** Update: The House has passed the Farm Bill which consolidates power, weakens states’ rights, and accelerates the decline of our farms, our food system, and our land. The removal of the liability shield was hard fought and important, but it does not redeem a bill that remains structurally harmful at every level. The Senate must reject this bill and stand for farmers, for states, and for the future of America. - Elizabeth Kucinich

Members of Congress must vote NO on this unconstitutional Farm Bill.

Despite today’s vote to remove the chemical liability shield, the Farm Bill currently under consideration in the House remains a devastating failure of policy and responsibility.

This is a moment for caution, not celebration. If we signal victory now, before the full House vote, we risk sending exactly the wrong message to America, that this bill is now safe to support. It is not.

This Farm Bill still erodes states’ rights, limits the ability of communities to protect their citizens, entrenches industrial agriculture, and locks farmers further into dependence on costly chemical inputs and consolidated corporate power.

This bill represents massive federal overreach, overriding constitutionally established protections and preventing states from improving standards beyond federal baselines across agriculture, from pesticide use and spray protocols to animal welfare. It replaces a system in which federal law sets a floor with one that imposes a ceiling, locking in the lowest standards nationwide, stripping states of their authority, and opening the door to the destruction of the very land we call America.

It opens the door to unbridled decimation of our forests and weakens the authority of states and communities to steward their land, water, and public health.

It leaves more than 40 million Americans at risk of food insecurity through cuts to SNAP, while directing support into a system that does not feed people well, but instead entrenches dependence on industrial inputs and centralized control.

It fails to provide any systemic support to forestall the growing farm bankruptcy crisis, offering no meaningful pathway to stabilize farmers as rising input costs, mounting debt, and volatile markets push more operations to the brink, including a major push to support transition to agricultural systems that reduce reliance on costly external inputs, such as regenerative organic practices.

It reinforces a model of extreme confinement that condemns billions of animals to lives of relentless suffering, and it doubles down on a system driven by toxic chemical dependency and monopoly power that is pushing independent farmers off the land and degrading the very soil our future depends upon.

We acknowledge and are grateful for the bipartisan leadership that secured removal of the chemical liability shield from the proposed text. Rep. Luna (R-FL) advanced the amendment with clarity and courage, and Rep. McGovern (D-MA) pressed the issue in the Rules Committee with tenacity to ensure it was fully considered and brought to the floor for a vote. The food movement elevated this issue, but it is only one of many disastrous provisions in this bill.

The vote is imminent. The House must vote NO!

Share

People vs. Poison Rally
Monday, April 27, 2026, from 9am outside the Supreme Court
Register to attend or watch online: https://thepeoplevspoison.org

For background on the broader topics discussed in this article, watch my documentaries: GMO OMG, reveals the rise of glyphosate based agriculture, Organic Rising, examines organic agriculture and its implications for human and environmental health, and Circle of Poison, documents how chemicals banned or restricted in the U.S. are still produced, exported, and return through imported food.

__

On April 27, Washington will become the stage for a rare convergence of power, people, and principle.

In a striking coincidence, King Charles III, arguably the world’s most prominent advocate for regenerative organic agriculture and ambassador for nature, is scheduled to arrive in Washington, DC. His decades of leadership in this field stand as a defining example of principled stewardship, and place him among those I hold in the highest regard.

On that same day, inside the United States Supreme Court, justices will hear oral arguments in Monsanto Company v. Durnell, a case I recently examined in A Poisoned Politics Poisons People: All Three Branches Move to Shield Bayer/Monsanto from Liability Amid One of the Largest Cancer Litigations in American History. Outside the Court, citizens from across the country will gather for the People vs. Poison rally. Dennis and I will be speaking alongside a powerful lineup of advocates standing for life, health, and accountability.

If Bayer and Monsanto prevail, hundreds of thousands of current and future claims could be extinguished. One of the largest cancer litigations in American history would be effectively shut down. A regulatory determination would become a legal shield, and the absence of a warning label would function not as evidence of safety, but as a barrier to justice.

Three events. One place. One day. A convergence that reveals, with unusual clarity, the forces shaping food, law, and human health.

This moment did not emerge in isolation. The last major national push for transparency in our food system centered on GMO labeling, a movement that brought millions of Americans into a shared demand for the basic right to know what is in their food. In that same period, in 2011, King Charles, then Prince of Wales, came to Washington and delivered a clear message: our capital ultimately depends upon the health of Nature’s capital. He called for a fundamental reordering of our relationship with land, food, and the living systems that sustain us.

More than a decade later, that same fault line has returned, now before the Court. What began as a call for transparency has evolved into a test of accountability. The question now reaches beyond what the public is allowed to see. It asks whether those who are harmed have a right to justice.

At the center of this case is a narrow but deeply consequential legal question: whether federal pesticide law under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act blocks a state level failure to warn claim when the Environmental Protection Agency has not required a cancer warning on the product label. The Court has deliberately limited its review to this precise issue, making this a focused test of who holds authority over truth and accountability in the marketplace.

In practical terms, this is a case about labels. Labels are where science, law, and public health converge. Control the label, and one shapes what the public is told, what risks are acknowledged, and whether those harmed have a path to justice..

At a time when the language of “No Kings” echoes across American discourse, a British king arrives carrying a message that stands in profound contrast to the systems now being defended at the highest levels of American government.

For decades, King Charles has spoken of harmony as the foundation of a functioning civilization. He has advanced life sustaining models of agriculture, architecture, community and economy.

Long before soil degradation, biodiversity collapse, and chemical dependency entered mainstream awareness, King Charles warned that a society which erodes the living systems that sustain it undermines its own future. He has worked courageously to advance alternatives rooted in restoration including organic agricultural production.

During the height of the last major food battle, that one over GMO labeling, fifteen years ago on May 4, 2011, standing in Washington at Georgetown University, he delivered a speech on the Future of Food that now reads as both warning and diagnosis.

Watch:

Transcript: https://cookingupastory.com/prince-of-wales-speech-on-the-future-of-food/

He spoke plainly about the system we have built. “Most forms of industrialized agriculture now have an umbilical dependency on oil, chemical pesticides, and artificial fertilizers.”

He named the distortion at its core. “The cost of that damage is not factored into the price of food production. The primary polluter is not charged. Doing the right thing is penalized.”

And he grounded the entire system in a truth we have chosen to ignore. “Our capital ultimately depends upon the health of Nature’s capital.” These were not philosophical reflections. They were a warning.

Now, fifteen years later, that warning stands before the Supreme Court on the day he returns to DC.

The case is being presented as a technical question of federal law. It is not. It is a test of whether the public retains the right to hold power accountable.

At issue is whether Bayer can be sued for failing to warn about cancer risks associated with glyphosate, or whether approval of a pesticide label by the Environmental Protection Agency closes the door to those claims entirely.

At the center of this case is a reality that must be named clearly - regulatory capture.

The Environmental Protection Agency has determined (stated not proven) that glyphosate is not carcinogenic and has approved product labels that carry no cancer warning. At the same time, juries across the United States have heard extensive evidence and found in favor of plaintiffs who allege that exposure to glyphosate-based herbicides contributed to their cancer. More than 100,000 claims have been filed. Billions of dollars have already been paid in settlements and verdicts.

This is a direct collision between regulatory determinations and lived reality.

Regulatory capture does not require overt corruption. It emerges through reliance on industry data, institutional pressure, and the normalization of assumptions that favor continuity over disruption. Over time, the system begins to reflect the priorities of the regulated industry itself.

If that system is treated as final and unchallengeable, then regulatory approval becomes a shield. The absence of a warning label does not resolve the question of risk. It determines whether that question can be heard in a court of law at all.

We have seen this pattern before. Tobacco was sold for decades under assurances of safety while evidence of harm accumulated. Regulatory systems failed to act until litigation and public pressure forced the truth into the open.

Years ago, scientists who raised concerns about chemical intensive agriculture were discredited and marginalized. In GMO OMG, a documentary a documentary I co produced, filmmaker Jeremy Seifert journeys around the world to examine how genetically engineered crops designed to withstand direct spraying of glyphosate have reshaped agriculture, intensified chemical dependence, and increased direct human exposure to the chemical. The film explores the case of Gilles-Éric Séralini, whose research on glyphosate triggered global controversy and revealed how dissenting science is handled when it challenges entrenched systems. Those questions have not gone away. They have intensified.

While this Supreme Court case is about truth in labeling, the Administration continues to deregulate additional herbicides, and genetically engineered seeds are now designed to withstand not only glyphosate, but also Dicamba and 2,4 D, a component of Agent Orange. This stacking of resistance traits allows multiple poisons to be applied across the same fields, reinforcing a system of layered chemical dependence rather than reducing it.

2,4 D has been associated with markers of DNA damage and oxidative stress, raising ongoing questions about genetic and long term health effects, particularly under conditions of repeated exposure. The legacy of Agent Orange, as experienced by Vietnam veterans and their families, offers a sobering reference point in understanding how chemical exposure can carry consequences across generations.

At the same time, exposure to Dicamba has been associated with acute health effects, and its well documented tendency to drift has expanded exposure beyond fields into surrounding communities.

Research on Atrazine has shown endocrine disrupting effects in amphibians, including the feminization of male frogs under certain exposure conditions, in which genetically male frogs develop female characteristics, and in some cases functional female reproductive organs, a finding associated with the work of Tyrone Hayes. Atrazine has been banned in the European Union due to concerns over water contamination and environmental and human health risks, yet it continues to be widely used in the United States.

These, plus many more, biologically active cocktails of poisons, are deployed at scale across the landscape, interacting with living systems in ways that are not fully understood. This trajectory reflects a system that expands chemical reliance even as evidence of harm continues to surface.

The current legal battle does not stand alone. The Administration and a Republican controlled Congress are advancing liability protections for chemical manufacturers, reinforcing the very shield now being tested in the courts. At the same time, the “EATS Act” architecture seeks to prevent states and municipalities from setting stronger standards than federal law, meaning that local governments could be blocked from establishing safety buffers around schools and homes where pesticides are sprayed. States could lose the ability to respond to emerging science or protect their citizens based on local conditions.

This is the consolidation of power: Close the courts. Preempt the states. Centralize authority. Remove the mechanisms by which people can defend themselves.

All of this converges in Monsanto Company v. Durnell. The question before the Court is framed narrowly, whether federal pesticide law blocks a state level failure to warn claim when the Environmental Protection Agency has not required a cancer warning on the label. In practice, the implications are far broader. If the absence of a warning becomes a shield against accountability, then the system that has allowed these exposures to expand will be insulated from challenge at the very moment scrutiny is most needed.

In the film Organic Rising, we examine how this system of chemical dependence has taken hold across our food system, and point toward organic and regenerative agriculture as a path that restores the integrity of land, food, and human health.

Food, by its very nature, should sustain life. It should nourish, protect, and strengthen the body. Yet what we are confronting is a system in which that fundamental truth has been inverted. Glyphosate is not the whole story. It is the most visible expression of a much larger reality. Even if it were removed tomorrow, it would be replaced by other chemicals already being deployed across our fields, many of which carry their own risks and unknown long term consequences. This is not a single product problem. It is a system built on chemical dependency, where the burden of risk is carried by people, by communities, and by the land itself.

This is why the path forward must be clear. No matter your understanding of the terms pro and life, we must move away from systems of poison, destruction and death and towards Pro Life Agriculture, a system of food and farming that is rooted in the protection and regeneration of life. This means supporting farmers in transitioning to practices that build soil, eliminate toxic inputs, protect animal welfare, and restore the integrity of our food supply. It means aligning policy, markets, and public investment with systems that sustain life rather than degrade it.

At the same time, while our nation wages illegal war abroad, raising profound moral and human questions, there is a quieter yet equally vast battleground here at home.

Fought in the name of human security and agricultural global dominance, it is a battle being waged against our health, against our farmers, against our food supply. It is being waged against the land beneath our feet and our children’s futures through the daily exposure carried into our bodies without our full knowledge or consent.

On Monday, April 27, that reality comes into sharp focus. The battle is being argued and fought both inside and outside on the steps of the Supreme Court.

The deeper concern is whether the systems of government charged with protecting the public and upholding the law are instead shaping outcomes that leave people more exposed and the legal process further corrupted.

A president, vested with democratic authority, advances systems that consolidate power and defend chemical dependency. A king, often dismissed as symbolic, has spent decades calling for stewardship, balance, and the restoration of living systems.

The irony reveals something essential. Leadership is not defined by title. It is defined by what one serves. One model shields itself from consequence. One calls us back into responsibility. One extracts. One restores.

Democracy is only a democracy when the people rise and lead.

Where will you lead our future?

____

Reminder - watch these award winning documentaries:

GMO OMG: Filmmaker Jeremy Seifert journeys to Haiti, Paris, Norway, and even inside the world of Monsanto in search of answers about genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and how they affect our children, the health of our planet, and our freedom of choice. The film examines the rise of genetically engineered crops designed to withstand heavy spraying of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup. These “Roundup Ready” seeds allow fields to be sprayed directly, driving widespread herbicide use and raising urgent questions about ecological impact, human health, and long term dependence on chemical agriculture.

Organic Rising is the first feature-length film to demystify organic agriculture for the consumer. Initially, the documentary presents the two predominant U.S. agrarian practices, conventional and organic, and how they impact human health and the planet. It simultaneously demystifies the USDA organic regulatory process and farming methods allowing consumers to make informed choices and explore avenues of supporting and maintaining a strong and robust agricultural future.

Circle of Poison, which explores how chemicals banned or restricted in the United States are produced for export and used worldwide, extending their reach and risks beyond national borders, with pathways back through imported food and the interconnected global environment.

Drawing on decades of experience in Congress and his consistent opposition to U.S. military interventions, Kucinich situates the current conflict within a longer historical arc of American foreign policy defined by overreach, deception, and mounting human and economic cost.

At the heart of his analysis is a simple but urgent truth: This is a war of choice, not necessity. Kucinich argues that the conflict does not arise from core American interests, but rather from external pressures, geopolitical entanglements, and the enduring influence of allied political forces, particularly those aligned with Benjamin Netanyahu. He describes a dynamic in which U.S. policy is shaped less by national interest and more by political leverage, lobbying power, and strategic manipulation.

A Familiar Pattern: From Vietnam to Iraq to Iran

Kucinich draws direct parallels between the current moment and past wars, particularly Vietnam and Iraq. He recalls how the United States entered those conflicts without fully understanding the consequences, only to become trapped in prolonged, costly engagements that failed to achieve their stated aims. The language of “quagmire” and “credibility gap,” once associated with Vietnam, is now resurfacing, signaling a repetition of history rather than a departure from it.

The Iraq War, which Kucinich led the opposition to while in Congress, serves as a particularly stark warning. Built on false premises and sustained by political inertia, it cost trillions of dollars and countless lives. He suggests that the rationale for confronting Iran, including renewed fears around weapons programs, echoes those earlier justifications, raising serious concerns about truth, accountability, and intent.

The Economic Breaking Point

Beyond the battlefield, the conversation turns to the profound economic implications of war. The United States now carries a staggering national debt, estimated at $38 trillion, with roughly $1 trillion annually required just to service that debt. Against this backdrop, the prospect of an additional $200 billion war appropriation, alongside a proposed $1.5 trillion military budget, signals a dangerous escalation.

Kucinich is unequivocal: The United States is becoming a militarized economy. Public spending is increasingly diverted toward defense and war-making, while essential domestic programs such as healthcare, childcare, and social support systems are deprioritized. This shift, he argues, is not sustainable. It places immense strain on ordinary Americans, who are already grappling with rising inflation, increasing fuel costs, and higher food prices.

He also highlights the global ripple effects. Disruptions to oil supply, fertilizer availability, and critical materials like helium are already impacting agriculture, technology, and supply chains. Family farms, already under pressure from market consolidation and lack of access to capital, face even greater instability in this environment.

The Myth of War as Economic Engine

A central theme of the discussion is the persistent myth that war stimulates economic growth. Kucinich dismantles this idea, noting that modern warfare is no longer labor-intensive. Unlike the industrial mobilization of World War II, today’s military economy is driven by advanced technology and capital investment, not widespread job creation.

The result is a concentration of wealth and resources within the military-industrial sector, with fewer benefits for the broader population. War, in this context, becomes a drain on productive economic activity rather than a catalyst for it. It weakens civilian industries, reduces living standards, and accelerates structural decline.

Silencing Dissent and the Rise of Public Resistance

One of the more striking observations in the conversation is the relative absence of large-scale public protest against the war, especially when compared to the Iraq era. Kucinich points to a growing suppression of dissent, particularly on university campuses, where criticism of U.S. foreign policy can carry significant personal and professional consequences.

Yet beneath the surface, he sees signs of awakening. Recent nationwide protests, involving millions of Americans, reflect a broader unease with the direction of the country. Economic hardship, combined with concerns about authoritarian governance, is beginning to galvanize public opposition. Kucinich believes this latent dissent will continue to grow, potentially reshaping the political landscape in upcoming elections.

A Changing World Order

The conversation also situates the conflict within a shifting global context. The United States, Kucinich argues, is operating under the illusion of a unipolar world, even as new alliances and economic blocs emerge. The expansion of BRICS nations and the move by countries like Iran to conduct trade outside the U.S. dollar signal a gradual erosion of American economic dominance.

This transition has profound implications. As global power becomes more distributed, the costs of unilateral military action increase, and the ability of the United States to sustain its economic model comes into question. The war in Iran, rather than reinforcing American leadership, may accelerate its relative decline.

A Moral Reckoning

Perhaps the most powerful dimension of Kucinich’s message is moral. He speaks with visible anguish about the human cost of war, particularly the deaths of civilians, including children. These are not abstract statistics but lived realities that demand accountability.

He challenges the fundamental purpose of American governance, asking whether it has drifted from its founding principles into something unrecognizable. The pursuit of power, resources, and geopolitical dominance, he argues, has come at the expense of ethics, compassion, and the well-being of both Americans and people around the world.

A Choice Before the Nation

The conversation closes with a stark but hopeful proposition. The trajectory of the United States is not fixed. Change is possible, but only if the American people demand it. Kucinich calls for a reorientation of national priorities, away from endless war and toward care for domestic needs, international cooperation, and a renewed commitment to peace.

He envisions a United States that is no longer a nation above others, but a nation among them, grounded in mutual respect and shared humanity.

The question that remains is whether the country will heed this call, or continue down a path that history has already shown leads to decline.

Tomorrow, I will join constitutional scholars in Congress to present the case for the impeachment and removal of the President, a responsibility I have taken up before in defense of the Constitution.

Since that meeting was announced, Donald Trump has stated that if Iran does not accede to his demands, “a whole civilization will die,” at his direction and instance.

This statement alone underscores the unprecedented urgency of Congress returning to full session immediately to consider an impeachment resolution and begin the process of removing the President from office.

Victor Davis Hanson, in his book The End of Everything: How Wars Descend into Annihilation, offers a sweeping historical account of how civilizations collapse through war driven by human passion. In a 2024 review in Law & Liberty, Graham McAleer writes: “The historical record shows, Hanson argues, that no matter how sophisticated a great power is, there is always the risk of annihilation when a strategy relies on hope, stokes vengeance, overstates prowess, and displays arrogance.” We must ask plainly: Are we checking those boxes now?

The President cannot commit cultural homicide against Iran without committing cultural suicide on behalf of so-called Western civilization, changing forever how America and Americans are seen across the world. We are not immune from the consequences of this misuse of power. This path risks both the end of Iran, and the end of America as we know it. It propels the world to war.

The President must be brought to account for his threat to unlawfully unleash violence, or every American will be stained by actions already taken. Thousands of innocent Iranian civilians have been killed, including 180 children in the February 28 missile strike on an elementary school in Minab, Iran.

The destruction of Persian civilization is already underway. The President and his Secretary of War have usurped unto themselves the authority to direct assassinations of educators, philosophers, and scientists, and to order the bombing of universities, hospitals, and mosques. We have seen this pattern before in the pulverization of Gaza and Lebanon. Now it extends to Iran. World treasures of antiquity are being destroyed.

A President associated with the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, rooted in the exploitation of children, now presides over the killing of children abroad. This is a gigantic moral collapse.

The President has repeatedly threatened that this evening, at 8 p.m. Eastern, 3 a.m. Tehran time, he will misuse the power of his office to attempt the destruction of a civilization, through means that could surpass even the devastation inflicted upon the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

If such a plan proceeds, the consequences will not be confined to Iran. The unleashing of destruction upon countless millions of innocent people will reverberate across the world and across generations.

We now find ourselves watching the clock, 8 p.m. Eastern, 7 p.m. Central, 6 p.m. Mountain, 5 p.m. Pacific, as if counting down to a new year. But this is not a celebration. It is a doomsday clock, driven by one man’s will.

No matter what happens tonight, Congress must act. The President must be impeached and removed from office, for the sake of our nation and for the sake of the world. Silence is complicity.

Former Congressman Kucinich, who filed articles of impeachment against President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard Cheney for manipulating intelligence on Iraq, deceiving the public into war, violating international law, warrantless surveillance, and abuse of executive power, calls upon Congress to uphold its duty and oath of office to the Constitution of the United States in response to actions taken by the Trump administration.

WASHINGTON, April 6, 2026 — Dennis J. Kucinich, who served as a Member of Congress from 1997 to 2013 and led efforts to avoid, avert, and ultimately end the war against Iraq, will present the constitutional case for the impeachment and removal from office of Donald J. Trump at a national legal symposium.

Members of Congress take an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” to “bear true faith and allegiance to the same,” and to “well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office.” That oath establishes a clear duty for Congress to act when constitutional boundaries are crossed.

President Donald J. Trump was elected on a promise to end forever wars and steward the nation’s resources. He has moved to escalation of war, including strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites, actions that are intensifying instability across the region and drawing the world closer to a wider war.

Recent public statements by President Donald J. Trump further underscore the urgency of this moment. In a public post, he threatened large scale attacks on Iranian power plants and bridges, infrastructure essential to civilian life. Legal experts have warned that such actions, if carried out without clear military necessity, may constitute war crimes under international law. These threats raise serious constitutional and legal questions that require immediate scrutiny by Congress.

The upholding of the Constitution, the stewardship of the nation’s resources, and the protection of national security extend across the political spectrum. This is not a partisan matter. It is about maintaining the stability of the country. The national debt is rising, inflationary pressures are building, and further escalation risks deep economic disruption at a moment when resilience is essential.

“As someone who has challenged, in federal court, the unconstitutional actions of three presidents, two Democrats (Bill Clinton, Barack Obama) and one Republican (George W. Bush), I recognize the urgency of the moment to hold accountable this president for usurping the Constitution and for violations of U.S. laws and treaties,” Kucinich said. “This is not about whether you love President Trump, but whether you love the Constitution more.”

“I took no pleasure in filing Articles of Impeachment against President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard Cheney, but both violated their oaths of office ‘to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.’ Present Members of Congress have a solemn obligation in this regard,” the eight-term congressman said.

“Our President is promising an escalation of an illegal regional war resulting in the deaths of thousands of innocent people in Iran and other countries, and the deaths of American soldiers. He is taking the United States to the brink of WW III, and yet he has absolutely no legal authority to do so,” Kucinich said. “This is not academic. It becomes a question of whether the Constitution and the Republic will survive.”

__

For media inquiries, please contact:

Trevor Fitzgibbon
Trevor FG, Silent | Partner | Inc.
704-775-0487
TrevorFG@protonmail.me

Former Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich (1997 to 2013) challenged three administrations, Clinton (Serbia), Bush (Iraq), and Obama (Libya), over unauthorized military action under the War Powers Resolution, led Congressional opposition to the Iraq War, and delivered 155 speeches in Congress warning against war with Iran.

“The President's address to the nation was a tone-deaf sale pitch for more war, delivered on the first night of Passover.

Civilian and military casualties are mounting across the region. Lives are being extinguished while triumphalist and violent rhetoric is offered as justification. War is being escalated in the name of peace, a contradiction that demands moral clarity, not political acceptance.

Each life lost carries equal value. No nation’s suffering is expendable. No people exist as collateral.

Iran is not an abstraction, nor just a target on a map. It is one of the great cradles of civilization, a society whose cultural and intellectual contributions long predate the rise of the modern West. To speak casually of bombing such a nation ‘back to the Stone Age’ reveals a colonial mindset that dehumanizes others and diminishes our own humanity in the process.

The extensive bombing of Iran by the United States and Israel, along with Iran’s counterstrikes, is already taking innocent lives. The global economy is destabilizing as a result.

Energy markets are being disrupted. Oil and gas production is constrained. Fertilizer supply chains are impaired. Critical materials are being cut off.

These consequences will be felt worldwide. Yet the deeper crisis is not economic, it is moral.

We have seen this before. The repeated invocation of a nuclear threat echoes the false claims of ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ used to justify the invasion of Iraq. That war cost thousands of American lives, the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and trillions of dollars, while leaving a legacy of instability and grief that endures to this day.

If the President truly sought to prevent a nuclear Iran, he would not have abandoned the JCPOA, an agreement that placed verifiable limits on Iran’s nuclear program. Instead, we are presented with a cycle of escalation that defies logic and invites catastrophe.

Political rhetoric is becoming increasingly radical and dangerous. This is not a question of partisan politics. It is a question of conscience with very real global and domestic consequences.

The American people are not called to accept this. They are called to stand against it.

Members of Congress must have the courage to exercise their constitutional authority and rein this in.

War framed as strength is destruction. Violence presented as necessity is gratuitous violence, with consequences already accelerating destabilizing shifts in the global order.

Congress must act. The Constitution vests in Congress the authority to bring this, and any war, to an end through the power of the purse.

The American people must immediately contact their representatives and demand a NO vote on any supplemental funding that would continue this war. Congress must VOTE NO.”

__

For media inquiries, please contact:

Trevor Fitzgibbon
Trevor FG, Silent | Partner | Inc.
704-775-0487
TrevorFG@protonmail.me

Subscribe now

Share

(Included at the end of this article is a simple guide to lobbying your Members of Congress including contact info and a basic script. - Please contact them today!)

Up to 15,000 of the 50,000 American troops in the Middle East region are being positioned to participate in an assault on Kharg Island, Iran’s critical oil export hub, with the aspiration that America, once in control of Kharg, will turn the tables and assume dominance, opening the Strait of Hormuz for the U.S. and allies, while cutting off Iran from its major source of oil revenue.

Marines and paratroopers, with air and naval support, are poised to invade Kharg’s heavily defended 25-mile coast which features rocky terrain, cliffs and in some places, flat limestone surfaces, each presenting its own strategic calculus and hazards. Special Operations may be tasked with the mission of capturing Iran’s enriched uranium, an equally perilous task.

The U.S. cannot invade and/or hold Kharg Island without taking heavy casualties. Iran has been preparing more than 20 years for an assault on the island and U.S. troops could face potential annihilation with counter-attack coming from all directions, air, land and sea, giving new meaning to Kharg Island’s nickname, ‘The Forbidden Island.’

Our political leaders and their military advisors, unless they have been so infected with the virus of war that they have gone mad, must know our troops are facing slaughter.

Subscribe now

We could be witnessing the tragic unfolding of a 21^st century version of Custer’s Last Stand, where, at the Battle of Little Big Horn in June of 1876, General George Custer and 215 troops in his command were killed, thoroughly routed by the spiritual and strategic wisdom of native Indian leaders, Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse and their followers.

Custer’s troops had been sent by the U.S. government to reclaim Dakota Sioux land in the Black Hills after the discovery of gold in 1874.

Hubris is not limited to time and space. Underestimation of the strength of the opposition, an aggressive battle doctrine which ignored risk to life, overconfidence and cultural bias were operative at Little Big Horn and are abundantly present today among the Trump Administration’s advisors.

There should be no ground invasion of Kharg or other Iranian islands. There should be no further bombing runs or missile attacks on Iran. It is time to de-escalate, and quickly, to avoid further loss of life, and the world-wide collapse of food, fertilizer, fuel and other basic necessities.

I am not new to the hazards of malignant U.S. foreign policy. As a Member of Congress, I led the effort against the Iraq. War. Over several years, I made 155 speeches in the House of Representatives, specifically cautioning against an attack on Iran, and urging diplomacy.

President Trump has fumbled for explanations for this war. It was for Israel, for regime change, to get rid of enriched uranium, to get rid of Iran’s missiles, and yesterday, according to the Financial Times, the naked reason is blood for oil.

Quoting the President: “to be honest with you, my favorite thing is to take the oil in Iran, but some stupid people back in the U.S. say: ‘Why are you doing that?’ But they’re stupid people.”

Donald Trump meet Forrest Gump: “Stupid is as stupid does.” (Like cancelling the JCPOA nuclear agreement with Iran in 2018 and then complaining the Iranians are not abiding by it, or killing Iran’s chief negotiator, Ali Larijani , and then grousing there is no one with whom to negotiate).

In the alternative, perhaps the President and his cronies having recently seized control of $150 billion of oil in Venezuela, are criminal masterminds, using the U.S. military as enforcers for private gain.

The President explained his ‘Rule of (liquid) Gold to the New York Times: “We’re going to be using oil, and we’re going to be taking (Venezuela’s) oil.”

Favored Administration insiders make billions through stock manipulations, with advance knowledge of president’s market-pacing blurbs, underscoring war as a gigantic grift.

During my service as a member of Congress, I challenged bipartisan knavery and duplicity.

I sued three Presidents for violating the Constitution’s war powers, Democrat and Republican alike: Bill Clinton over Serbia, George W. Bush over Iraq, and Barack Obama over Libya.

I presented Articles of Impeachment charging both President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney with violations of the Constitution. I did so as both parties repeatedly enabled war, not only through the vainglorious, corrupt actions of the Executive branch, but through Congressional nonfeasance.

Congress has failed to exercise its fundamental Constitutional responsibilities relating to the War Power, as well as abandoned its preeminent role to curtail war through using the appropriations process.

Here is what I have witnessed as a Member of Congress: The Democratic Party, aware of the public’s fatigue over the war in Iraq, ran its 2006 campaign on a promise to end that war. The second the Democrats returned to power, leaders pledged to continue to fund the war, the very war they promised to end.

The bait and switch of the Democratic Party in the 2006 campaign, promising peace and delivering war, led me to run for president a second time, on a platform of Strength through Peace.

In 2024, Donald Trump promised peace. It was the cornerstone of his campaign. He excited a crossover vote, won the election and he, too, gave us the opposite, under the slogan “Peace through Strength,” followed by heavy military spending and imperial policies which either provoke or initiate war.

If you want to see this war brought to an end, remember this: An appropriations vote is a vote for war. If your congressional representative votes for the “National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), they vote for war. This is not about disarming. It is about Congress deciding, on our behalf, limitations on aggression. If Congress votes for a supplemental appropriation to replenish missile stocks, and other armaments, they vote for war.

The power of the purse is the surest means by which Congress can stop the Iran war, or any war. If Congress funds war, Congress authorizes it. If Congress cuts off funds, this war will be brought to an end.

The Democratic leader of the House, Hakeem Jeffries, has kept open the possibility of support for an additional $200 billion for the Iran War. This in advance of the 2027 annual war appropriation which the president has doubled, requesting $1.5 trillion, (about 80% of current discretionary spending).

The use of the power of the purse is the only means by which Congress can stop this war.

Members of Congress supporting a ground attack on Iran have failed to fulfill one of the most important Constitutional responsibilities: Only Congress can legally take the American people from peace to a state of war and put America’s sons and daughters in harm’s way. Since Congress will not formally vote on a declaration of war, it enables war to be pursued through appropriations.

The economic costs of war against Iran, already approaching $40 billion, pale in consideration to the moral costs. The murder of 168 girls by a U.S. Tomahawk missile which struck the Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school, in Minab, Iran on February 28^th, will forever be a blot on our nation’s conscience.

The assassination of the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s chief of state and religious leader as horrifying as it was illegal. The ongoing loss of thousands of Iranian civilian lives due to U.S. and Israeli bombing similarly violates international law, as well as the U.S.’ own laws and cries out for justice. And we must never forget the price which American military families have already paid in loss of life or injury to their loved ones.

The wanton devastation our own government inflicts upon others in distant lands, our detachment from the carnage visited upon innocent people abroad, will return home in more coffins, more fractured families and pile misery upon misery in other, incalculable ways.

We cannot escape the consequences of the wrongful decisions of our leaders who disregard the U.S. Constitution, violate international and humanitarian law and capriciously kill civilians in other nations, ultimately placing American lives, both military and civilian, at risk.

The Iran war is, much like the attacks against the people of Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, a crime against humanity, compounded by every bomb and missile strike paid for with our tax dollars. President Trump’s repeated threats to obliterate civilian Iranian energy and water infrastructure are textbook war crimes.

Share

Throughout my career I had no hesitation to challenge the unconstitutional abuse of the war power. Federal courts have consistently declined to intervene in disputes between Congress and the President over war powers. An appropriations vote is the prime political mechanism to start, continue, or to end a war. A “Yes” vote for a Pentagon appropriation is a vote for war. Period.

Exercising the power of the purse, voting “No” on appropriations which enable war, is the only means by which Congress can stop this war and any other war. If Congress funds war, Congress authorizes war.

Congress also has the War Powers Resolution, which can set a deadline for ending hostilities. Recently, Democratic leadership declined to force a War Powers vote, even as there was bipartisan support.

Ultimately, the financial support for war is not about Democrat versus Republican. Both parties have been captured by foreign and domestic interests that profit from endless war.

Our present leaders will continue search for false justification was the Iran war, seeking to justify the unjustifiable profligate arms spending. The cost of the Iran War will felt across the country, at the gas pump, and at the supermarket, while our government quibbles over feeding Americans through the SNAP program, as our farmers are go bankrupt. Is there any clearer demonstration that America has lost its way when its way is war?

A nation weakens itself, not through a single decision, but through a pattern of choices that place wars of choice above the well-being of its own people.

We the People also face a choice. Continued militarization of the budget brings militarization of thought, word and deed, precipitating more conflict, more wars and fewer resources for the needs of the American people, for jobs, wages, health care, education, and retirement security.

It is time for America to come home from the wars.

The midterm elections are approaching. Democrats and Republicans alike must be held accountable.

You, dear reader, have a voice, and it must be heard. Tell your member of Congress, clearly and without ambiguity, that spending more money for war is not acceptable.

It is time for a new path, and that path begins with you.

Get involved in the elections. Show up. Organize. Support candidates who respect the Constitution, who understand the cost of war, and who will not vote to fund war.

Help ensure that those candidates who stand up for the Constitution and who believe in diplomacy and peace are the ones who prevail.

Only an active citizenry can change the outcome. A constitutional republic endures only when its citizens remain vigilant.

That responsibility now rests with you. With us. With We the People.

Find your Member of Congress and both your Senators:

House: https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative

Senate: https://www.senate.gov/general/resources/pdf/senators_phone_list.pdf

Call their office directly (websites are linked from the directory above) or phone the Capitol Switchboard and politely ask to be transferred: 1 (202) 224-3121

Ask for your representative’s office. Politely speak to staff. They are usually very young so be nice to them. They are likely as intimidated as you may feel if this is your first time to lobby like this.

Say something like, “My name is XXX. I am a constituent and a primary voter. Please ensure that our representative votes NO on any WAR APPROPRIATIONS BILL.”

Please also write to your representatives. Contact makes a difference. You can also go to their District or DC offices in person. Schedule ahead of time if you want to have an official meeting. Bring your friends, family and community with you! Your engagement makes a difference.

Be respectful, polite and confident in what you are asking for.

Healthy soil, water, and ecosystems are the foundation of human life. The health of creation gives rise to the health of life.

Powerful outside interests are using America’s treasury and public policy to advance profit-driven agendas while the health, land, and future of the American people bear the cost.

The same public purse that finances war abroad is now underwriting policies that poison the land at home.

Political energy that should be confronting this system is instead being redirected into advertising, messaging, and branding, while the real decisions are made through law, regulation, and votes.

While the long planned objectives of a foreign country drew America’s Department of War, the Department of State and the U.S. taxpayer’s purse into an expanding conflict across the Middle East, a foreign corporation, Bayer/Monsanto suddenly blasted onto the policy scene.

In the span of three weeks, the Executive Branch, the Judicial Branch, and the Legislative Branch each took major actions to shield the German corporation, Bayer/Monsanto, from liability as it stands at the center of one of the largest mass injury litigations in American history.

First, President Donald Trump issued an executive order invoking the Defense Production Act to secure the domestic supply of glyphosate-based herbicides and elemental phosphorus, a key industrial input used in the manufacture of agrochemicals and certain weapons systems. Bayer is currently the only domestic producer of elemental phosphorus in the United States.

Second, the Department of Justice filed an amicus brief in the United States Supreme Court supporting Bayer in Monsanto Company v. Durnell, a case addressing whether federal pesticide law preempts state law, placing at risk claims brought by citizens harmed by glyphosate-based herbicides.

Bayer traces its corporate lineage to IG Farben, the German chemical conglomerate that built facilities at Auschwitz and conducted pharmaceutical experiments on concentration camp prisoners. After the Nuremberg trials, IG Farben was dismantled and Bayer emerged as one of the companies created from its breakup. In 2018 Bayer acquired Monsanto, producer of the glyphosate herbicide Roundup.

In June 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court asked the Solicitor General to provide the federal government’s view on whether it should hear Monsanto Company v. Durnell. The Justice Department responded by supporting Bayer’s argument that federal pesticide law should preempt state law claims that companies failed to warn citizens about the risks of their products.

In January 2026 the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. The decision now before the Court could determine whether tens of thousands of cancer victims’ claims against Bayer/Monsanto survive or disappear.

The Supreme Court receives roughly 7,000 to 8,000 petitions each year and typically agrees to hear fewer than one percent of the cases. Four Supreme Court Justices must agree to grant review and place a case on the national docket.

The Roundup litigation had already moved through a lengthy legal process. Juries examined evidence. Appellate courts reviewed the verdicts. Injured citizens were exercising a long recognized right to seek redress through state tort law.

Yet, four Justices chose for the nation’s highest court to take up the question at the very moment when tens of thousands of claims against Bayer remain pending.

If the Court ultimately adopts Bayer’s argument, the ruling could eliminate thousands of existing Roundup cancer lawsuits and close the courthouse doors to hundreds of thousands of potential future claims. Glyphosate is the most widely used herbicide in the United States, meaning the legal precedent would extend far beyond the cases already filed and would shape the rights of Americans exposed to the chemical glyphosate, as well as other toxic chemicals, for decades to come.

Citizens possess the right to bring claims when they believe a company’s product caused them harm. That right is the foundation of American tort law. Juries examine evidence, determine liability, and hold companies accountable when their products cause injury.

Bayer’s legal strategy seeks to replace that system with federal preemption. If the Environmental Protection Agency approved the label, the company argues, injured citizens should lose the right to sue for failure to warn, even when juries find evidence of harm. If that theory prevails, the courthouse doors close not because a jury rejected the evidence, but because federal regulatory approval becomes a legal shield against accountability.

The Court’s decision to hear the case could set the stage for a significant narrowing of citizens’ ability to seek redress through state tort law, raising profound questions about due process under the Fourteenth Amendment. In this respect, the stakes echo the Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which dramatically expanded the political spending rights of corporations under the First Amendment and reshaped the balance of power in American elections.

Third, House Farm Bill negotiations advanced language that would strengthen pesticide preemption and shield chemical manufacturers from certain state-based liability claims.

Executive action, judicial review, and legislative protection have now moved in the same direction, impairing the basic rights of people to recover damages for injuries caused by poisonous chemicals.

Glyphosate sits at the center of one of the largest mass injury litigations in American history. More than 165,000 Americans have filed lawsuits alleging that exposure to Roundup and other glyphosate based herbicides caused their Non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Bayer agreed in 2020 to a settlement package worth up to $10.9 billion to resolve a large share of existing claims. Tens of thousands of cases remain pending as new litigation continues, leaving Bayer’s potential exposure in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

Previously, injured citizens brought claims. Evidence was examined. Juries reached conclusions. Now, instead of allowing Americans to continue seeking legal recourse for grave harms, the federal government is moving to shield Bayer from liability. The Department of Justice argues that if the Environmental Protection Agency approved the label, injured citizens should lose the right to sue for failure to warn.

The Farm Bill language now under consideration would harden that shield. Rep. Chellie Pingree described the provision plainly, warning that it would protect chemical manufacturers such as Bayer from lawsuits and preempt state and local warning label laws or usage regulations.

The provision would also undercut local authority to act when federal regulators delay or defer to industry pressure. Seven states currently do not preempt local governments from regulating pesticide use. Pingree’s office warned that in Maine alone more than thirty state and local pesticide protections could be undermined by the proposed language.

This matters because states carry constitutional responsibility for protecting the health and welfare of their citizens.

State tort law, consumer protection law, and public health authority form the backbone of that responsibility. When federal law blocks states and municipalities from regulating pesticide exposure or pursuing accountability for harm, local governments lose the tools they rely on to protect their communities.

Subscribe now

The American farmer carries the risk while the chemical manufacturer receives the shield.

The consequences extend far beyond agriculture. Physicians, nurses, oncologists, hospitals, public health officials, and health insurers should be at the forefront of this fight. Glyphosate induced Non-Hodgkin lymphoma imposes enormous costs on patients, families, medical systems, and insurers.

When chemical companies are shielded from liability, those costs do not disappear. They shift to hospitals, insurance systems, families, and taxpayers. This is a public health crisis moving through the American food system and across the landscape of the American heartland.

The system that produced this crisis has deep historical roots.

Modern chemical agriculture arose in the context of warfare. The twentieth century chemical industry developed many of its core technologies during periods of global conflict, and after World War II chemical manufacturing capacity and scientific expertise were redirected toward agriculture. The language followed the chemistry.

We declared war on weeds, war on insects, and war on fungi. Fields became battlegrounds. Industrial agriculture relies on chemicals designed to kill. Herbicides kill plants. Insecticides kill insects. Fungicides kill fungi. This is Ecocide.

These compounds eliminate living organisms in the interests of industrial production. Some targets are labeled pests. Many others are casualties of unregulated industrial production. Pollinators, soil organisms, birds, aquatic life, and beneficial insects disappear from landscapes saturated with chemical inputs.

Human beings live inside those same landscapes. Farmworkers, rural communities, and consumers become collateral damage in a system built to deploy lethal chemistry across millions of acres.

Ecocide becomes a pathway to human suffering and disease.

The mentality that accepts ecological destruction in pursuit of control resembles the mentality that accepts civilian casualties as an unavoidable cost of war. Life treated as expendable in one arena rarely remains protected in another.

The American heartland must challenge a permanent war against the living systems that sustain it, and us!

At the same time, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is reshaping pesticide regulation in ways that benefit the chemical industry. The agency has accelerated pesticide approvals, delayed safety reporting requirements for toxic chemicals, and allowed chemicals to remain on the market while safety reviews remain incomplete. Those regulatory decisions now form the scientific basis the Justice Department is asking the Supreme Court to treat as final authority on pesticide safety.

At the very moment those regulatory decisions are being used in court to protect chemical manufacturers, the scientific infrastructure inside the EPA is being weakened. Last year EPA officials began dismantling the agency’s research office that provided much of the scientific foundation for chemical risk assessments. Career scientists warned that removing this office will weaken independent analysis and increase the risk of political interference in decisions about chemical safety.

Congress is moving in the same direction. Separate legislation introduced by Republican lawmakers would weaken the nation’s toxic chemical laws by limiting the scientific evidence regulators can use to determine health risks and by giving industry a larger role in the chemical assessment process under the Toxic Substances Control Act, the federal law that governs chemical safety in the United States.

While these proposals are not part of the Farm Bill itself, they move the regulatory system in the same direction. The scientific guardrails that once helped protect public health are being weakened, and industry influence over chemical safety decisions is expanding.

In short, government policy and law are being rewritten to shield chemical companies while the public bears the risk.

Subscribe now

The revolving door between the chemical industry and federal regulators is visible. Four chemical industry lobbyists now sit in the top four posts at the EPA office that regulates chemicals and pesticides. One example is Kyle Kunkler, now a Deputy Assistant Administrator in the EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, previously worked as a pesticide lobbyist for the American Soybean Association.

Inside the White House, Chief of Staff Susie Wiles previously worked at Mercury Public Affairs, a lobbying firm that later registered to represent Bayer, according to U.S. Right to Know’s reporting on Bayer’s influence network in Trump’s Washington.

Investigations by U.S. Right to Know document the scale of Bayer’s influence campaign in Washington. Their reporting, Tracing Bayer’s Ties to Power in Trump’s Washington, details the company’s network of lobbyists and political influence across Congress and federal agencies.

According to U.S. Right to Know, Bayer spent $9.19 million lobbying Washington in 2025, employing dozens of lobbyists across more than a dozen firms. The Justice Department brief supporting Bayer was signed by Deputy Solicitor General Sarah M. Harris and Assistant to the Solicitor General Aaron Z. Roper, both of whom previously worked at Williams & Connolly, the law firm that defended Monsanto in major pesticide litigation.

Corporate power now operates across the three arenas that shape American law. Legislatures write the law. Regulators determine the science that informs it. Courts decide how that law is interpreted. Bayer and its allies operate in all three arenas.

During the House Agriculture Committee markup of the Farm Bill, Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-ME) introduced an amendment to strip the pesticide liability shield from the bill. Every Republican on the committee voted to keep the liability shield. Every Democrat but one voted to remove it.

Chairman Glenn “GT” Thompson defended his bill as bipartisan and dismissed criticism that it served industry interests as a mischaracterization of the facts. The committee ultimately approved the bill 34 to 17, with seven Democrats joining Republicans.

Several members of Congress from both parties have attempted to push back against chemical industry influence.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-ME) introduced the bipartisan No Immunity for Glyphosate Act, which would prevent pesticide manufacturers from receiving federal liability protections tied to glyphosate.

Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) has warned that chemical agriculture policy now contradicts the public health goals many lawmakers claim to support, and Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) has introduced legislation to ban the herbicide diquat.

Resistance exists inside Congress. The pressure of industry lobbying remains immense. This is all the more reason why a unified movement must galvanize around issues and not political parties. Food touches on all issues and all aspects of our lives.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. helped to catalyze a movement demanding a transition away from chemical intensive agriculture and toward regenerative organic farming. I helped organize that effort and hosted the campaign’s national agriculture roundtable that brought together farmers, scientists, and food system leaders and drew more than 36,000 participants. That movement carried a clear mandate, to end chemical dependency in agriculture, restore soil health, and protect farmers and public health, and by doing that, create on farm and economic resilience.

Dr. Bob Quinn, PhD in Plant Biochemistry, regenerative organic pioneer and Montana farmer, is a longtime friend and mentor. He built the internationally recognized Kamut ancient grain brand and has spent decades demonstrating that regenerative organic agriculture can succeed at scale.

During Senator Roger Marshall’s MAHA soil health roundtable, and in policy recommendations delivered to Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Quinn framed the issue with striking clarity.

Dr. Quinn has shown through both science and practice that regenerative organic transition can restore farm profitability while building viable market pipelines for farmers. His own family farm was once operating in the red, burdened by the rising costs of chemical inputs and seed. Out of economic necessity he transitioned to organic production. That decision not only saved the farm, it helped establish the pathway he now shares with farmers across the country who seek to restore both economic independence and soil health.

Dr. Quinn describes the shift away from toxic chemical agriculture toward regenerative organic systems as Pro Life agriculture. Life with a capital “L”, from the genome and the unborn child to the living soil, the farmer, and the entire ecosystem of creation.

This systems perspective recognizes a simple truth: Everything is connected. The health of one part of creation determines the health of the whole.

The phrase captures the moral clarity this moment demands. The foundations of life itself are being eroded at accelerating rates.

The chemicals at the center of this debate are designed to kill. A policy that shields companies producing lethal chemicals from accountability cannot honestly claim to defend life. The American heartland needs Pro Life agriculture.

Millions of Americans who supported this administration identify strongly as pro life. That conviction carries profound moral weight, and it demands consistency. Yet many of the same elected officials who campaign on protecting life are advancing chemical liability shields and deregulation that protect corporations while exposing farmers, families, and communities to harm.

Citizens must now ask their legislators and their government a simple question: Does this policy truly protect life? Does it protect the soil, the farmer, the farmworker, the child, the patient, and the community? Is this policy truly Pro Life, with a capital L?

American agriculture now operates inside a chemical dependency system engineered through decades of policy, subsidies, and corporate influence. The country should be helping agriculture enter a recovery program from chemical dependency.

Farmers did not create this system alone. Recovery requires new markets, new infrastructure, crop insurance reform, transition support, and policies that reward soil health rather than chemical throughput.

The power of this moment does not sit inside Washington alone. It sits with the farmers, families, physicians, and citizens who built this movement.

The coming midterm elections will determine whether chemical agriculture tightens its grip on American law or whether citizens reclaim the mandate they created. Policy does not move in a vacuum. It moves in response to political pressure, public scrutiny, and the willingness of citizens to hold their representatives accountable.

This moment should serve as a clear lesson in how power actually moves in Washington. Advertising may shape public narratives, but law shapes the systems that govern our food, our farms, and our health.

The alignment that occurred across the Executive Branch, the Judicial Branch, and the House of Representatives shows how quickly policy can move when powerful interests are focused on shaping legislation, regulation, and potential court outcomes. If Americans want to change the direction of the food and farming system, their attention must now turn to the place where the law is still being written.

That place is the United States Senate.

__

(A guide to Senate Farm Bill Action to follow later this week)

The Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026 contains statutory language that restructures federal authority. It expands federal preemption, narrows state and local governance, limits judicial oversight, and concentrates decision making inside federal agencies, which increases the risk of regulatory agency capture and weakens the distributed safeguards that protect farmers, public health, and national resilience.

From pesticide liability shields that restrict state tort authority, to clauses that prohibit counties from regulating pesticide use, to interstate livestock provisions that override state production standards, this bill centralizes authority in Washington in ways that favor large industrial actors while increasing farm level risk, weakening health protections, and externalizing long term environmental and medical costs onto taxpayers, driving higher public expenditures and deeper structural debt.

The draft Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026 dismantles state authority and removes local protection, state innovation, court accountability, market differentiation, and independent review. In their place, it installs federal uniformity controlled by a narrow circle of decision makers.

Instead of strengthening America, this bill exposes farmers, landscapes, and rural communities to deeper chemical dependency, greater corporate concentration, and reduced democratic control.

While national messaging speaks of reform and “Making America Healthy Again,” the governing architecture moving through Congress crushes the very mechanisms that protect farmers, families, and states. For all the rhetoric about strength, this bill lands another black eye on American farmers and a body blow to public health. It dismantles the safeguards that keep our food system accountable. It weakens environmental protections, shields corporate actors, and accelerates consolidation. It facilitates the structural demolition of democratic food governance.

This bill:

· Strips local governments of authority to protect their drinking water and schools from pesticide exposure.

· Blocks states from enforcing higher animal welfare and food safety standards within their own markets.

· Shields pesticide manufacturers from expanded state liability when harm occurs.

· Elevates federal label approval as the ceiling for accountability.

· Concentrates authority inside federal agencies that have already weakened regulatory standards this year.

At the very moment American agriculture is facing one of the worst economic crises since the 1980s farm collapse, Congress is centralizing power upward and accelerating consolidation.

Roughly 60 to 70 family farms disappear every day. Land consolidates. Debt rises. Young farmers are priced out of ownership. Rural communities hollow out.

When small producers fail, industrial consolidation accelerates. When consolidation accelerates, policy becomes easier to shape from the top. When authority is centralized and oversight layers are stripped away, reform on behalf of the health and vitality of the country becomes nearly impossible.

This is the process of systems capture, corruption, and power concentration. It erodes the constitutional balance between federal authority, state sovereignty, and judicial oversight by removing overlapping safeguards and narrowing independent avenues of review. It replaces distributed governance with centralized control.

If enacted without correction, the long-term consequences will be measured in polluted waterways, diminished soil health, collapsing independent farms, rising health burdens, and the erosion of local self-governance. It lays America open to systematic chemical and corporate abuse, the results of which will have devastating consequences to our ability to live, our long-term health and the vitality of current and future generations.

Subscribe now

The bill is scheduled to be marked up in Congress on Tuesday. Markup is the most viable opportunity to amend or strike damaging provisions before they become entrenched. Once the bill leaves committee to come to the floor, amendments become far more difficult.

This guide is written for policymakers and advocates who need to understand exactly what is at stake, how the provisions interact, and what must be corrected.

These issues unite the country. Americans want a healthy, clean food supply. Farmers want and need reforms that reduce dependency and restore competitiveness, not policies that lock in input intensive models and protect corporate actors from accountability.

What follows is a guide to the most important provisions, with direct quoted language and references so readers can verify line by line in the Farm Bill Text PDF.

What This Bill Does, in Plain English:

• Section 10202 requires EPA to coordinate with USDA and weigh economic viability in pesticide risk and safety decisions. EPA must coordinate with the USDA and conduct economic analysis when imposing risk mitigation measures. Economic review is appropriate, but if short term production costs dominate the analysis, long term public health and environmental costs may receive less weight. This embeds production economics directly into health protection decisions.

• Section 10204 extends the statutory deadline for EPA to complete registration review of existing pesticides until 2031. This provision embeds regulatory delay into statute at the very moment when public confidence in chemical oversight depends on timely, science based review.

Registration review is the mechanism Congress created to ensure that previously approved chemicals are periodically reassessed in light of updated science. By extending this deadline, the bill allows older pesticides to remain on the market without timely re evaluation, including dozens of chemicals with unresolved endocrine disruption concerns.

Endocrine disrupting compounds interfere with hormonal systems at very low doses and are associated with reproductive harm, developmental disorders, metabolic disease, and certain cancers. Congress required endocrine screening decades ago, yet implementation has repeatedly been delayed. Extending the review timeline to 2031 further postpones independent reassessment and allows potential hormone disrupting chemicals to remain in circulation without current scientific scrutiny.

From a fiscal standpoint, postponing reassessment also defers the identification of preventable health costs that ultimately fall on taxpayers through Medicare, Medicaid, disability systems, and lost productivity.

Action: As your Congress person to strike the extension of the registration review deadline in Section 10204 and restore timely EPA review of all pesticides, including full endocrine screening requirements.

• Section 10205 makes EPA label approval the ceiling for pesticide warnings and liability. Once EPA approves a pesticide label, states and courts are largely barred from requiring additional warnings or holding manufacturers liable for failing to provide them. This means federal approval becomes the final standard. If the federal review process overlooks a risk or moves slowly to update science, state level correction is limited. Accountability becomes centralized inside one federal system rather than reinforced by independent state courts. The agency has already been captured by the chemical industry, so there will not be truth in labeling and the EPA will stand in the way of real safety and population protections.

• Section 10206 removes local authority to protect drinking water and schools from pesticides. Local governments would be prohibited from restricting pesticide application even in sensitive areas such as drinking water zones or near schools. This removes decision making from the level closest to affected communities and places it entirely at the state or federal level. Geographic differences in soil, water, and population exposure can no longer be addressed locally.

• Section 10207 declares pesticide use automatically lawful if it follows the federal label without further permitting. The bill states that label compliant use is lawful “notwithstanding any other provision of law.” That language can override additional permitting requirements under other environmental statutes. When one approval replaces layered oversight, legal redundancy is reduced and independent safeguards are weakened and populations will be exposed.

Action: Ask your Congress person to remove Sections 10202 and 10205 - 10207, rejecting liability shields for chemical companies and upholding state and local rights to protect people from pesticides. Rep. Pingree’s (D-ME) Protect Our Health Amendment would strip Sections 10205 - 10207, and Members of Congress should support this amendment.

• Section 25(b) amendments create a default exemption for certain genetically engineered plant incorporated pesticidal traits from normal oversight.

This means crops are engineered to produce their own insect killing pesticidal proteins within their tissues. The pesticide is built into the plant itself, resulting in systemic and continuous exposure, and residues can be present in the food supply. The provision automatically exempts these traits and their residues from key regulatory and tolerance requirements unless EPA later intervenes. This shifts oversight from proactive safety review to reactive correction, despite unresolved questions about long term, cumulative ecological and microbiome effects.

Action: Ask your Congress person to remove this exemption entirely and require full pesticide registration, residue review, and transparency before commercialization.

• Section 12006 relates to interstate livestock preemption (EATS Act architecture) – it would prohibit states from enforcing higher production standards on out-of-state livestock products sold within their markets, usurping state sovereignty and undermining voter-enacted protections. States that adopt higher animal welfare or production standards such as reduced drugs in the meat supply would not be able to apply those standards to products entering from other states. Farmed animals are NOT protected under the federal Animal Welfare Act. This provision further centralizes livestock governance and limits states’ ability to reflect voter preferences, ethics and health choices in their own markets. Producers who invest in higher standards such as cage-free, pasture-raised, antibiotic-free or pharma-free systems will face competition from lower standard systems without market differentiation labelling.

Action: Ask your Congress person to Remove this interstate preemption language to preserve state sovereignty, to set and enforce production standards connected to public health and animal welfare, protect humane producers, and maintain democratic pathways for agricultural reform.

• Section 10212 restricts courts from issuing injunctions for certain toxic wildfire chemical discharges. Courts are barred from enjoining certain aerial wildfire retardant discharges conducted under federal agreements. Emergency response remains available, but judicial oversight is limited. Independent review of environmental impacts is reduced during the covered period.

• Title II conservation provisions subsidize technologies that optimize chemical use. The bill increases public funding, in some cases up to ninety percent cost share to modernize chemical agriculture rather than transition away from it, incentivizing continued chemical dependence under the banner of conservation.

Subscribe now

The Structural Pattern

Taken together, these provisions shift authority upward, reduce overlapping safeguards, and narrow corrective mechanisms at the state and local level.

When liability is limited, local authority is removed, production standards are lowered across states, and conservation funding reinforces input intensive systems, power consolidates.

Consolidation reduces accountability options. It increases the importance of influencing a small number of federal decision makers. It makes correction harder once policy direction is set.

More fundamentally, it weakens democratic and constitutional checks and balances.

States have historically functioned as co-regulators of public health and environmental protection. Courts have served as independent accountability mechanisms. Local governments have acted as first responders to contamination and exposure. When those layers are stripped away, authority concentrates inside federal agencies and congressional text.

The American system was designed with distributed power for a reason. Multiple layers of oversight create resilience. They prevent single points of failure. They allow correction when science evolves or when regulators make mistakes.

When those layers are narrowed, the system becomes more fragile. It becomes easier to shape from the center and harder to reform once captured.

A short guide to take immediate action:

· Call Members of Congress about the bill: bit.ly/saynotopesticides

· Send a message to Members of Congress about the bill (Pesticide Action Network): https://www.panna.org/action/farm-bill-draft-is-an-attack-against-health-and-the-environment/

· Send a message to Members of Congress supporting the Pingree Protect Our Health Amendment (Beyond Pesticides):https://secure.everyaction.com/yRiIuQUCj0uSUB6BVxI6Qw2

Today the Trump Administration, at the behest of the decrepit Netanyahu government, was instrumental in the bombing of a girls’ elementary school, killing 57 children. Let that sink in. Journey to the center of the world of American leaders’ madness and ruin to see desperate Iranian parents picking through rubble, searching for any signs of their little girls.

Now tell those parents, as we are being told, that America has done this so the Iranian people can be free. It’s the Empire’s new equation, Freedom = Death.

This murderous approach that the Trump Administration has wantonly indulged is identical to the policy of the Netanyahu government to bomb schools in Gaza and to murder innocent children as a (psychopathic) determination of heading off retribution in the future. The murder of children has become a state sacrament.

This is, in fact, an extension of the Epstein saga, the destruction of innocence through child rape, murder and cannibalism by powerful people whose thirst for blood will never be slaked in this cartwheeling carnival of human sacrifice called war.

Peter Berger, in Pyramids of Sacrifice drew the equation between the Aztec civilization’s cult of human sacrifice and the collapse of its empire, writing: “Thus the great pyramid of Cholula provides a metaphorical paradigm for the relations among theory, power and the victims of both – the intellectuals who define reality, the power wielders who shape the world to conform to the definitions and the others who are called upon to suffer in consequence of both enterprises.”

Consider the wider context in which these events occur: The rise of predatory Zionism, with its execution of a strategy of annihilation, ethnic cleansing, mass murder and genocide and with ambitions for an Empire from the Euphrates to the Nile; the attempt to stifle dissent on U.S. college campuses, threats to university funding; changes in first amendment law at state levels to punish critics of Israel; the domination of both political parties in U.S. politics by AIPAC and affiliated groups; the domination of the media by those more dedicated to the shameful cause of the Likud Government of Netanyahu, Smotrich and Ben Gvir than they are to the United States Constitution.

We have a front row seat at the steady decline of Western “civilization,” led by the U.S. government, more recently precipitating the Iraq-Iran War, the war in Afghanistan, the War in Iraq, the War against Lebanon, the War against Syria, the War against Gaza and the West Bank, the War against Yemen and now presenting the (second) U.S. war against Iran.

Subscribe now

Renaming the Department of Defense to the Department of War is splendid Truth in Advertising.

Simultaneously, the collapse of the American economy is in the offing, mired in debt, yet preparing to appropriate $1.5 trillion dollars a year for war, most of next year’s discretionary spending which would otherwise be used for the health, education and general welfare of the American people.

Today the US, the “most powerful military in the world” has been reduced to being an arm of the Israeli government, in service of greater Israel.

That we have made Netanyahu’s long-desired war upon Iran our own, is a sign that Lincoln’s Prayer of a “Government of the People, by the People and For the People, Shall not Perish, is no longer part of our national invocation. Nor are George Washington’s admonitions about foreign entanglements regarded, nor President Eisenhower’s warning about the military industrial complex.

No today, America’s leaders cast aide centuries of accumulated wisdom of governance and descend into a circle of Hell, lower than Dante imagined in the Inferno, a place reserved for those who sacrifice their nations for personal wealth and power and for whom nothing is immoral, there is no spiritual code and no divine being other than themselves.

The modern punishments of Impeachment and trial by the Hague are insufficient to deal with such beings.

In his address to the World Economic Forum in Davos, President Trump painted a picture of economic resurgence. The U.S. economy, he declared, is booming. Inflation has been defeated. Investment is pouring back into the country. His administration, he said, has delivered the fastest and most dramatic economic turnaround in American history.

For the global financiers, executives, and investors gathered in the Alps, the message was clear. Capital is winning again.

But that story collapses when viewed from farm country.

What Trump celebrated in Davos was an economy measured almost entirely through the lens of high finance. Asset values. Financial inflows. Market confidence. Investment velocity. Corporate and brand expansion. These are the indicators that matter in global economic forums. They are also the indicators that bypass the lived economy of farmers.

Subscribe now

A farm economy is not measured by capital velocity. It is measured by input costs versus crop value, soil fertility over time, access to affordable credit, resilience to droughts and floods, seed sovereignty, and what remains after debt service is paid and another season has been survived.

By those measures, American agriculture is not booming. It is breaking.

This is the structural contradiction at the heart of the current economic narrative. Capital is increasingly mobile, global, and abstract, while farming is land bound, biologically constrained, and increasingly dependent on inputs controlled and price manipulated by a handful of multinational corporations.

Nowhere is this contradiction clearer than in modern agriculture’s reliance on genetically engineered seed and chemical inputs.

The Chemical Dependency Trap

Reliance on GMO seed and the herbicides, pesticides, and synthetic fertilizers that accompany it has quietly but decisively pushed farmers into a trap. What was sold as efficiency has become dependency. Seeds are patented, expensive, and must be repurchased annually. They are bundled with chemical regimes that grow more intensive as soils degrade and pests develop resistance.

Each season, farmers face higher upfront costs simply to stay in production. Margins shrink. Debt grows. And the land itself begins to fail.

This is not innovation. It is extractive agriculture dressed up as progress.

As soil biology is destroyed, organic matter declines, water retention collapses, and resilience to drought and flooding disappears. Farmers are forced to apply more inputs to compensate for declining soil health, locking them into a vicious cycle of rising costs and diminishing returns. What appears productive on a balance sheet is, in reality, biological liquidation; the destruction of the very systems of life which support the growing of crops and rural economies.

Corporate profits rise. Input sales grow. GDP appears to be healthy, but farm balance sheets collapse as the ecological health of the farm unravels.

At the same moment high finance was being toasted in Davos, the administration’s earlier intervention through the Department of Justice on behalf of Monsanto gained renewed force, as the Supreme Court agreed last week to take up the glyphosate case the administration urged it to hear, placing the weight of the U.S. government behind a foreign multinational corporation against chemically injured Americans, many of them farmers and farm workers.

Law, Power, and the Final Externalization of Risk

The collapse facing farm families and rural communities is not unfolding in a legal vacuum. Thumbs are very heavily weighted on the scales of Lady Justice.

The Supreme Court’s decision to take up the glyphosate case, following the administration’s earlier urging through the Department of Justice, marks a decisive moment. If chemical manufacturers are shielded from accountability, risk does not disappear. It is displaced, into farm families’ bodies, into rural water systems, into public health budgets, and into the land itself.

This moment matters because it clarifies where power is aligning. When courts and regulators move to protect chemical corporations from consequence, they entrench the very system driving farm bankruptcy, ecological degradation, and rising illness. They tell farmers there is no recourse. They tell rural communities the damage is theirs to live with.

For a movement that claims to stand for health, this is a defining test. There is no path to making America healthy again while insulating the sources of harm from responsibility.

Subscribe now

An economy that celebrates capital accumulation on the global stage, subsidizes chemical dependency at home, and shields its architects from accountability is not merely unstable. It is unjust.

Inflation Defeated, Except Where It Matters

Trump’s claim that inflation has been defeated rings hollow in agriculture.

Farmers continue to face relentless cost inflation. Seed prices driven upward by consolidation and intellectual property control, chemical inputs rising as resistance forces higher application rates, equipment costs remaining elevated, insurance premiums increasing, and interest rates making operating loans more expensive and more precarious.

For farmers, inflation has not disappeared. It has been displaced. Absorbed quietly through debt, land loss, and bankruptcy.

What emerges is a two speed economy.

At the top, wealth grows through licensing deals, branding, ventures, and global finance. Capital moves freely across borders. Risk is diversified and externalized.

At the base, farmers shoulder ecological risk, climate volatility, and market instability. The land absorbs chemicals. The soil dies. Risks rise as resilience fails and the farm becomes unworkable. Farm families absorb financial collapse and deteriorating health. Suicide rates are rising, and ever increasing chemical exposure is taking a measurable toll on bodies and lives.

Rural communities absorb the social and psychological fallout and the hidden costs, polluted water, poisoned land, and long term public health damage.

Policy as an Accelerator of Debt and Collapse

This suffering is not accidental. It is the result of policy choices.

Federal programs continue to subsidize chemical intensive systems through crop insurance structures, commodity programs, and regulatory frameworks that shield agrochemical manufacturers from liability. Farmers are locked into production models that degrade land and health while being told there are no viable alternatives supported at scale.

This is why bankruptcy rates rise even in years of high yields. This is why mental health crises deepen in so called good seasons. This is why rural America hollows out while agribusiness consolidates upward.

An economy that claims strength while destroying its soil, indebting its farmers, and externalizing health costs onto rural communities is not strong. It is unstable.

These crises are not inevitable. They result from political and financial policy values and choices, and different choices are available.

Policy as an Accelerator of Prosperity

Stop underwriting chemical dependency, start underwriting transition: Federal farm policy must stop subsidizing systems that require escalating chemical use to remain viable. Crop insurance, commodity programs, and research dollars should reward soil health, biological resilience, and reduced input dependence.

Restore accountability: No company whose products contaminate land, water, or human bodies should be protected from liability by regulatory or judicial maneuvering. Accountability is pro farmer, pro family, and pro health.

Support real transitions, not talking points: Farmers need viable, well funded pathways to regenerative organic systems that lower costs, rebuild soil, and restore independence. That means technical assistance, transition finance, fair markets, and procurement policies that reward stewardship.

True cost accounting and antitrust: Polluted water, chronic illness, mental health crises, and rural hollowing are real costs that have been systematically shifted off corporate balance sheets and onto farm families, rural communities, and taxpayers. This distortion masks failure as success and allows monopolistic systems to thrive while independent producers collapse.

True cost accounting is pro market. It is essential to restoring honest competition and preventing the concentration of power that undermines both capitalism and democracy.

Farmers are the canaries in the coal mine of this system. When those closest to the land, to food production essential to all life, and to risk can no longer survive, it signals not individual failure but systemic imbalance. Ignoring these signals does not protect the economy. It accelerates collapse.

Redefine prosperity and reform the debt based monetary system that drives extraction: The way money is created shapes the entire economy. Today, most money enters circulation as interest bearing debt, which creates constant pressure for growth, consolidation, and extraction in order to service that debt. This dynamic rewards scale over resilience, speculation over production, and short term returns over long term stewardship.

In agriculture, the consequences are clear. Farmers are pushed to borrow more each year to pay for land, seed, chemicals, equipment, and operating costs. As debt loads rise, margins shrink and independence disappears. Ecological harm, consolidation, and bankruptcy are not anomalies in this system. They are predictable outcomes of a financial architecture that requires perpetual expansion to remain solvent.

This debt based money system is a central driver of social and ecological damage across the economy, from degraded land and polluted water to hollowed out rural communities and rising inequality. Addressing agricultural collapse without addressing the financial system that governs credit, risk, and investment will not resolve the underlying problem.

A more durable economy requires monetary reform that supports productive activity rather than rent extraction, and investment in real value rather than asset inflation. I have explored this in more detail in my article, Breaking the Debt Chains: Exposing the Root Cause of Social and Ecological Destruction, which examines how debt based money shapes policy incentives and concentrates power.

True prosperity should be measured by the health of land, the viability of food producers, the stability of communities, and the ability of future generations to live without inheriting unpayable debt. Reforming agriculture and reforming the monetary system must proceed together if markets are to function honestly and communities are to endure.

Farm families and rural communities have carried the burden long enough.
The question now is whether policy will continue to protect power or finally begin to protect life.

On this day, as we celebrate the life and legacy of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. federal agents are erasing his legacy, targeting people of color, going door-to-door, dragging people from their homes, disappearing them; randomly stopping brown and black people in cars and on the street, brandishing guns, demanding papers, arbitrarily arresting citizens, flagrantly violating long-established constitutional rights, attacking witnesses with pepper spray, toxic gas and, in the case of Renee Nicole Good, claiming impunity while murdering a US citizen witnessing ICE’s chaos and brutality.

We have gone from “I Have a Dream” to We Have a Nightmare.

Subscribe now

On December 10, 2014, in recognition of my efforts to create a cabinet-level Department of Peace, I was invited to be a keynote speaker at the King Center in Atlanta, in celebration of Dr. King’s receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, an honor he accepted with the belief that “…unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.”

His dedication to non-violent resistance, in the manner of Mahatma Gandhi, provided moral leadership for the civil rights movement dedicated to ushering in an era of equality, economic justice and educational opportunities, to emancipate not only people of color, but to release all humanity from the halters of hate, and to help us recognize our essential co-equality so that “We the People,” includes all of us.

Under the guise of enforcing immigration law, this Administration has commenced an ideological attack on everything that recognizes America’s diversity, the imperative of equality, and the fairness of inclusion.

We are witnessing a frontal attack on America’s capacity to meet the purpose of governance itself, as described in the Preamble to the Constitution:

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

The Preamble as interpreted by the current Administration is monochromatic, sows division, reeks of injustice, incites discord, misuses the military, pulverizes economic, educational and health care needs, assaults constitutional freedoms and would bequeath a nation indistinguishable from fascism.

Dr. King’s legacy wasn’t just about people of one race, it is about the social, economic and political rights of all of us.

In contrast, the Administration has attacked the Voting Rights Act with new voter ID laws, attempts to compel polling station closures, and attempts to scuttle mail-in ballots.

The federal government has defunded programs in public schools and universities designed to provide equality of opportunity. Funding for programs which recognize inclusiveness have been removed from every federal department. Universities and corporations have been successfully threatened or punished with sanctions or loss of federal contracts if they failed to align with a policy which, imposes historical blindness in name of color blindness.

Years ago, in Cleveland, our family which grew to nine members, had trouble finding rent. We lived in tenement apartments where our neighbors were mostly black. Economic inequality affects the living conditions of people, regardless of race. Was there resentment of blacks in our house? No. We could see we were struggling with the same conditions and we were united in our striving.

Today, nearly 8 million African Americans and 5 million Americans of Hispanic origin, and 20 million white Americans live below the federal poverty level. Wealth concentration in America finds the top 1% accumulating 987 times more wealth than the bottom 20%. In total, over 40% of Americans are low income or poor.

This Administration has sent soldiers to patrol our cities, and has flooded cities with agents who behave like gestapo. It threatens to takeover countries around the world, while proposing a $1.5 trillion budget for its newly named Department of War. This would amount to nearly three-quarters of all discretionary spending, widening the wealth gap and pitching even more Americans into poverty. This is an outrage and demands a broad civic response.

Instead of creating programs which can lift all Americans out of poverty, and which can protect America’s middle class from sinking into poverty, the Administration callously chooses to divide the country, appealing to grievance narratives, white identity and demographic dominance which can intensify anti-immigration and anti-DEI policies and cause people to lose sight of the federal government’s own responsibilities.

As a prelude to destroying the civil rights movement itself, the federal government has been removing the names and historic accomplishments of minorities from places of honor and recognition, like World Heavyweight Champion, Muhammad Ali, and Wilma Rudolph, three times Olympic Gold Medalist. Bayard Rustin, who created the 1963 March on Washington , Doris “Dorie” Miller, who was awarded the Navy Cross and Fannie Lou Hamer, noted voting rights activist, all erased per the guidance of the President, who ordered termination of traces of recognition for people of color, including Native Americans.

These actions were devised to insure disparities and oppression affecting not only race but gender equality.

In attempting to obliterate the teaching of civil rights history, the Administration has diminished the hallowed history of each and every group, regardless of color and country of origin, rejecting the journey of all those generations of Americans who had to overcome hardship and discrimination, were denied opportunities, placed in a desperate struggle and somehow survived.

Policies which take down the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 are a sinister remake of America in the image and likeness of a pre-civil rights era and perhaps even pre-Civil War America.

When Dr. King spoke of “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” that arc rose from the recognition of the evils of slavery, ascended in Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and the 13^th Amendment which abolished slavery, and rose even higher with the 14^th Amendment of Equal Protection under the law.

Each wave of immigration has challenged our nation. Each wave of immigration has enriched America, defined America as the place where paraphrasing Emma Lazarus’ words at the base of the State of Liberty, the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free risked their lives to journey to freedom, to America, a light of nations.

Yes, America has failed control its borders. Yes, America must control its borders. But the past failures cannot be cured by anti-immigrant policies which run so deep that the President himself, in shockingly racialized rhetoric -- described one immigrant group as “garbage.”

Fear is on the ascendent as immigration is recast as an invasion. Radicalization is being normalized through online memes and orgies of anti-this and anti-that.

It is not “woke” to stand up for our constitutional rights. It is not woke to resist our cities becoming occupation zones. It is not woke to want to stop federal agents from asking for our papers, knocking at the doors, invading our schools, and our places of worship.

Today, in the Rotunda of the United States Capitol, an extraordinary sculpture of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., is in silent repose, a beautiful likeness, yet without arms and legs. - (Worthy of note is the other Rotunda statue depicting its subjects still bound in stone — that of the suffragettes).

Let us celebration Dr. King’s birth, his life, his sacrifice by being his arms, his legs, his heirs and heiresses challenging a government whose definition of America is fossilized, narrow, and disrespectful of an historic tradition which became the envy of the world for its pledge of one nation, “with liberty and justice for all.”

Let us, once again, mindful of our tempestuous history, blessed by our Constitution, take up the banner of the civil rights movement and rally the nation in defense of the social, economic and political rights of all Americans.

It is not “woke” to stand up for our constitutional rights. It is not woke to resist our cities becoming occupation zones. It is not woke to want to stop federal agents from lawlessly knocking at our doors. It is not woke to demand our government finally address rising economic inequality.

It is not “woke” to demand our government work for peace.

No, it is not woke, when the American people finally awake to the threat to the freedoms of all of us. In the 250^th year of our Independence, let us remember where we came from. Let us remember how our freedoms evolved. And let us reject anyone who wishes to impose a government foreign to us and adverse to our freedom-loving nature.

Let us prepare, as did Bayard Rustin and A. Phillip Randolph in 1963, to once again March on Washington in a peaceful insistence of freedom and jobs. Let all of us who feel we are losing our nation converge on Washington to reclaim it, as did over a quarter-million Americans on August 28, 1963.

Let Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream,” speech delivered on that day, be read again to set the tone for reminding our government that we still dream of the America that can be and reject the nightmare being imposed upon us.

The killing in Minneapolis of Renee Good, by an agent of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, (ICE) marks an inflection point in American history, not unlike the famous “shot heard ‘round the world,” that sparked a revolution in the American colonies.

As a member of Congress, I voted against the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. I understood then, as I understand now, that the expansion of federal police power inevitably endangers freedom. That danger is no longer theoretical. Federal police power has entered our communities and is a menace. This is no longer a debate about immigration policy. We are in a Constitutional crisis.

In a democratic society there are safeguards to prevent the abuse of power. This Administration has stripped those safeguards. None of us are safe when government agents, gestapo-like, bring terror to our streets, arbitrarily detaining people based on skin color, ethnicity, or accent, denying due process, and acting as police, prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner.

Americans are flooding streets in major cities with massive marches and other acts of resistance, which will be further fueled by the federal government’s complicity and the transparently calculated attempt by top officials to cover-up the murder.

The killing of Renee Good comes at a moment when Americans are already weary of escalating government intrusion into their private life: Mass surveillance, facial recognition, warrantless searches, investigation of journalists, monitoring of protestors, and the expansion of artificial intelligence for domestic law enforcement further erode Americans’ expectation of privacy.

The specter of the National Guard activated by the President, for obvious partisan purposes, was a clear violation of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 which was passed to prevent federal troops from being involved in local law enforcement.

As protests against wars abroad and conflicts at home escalate, the possibility exists that this President will invoke the Insurrection of Act of 1807, placing Posse Comitatus in abeyance, federalizing the National Guard and sending the Guard and the US military to quell civil disorder which the President himself has incited.

Before our eyes America is being transformed from a republic in which the rights of citizens are protected by law into something very dark, an authoritarian order in which individual rights are nullified.

Our government, acting as though unbridled by law, has licensed itself to accost, beat up, drag, kidnap and imprison people within the United States, including American citizens, while abroad it wages war wantonly and kills with abandon. ICE has stormed into American cities, not in a manner consistent with lawful immigration enforcement, but as a show of force, directed at the public itself.

The clear purpose in intimidation. State power is being used to suppress dissent and condition the public to fear its own government.

A timid public, cowed by the knock at the door and armed agents roaming neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, and places of worship, may forfeit their rights, unless it understands the urgency of knowing and then asserting them.

Here are the constitutional rights ICE agents routinely violate with impunity; rights which belong to all persons in the United States:

First Amendment rights to freedom of speech, peaceful protest, freedom of the press, to record public officials, and the right to freedom of association.

Fourth Amendment rights to be secure against unreasonable search and seizures.

Fifth Amendment rights to avoid custodial interrogation without being read Miranda rights.

Sixth Amendment rights include assistance of legal counsel, prevention of indefinite detention, notice of charges, right to know the nature of the accusation.

Fourteenth Amendment right to due process and equal protection, including protection from racial profiling, excessive use of force and unjustified deadly force

Taken together, ICE’s violations threaten the life and liberty of every person in this country.

None of us are safe when agents of the federal government aggressively roam the streets of our cities, invade our schools, our places of worship, our workplaces, our businesses without warrants, and arbitrarily arrest people based on their skin color, their ethnicity, their accents, denying due process as though storm troopers.

Like many Americans, I have carefully studied the videos of the killing of Renee Good. As a former chair of a congressional investigative subcommittee on Domestic Policy, I am committed to a careful review of all available evidence.

The evidence supports but one conclusion. Renee Good was killed by an agent of the United States government who was visibly not in imminent danger when, in less than a second, he fired three shots, point blank, at Renee Good as her vehicle slowly turned away from him.

At least two rounds from the agent’s 9mm Glock struck her in the head, killing her instantly. This happened almost immediately after (with her driver’s window rolled down), she calmly told the agent: “I’m not mad at you.”

After the fatal shots were fired, as the car careened, the agent added a chilling, dehumanizing punctuation which could lead to first degree murder charges: “Fcking btch.” The agent walked away from the site, unmoved and unscathed.

Renee Good was not a domestic terrorist, despite false and defamatory claims made by high-ranking officials attempting to smear the dead woman to deflect accountability. The fictionalized account of her “running over” the agent, the lack of an immediate interview of the agent by his supervisor, the spiriting away of the agent from the scene, the concoction of an official narrative at odds with observable facts, will raise profound questions about a cover up which could shake the foundations of this country.

Subscribe now

Renee Good was a mother of three. An award-winning poet. A wife. She had just dropped her six-year-old child at school. Her car contained stuffed animals children hug for comfort. The car’s rear window was covered with decals from visits to America’s National Parks.

What makes her death so searing is the violent collision on the streets of an American city between a gentle soul expressing warmth and compassion to the very government agent who then murdered her.

We must not direct hate toward the agent, or toward the government itself, which remains our government. But accountability is not negotiable. That accountability extends to every official who authorized, condoned, or excused the killing of Renee Good.

Her death is a warning to the nation: Government power without restraint leads to deadly repression. A silent Congress enables it. A passive public invites it.

We the People must know our constitutional rights and be prepared to assert them. The Founders pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to secure our Independence, our Constitution,and our Bill of Rights. If we fail to defend freedom now, we risk losing everything.

We must all become peacefully visible, everywhere, to affirm we heard the shots, that we saw what happened to Renee Good, and that we will challenge our government to honor the Constitution of the United States.

After the shooting, Renee Good’s wife, Becca, in heartbreaking grief, sat in the snow alongside the couple’s dog. She called out, plaintively, in a voice that surely must have touched Heaven itself: “What are we going to do?!”

Renee’s killing provokes deep grief and outrage. It necessarily requires lawful action to restore constitutional boundaries and to reassert civilian control over the use of federal police power.

First, Legal Accountability Must Occur. An independent special prosecutor should be appointed to fully investigate Renee Good’s killing, including the actions of the federal agent involved, the chain of command and any officials who participated in the construction or dissemination of a false narrative. Illegal use of lethal force must be prosecuted, as should concerted attempts to construct a cover-up.

ICE must be Investigated for Civil Rights Violations. A special, independent prosecutor must be appointed to initiate a wide-spread probe into practices of ICE which have violated the constitutional rights of countless persons in America. If sufficient evidence exists that ICE has systematically violated the U.S. Constitution, ICE must be abolished.

Courts must impose constitutional restraint. The federal courts exist to check executive overreach. Judges must rigorously enforce limits on search, seizure, detention, interrogation and the use of force. Suppression of unlawfully obtained evidence, civil liability for rights violations, and injunctive relief against abusive practices all must be considered. The rule of law must be restored to its fullness.

Congress must reclaim its rightful role as a co-equal branch of government. Congressional oversight has been abdicated. That abandonment of duty must end. Congress must investigate the militarization of ICE, its violent enforcement tactics and the erosion of constitutional safeguards.

Congress must reclaim its power of the purse, conditioning department funding on strict constitutional compliance and full adherence to due process rights. Legislation must limit federal police activities within states and municipalities, place further prohibitions on the use of military force for civilian law enforcement, and require transparency regarding the action of federal agents who use force.

Rights survive only when people know them, can recite them and insist upon them. Citizens must document encounters with federal agents, assert their right to remain silent, demand warrants and refuse unlawful searches, consistent with constitutional rights.

Peaceful protest is not disorder. It is one of the highest expressions of our freedom. Communities must organize peaceful, visible, nonviolent assemblies that affirm constitutional rights and reject intimidation.

It is time to return to campuses with teach-ins about the individual rights granted by the Constitution and the legal means to assert those rights. Faith communities, civic organizations and local governments must publicly affirm constitutional protections apply to all persons, without exceptions.

The Founders understood that the principles they inscribed upon parchment could be guaranteed only by an informed and engaged public. When government forgets its limits, it is the duty of the people to remind it. This is the sacred obligation of citizenry.

The shots that killed Renee Good must not be answered with fear or silence. They must be answered with law, with accountability and the unyielding insistence that the Constitution still governs this nation.

I have spent most of my adult life working at the intersection of food, health, and public policy. I did not come to this work through ideology. I came to it through lived experience, long before I ever held a policy title.

My mother reversed severe, debilitating Crohn’s disease decades ago after being advised to undergo radical intestinal surgery. Doctors told her there were no other options. She refused to accept that verdict and changed what she ate. Through a whole food, plant-based approach, she regained her health. That decision reshaped our family’s relationship to food and planted the seed for my life’s work.

My mother’s healing journey is also rooted in land and farming history. Her family were pasture raised cattle farmers. They raised animals on grass, with care for land, animals, and food quality long before industrial confinement systems existed. I grew up understanding that animals, soil, and human health are inseparable, and that how food is produced matters as much as what is eaten.

That way of farming did not disappear by choice. My mother’s family were eventually pushed out of agriculture by industrial pressures. Like so many small and mid sized family farmers, they could not compete with consolidation, vertically integrated markets, and systems that rewarded scale over stewardship. What was lost was not only a livelihood, but a way of relating to land, animals, and food that honored balance, care, and continuity. That history sits quietly beneath today’s dietary debates, reminding us that industrial food systems did not simply replace older models. They displaced living ones.

Years later, my husband Dennis faced his own long battle with Crohn’s disease, which had begun in childhood and resulted in multiple major surgeries that left his body profoundly compromised. Before we ever met, Dennis made a pivotal dietary choice. He became vegan, and the transformation in his health was almost immediate. After decades of illness, removing animal foods and adopting a whole food, organic, plant-based diet changed everything. His inflammation subsided. His energy returned. His vitality came back online.

These experiences shaped my professional path. I went on to serve as Director of Government Affairs at the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, working on prevention and reversal of chronic disease through plant-based nutrition. Later, I became Director of Policy at the Center for Food Safety, where I worked on investigations into drugs used in industrial animal agriculture and the regulatory failures that allow chemical and pharmaceutical residues to persist in the food supply.

I have seen this issue from every angle: personal, clinical, agricultural, and policy level.

This piece builds directly on an earlier essay I published here, The False Promise of Keto and Ancestral Eating in the Age of Chemical Intensive Industrial Agriculture. In that article, I examined how popular dietary narratives that romanticize meat heavy or so-called ancestral diets collapse when confronted with the realities of modern food production.

What may have made sense in ecological contexts defined by pasture, seasonality, and low chemical inputs no longer maps onto an industrial system dependent on genetically engineered feed, pervasive herbicide use, and routine pharmaceutical intervention. The newly released Dietary Guidelines for Americans double down on that disconnect. Rather than grappling with how food is actually produced in the United States today, they reinforce dietary advice that assumes a food system that no longer exists.

Which is why the release of the 2025–2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans is so deeply troubling.

Nutrition divorced from reality

The guidelines promote increased consumption of meat and dairy while remaining almost entirely silent on how those foods are produced, what they contain, and whether our land, water, animals, and bodies can bear the cost. Nutrition is treated as an abstraction, divorced from agricultural reality.

This is not a minor oversight. It is the central failure of the document.

In the United States today, the overwhelming majority of meat, eggs, and dairy come from highly intensive industrial systems. These systems rely on confinement, routine drug use, chemically saturated feed, and enormous waste burdens. Animals are routinely administered antibiotics, hormones, beta agonists, coccidiostats, and other pharmaceutical agents, many of which accumulate in animal tissues and enter the human food supply.

What is also missing from the guidelines is any acknowledgment that most U.S. meat production depends on a chemically intensive feed system built on genetically engineered corn and soy. These crops are routinely treated with glyphosate and other herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides. Residues move through the feed supply and into animal tissues, manure, soil, air, and water. Recommending increased consumption of animal foods without acknowledging this reality divorces nutrition guidance from the actual conditions under which American food is produced.

This omission places the guidelines in direct tension with the stated goals of the Make America Healthy Again agenda. You cannot reduce chronic disease, chemical exposure, or environmental harm while promoting dietary patterns that rely on genetically engineered feed, pervasive herbicide use, and pharmaceutical dependent animal production systems. Health policy that ignores these realities is not reform. It is avoidance.

I worked on the reports documenting this reality. Hundreds of veterinary drugs and feed additives are approved for use in food producing animals, many with limited post market surveillance and inadequate consideration of cumulative exposure. This is not speculation. It is policy fact.

Subscribe now

If federal nutrition guidance is going to encourage Americans to eat more animal foods, it has a responsibility to say clearly that those foods must be produced under organic, chemical free standards. Absent that, the guidance effectively endorses industrial practices that undermine human health while externalizing the costs onto people, animals, and ecosystems.

Protein obsession stripping away fiber

The guidelines center protein while marginalizing fiber rich plant foods that are foundational to gut health, metabolic function, immune resilience, and inflammation control.

Animal foods contain no dietary fiber. None.

Fiber deficiency is strongly associated with rising rates of metabolic disease, inflammatory disorders, colon pathology, and dysregulated gut microbiomes. Yet fiber remains sidelined in favor of protein targets that ignore the broader nutritional matrix required for health.

Nutrition does not begin on the plate. It begins in the soil.

Industrial animal agriculture depends on feed crops grown with herbicides, pesticides, and fungicides that degrade soil biology, reduce micronutrient density, and compromise ecosystem function across the food chain. When soil is depleted, food is depleted. The guidelines ignore this reality entirely.

Emotional and psychological health cannot be separated from diet

What we eat affects not only our bodies, but our nervous systems.

Diet influences emotional regulation and mental wellbeing through inflammation, the gut brain axis, and stress response pathways. Across cultures and traditions, plant forward diets have long been associated with greater calm, clarity, and nonviolence. This is observable human experience, increasingly supported by neuroscience and microbiome research.

The drugs used in industrial meat are hurting people, but there is also a deeper cost that rarely gets acknowledged. A diet built on pain, confinement, and chemical exposure dysregulates the nervous system and dulls our capacity for calm, empathy, and connection. Food produced through suffering affects the human spirit as well as the body.

By contrast, plant forward diets are consistently linked to greater calm, emotional resilience, and psychological stability.

Bio-individuality, ecology, and honest availability

I understand the need for dietary approaches that account for bio-individuality, ecological reality, and availability. Human bodies differ. Cultures differ. Geographies differ. Access differs. Health circumstances differ. There is no single diet that looks identical for every person in every place at every stage of life.

Acknowledging bio-individuality is an opportunity for leadership. It allows policymakers to align flexibility with integrity, dietary choice with truth, and availability with lived reality. When nutrition guidance reflects how food is produced, how land and ecosystems function, and how people actually access nourishment, it becomes a tool for health rather than abstraction.

Flexibility grounded in integrity strengthens public trust. Choice grounded in truth empowers people. Availability addressed honestly invites policies that expand access to nourishing food rather than assuming it exists for all.

Carrying capacity and ecological limits

Perhaps most troubling of all is the absence of any discussion of ecological limits.

You cannot recommend that everyone eat more meat without asking where that meat will come from, what the land can sustain, how much water is required, and who bears the environmental and social costs. Increased animal food consumption at population scale does not lead to pastoral renewal. It leads to further expansion of confinement-based production systems.

Nutrition guidance that ignores agricultural reality is not guidance. It is fiction.

Some have begun referring to the newly released document as “dietary guidelines against humanity.” While the language is stark, the concern it reflects is serious. Guidelines that normalize cruelty, chemical exposure, nutrient dilution, and ecological overshoot do not simply fail to protect health. They shape systems that harm people, animals, land, and the social fabric that binds them together.

Policy alignment, not rhetoric

This moment calls for more than critique. It calls for alignment.

We have heard this administration pay lip service to healthy food and agriculture while simultaneously decimating the very programs that make it possible. Never in modern history has USDA been so overtly hostile to organic production, regenerative transition, and the farmers working to steward land responsibly. Funding for organic research, technical assistance, conservation programs, and transition support has been cut or sidelined, even as consolidation accelerates, and farmer bankruptcies rise. It is impossible to claim a commitment to health while dismantling the policy infrastructure that supports clean food, resilient farms, and ecological renewal.

It is also impossible to ignore who holds influence inside this administration. Chemical and pharmaceutical interests are deeply embedded across the agencies tasked with protecting health, food safety, and the environment. When Big Chemical and Big Pharma shape policy priorities, it should not surprise anyone that dietary guidance minimizes chemical exposure, overlooks drugs in the food supply, and treats food as a delivery vehicle for nutrients rather than as a living system tied to land, biology, and community wellbeing. Regulatory capture does not require malice. It requires only silence where honesty is needed most.

A way forward

If we are serious about health, then USDA policy must support organic, regenerative pasture systems that restore soil, respect animals, and allow farmers to remain on their land. Farmers should be helped to stay in farming, not pushed into bankruptcy by consolidation, debt, and policies that reward scale over stewardship. The current farm crisis is not a failure of farmers. It is the predictable outcome of a system that has stripped resilience from rural America.

Subscribe now

Health guidance cannot stand apart from this reality. FDA, EPA, USDA, and HHS must align around a shared mandate to truly protect life, beginning with the unborn, extending through the land that nourishes us, and reaching into the wellbeing of communities themselves. Protecting health means reducing chemical exposure, supporting clean food systems, restoring soil, and ensuring that nourishment is not built on harm displaced elsewhere.

The Dietary Guidelines were an opening. They could have been an invitation to tell the truth about food, farming, and health in America today. That invitation still stands. We can choose guidance that heals people, restores land, honors farmers, and reconnects food with life itself. That future is not theoretical. It already exists wherever land is cared for, animals are respected, and food is grown with integrity. Our policies can meet it there.

This Administration, elected with a promise to end forever wars, has since taken America to war against Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Somalia and Nigeria, while funding genocide against Gazans.

It has invaded Venezuela, kidnapped its President, Nicholas Moduro, and his wife; pledged to “run” the county, and to appropriate (steal) Venezuela’s extensive oil reserves. Venezuela spent approximately $ ZERO for its defense in 2024.

This is not Pax Americana. It is Pox Americana from War-a-Iago.

As a Member of House of Representatives, I challenged in court and in Congress President Clinton over Serbia, President Bush over Iraq and President Obama over Libya, each time working with members of both political parties to take action to insist on Congress’ co-equality, and its constitutional responsibility to decide when America should offer the treasure of our youth and our precious financial resources to be taken from peace to war.

Even a remote possibility of U.S. ground troops being sent to invade and occupy Venezuela ought to shock America’s moribund peace movement into action.

The long-term consequences of U.S. actions in Venezuela demolish laws which hold together the United States, and the International legal order.

This is not academic. The U.S. Constitution and the UN Charter must not become confetti showering an authoritarian fantasy victory parade.

What the Administration has done in smashing the US Constitution and international law is to unravel generations of painstaking work to try to limit war. Instead, it has set the stage for a war of all against all.

Our vainglorious leaders’ unseemly bravado about the precision operation for Venezuelan regime change, bespeaks a pathological consequence-free mindset: Aggression in its effrontery inviting every manner of retribution upon Americans everywhere.

A government that abandons its ideals, its Constitution, its laws, its freedoms, its commitments, its promises in search of global empire and booty will bring our nation to ruin, leaving America in debt, depression and danger.

We had a glimmer of what we may further expect domestically, notwithstanding court disapproval, with the President’s digression from his celebration of the takeover of Venezuela to extolling the glories of federal troops’ enforcement of law in American cities, in clear violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, a nineteenth century law which limits the use of federal troops for domestic purposes.

Our Constitution holds America together with principles of cohesion, coherence, common sense and liberty. It is not to be nullified by self-aggrandizing social media posts.

Subscribe now

The Administration, dispensing with all pretense, now exercises a “War Department,” with a TRILLION-DOLLAR war budget, while trillions of military spending dollars remain unaccounted, and America’s leaders afflicted with a crass messianism informed not by 19^th century imperialism, but 11^th century crusading of like against unlike.

This is not the Will of a Heavenly God being fulfilled but a venal desire for more earthly power.

Furthermore, knocking over the government of Venezuela which, to reitterate, spent approximately ZERO for its defense in 2024 and then declaring the gambit to be one of the greatest military operations since WWII, is a violation of the English language which imposes limits on hyperbole -- or should.

Here are the US laws that this Administration violated in its January 3^, 2026 attack:

The U.S. Constitution: Article I, Section 8 grants Congress the sole power to declare war. The attack on Venezuela was an carefully contrived Act of War. Period. The invasion of Venezuela and the abduction of President Maduro was in planning stages for several months, according to General Caine who was tasked with overseeing the attack. Congress was deliberately circumvented.

The War Powers Resolution: Requires the President to notify Congress within 48 hours of military action and sets time limits for withdrawal, unless an AUMF (Authorization for Use of Military Force) or Declaration of War is passed. The President has noted that ”boots were on the ground” for the attack on Venezuela and has left open the possibility of US troops being sent for the second stage of the invasion.

The Neutrality Act: Prohibits the US government from engaging in or supporting unauthorized military actions against countries not at war with the U.S. Venezuela was not at war with the US.

The Foreign Assistance Act: Forbids U.S. assistance to governments or groups involved in coups or military overthrows.

The Arms Export Control Act: Forbids U.S. weapons being used in unauthorized acts of aggression.

Inside the Chamber of the House of Representatives, the most famous law givers in history, in bas relief, frame the rectangular chamber as sentinels, evoking the primacy of law in our national experience. Today, U.S. law is reduced yet again to whim, capris and corrupt motives.

Congress has a responsibility to our Constitution, to its constituents and to the world, to call out this Administration for its calculated, gross violations of the Constitution and U.S.law, and for making Americans less secure financially and at risk physically due to its wanton, illegal practice of war.

Congress must insist on enforcement of the War Powers Act and also ensure that the Administration acts within the bounds of international law.

If I were in Congress, I would put forth legislation to cut off funds for any military action not expressly approved by Congress and then go to federal court to obtain enforcement, if the Administration defies Congress.

Congress must reclaim its Constitutional authority in the process of checks and balances, or the Republic is lost.

In the life of each of us, there is someone special whose influence and participation telescopes from our childhood to the starry dreams of maturity. That person is my life is Aunt Betty.

Dark red hair, light skin, green eyes, and an angel’s voice, when accompanied by husband Lenny, a talented pianist, a jokester, a parimutuel clerk at Thistledown Race Track in Cleveland.

Holidays, Aunt Betty somehow knew not what I wanted, but what I needed. knew it when I was five years old and she bought me a Hopalong Cassidy sweater, or when replacing a puppy that died suddenly, or providing me with a new pair of shoes when she noticed my feet turning blue from cheap dye from shoes with holey soles.

It’s not that I came to expect help whenever I needed it, but Aunt Betty had the caring touch of a loving mother, the all-seeing eye of a watchful principal and, perhaps, most significantly, an unsurpassed knowledge of the Daily Racing Form.

Our family, which grew from Mom and Dad to seven children, struggled financially, often having difficulty finding a roof over our heads. When it seemed as though I could fall through the cracks, Aunt Betty would appear, with a lesson about the difference between needs and wants.

There was, in my early high school days a moment which arose when I wanted something that I didn’t need, couldn’t possibly pay for and I knew there was only one person I could go to, dropping hints about having something that achieved an outsized importance for this then pint-sized nephew.

Some kids are born athletes. I was born unathletic, but I had a great desire to play sports. The closest I came to being an athlete was having athlete’s feet. But, by the time I got to the ninth grade I had grown to 4’9” and weighed 97 lbs, a decent mascot size, certainly not St. John Cantius Jayhawks’ varsity football material, where, in August tryouts the players were foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier.

Subscribe now

Through an uncanny series of events which could only happen when less than thirty-three boys show up for the first practice, I made the team. I became a third-string quarterback, notwithstanding the proper concerns of our team’s coach that I could be annihilated by a single tackle.

The vantage point of a wooden field bench is, after all , superior to the loneliness of the spectators’ stands, especially for a young teenager who wanted to belong, and was longing to somehow fit in and enjoyed the rough and tumble.

It would have been enough to be a Jayhawk, suited up in an oversized jersey, borrowed cleats, and a high-impact plastic helmet with electric flash insignia, inside the webbing of which I kept juicy peaches to slake my thirst during the late summer practices at Tremont field, until a head-on collision caused the peaches to burst running down my face, prompting brief concerns I had cracked my head.

The daily calisthenics, the long runs around the 440 yd. track laden with dust from the nearby steel mill, helped inform a type of discipline, a sense of purpose much larger than my skill set.

As a quarterback, I took the responsibility to know the football playbook, studying the diagrams, knowing each player’s assignments, yet not really expecting to get into a game, especially as a freshman on a varsity, although occasional calls from the stands would urge the coach to put me into the fray, with a vibe not unlike the urgings of a crowd hungry to feed a Christian to the lions.

Early in a season of punishment, otherwise known as the game schedule, devised by someone with a wicked sense of humor, we ended up playing teams from much larger schools, who inflicted a beat down on our first and second team quarterbacks.

In the locker room at half time, surveying his bedraggled team which had caught the express train to defeat, the Coach looked at me and uttered those unforgettable words:

“Kucinich, you are starting at quarterback the second half.”

The heart of an overachiever knows no bounds, although one quickly discovers the limits of mind over matter from the bottom of a pile of tacklers after cartwheeling in the air like a jackrabbit meeting his maker.

Oh what a season of fortitude that was, every ride home after an away game I stretched out in the baggage rack while my teammates suffered the less accommodating hard-backed bus seats to contemplate defeat.

Miracle, I participated in enough quarters to gain a “letter,” a significantly outsized achievement for an undersized player, whom few could ducking behind the center, except the pitiless defenders who broke through our paper mache offensive line.

I earned a St. John Cantius letter, an S J C, configured in a block form, with a small football sewn on. Every athlete who won a letter proudly displayed it on an ivory white sweater, worn as form of status in high school., a gridiron warrior. The Letter Sweater (I put it here in capitals) was a visible symbol of attainment.

I wanted one.

I worked various jobs to pay my tuition, but the cost of a letter sweater was beyond my reach. So many months passed by and the SJC letter sat atop a pile of books at home, occasionally getting a wistful glance from yours truly.

I visited Aunt Betty one weekend with two of my friends who wore their Letter Sweaters and she remarked how smart they looked. During the visit I confided in her that I really wanted a letter sweater, but couldn’t afford it. I let it go at that.

Next week she called and invited me to go the Thistledown Racing track with her.

When I arrived at her house, she was reviewing the Daily Racing Form, the way I studied school homework., except she had calculations I didn’t understand, based on the races the horse had run, the condition of the track, the jockey, the jockey’s weight, stuff like that. She circled several races, checked her watch and said “Let’s go!”

She drove us to the track just in time for the first race. The call to the post still rings in my ears. The horses in all the silken colors. The jockeys, my size!

The horses burst out of the gate, Aunt Betty loudly shouting into the crowd, “Come on, come on,” and then, boom! She bet the winner. After the second race she announced to me that she hit the Daily Double, which meant she picked winners in the first two races of a ten event program.

“Come on, let’s go!” she said.

“Where?” I asked.

“I won the money for your letter sweater.“

We drove to downtown Cleveland to a sporting goods shop, but the sweaters in store were all too large.. The salesman, after measuring and remeasuring assured me they would have one in my size in a few weeks. I dropped off the SJC letter to be applied on the sweater, by the shop.

There was a long delay. Maybe they could not make a sweater my size. I stopped asking about it and immersed myself in basketball season.

Christmas and New Year’s celebrations were always special at Aunt Betty and Uncle Lenny’s, with piano music, sing-alongs, unlimited food, and then a gift exchange. I bought Betty and Lenny a picture of a championship racehorse I found in a Salvation Army store. Framed it. Wrapped it neatly. They loved it

Then Aunt Betty reached under the tree and handed me a carefully wrapped package. I opened it gently moving aside large tissues, uncovering A LETTER SWEATER. I stared at it for a moment, quickly tried it on, it fit perfectly. Warm, bright light seemed to suddenly pour into the room. I was draped in a physical symbol of achievement.

I remember the special pride I felt when I returned to my classes at St John Cantius, just after the New Year, wearing my new St. John Cantius letter sweater, and being able to add a basketball and baseball emblem on the monogram. I never forgot that it was Aunt Betty, who, with the presence and grace of a fairy godmother and a wand called the Daily Racing Form, lifted me from diminutive obscurity to membership in the St. John Cantius Letterman’s Club, and helped me to believe that anything is possible

Aunt Betty worked as an executive secretary for a big company in downtown Cleveland and earned a decent wage, the racetrack was her mad money, a horse -powered ATM of sorts, and a source of my good fortune.

As I ventured through high school, Aunt Betty would invite me to go to the track with her, and would find ways to share her winnings, although she would never tell me how she, like magic, figured out the winners. Her stern advice: Don’t gamble.”

A few years out of high school I became seriously ill with Crohn’s disease and there was Aunt Betty again, by my hospital bedside, paying for around-the-clock private duty nurses to bring me back to health, taking me into her home to ensure my full recovery from surgery.

I often think about Aunt Betty and her love and generosity. Years later, when I was on another race track, called Congress, I brought her with me to the White House Christmas Party where she met the President. She made such an impression on President Clinton that whenever I would see him afterwards he would ask: “How is Aunt Betty?”

That letter sweater doesn’t fit me anymore, but I still have it, folded away in the box that she gave me so many years ago, a momento of a boy’s dreams, the stuff of life’s possibilities. Since my SJC Jayhawk’s jersey number was #26, the year 2026 has special meaning.

As I look at the world today, it is easy to feel the weight of what we are up against. Systems that seem immovable. Forces that feel too large to challenge. A sense that ordinary people no longer have a place on the field. And yet, when I search for perspective, I return to a simple memory that has stayed with me all my life.

A small boy, barely four feet nine, standing on a football field where everyone else was bigger, stronger, more prepared. I did not have the size for the game. I did not have great strength. What I had was something else. I learned the plays. I studied the field. I paid attention. And because of that, I earned my place. Not through physical power, but through understanding. Not through dominance, but through determination.

And when I think about that boy, I think of my Aunt Betty and the singular role she played in my life.

Her strength never demanded attention. Her generosity was quiet, steady, and constant. She noticed people. She saw what they needed. She gave without expectation and without applause. She taught me, without ever saying it aloud, that love is not a feeling. It is an act. A responsibility. A way of showing up for others when it matters most.

In her, and in that boy on the field, I see the same truth. Courage and compassion are not separate things. One gives us the will to step forward. The other gives us the reason to do so. Both are necessary. Both are powerful.

That lesson has stayed with me through every chapter of my life. In politics. In public service. In moments of doubt. In moments of hope. Change does not come from force alone. It comes from participation. From learning the field. From believing that even when the odds are long, presence matters.

The challenges before us now are real. They are large. But history does not move because of institutions alone. It moves because ordinary people decide to engage, to care, and to act.

That is how change begins. Not with grand gestures, but with steady commitment. With courage joined to compassion. With people willing to step forward, even when the field looks daunting.

And so, as another year begins, I think of Aunt Betty. Of kindness given freely. Of belief quietly passed on. Of the simple truth that no one is too small to make a difference.

May we carry that spirit with us into the year ahead. May we give generously, receive graciously, and remember that the future is shaped by those who choose to show up. May your New Year be one of profound giving and receiving and let us remember the Aunt Betty’s of the world , those who are in our presence and those whose embrace is not limited by time or space. Happy New Year indeed.

On this Eve of Thanksgiving, as families gather in warm kitchens, stirring bubbling pots over hot stoves and setting tables in preparation for tomorrow’s feast, please do, truly give thanks to the farms, the farmers and to the animals and plants farmed which brought abundance to us this year.

Sharing food is a sacred act, and its eating is a gift from the Earth and from the communities who grew it. Food is a gift of life from one species to another, from the Earth herself, from the soil and land. Every act of food growing and consuming is part of a larger sacred web of nourishment and meaning with the aim and potential to sustain bodies, communities, and future generations.

I woke before dawn thinking of those who make our lives possible, the night’s rain still kissing the land as the morning slowly awakened. My first thoughts were of our land and her stewards, giving, giving, and giving. How they work and toil to feed us.

A deep prayer arose in me: That in the coming year, both our communities and our government will awaken to the primacy of the sacred exchanges which give us life. It is not only animals who are sacrificed in our current food system, in fields and in confinement. It is also the farmers, the land and the very foundations of life itself.

As families prepare to gather at the sacred hearth in love and celebration, farmers are going bankrupt at record rates. The programs that supported healthy local food have been eliminated. And just last week, as we Americans prepared to give thanks for the harvest, the Environmental Protection Agency approved yet another “forever chemical” pesticide, poisoning the land future generations will depend upon.

Family Farms are Disappearing

Farmers are facing the worst financial crisis in decades. Since 2020, seed costs are up 18 percent, fuel 32 percent, fertilizer 37 percent, labor 47 percent, and interest expenses a staggering 73 percent. Crop prices have barely moved since the 1970s. Costs are artificially manipulated by large corporations who now control supply.

Between 2017 and 2024, America lost 160,000 farms, an average of 63 every single day. Nearly 24 million acres of farmland have vanished, lost to development, consolidation, and relentless economic pressure. The human toll is immeasurable. Suicide rates among farmers remain several times the national average. Rural hospitals are closing.

The bankruptcy of farms is yielding land for international financial institution investors who convert fake fiat money into assets through manipulated misfortune. America is edging, ever closer, to plantation style monopoly and economics.

America’s food security is gravely under threat. As farms disappear and support programs are dismantled, the United States is becoming dangerously dependent on food imports. From 2007 to 2023, imports grew from supplying 50 percent to 59 percent of fresh fruit and from 20 percent to 35 percent of fresh vegetables consumed in the United States.

In 2024, U.S. agricultural imports reached a record 213 billion dollars. The U.S. trade balance in agriculture, positive for nearly sixty years, shifted to a deficit in 2019 and by 2023 imports exceeded exports by 21 billion dollars.

This is not merely an economic issue. Every acre of domestic farmland is a national security asset. When we lose diversified family farms that grow nutrient-dense food for local and regional markets, we surrender control over the most fundamental human need and compromise our ability to feed ourselves.

Behind these losses lies a systematic consolidation of American farmland into fewer hands. When family farms fail, land is absorbed by capital backed operations and purchased by corporations and foreign interests that treat soil as a financial instrument rather than a sacred trust.

Larger operations typically employ fewer people per acre, contribute less to local economies, and operate as industrial monocultures dependent on chemical inputs. Rural communities that once thrived around networks of family farms become economic deserts as those farms disappear and the social fabric unravels.

Subscribe now

Poisoning the Land, Our Food, and Ourselves

The most profound betrayal may be the Environmental Protection Agency’s accelerating approval of PFAS pesticides.

On November 21, the week before Thanksgiving, EPA approved isocycloseram, a pesticide containing PFAS, Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, commonly known as “forever chemicals.” This marked the second PFAS pesticide approved this month and the sixth proposed or approved since this administration took office.

PFAS never break down. They accumulate in soil, contaminate water, bioaccumulate in our bodies, and are linked to cancer, birth defects, immune disruption, liver damage, and reproductive harm.

The Centers for Disease Control has detected PFAS in the blood of 99 percent of Americans, including newborn babies. Now, with further approval of the EPA, these pesticides will be sprayed on vegetables Americans eat every day, romaine lettuce, broccoli, potatoes, soybeans, wheat, cotton, on golf courses and on lawns and children’s play areas,

The previously approved cyclobutrifluram breaks down into trifluoroacetic acid, now one of the most pervasive PFAS water contaminants on Earth. Scientists warn that we are exceeding a planetary boundary with this chemical, beyond which harm may become irreversible.

Research shows that 14 percent of U.S. pesticide active ingredients are now PFAS, including nearly one third of those approved in the past decade. PFAS ingredients have been found in streams and rivers nationwide, and some pesticide products contain PFOA and PFOS, among the most toxic PFAS chemicals, likely leaching from fluorinated containers.

While states such as Maine and Minnesota have moved to ban PFAS pesticides, the federal government is accelerating approvals, weakening drinking water standards, and proposing to relax reporting requirements. The EPA is now led by former chemical industry lobbyists. This is regulatory capture in its most dangerous form.

Throughout my work as Director of Policy at the Center for Food Safety and as a board member of the Rodale Institute, I have seen clearly that regenerative organic agriculture is truly pro-life agriculture, the thoughtful and committed stewardship of all living systems, the protection of nature in her wild and working landscapes.

Farmers are not merely producers. They are significant stewards of the natural world. When they farm in regenerative organic systems, they rebuild soil, support biodiversity, filter water, sustain pollinators and wildlife, and uphold the living systems upon which all life depends.

By contrast, when farmers are pushed into chemically dependent, heavily subsidized industrial systems, their farms become sacrifice zones and financial pass-throughs for the corporations that license their GMO seed, own their confined animals, and extract ever rising profits from agrichemicals and artificial inputs.

The way we farm determines not only what appears on our plates, but whether the land itself will remain capable of sustaining future generations.

When family farms disappear, we lose not only food production but accumulated wisdom, place-based knowledge, and the intergenerational commitment that makes truly regenerative agriculture possible. When our government approves chemicals that permanently contaminate that land, we betray future generations.

When I worked to help found Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Democratic presidential campaign in 2022, we worked to create a nonpartisan, bridgebuilding movement to Make America Healthy Again by supporting farmers who grow real food, rebuilding local food systems, honoring the land and its stewards, and protecting Americans from toxic chemicals.

Government says “Ha Ha” to MAHA

Rural and urban Americans alike embraced that vision. They voted for change. They believed promises to restore integrity, self-reliance, and prosperity to the land. They have received the opposite.

Captured agencies and misguided advisers have advanced the same broken systems that favor monopolies over families, imports over independence, processed commodities over real food, and chemical dependency over regenerative practice.

The heart of rural America is being broken not by foreign powers but by the very government that pledged to defend it. This is not making America healthy. This is making America sick for generations while poisoning the land farmers depend on for their livelihoods.

Last month, 115 MAHA associated farm and food advocacy organizations sent a letter to USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins calling for policies aligned with the Make America Healthy Again initiative. They presented seven specific demands:

1. Redirect USDA purchasing power by using the five billion dollar commodity budget, (forty-five percent of which currently goes to just twenty five corporations), to support independent organic and pasture based producers.

2. Restore cancelled local food programs, including the Local Food for Schools program, the Local Food Purchase Assistance program, Farm to School grants, and Regional Food Business Centers.

3. Advance healthy school meals through kitchen equipment, training, and scratch cooking to replace ultra processed foods.

4. Support organic and regenerative organic agriculture by restoring conservation funding, fully staffing the National Organic Program, providing technical assistance, and offering emergency support to organic dairy.

5. Strengthen the Natural Resources Conservation Service by restoring the twenty-four hundred lost staff positions and reinstating cancelled conservation contracts.

6. Reform agricultural checkoff programs so mandatory farmer fees are not funneled to pro-pesticide lobbying groups.

7. Ensure disaster and economic relief reaches all farmers, including fruit, vegetable, organic, and regenerative producers, not just commodity operations.

This Thanksgiving, please be conscious and grateful for those who grow, harvest, transport, and prepare our food, and those who are our food in the form of plants and animals we consume.

Take a moment to stand for the policies they, and we, deserve.

Sign and share the petition with your friends and family, calling on Secretary Rollins and the Department of Agriculture to protect farmers, restore local procurement, rebuild conservation programs, and promote genuinely healthy food for American families:

Support local and organic farms. Demand policies that put family farmers first, protect farmland from consolidation, and recognize the sacred importance of those who feed us. The future of American agriculture and American food security depends on what we do now.

____

Elizabeth Kucinich is former Director of Policy at the Center for Food Safety, former board member of the Rodale Institute, and producer of Organic Rising, Hot Water, GMO OMG and Circle of Poison. She was a co-founder of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Democratic presidential campaign, the precursor to the Make America Healthy Again movement.

Those of us whose memories trace back to the afternoon of November 22, 1963, remember exactly where we were, to the moment, when we learned President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

Sister Justicia, the Principal of Cleveland’s St. John Cantius Catholic High School called me from the study hall I was monitoring and shared the shocking news that President Kennedy had been shot. I suggested we link the school’s public address system to a network radio broadcast, so that the entire student body would know.

It had been a little more than a week since I had joined my senior classmates on a trip to Washington, D.C., where we excitedly witnessed, on November 11, 1963, President Kennedy laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown soldier.

It was the closest I had come to the President who spoke to my soul , and I am sure to the soul of many young Americans when, in his Inaugural Speech he said:

“Let the word go forth, from this time and place, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans…”.

President John F. Kennedy ignited my passion for public service on his first day in office, January 20, 1961. I was certainly not the only young person who felt that the President was talking to me, directly, and I reached for that torch.

President Kennedy’s call, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country,” was a call for national unity, for collective participation, for putting the interests of all of us above the concerns of any one of us.

Those of us who heard that call to service so many years ago, those of us who answered it, those of us who have put service to nation above service to self, those of us who know what we lost on November 22, 1963, even now, are dedicated to repairing that ship of state, placing our hands on its wheel and setting sail for home, to return and to reclaim what is good, what is just, what is right and what is beautiful about our beloved America.

Time is an illusion in matters of the heart. Love of country is timeless, it summons us to come to the aid of our country. Some of us still hold resolutely the torch which was passed to us sixty-four years ago and are prepared and determined to use its flame to relight the flickering torch of freedom in our nation’s citadel.

Subscribe now

We remember and still hear the strains of liberty, however faint. We remember and can still envision red, white and blue hues of the American mosaic of many races, colors and creeds, illuminated by Emma Lazarus’ ‘lamp lifted beside the Golden Door.’

We know that America, woven from myth and magic, worn by civil strife and foreign wars, is always ours to restore, to realign with a higher calling, a higher purpose of nationhood, the UNITED states, fulfilling the call for, the promise of, national unity which presages human unity, “out of many, we are one.”

Our remembrance of the man and the myth of President John F. Kennedy, like the myths of America’s Founders, merges fact and fiction with the alchemy of human imagination. Shakespeare in The Tempest wrote: “We are such stuff as dreams are made on.”

President Kennedy’s was a call to an American Altruism, a belief in America and in each other, a knowingness that our lives belonged not only to ourselves, but achieved greater meaning when devoted to a higher cause. A call to a mystic and mighty faith in our America.

Then the announcement: November 22, 1963 , at 2:00 pm Eastern, President Kennedy was dead.

Disbelief, a sense of deep, unutterable loss swept through the student body. Amidst free-flowing tears and spontaneous cries of bereavement, Sister Justicia asked that we go to the adjacent St. John Cantius Church to pray, for our late President and for our country.

A dream-like cloud of deep grief enveloped us. We filed into the halls in silence. We opened our lockers. We took our coats and went immediately to kneel before the altar to pray for America.

Sixty-two years later, we are still praying.

America has never recovered from the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Our generation experienced a psychic dismemberment profound, faith in goodness severed, trust, severed; hope, severed; in the words of Yeat’s “everywhere, the ceremony of innocence is drowned.”

In the ensuing years, in a flood of articles, books and even movies, we experienced a type of post-traumatic stress, pitched into endless questions of who assassinated President Kennedy…and why?

The endless speculation: What would have America become had not death’s accomplices intervened? What would have we Americans become if inspired to be more than we were, better than we were, by a President who sensed the deep potential of arousing the conscience and the consciousness of a nation?

We may never know the answers, but we do know his assassination changed our lives forever. It ripped away the moorings of predictability, the notions of continuity in time, of governance, of leadership, the mental infrastructure of our social reality disintegrated. It left many of us with a feeling that the world was less solid, more liquid.

No one can compete with the mythic dimensions of a martyred president, whose portrait had been placed, in tens of millions of homes, sometimes next to that of Christ, a constant reminder of what we had, of what had we lost, of the seemingly irretrievable.

Yet, handed down, generation to generation, was the hope that somehow, in some way, we could reclaim the myth and the promise of President Kennedy’s America and turn it into reality: The America of service, the America of education, the America of wisdom, the America of fitness, the America of goodwill, the America of daring, the America reaching for the stars, in peace.

And today, in our journey from November 22, 1963, that America appears as the distant shore of a land from which our ship of state has departed, rudderless, drifting away in waves of destructive partisanship, self -interest, greed, and invocations of violence.

We Americans are the heirs and heiresses of more than 250 years of dreams, including those of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and of generations of Americans who built this nation.

Subscribe now

What shall we the dreamers of today do with our dreams? Let them vanish upon waking up in the harsh reality of a nation tempting the forces of destruction?

No. Poet Langston Hughes’ Depression-era meditation on freedom and equality, “Let America Be America Again,” demands dreamers awake to the challenge of matching our dreams to action:

…. [we] must bring back our mighty dream again….

We must take back our land again,

America!

O, yes,

I say it plain.

America never was America to me,

And yet I swear this oath –

America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster

Death,

The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and

Lies,

We, the people, must redeem

The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.

The mountains and the endless plain—

All, all the stretch of these great green states.

And make America again”

Langston Hughes, Let America Be America Again, 1935

Let us arise, America. Let us rendezvous with the powerful spirits of patriots, matriots, poets and Presidents, our Native Americans, and centuries of voyagers from around the world, the searchers, the seekers of freedom, the sentinels, the believers in what America can be, will be, at last, and make the America of which we dream.

Share

Gaza is an occupied territory. Its borders, airspace, imports, exports, and even calories are controlled by Israel and its Western backers. Gaza does not need another flag flown above its ruins; it needs the right to rebuild on its own terms.

The Mirage of “Transition”

Western governments are preparing a plan for Gaza’s postwar administration. The proposal, advanced through quiet coordination between Washington, London, and Jerusalem, would establish a new international body called the Gaza International Transitional Authority to govern the territory for several years following the conflict. The concept, promoted as a stabilization effort, is said to draw inspiration from earlier foreign-led missions in Kosovo and Lebanon.

At the center of this “plan” is the risible suggestion that former British Prime Minister Tony Blair should lead the authority, overseeing Gaza’s reconstruction, policing, and governance on behalf of the self-proclaimed international community.

Gaza Governor Blair. “You What?!”

Tony Blair, then British Prime Minister, gave George W. Bush political cover for the invasion of Iraq which resulted in the deaths of over 1,000,000 Iraqis. On July 23, 2002, as recorded in the infamous Downing Street Memo, Blair’s government reviewed the case for the war and concluded that “the [U.S.] intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.” Put another way, President Bush was lying about Iraq being a threat.

The British government, led by Blair, knew Bush was lying. Tony Blair gave special legitimacy to that lie. The U.S. attack on Iraq commenced seven months later.

Blair’s slavish devotion to the Western narrative, no matter how totally corrupt, credentials him well to lead a proposed Gaza International Transitional Authority, an interim body that would rule Gaza for several years before handing power to a restructured Palestinian Authority.

This is an imperial project by definition, one that would embed permanent control, deepen division, and ensure that Gaza will be subjugated. What a surprise.

Enter Tony Blair as a peace envoy, illustrating the grotesque inversion of reality wherein an architect of war becomes an exemplar of peace for a people who have experienced the ravages of genocide at the hands of the very western interests Blair continues to serve.

Subscribe now

More recent reports indicate President Trump or Trump-aligned representatives will also take part in this pretense of governance, but my guess is that the grim implications of such an endeavor will give the White House pause and provide even more encouragement for the appointment of Blair as Governor of the Gaza Occupation, packaged as reform.

The proper motto of this cynical rebranding of colonial rule by the same powers who drew the map of the Middle East, should be: ‘What is broken, stays broken.’ Under this condition, imperialism as humanitarianism becomes war as peace.

Who better to keep this wretched system in place than Blair, who as the envoy of the Middle East’s Quartet (composed of US, EU, UN and Russia) from 2007-2015, served Israel’s interests alone.

Kosovo: Occupation Disguised as Liberation

Let’s dive deeper into the proposition that Blair and his advocates present Kosovo and Lebanon as what they propose to do in Gaza, demonstrating that international administration can produce liberal democracy.

In their telling, NATO’s 1999 intervention was a triumph. Milosevic’s forces were expelled, the United Nations assumed control, and a stable state eventually emerged.

But history tells a different story. Under the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo, foreign officials assumed full executive, legislative, and judicial control.

Local leaders were reduced to consultation. At first, this was accepted as liberation. Within five years, it was understood to be not liberation but occupation.

Riots erupted in 2004. The phrase “UNMIK equals governance by bullets” captured the truth of an unaccountable government imposed without consent. .

Kosovo today is undergoing an even more rigid implementation of a failed and wrong headed model of forced fracture and sectarian governance masquerading as peace and democracy. It is a place where Western powers celebrate the illusion of stability while maintaining the reality of dependency. The Kosovo model which institutionalized occupation under international management is proposed for Gaza.

Lebanon: The Architecture of Division

Both Kosovo and Lebanon were built on the same imperial premise: Divided peoples are easier to control than united ones.

The Lebanon model entrenched colonial sectarianism under local disguise. Under the French Mandate beginning in 1920, Lebanon became a testing ground for what the West still calls power sharing. France redrew borders to create a Christian majority state under Maronite leadership and wrote sectarian identity into the constitution.

The National Pact of 1943 later codified this arrangement, guaranteeing each religious community fixed control of the highest offices: The presidency to a Maronite Christian, the prime minister to a Sunni Muslim, and the speakership of parliament to a Shia Muslim.

What looked like balance was in truth a system of permanent division. This structure was not born from Lebanon’s culture. It was born from French colonial strategy, designed to preserve influence by keeping the country internally fragmented.

Over time, sectarianism became not a reflection of society but its architecture. Patronage, corruption, and militia rule followed. Every community became a fiefdom, every ministry a prize for one sect’s elite.

When civil war erupted in Lebanon in 1975, the fault lines had already been laid by this colonial inheritance. The war was the logical outcome of a system that defined citizens first by confession and then by allegiance. Even the Taif Agreement of 1989, which ended the war, merely recalibrated the quotas. It did not remove the sectarian scaffolding that guaranteed paralysis.

The result is a nation where governance itself is gridlock, where corruption, inequality, and dependency masquerade as coexistence.

That Lebanon is now invoked as a plan for Gaza, manufactured fragility presented as multicultural harmony, endless negotiation sold as peace demonstrates the West knows nothing about Lebanon and even less about Gaza.

Repeating History in Gaza

Applying the Lebanon approach to Gaza is to deliberately reproduce the conditions of conflict and call it reconstruction. It is to confuse division for diversity, subjugation for security, and occupation for order.

Gaza is not a failed state in need of administration. It is an occupied territory. Its borders, airspace, imports, exports, and even calories are controlled by Israel and its Western backers. It has lived under blockade and bombardment for years. Its economy and infrastructure are systematically strangled.

An imported administration, armed, funded, and directed by outsiders would not bring relief. It would extend the existing system of colonial control, formalizing it under international management.

Subscribe now

Such a mission would amount to the same outcome: Foreign rule as liberation.

Gaza does not need another flag flown above its ruins; it needs the right to rebuild on its own terms.

Lessons Unlearned: From Sykes-Picot to Blair

Western diplomats, custodians of the system that created the crisis, describe such missions as temporary. Gaza knows what ‘temporary’ means: Decades of interim arrangements that never end, checkpoints that never close, and an occupation that has metastasized into permanence.

From the Sykes-Picot Agreement to the Balfour Declaration, Britain and its allies carved the Middle East into artificial states, installed sectarian governments, and called it order, creating conditions for the sectarian government of Israel born of partition and maintained through military dominance.

The fossilized thinking of Sykes-Picot and Balfour creeps along through the hoary pretense that the so-called civilized West must oversee the unstable East, through an insidious colonial mission repackaged as a twenty-first century imperative.

A Tale of Two Leaders

Tony Blair and I stood on opposite sides of history.

Blair used his office to justify the invasion of Iraq. I used my position as a member of the United States House of Representatives to try to prevent it.

I was not a head of state, but I used every power in the congressional parliamentary playbook to challenge both Bush and Blair, including helping to mobilize millions of people against the Iraq war.

That contrast matters. The same governments that waged that war based on lies now want to place Tony Blair in charge of Gaza, as if the co-author of one tragedy could administer the cure for another.

What Real Peace Requires

The attempt to manage Gaza as an isolated province under international administration is the latest stage in a century of colonial containment. It mirrors the British Mandate’s logic; to stabilize through control, to promise independence while denying it in practice.

This is not a conflict between two equal sides. It is a prolonged occupation underwritten by Western arms and Western diplomacy. To speak honestly about peace in the Middle East is to confront that reality.

A real peace cannot be built upon partitions, blockades, and externally imposed governments. It must begin with the recognition of Palestinian sovereignty, not as a concession but as a right. It must mean the end of occupation, the dismantling of apartheid systems, and the restoration of equality under law.

Until the world is willing to face the full moral and historical truth of Palestine, every transition plan will simply be another name for domination of what was once a single, continuous homeland concertedly reduced to isolated fragments.

The land of Palestine exists as disconnected enclaves, each surrounded by military checkpoints, walls, and settlements built as instruments of control, in defiance of international law.

Gaza is sealed from the sea and air. The West Bank is carved into zones of occupation, each overseen by Israeli forces and illegal settlers. East Jerusalem is being erased through bureaucratic strangulation and displacement. What remains of Palestine is a patchwork of prisons, the deliberate outcome of a violent colonial system which makes mockery of self-governance.

Israel’s government, shaped by apartheid policies and militarized expansion, has created the instability it now claims to fight. It has normalized violence, dehumanized millions, and extinguished any hope for peace.

A transitional authority in Gaza is not meant to change that underlying reality. The true transition, from occupation to coexistence, from apartheid to equality must begin inside Israel.

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

My Dear Fellow Americans,

We are at an inflection point in the history of this country and in the history of the world. I feel this gathering here today is essential to what we hope our world will become, as opposed to what we fear may happen to it. I’m going to focus on Gaza.

Now, the thinking that separates us, the thinking that permits us to observe Gaza with a vicarious horror, a type of protective detachment, makes apparent there is only so much practiced degradation that any of us can contemplate.

But distance in time and space, while comforting us, also mislead.

We have to break the bonds which tether us to separative thinking. We must, as a matter of survival, declare here and now to the world, that we are all Palestinians.

We are all Palestinians. It is our children who are being shot, our families being bombed, our houses being taken and destroyed, our land being poisoned with every type of munition, Ourselves, our very selves are torn asunder. We are all Palestinians.

We hunger and we thirst for food, for water, and for justice. We are starving.

It is through the long-suffering Palestinians that we learn the power of human dignity, and endurance. We see demonstrated an extraordinary instinct for survival, an instinct that reaches and towers also, an instinct that, is almost beyond human understanding. It is the power of human dignity, of endurance of the life instinct which unites us here in Kingston with Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

The Palestinians are stripped bare with the curse of nothingness. Yet they possess a power and indomitability that refuses to capitulate to genocide and ethnic cleansing, sanctioned violence and murder most foul.

The Palestinians are a lesson to the entire world about the undeniable power when people stand against injustice.

We reject the separation of time and space and degraded politics. We claim our brotherhood and our sisterhood with the people of Gaza and the West Bank. The strength of the Palestinian people gifts us with extraordinary strength. We’re gifted with the courage of the Palestinian people, with the grace under suffering of the Palestinian people. Humanity cannot be defeated because the Palestinian people cannot be defeated.

Today in Kingston, NY, we gather for peace. We claim our humanity. We claim our unity with the Palestinian people and with all peoples everywhere who face life and death at the hands of any government or institution whose policies and practices are set apart from human values, from human dignity.

As citizens of a common planet, it’s only through understanding our commonalities, to know deeply how much we are all alike, that we set ourselves on a path to redemption, redemption from the chaos of hate, redemption from destruction, redemption from dichotomous thinking of us-versus-them, whoever they are, that which leads us to mutual assured destruction.

Subscribe now

So, empowered by the long suffering and fortitude of the Palestinians, with whom we are in communion, we declare that here in Kingston, New York, on Saturday, September 27th, 2025, on behalf of the Palestinian people and of all peoples, that we have a right to be free of the scourge of war.

We have a right and a duty to resist genocide.

We have a right and a duty to resist ethnic cleansing.

We have a right and a duty to resist state sponsored starvation.

We have a right and a duty to resist all practices which fund genocide, ethnic cleansing, starvation, which separate us from our brothers and sisters everywhere in the world.

We have a right to a peaceful existence, free of the machinations of political leaders, political parties, propaganda, conspiracies, incitements, provocations, and media channels which profit from division.

We have a right to governments we can call our own, mindful of the stated purpose of our own government and the preamble of the United States Constitution, to form a more perfect union, to establish justice, to ensure domestic tranquility, to provide for the common defense, (which housing, healthcare, and education are a part of), to support the general welfare, to secure the blessings of liberty.

Those principles have served us to this point in our nation’s history. But war, militarism, and licensing of genocide defeat the purpose of our nationhood.

This then is the moment when inspired by the resistance to extinction of our Palestinian brothers and sisters, we set about the challenge of constructing a new America.

A new America. which builds upon the very concept of the United States as embracing the unity of all peoples.

Therefore, we reject war and work to establish peace. We reject funding governments whose purpose is mass murder.

We support feeding hungry people with bread, not bombs.

We assert that a trillion dollar annual war budget represents death on the installment plan.

We must turn our swords into plowshares, our spears into pruning hooks, and create a beloved nation where all are sheltered, all are fed, all are educated, and all are healthy.

Let us then lift up our eyes.

Let us expand our vision.

Let us leave behind this cloud of confusion and fear which has descended upon our world.

Let us imagine and work to create an America which is not a nation above nations, but a nation among nations,

Let us merge with the common humanity of the entire world, where we abandon our pretensions of world domination, where we create cooperative economic models which serve all Americans and enable goodwill to prevail among all nations.

Let us work to enshrine principles of cooperation and security through insisting on the principles of the Biological Weapons Convention, the Chemical Weapons Convention, the Small Arms Treaty, the Landmine Treaty, and all nuclear treaties toward the goal of nuclear abolition.

Let us create an America which merges with the advancing tide of humanity. An America which reconnects with the deeper rhythms which support life on the planet.

Let us call forth our true America, the land that we love, a people that we love, regifting the world with a spirit of benevolence, primal human sympathy, compassion, and unity. America.

Thank you very much thank you.