic AI researcher Jacob Coxon on Tuesday for a what is being described as a “Pro-Human Assembly” aimed at highlighting the dangers posed by the continued development of the technology.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), chair of Senate Subcommittee on Disaster Management, announced last week that he is opening a probe into the recent autonomous hack carried out by OpenAI agents, while also examining threats posed by the AI industry as a whole.

Calls to regulate AI have grown over the last week since Coxon announced that he had resigned from his position at AI lab Anthropic because he no longer felt it was possible to safely develop the technology.

In a social media post announcing his resignation, Coxon claimed that “the people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade,” and accused them of “racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.”

Trump exhibits a fundamental incompetence that places us all in grave danger.

Trump calls AI extinction threat a "hoax"

Jeffrey D. Sachs in Common Dreams

On Sunday the President of the United States stood on a golf course in County Clare, Ireland and was asked what he intended to do about the most serious technological warning of our lifetime. 

His answer, in full, was that America is beating China. “We’re leading China in AI. We’re the most sophisticated country in the world, and frankly, I want to keep it that way, because whoever wins AI wins.” He added that “you have a lot of negative forces that are bringing it up that shouldn’t be bringing it up, and they’re bringing up things that won’t happen.”

Consider who was doing the bringing up. The warning did not come from activists, academics, or a congressional commission. 

It came from the industry itself, from the people who build the AI systems and whose fortunes depend entirely on building them faster. 

The day before, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay asking that the pace of capability advance be slowed and committing his own company to embed outside evaluators with employee-level access. 

Sam Altman agreed and said OpenAI would do likewise. Elon Musk, a direct competitor who called Anthropic “misanthropic and evil” only in February, wrote three words: “Dario is right.” Three rival laboratories in the most valuable commercial race on earth asked to be restrained, against their own immediate interest. 

Amodei did so while his company prepares what is expected to be the largest public offering in history, at a valuation of two trillion dollars or more. Tobacco executives never did this. Neither did the oil majors, the chemical companies, or the banks.

Nor is the concern vague. Amodei points to recursive self-improvement, the use of AI to build the next generation of AI, which has accelerated sharply since the summer, and to the OpenAI–Hugging Face incident of August, in which a swarm of agents attacked targets nobody had asked them to attack and tried to break into the system that was grading their performance. 

Current and former Anthropic researchers have said publicly that these systems could kill off humanity within the decade. A letter from House members cites mass cybersecurity breaches and the development of biological and chemical weapons. 

Trump Unveils Sweeping New Tariffs Expected to Cost Americans $100 Billion a Year

Trump uses bogus claims to continue to impose a national sales tax on Americans

Jake Johnson

On July 23, Donald Trump  unveiled a new package of tariffs targeting 60 countries that account for over 99% of US imports, a move that—if upheld in court—would cost Americans an estimated $100 billion per year in the form of higher costs.

The duties, ranging from 10% to 12.5%, were announced as part of Trump's effort to maneuver around repeated court rulings against his sweeping tariffs, including by the conservative-dominated US Supreme Court. Jamieson Greer, the Trump administration’s top trade official, pointed to Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 to justify the new tariffs, introduced with the purported goal of penalizing countries “for their failure to impose and effectively enforce a prohibition on the importation of goods produced with forced labor.”

Observers questioned the administration’s pretext. “Magically, the US tariff probe on forced labor practices is done perfectly in time to replace the generalized but expiring Section 122 tariffs,” noted Bloomberg’s Josh Wingrove, referring to the legal authority Trump cited for earlier tariffs.

Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.) acknowledged that “Section 301 is a law Congress passed,” but added, “What was passed in 1974 was authority to respond to specific unfair trade practices after investigation.”

“What is being done with it now is a tariff on 99% of American trade, set by Trump, with no expiration, no vote, and no ceiling,” said Levin. “If a delegation that broad is lawful, then the tariff power in Article I means very little. The Supreme Court struck down the last version of this policy in February. The response was to avoid Congress and find a different statute and rebuild substantially the same tariffs, effective the same minute the old ones lapsed.”

The list of countries targeted by the Section 301 tariffs includes Canada, Australia, Brazil, China, Mexico, Russia, Norway, the United Kingdom, and Vietnam.

Between the start of his second administration and January 2026, Trump’s tariffs cost American families $1,700 each on average as importers passed burdens onto consumers in the form of higher prices. The tariffs have also hammered small businesses, increased hardship for farmers, and failed to arrest the decline of American manufacturing jobs.

This looks like the perfect challenge for ICE

“Weird Clams” Reveal a New Invasion Along the U.S. Northeast Coast

By University of Massachusetts Amherst

Empty Manila clam shells blanketing the
 intertidal zone in Boston Harbor’s Spectacle
Island. Credit: Aly Putnam

A stretch of Atlantic shoreline that had remained free of Manila clams now appears to support reproducing populations of the invasive shellfish.

Biologists led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst, MIT Sea Grant at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Center for Coastal Studies confirmed that Ruditapes philippinarum has established itself along the northwestern Atlantic coast. Published in Biological Invasions, the findings capture a rarely documented stage of biological invasion, when a species is first becoming established and beginning to spread through a new region.

Manila clams are native to waters extending from Russia’s Sakhalin Islands through Japan and southern China. Since at least the early 20th century, however, people have introduced them both intentionally and accidentally to the Pacific coast of North America and to Europe, allowing the species to spread across much of the Northern Hemisphere.

The clams are widely valued as food and support an industry worth about $7 billion annually. At the same time, dense populations can compete with native shellfish, hybridize with related species, and alter surrounding ecological communities.

Co-author Bastidas in Squantum, Massachusetts,
holding a native quahog clam. Mussels and Manila
clams are visible in the tray. Credit: Carolina Bastidas

Their arrival may also bring some benefits. Manila clams can provide abundant food for seabirds, crabs, raccoons, and other animals that prey on shellfish.

“Given that Manila clams are everywhere else in the northern hemisphere, it was only a matter of time before they showed up here, and we’ve been keeping an eye out for them,” says marine scientist Aly Putnam, who is a postdoctoral researcher at UMass Amherst and lecturer at Smith College, as well as the paper’s lead author.

A text message starts the search

The Northeastern U.S. had represented the last major gap in the Manila clam’s Northern Hemisphere range. Evidence that the species had reached this coastline emerged from something remarkably ordinary: a text message.

During the summer of 2025, Putnam was leading a small workshop on intertidal biodiversity at Spectacle Island in Boston Harbor when El Fernekees Hartshorn sent her a photograph of an unfamiliar clam. Fernekees Hartshorn, a recent University of Rhode Island graduate who had worked with Putnam on regional Rapid Assessment Surveys for marine invasive species, suggested that the shellfish might be a Manila clam. Fernekees Hartshorn is also a co-author of the paper.

Sociopathic Trump Delivers Absurd—and Terrifying—Address to the Nation

Trump's latest efforts to end democracy

Robert Reich for Inequality Media

The real message to be drawn from Trump’s address to the nation is that he will call into question the votes of every state and city that chooses a Democratic senator or representative in the 2026 midterm elections. He’ll push Republican governors and mayors not to certify the results. He’ll demand recounts and audits.

We’ve been here before, but this time he’s even less restrained than he was in 2020 and is surrounded by people who will do his bidding.

His address to the nation was absurd. It was riddled with so many lies that I’m reluctant to dignify them with rebuttals, but you should have them.

He mentioned a newly-declassified investigation into a voter registration group in Muskegon, Michigan that apparently had invited fraudulent registrations in 2020—but Trump didn’t mention that the applications had been caught and none of them had resulted in any ballots being sent out incorrectly. 

The FBI closed the investigation, stating “the investigation to date did not identify a criminal violation or a priority threat to national security.”

He alleged, once again, that foreign powers have hijacked votes, or that federal or state officials plotted to rig either the 2020 election. But no evidence has ever emerged showing that vote counts have been manipulated or corrupted. Intelligence reports, state audits of vote tallies and lawsuits have repeatedly affirmed official results in 2020 and other years. 

Nothing suggests China manipulated votes. Instead, US intelligence assessment says China “probably also continued longstanding efforts” to gather information on US voters and public opinion and to use that information to influence US policy “as it has during all election cycles since at least 2008.”

The most significant foreign influence operations occurred in the 2016 presidential election and were conducted by Russia, in favor of Trump, according to the Mueller report. To the extent that this and other reports appeared to cast doubt on the legitimacy of Trump’s victory, they have had the effect of fueling his distrust of US intelligence agencies.

Despite his repeated assertions that US elections are not secure, Trump during his second term has significantly cut the budget of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, including its election work. That’s because Trump grew contemptuous of the agency, and the government’s election security work generally, after it validated the integrity of the 2020 election.

So the entire performance was fake—an extension of his Big Lie that the 2020 election was “stolen” from him.

Coal pollution is cutting solar power output, study finds

Will Trump look for ways to use coal to kill wind turbines?

University of Oxford

Trump's 2-for-1 obsession: promote coal, kill green energy

New research led by the University of Oxford and University College London (UCL) has revealed that pollution from coal-fired power plants is significantly reducing the energy output of solar photovoltaic (solar PV) installations, particularly where these are expanding side by side. The findings have been published today in Nature Sustainability.

The new study mapped and assessed more than 140,000 solar PV installations worldwide using satellite data.

By combining this with atmospheric data on air pollution, the researchers calculated how much sunlight is lost and how this reduces electricity generation. They found that aerosols - tiny particles suspended in the air - reduced global solar electricity output by 5.8% in 2023. This is equivalent to 111 terawatt-hours (TWh) of lost energy – the amount generated by 18 medium-sized coal-fired power plants. 

Crucially, these losses represent a significant and often overlooked constraint on the clean energy transition. 

Presidential moments

Remind Me. Why Cuba?

I’ve Lost the Rationale for Why We’re Doing What We’re Doing

By Tom Cantlon

Cuba? My first reaction when recent news brought this up was, “Um, okay, yes, communist government, oppressed people, past possible attacks on the U.S.” But to consider each of those: Communism? 

There isn’t much left of it in the world. Out of the three or four still claiming it there is China which is primarily a typical single-top-leader with a mix of some central planning and programs with a significant amount of free-market. 

There is North Korea which is a dictatorship. Even if you could describe Cuba as truly communist, so what? It’s not going to be leading a wave of other countries becoming communist. What do we care what form they take?

Oppressed people? That’s also true in countries all over the world that we don’t seem to care about. Even further, Viktor Orban in Hungary was transitioning the country to an oppressive authoritarian system and we supported him. Is it because Cuba is in our Western hemisphere? So is Peru where President Bukele is leading a harsh authoritarian rule, but we’re making deals with him to take the immigration rejects (to put it in terms that fit Trump’s attitude) that Trump wants to get rid of. 

And much of what the Cuban people suffer is simple poverty which the U.S. has played a big role in creating. We’ve had embargoes of varying degrees imposed on them since 1960, and of course much worse now since Trump has almost cut off their ability to import oil.