The Big Tech Campaign to Fast Track Nuke Energy. Senators Whitehouse and Booker Take the Lead in Congress

The ADVANCE Act passed 393-13 in the House and 88-2 in the Senate, where only Markey and Sanders voted no. Both senators have repeatedly opposed building new nuclear plants due to environmental concerns, such as the ongoing absence of a long-term solution to the nation’s roughly 100,000 tons of radioactive waste.

Last May, Trump signed a series of executive orders to radically overhaul nuclear safety oversight, citing the ADVANCE Act as justification for transforming the NRC’s culture, directing the agency to approve new reactors within 18 months, and consult with DOGE on a wholesale revision of its regulations. Since then, the administration has secretly overhauled nuclear safety rules, proposed to severely cut inspections and radiation standards, exempted new reactors from environmental reviews, and triggered an exodus of 400 NRC employees since Trump took office.

CAPITOL HILL CITIZEN, By Peter Castagno, May 2026

In September 2014, a Google engineer hosted a private meeting at the company’s Mountain View headquarters. The guests included a nuclear energy investor and staff from the influential think tank Third Way.

By the end of the meeting, the small group agreed to “fund a bit of work in DC” to influence policy in favor of nuclear energy. That meeting set in motion a decade-long campaign that would transform Democratic politics on nuclear energy – and leave the regulatory framework governing atomic safety vulnerable to the most aggressive deregulatory assault in its history. 

The Trump administration leveraged the bipartisan legislative architecture that Democrats helped build to gut the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Ross Koningstein – Google’s former director emeritus of nuclear energy R&D – hosted the Mountain View gathering. 

As he explained in a 2024 article, the tech giant quietly supported Third Way, the Clean Air Task Force, ClearPath and other advocacy groups for over a decade, helping lawmakers craft pro-nuclear legislation.

Third Way and its partners have since taken credit for “creating an entirely new policy discussion around advanced nuclear energy,” helping draft overhauls to nuclear policy, and working “behind the scenes” to shift Democrats’ nuclear views. 

In the early years of this effort, public support for nuclear energy was at a low point. In 2016, Gallup found a majority of Americans opposed nuclear energy for the first time since it began surveying the issue in 1994. Only 34% of Democrats favored it. By 2025, that figure climbed to 46% of Democrats – a 12-point change in less than a decade. 

That shift coincided with a surge of Silicon Valley nuclear investment and advocacy. Jeff Navin, a lobbyist for Bill Gates’ small modular reactor (SMR) startup TerraPower, described 2015 as a pivotal year for nuclear support in Capitol Hill. 

At that year’s Paris Climate Talks, Gates announced the Breakthrough Energy Coalition with co-investors including Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Richard Branson. Peter Thiel, another top Silicon Valley nuclear investor, published – The New Atomic Age We Need – a New York Times op-ed within the same 48-hour window. 

Breakthrough Energy has since grown into a $4 billion juggernaut spanning venture capital, philanthropy, and policy advocacy, with $7.9 million in direct lobbying expenditures since 2020

Breakthrough Energy has since grown into a $4 billion juggernaut spanning venture capital, philanthropy, and policy advocacy, with $7.9 million in direct lobbying expenditures since 2020. 

Taken together, Breakthrough entities and the Gates Foundation have given more than $60 million to the key pro-nuclear groups that reshaped policy, the majority since 2022. 

This includes more than $20 million to Third Way, over $10 million to the Clean Air Task Force, more than $9 million to ClearPath, and nearly $4 million to the Breakthrough Institute. Laying the groundwork for Trump Third Way’s ties to Gates go beyond receiving more than $20 million from his philanthropies. 

The think tank’s most recent 2024 tax filing lists lobby firm Boundary Stone Partners as its top contractor for ‘strategic consulting.’ Third Way has paid Boundary Stone Partners over $2 million since 2020, while the lobby group was simultaneously providing “comprehensive legislative and strategic support” to Gates’ nuclear firm TerraPower, which paid it $900,000 in lobby fees over the same period. 

Former Office of Nuclear Energy chief of staff Andrew Richards, who led Boundary Stone Partners’ nuclear practice until March 2025, is now TerraPower’s vice president of government affairs. Jeff Navin, Boundary Stone Partner’s co-founder, has long helped coordinate Third Way’s nuclear strategy. He was Terra- Power’s director of external affairs until last April.

Navin and Josh Freed, Third Way’s energy and climate chief, approached the White House together to set up its first nuclear energy summit. Before joining Third Way, Freed was a senior advisor to the Gates Foundation. Gates has also exerted influence directly. He told Bloomberg in 2022 he had quietly lobbied elected officials including former Senator Joe Manchin, for years on federal climate policy, helping secure tax incentives for nuclear energy in the Inflation Reduction Act. 

The billionaire told the former West Virginia senator that coal workers could potentially transition into building reactors for TerraPower – he donated $2,900 to Manchin in May 2022, months before the IRA’s passage. Manchin would later lead the ouster of Democrat NRC commissioner Jeff Baran, who frequently raised concerns about safety issues of experimental SMRs like TerraPower. 

TerraPower’s client case study for Boundary Stone Partners notes it successfully lobbied for bills, including the 2024 ADVANCE Act. The law required the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to rewrite the language of its mission statement to promote the benefits of civilian nuclear expansion. 

Victor Gilinsky, who served as a NRC commissioner in the Ford, Carter, and Reagan administrations, observed the bill showed “every sign of having been written by interested parties and with little vetting” in a 2024 Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists op-ed. He warned the subtle shift in language could open the door to severe consequences, eroding the agency’s independence to expedite licensing of experimental reactors. 

“TerraPower foresees selling hundreds of such reactors for domestic use and export,” Gilinsky wrote in a 2024 analysis. “The new law is largely directed at clearing the way for the rapid licensing of such reactors by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). It does so in part by providing additional resources but also—more ominously – by weakening the agency’s safety reviews and inspections in the name of efficiency.” 

The ADVANCE Act passed 393-13 in the House and 88-2 in the Senate, where only Markey and Sanders voted no. Both senators have repeatedly opposed building new nuclear plants due to environmental concerns, such as the ongoing absence of a long-term solution to the nation’s roughly 100,000 tons of radioactive waste.

During his floor speech, Markey expressed skepticism that rapidly licensing experimental nuclear reactors was justified on climate grounds. 

“It’s shortsighted to me to make such a herculean effort to promote new nuclear technologies when we’re yet to solve the longstanding problems resulting from our existing nuclear fleet,” Markey said in his floor speech. “To this day, the Navajo Nation is dealing with the legacy of uranium contamination, including more than 500 abandoned uranium mines and homes and water sources polluted with elevated levels of radiation.” 

TerraPower-linked groups were heavily involved in pushing the ADVANCE Act through Congress and celebrated its passage, including the nation’s most prominent industry group, the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI). 

The NEI and Silicon Valley have deepened their relationship in recent years. Amazon is now a dues-paying member. The CEO of X-Energy, backed by $500 million in Amazon investment, sits on NEI’s board, alongside TerraPower CEO Chris Levesque and Oklo CEO Jacob DeWitte – whose firm was seeded by Sam Altman and Peter Thiel. NEI’s PAC has donated hundreds of thousands to the ADVANCE Act’s Democratic champions, including a total of $66,000 to Congressman Frank Pallone (D-New Jersey), Ranking Member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. 

Pallone and several other pro-nuclear Democrats have since expressed alarm at the Trump administration’s interpretation of the law they enacted. 

Last May, Trump signed a series of executive orders to radically overhaul nuclear safety oversight, citing the ADVANCE Act as justification for transforming the NRC’s culture, directing the agency to approve new reactors within 18 months, and consult with DOGE on a wholesale revision of its regulations. Since then, the administration has secretly overhauled nuclear safety rules, proposed to severely cut inspections and radiation standards, exempted new reactors from environmental reviews, and triggered an exodus of 400 NRC employees since Trump took office.

Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) and Cory Booker (D-New Jersey) each gave closing remarks at a nuclear energy summit in 2016. Third Way partnered with the Nuclear Energy Institute to host the Washington event. 

In Third Way’s telling, the summit marked the beginning of a years-long partnership with lawmakers who “continued to champion” the nuclear legislation it helped write. 

In 2020, the Democratic Party included support for nuclear energy in its national platform for the first time since 1972. That year, the Democratic National Committee paid digital consulting firm Bully Pulpit International more than $30 million. 

From 2017 to 2023, the Nuclear Energy Institute paid the same firm $6.4 million to frame nuclear energy as “critical in the effort to lower carbon emissions” – achieving, according to Bully Pulpit, “consistent positive attitudinal shifts among DC elites and policy influencers.” Bully Pulpit was co-founded by former Obama campaign staffers. 

The firm that helped elect Democrats was simultaneously taking millions from the nuclear industry to shift Democratic opinion. Booker became the face of Democrats’ nuclear shift during his 2020 presidential campaign. 

He disparaged anti-nuclear Democrats, which a Gallup poll found made up 57% of the party at the time, during a 2019 interview: “As much as we say the Republicans when it comes to climate change must listen to science, our party has the same obligation to listen to scientists.” Booker’s framing is inaccurate. 

On whether decarbonization requires nuclear energy, expert opinion is deeply divided –  with leading experts including Daniel Kammen, Arjun Makhijani, and MV Ramana contending that 100% renewable pathways are viable. Yet this framing – disputed by leading experts – nonetheless became the political rationale for a sweeping legislative agenda Booker and Whitehouse would champion for the next half decade. 

The senators were primary architects of the legislative architecture that the Trump administration has since used for maximal deregulation. This includes The ADVANCE Act and the 2019 Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act (NEIMA), which directed the NRC to create a new licensing pathway – called “Part 53” – for experimental reactors. 

The Trump administration issued its Part 53 rule in March. It allows applicants to propose reactors in densely populated areas and use fast-tracked reviews from the Department of Defense and Department of Energy as evidence for their safety, and lacks specific guidance for carrying out systematic risk analyses. 

As ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works committee, Whitehouse has repeatedly lambasted Trump administration officials for gutting nuclear safety standards. 

“Despite so much commonsense, bipartisan work, the Trump Administration has upended progress in a flamingly partisan manner,” he said at a June 2025 hearing. “In this case, by DOGE-ing the NRC in flagrant disregard for nuclear safety, for the bipartisan direction of Congress, and for the law.” 

The purpose of the hearing was to consider two Trump nominees, Energy Secretary Chris Wright and EPA assistant administrator Usha-Maria Turner. Whitehouse voted against the EPA nominee due to her history of working in the fossil fuel industry: “The corruption and conflicts of interest are happening in plain view. For that reason, I will not support this nomination.”

However, Whitehouse voted in favor of Wright, a former fossil fuel executive and board member of nuclear startup Oklo. He withdrew his support a month later in protest of the Department of Energy’s “hostile takeover” of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. 

Yet despite his vocal concerns about the dangers of ongoing nuclear safety rollbacks, Whitehouse introduced the Nuclear Refuel Act in June 2025 and voted to move it to the Senate floor in October 2025. 

The bill would streamline new nuclear reprocessing facilities, which separate fissile material from spent fuel. The extracted materials are then repurposed for use as reactor fuel, but also can be used to create nuclear weapons. 

As over a dozen experts explained in a July 2025 letter to elected officials, security and economic concerns have long prevented the U.S. from using plutonium for civilian nuclear fuel. Experts warned a U.S. reprocessing program could lead to the spread of nuclear weapons technology – President Carter banned the practice after India used it to make a bomb in 1974 –  and weaken U.S. diplomats’ ability to discourage other countries from similarly extracting weapons-grade plutonium from their fuel. 

The Senate EPW press release for the Nuclear Refuel Act featured a celebratory statement from Oklo CEO Jacob DeWitte, who plans to use plutonium-bearing fuel for his breeder reactor. This comes as the Trump administration aims to transfer 20 tons of plutonium to private industry while cutting security standards meant to safeguard against the theft of nuclear materials. 

Unlike Whitehouse, Markey has opposed this effort: “Oklo Inc., a nuclear technology start-up, is the main company interested in receiving plutonium from [the Department of Energy],” Markey wrote in a September letter to Trump. “Oklo is also, with DOE’s support, building a $1.7 billion reprocessing plant in Tennessee. Your Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright, served on the Board of Directors of Oklo until his confirmation in February. 

In 2024, Wright and his wife also made contributions to your presidential campaign totaling about $458,000 and made contributions to the Republican National Committee of about $330,400.” Whitehouse and, to a greater extent, Booker have also received generous support from nuclear interests, including at least $200,000 from Breakthrough Energy and Google leaders. 

Holtec executives donated $68,100 to Booker’s committees in 2022, while the New Jersey firm was under a state criminal investigation for defrauding tax credit applications and under national scrutiny for safety violations. 

That year, Booker helped pass IRA nuclear subsidies Holtec is now using to restart its Palisades plant. Whitehouse’s most recent financial disclosure reports holdings of at least $1.8 million in tech giants invested in nuclear expansion, including Google, Amazon, and Meta.

Whitehouse invests up to $5 million in Nvidia, which recently announced a partnership with Oklo for the AI-assisted fabrication of plutonium- bearing fuel. 

Whitehouse and Booker also received donations from nuclear policy lobbyists, including $13,500 from KDCR Partners, a firm paid more than $4 million since 2020 by TerraPower, Breakthrough Energy, NEI, and Google to lobby on nuclear policy. 

KDCR’s founder was President Clinton’s deputy assistant for legislative affairs, one of multiple veterans of Democratic administrations recruited by the nuclear industry to shepherd its agenda through the party. In the mid-2010s, the Nuclear Energy Institute retained consulting firm Kivvit – co-founded by David Axelrod, Obama’s chief campaign strategist and senior advisor –  to help create the “Nuclear Matters” front group. As the Climate Investigations Center noted in 2016, Kivvit explained how its Nuclear Matters operation implemented a robust public affairs campaign, which includes advertising, sponsored event series, media relations, grasstops recruitment, third-party advocacy, and targeted social media engagement.” 

Nuclear Matters is funded almost entirely by NEI, but it describes itself as “a national coalition of grassroots advocates, working to inform the public and policymakers about the clear benefits of nuclear energy.” 

But the shell group transfers nearly its entire revenue to PR firm APCO Worldwide, which has received more than $20 million from Nuclear Matters and its parent nonprofit since 2016. 

Nuclear Matters’ first president Neal Cohen was the former president of APCO, where he helped develop Phillip Morris’ PR playbook. Carol Browner – former Clinton EPA administrator and Obama climate advisor – is Nuclear Matters’ most prominent third-party recruit. The group has paid her at least $850,000 since 2018. 

Browner recanted her formerly anti-nuclear views in a 2014 Forbes op-ed and announced she was joining a bipartisan “public education campaign” alongside former Senators Evan Bayh and Judd Gregg, to whom Nuclear Matters has paid $345,000. 

Bayh received $1.95 million from a lobby group that represents nuclear clients during the same period. Nuclear Matters lists Third Way among its partners and the groups frequently collaborate. 

Browner represented Nuclear Matters at the 2016 Third Way summit where Whitehouse and Booker gave closing remarks – in a room that also included Google’s Koningstein, Oklo’s future CEO, and TerraPower – a meeting Third Way later described as the milestone that launched a decade of successful bipartisan nuclear advocacy.

When Gates announced Breakthrough Energy at the 2015 Paris Climate Talks, he asserted the impending climate catastrophe brought an urgent need for “high risk” investments in clean energy technologies. 

The billionaire struck a different tone a decade later in a public memo ahead of the 2025 UN Climate Change Conference. 

Gates explained he still views climate change as serious, but not a “doomsday” level threat, and advocated a different approach to address it – one that benefits his nuclear company.

The first priority in Gates’ memo is to lower the “Green Premium” – “the cost difference between the clean and dirty way of doing things.” 

Gates wrote he was hopeful he could bring down TerraPower’s 50% Green Premium, before advocating government leaders promote policies to fund and support Green Premium technologies. 

Amazon-backed SMR startup X-Energy similarly noted its reliance on government support in its recent IPO filing. Yet while its technology is supported by more than a billion in public funding, X-Energy has an “Intellectual Property-driven business model” to generate “attractive free cash flow” from the use of its complex proprietary technology. 

Gates built his fortune on Microsoft’s copyright and patent protections. He co-founded TerraPower with former Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold in 2008, as the first spinout company of Myhrvold’s patent portfolio firm Intellectual Ventures. TerraPower – which has so far received more than $2.5 billion in government funding – already has more than 500 patents. 

The Trump administration greenlit TerraPower to begin construction of its first plant in March, nine months ahead of schedule. The company credited Trump’s May executive orders and bipartisan reforms that Third Way and its partners helped create for the rapid timeline.

Experts, such as Union of Concerned Scientists director of nuclear power safety Edwin Lyman, excoriated TerraPower’s rapid approval, noting the NRC itself conceded the reactor had unresolved safety issues in its reviews. 

June 2, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Inside the broligarchy: Is big tech running US politics? Carole Cadwalladr talks to DW News.

From Donald Trump’s alliances with tech billionaires to the collapse of US media outlets, investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr says we are accelerating towards a “techno‑fascist future.” Chapters 00:00 Where does government end and Big Tech begin? 00:26 DW speaks with Carole Cadwalladr, Investigative Journalist 02:40 What is the broligarchy? 06:45 Missing accountability for big tech 08:00 Tech entrepreneurs are taking over legacy media companies 10:30 A techno-Fascist future? 12:30 What can People do? 14:00 How Aware is the public about data collection risks? 15:20 AI and intellectual property 18:00 A positive way forward?

May 30, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, USA | Leave a comment

It’s the genocide, stupid

You’ll recall that Harris never distanced herself from Biden on this question. In her first interview after becoming the nominee, she maintained the party line on Israel, reciting the usual claptrap about the country’s right to “defend itself.” Asked point-blank whether her foreign policy would differ from Biden’s at all, she said it would remain the same. That is to say, the United States would continue to send weapons to Israel while the country carried out a genocide.

The DNC finally released its long-awaited autopsy of Kamala Harris’s failed presidential campaign, and it doesn’t mention Gaza. The Democratic leadership’s refusal to acknowledge the party’s shift on Israel could spell another defeat in 2028.

By Michael Arria  May 22, 2026, https://mondoweiss.net/2026/05/its-the-genocide-stupid/

On Thursday, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) finally released its long-awaited autopsy of Kamala Harris’s failed presidential campaign.

The rollout was highly on-brand for the Democratic establishment. The 192-page document seems slapped together, is full of typos, and was released only because CNN obtained a copy. In an accompanying note, DNC Chair Ken Martin said the report didn’t meet his standards, but that it was being released “because people need to be able to trust the Democratic Party and trust our word.”

In fact, the report has further eroded that trust by omitting some big, obvious reasons why Harris lost. Concerns about Biden’s age and his inexplicable decision to run for reelection are barely mentioned, and there’s virtually no analysis of the Democratic policies that might have helped propel Trump to another victory.

If one were compiling such a list, support for the Gaza genocide would presumably be near the top, but the issue is not mentioned once in the massive report.

You’ll recall that Harris never distanced herself from Biden on this question. In her first interview after becoming the nominee, she maintained the party line on Israel, reciting the usual claptrap about the country’s right to “defend itself.” Asked point-blank whether her foreign policy would differ from Biden’s at all, she said it would remain the same. That is to say, the United States would continue to send weapons to Israel while the country carried out a genocide.

A couple of months later, she reiterated her position on The View, telling the hosts that she couldn’t think of anything she would do differently. Although later in the interview she said that, unlike Biden, she would put Republicans in her cabinet.

Throughout the Harris campaign, Palestine advocates called on the former Senator to shift her position and take a firm stance against Israel’s actions.

“By taking a strong stand against Netanyahu’s authoritarian policies, the Biden-Harris administration can unify the Democratic Party and regain the trust of key voter bases, including young people, Arabs, and Muslims,” read an open letter to Harris from the Not Another Bomb coalition to Harris at the time. “This decisive action will reinforce the administration’s commitment to democracy and human rights, contrasting sharply with the far-right extremism embodied by Trump and his supporters. It sends a clear message that the Democratic Party stands for peace, justice, and the protection of all people, thereby strengthening the coalition needed to secure victory in the 2024 elections and beyond.”

She wouldn’t budge.

At the Democratic National Convention that August, the Uncommitted Movement pushed for a Palestinian speaker to be included. “The difficulty in approving even a single Palestinian American speaker among the dozens of speakers on the convention stage sends a troubling message to our anti-war voters, suggesting they aren’t truly included in this party,” explained a statement from the organization’s founders.

The request was denied.

It’s inaccurate to say the campaign simply ignored these issues. On the contrary, they leaned in from the opposite direction, embracing hawkish former House member Liz Cheney and sending Rep. Ritchie Torres to Michigan, the state with the highest percentage of Arab Americans, to tell voters that Harris would stand with Israel.

There’s a certain kind of centrist pundit who likes to wax sarcastic about the 2024 election and point out that Trump is also an ardent supporter of Israel. The inference is that people concerned about Gaza accomplished nothing by voting against Harris.

However, this brand of snark often presupposes that people fed up with the genocide actually voted. Yes, some people backed Trump because they irrationally believed that the guy currently bombing Iran was antiwar, but the actual number of people that foolish is presumably negligible. Much hay is also made over the Green Party, but Jill Stein got fewer than 900,000 votes and thus had no discernible impact on the ultimate result.

One of the biggest stories of the 2024 race is how many people stayed home.

“The most telling fact in this race is the drop in voter turnout,” wrote Mitchell Plitnick days after the election, pointing out that Harris netted millions less votes than Biden did in 2020.

“Theories will emerge, but the cause of Harris’ disastrous failure will forever be debated,” he wrote. “Still, there are good reasons to believe the Middle East in general and Gaza in particular played a significant role.”

“Nobody is going to get excited about the ‘politics of joy’ and ‘endless brat summer’ when they’re watching a kid raising his hands while he’s being burned to death attached to an IV,” political consultant Peter Feld told me at the time. “It pretty much puts an end to any of the vibes that they were trying to run on.”

“I don’t think you can explain this election without explaining the non-voters, and I think some of the post-election polling that’s come out and attempts to explain it by talking to voters is going to miss this story,” he continued. “If you haven’t spoken to non-voters, you haven’t explained the election.”

Among those who actually voted, the numbers indicate that many 2020 Biden voters jumped ship from the Democratic Party. A January 2025 YouGov survey found that among 2020 Biden voters who didn’t vote for Harris in 2024, Gaza was cited as the top reason they chose another candidate.

If you need further proof that Gaza hurt Harris at the polls, just look at what’s happened since November 2024. Israel critics are prevailing in Democratic primaries, and groups like AIPAC have become entirely toxic, and support for Israel has plummeted to historic lows amid the war on Iran. A recent NBC News poll found that just 32% of U.S. voters view Israel positively, which is down from 47% in 2023.

It’s difficult to overstate the incompetence of the DNC, but leaving this kind of stuff out of the “autopsy” report certainly feels like much more than oversight. Officials formerly connected to Biden and Harris are openly admitting as much.

“What’s important is what’s missing, what they’re not releasing,” Harris’s former communications director, Ashley Etienne, told Politico. “It feels like what the DNC is doing is cherry-picking the parts of it that it wants to actually release, that [are] less problematic for the party going forward.”

It’s an oversimplification to say Gaza is what cost the Democrats the election. There are multiple factors in every presidential race, and many of them have nothing to do with foreign policy. However, ignoring the genocide’s obvious impact on voters is malpractice and suggests that Democratic leadership could be poised to repeat the same mistakes in 2028.

May 29, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, USA | Leave a comment

American Democracy Does Not Exist

Caitlin Johnstone, May 20, 2026, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/american-democracy-does-not-exist?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=198559968&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Thomas Massie has lost his congressional seat against a primary opponent whose Israel lobby funding made the race the most expensive House of Representatives primary in history. Massie has been a rare Republican opponent of Israeli abuses on Capitol Hill.

The spending on Massie’s ouster topped out at a staggering $32 million when all was said and done. The second- and third-most expensive House primary races were also heavily slanted by Israel lobby funding, with AIPAC pouring millions into toppling progressive Democrats Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman.

Americans just watched the Israel lobby openly manipulate yet another election, and then in like two weeks they’re going to hear their government tell them they need to regime change another foreign country to bring “democracy” to its people. Americans themselves do not have democracy.

The ceasefire with Iran is tenuous and could end at any time. Washington is currently drumming up ridiculously transparent pretexts to justify attacking Cuba. And you just know as soon as the bombs start falling on whatever country they’re going to fall on, Americans will be told this is a good thing because it will bring freedom and democracy to whatever population is getting ripped apart by military explosives.

It’s just so silly how often the US propaganda machine bangs on about “democracy” while vast fortunes are poured into slanting the American electoral process to advance the agendas of plutocrats and special interest groups.

Let’s bring democracy to the Iraqi people! Oh no, the Russians are interfering in our democracy!

And meanwhile nothing of the sort actually exists in America. When the elections go toward whoever can afford to spend the most on manipulating and deceiving the public into voting their way, that’s not democracy. That’s plutocracy.

The rich buy up news outlets and social media platforms, pour funding into think tanks and lobby groups, and sponsor the primary campaigns of anyone who disagrees with them, and in so doing they are able to exert enough influence to get the public to vote in whatever way advances their agendas.

That’s why Americans have a joke of a minimum wage and no normal healthcare system. It’s why corporations are allowed to exploit the working class and pollute the environment without consequence. It’s why AI is being shoved down our throats with zero regulation while it consumes our clean water and takes our jobs. And it’s why American-made bombs are still falling in Lebanon and Gaza.

The rich and powerful are going to keep doing this until they are made to stop. They’re going to keep using their wealth and influence to manipulate public behavior until people stop allowing them to. You can’t vote this problem away, because they control the votes.

Forget about bringing democracy to Cuba. Try bringing democracy to the United States.

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May 25, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Trump is the joke….. that is no longer funny

While comedians laughed at his rallies, millions of Americans saw something entirely different. They saw somebody attacking a political establishment they already despised.

Trump discovered scandal itself could become a weapon. Every controversy kept him at the centre of public attention

20 May 2026 Roswell, https://theaimn.net/the-joke-that-lost-its-punchline/

In 2015 and 2016, much of the world treated Donald Trump like a political novelty act.

He was loud, theatrical, unpredictable, and impossible to ignore. Commentators laughed at the rallies. Late-night comedians built entire careers around his speeches. Political experts dismissed his presidential campaign as a publicity stunt that would eventually collapse under the weight of its own absurdity.

The assumption shared by many journalists, academics, and political professionals was simple: America would never elect him.

Then America did.

What followed was one of the most extraordinary political transformations in modern democratic history. A man once regarded as a sideshow became the central figure in American politics. More remarkably, he reshaped the Republican Party, dominated the global news cycle for nearly a decade, survived scandals that would have destroyed conventional politicians, lost an election, refused to accept the result, returned to power, and began a second presidency stronger and more experienced than the first.

The joke had become reality.

And now, nobody is laughing.

That shift reveals something deeper than the story of one man. It exposes how badly political institutions, media organisations, and intellectual elites misunderstood both Trump and the conditions that made him possible.

In the beginning, ridicule was seen as sufficient. Trump was mocked endlessly for his speaking style, his exaggerations, his vanity, his midnight meltdowns on Twitter and his disregard for political norms. Satire became the preferred language of opposition because satire is easy when a figure appears ridiculous.

But ridicule can become dangerous when it replaces analysis.

Large sections of the media spent years treating Trump as entertainment rather than understanding him as a symptom of growing political anger, institutional distrust, economic frustration, and cultural division inside the United States. While comedians laughed at his rallies, millions of Americans saw something entirely different. They saw somebody attacking a political establishment they already despised.

Trump understood something many professional politicians did not: people who feel ignored do not necessarily want polished leadership. Sometimes they want disruption. Sometimes they want revenge against systems they believe abandoned them.

His critics often focused on his behaviour while his supporters focused on what his behaviour represented.

That distinction changed American politics.

By the time Trump entered his second presidency, the atmosphere surrounding him had fundamentally altered. The humour remained, but the comfort had disappeared. Even opponents who once treated him as a temporary political accident now understood that Trumpism was not a passing phase. It had become a movement with enormous influence over American institutions, courts, media ecosystems, and foreign policy.

There is also a psychological shift that occurs when a political figure survives everything thrown at them.

Every investigation, scandal, indictment, controversy, and prediction of political death that failed to remove Trump strengthened the perception among supporters that he was being targeted by a hostile establishment. At the same time, every failed prediction weakened public trust in the experts making those predictions.

Eventually, mockery stopped looking powerful.

It started looking ineffective.

History contains many examples of societies underestimating disruptive political figures because they appeared too strange, too vulgar, or too unconventional to succeed. Democracies often assume their institutions are strong enough to absorb any personality. Sometimes they are. Sometimes they are not.

The danger is rarely the joke itself.

The danger is failing to notice when the audience stops laughing.

Trump’s rise also revealed the growing collapse of shared reality in modern democracies. Americans no longer consume the same information, trust the same institutions, or even agree on basic facts. In that environment, outrage becomes fuel, controversy becomes visibility, and constant attention becomes political power.

Trump mastered that environment better than any modern politician.

Traditional politicians speak carefully because they fear scandal. Trump discovered scandal itself could become a weapon. Every controversy kept him at the centre of public attention. Every attack reinforced his image as a political outsider fighting entrenched power.

His opponents often helped build the mythology they hoped to destroy.

That does not mean Trump is invincible, nor does it mean his critics were entirely wrong. It means modern politics no longer behaves according to old assumptions. The rules changed while much of the political class kept pretending they had not.

And perhaps that is the real lesson.

The story of Donald Trump is not merely the story of one man rising to power. It is the story of institutional complacency, media failure, public anger, and a society increasingly unable to distinguish politics from spectacle.

In 2016, many believed the joke would end.

Instead, the joke outlived the punchline.

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May 23, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Pete Hegseth “War Crimes Secretary” Called Out

 May 18, 2026 ScheerPost Staff, https://scheerpost.com/2026/05/18/pete-hegseth-war-crimes-secretary-called-out/

As the Trump administration’s war on Iran spirals deeper into civilian bloodshed and media complicity, activists with CODEPINK are demanding answers that Washington and corporate media seem determined to avoid. In this explosive conversation with ScheerPost, CODEPINK organizing director Danaka Katowicz lays out the movement’s growing campaign to force Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to answer for the bombing of a girls’ school in Minab, Iran — an attack that reportedly killed more than 168 people, most of them children.

But this interview goes far beyond one atrocity. It exposes a collapsing media system where billionaires, mergers, propaganda, AI warfare, and state violence increasingly operate hand-in-hand. From the Pentagon’s alleged use of AI targeting systems to CNN’s responsibility to confront war crimes instead of sanitizing them, Katowicz argues that ordinary people can no longer afford to remain spectators. As Gaza burns, Iran bleeds, and dissent is criminalized, CODEPINK says the answer is not despair — it’s organizing.

“Put Him on the Hot Seat”: CODEPINK Demands Answers for Iran School Bombing

The anti-war group CODEPINK is escalating its campaign against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth after the bombing of a girls’ school in Minab, Iran reportedly killed over 168 civilians — many of them children — during the opening phase of the Trump administration’s war on Iran.

Speaking with ScheerPost, CODEPINK organizing director Danaka Katowicz accused Hegseth and the Pentagon of evading accountability while major media institutions normalize mass civilian death.

According to Katowicz, Congress immediately demanded answers after the strike: Was AI used to select the target? What civilian mitigation procedures existed? Why was a girls’ school bombed in the first place? But instead of transparency, she says the administration stonewalled.

“Hegseth dodged those questions. He never answered them.”

That refusal sparked CODEPINK’s “Put Hegseth on the Hot Seat” campaign — a public push demanding that major outlets use their access to confront the defense secretary directly on-air.

Katowicz blasted the growing consolidation of corporate media, arguing that mergers and billionaire influence are turning news outlets into extensions of state power rather than institutions of accountability.

“The news is not even the news anymore. It’s just propaganda explaining why all these bad things are happening and why it’s actually fine.”

Throughout the interview, the conversation returned repeatedly to the alleged role of AI-assisted warfare. Joshua Scheer noted that similar targeting systems used in Gaza appear to have migrated into the Iran war — systems critics argue remove human judgment from life-and-death decisions.

The result, he argued, has been “war crime on top of war crime.”

Katowicz said CODEPINK’s disruptions inside congressional hearings are designed not only to confront power directly, but to show ordinary people that resistance is still possible.

“People see that power is being challenged in their face. And that means a lot to people.”

The organization says its long-term strategy goes beyond Washington. Through local chapters, labor organizing, coalition work, and direct action, CODEPINK hopes to build a broader anti-war movement capable of challenging what Scheer described as a “billionaire fascist ecosystem” where media, tech, finance, and militarism increasingly operate together.

Katowicz emphasized that activism cannot remain confined to Congress or social media outrage.

“The revolution isn’t just going to happen in D.C.”

The interview also highlighted CODEPINK’s expanding campaigns around Gaza, Palestine solidarity, labor organizing, and demands for the release of detained Palestinian doctor Hussam Abu Safiya.

As public opposition to endless war grows, CODEPINK argues the real battle may now be over whether Americans can still distinguish journalism from propaganda — and whether ordinary people are willing to move from outrage to organized resistance.

CODEPINK is demanding that CNN “put Hegseth on the hot seat”

After Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth refused to answer congressional questions about the bombing of a girls’ school in Minab, Iran that reportedly killed 168 people, most of them children. The campaign accuses both the Pentagon and corporate media of shielding war crimes from public accountability while demanding journalists confront Hegseth directly on-air about civilian deaths, AI targeting systems, and America’s expanding wars.

As the death toll from America’s war on Iran continues to rise, CODEPINK activists are escalating direct confrontations with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, accusing the Trump administration of enabling war crimes while corporate media looks the other way. During a fiery disruption of a congressional hearing, activists denounced Hegseth as a “War Crimes Secretary,” demanding answers for the Minab school massacre, alleged AI-assisted targeting of civilians, and what they describe as a criminal war machine operating with total impunity.

I end with Hegseth’s own words and hypocrisy

“If you’re doing something completely unlawful and ruthless, there is a consequence for that. That’s why the military says it will not follow unlawful orders from the commander-in-chief. There’s a standard, an ethos, a belief that we are above the kinds of actions carried out by our enemies.”

May 20, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, USA | Leave a comment

On Iran war he opposed then supported, Secretary of State Rubio channeled wrong predecessor – Walt Zlotow.

Don’t expect Marco Rubio to ever apologize for helping bring on what will likely become the most disastrous war in America’s 250 years. Rubio has been a fervent, lifelong promoter of senseless, endless US wars and US exceptionalism. He has always demonstrated the exact opposite of what a decent, peace promoting Secretary of State should be.

13 May 26, Walt Zlotow, https://theaimn.net/on-iran-war-he-opposed-then-supported-secretary-of-state-rubio-channeled-wrong-predecessor/

Marco Rubio is America’s 72nd Secretary of State going back to John Jay in 1789. While serving as the President’s top foreign affairs advisor, overseeing diplomatic missions, managing international relations, promoting human rights, Job One for every Secretary of State is to champion peace, not war.

Predecessors in this prestigious post include Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster and William Jennings Bryan.

What an as astonishing cast of noble Secretaries that Rubio could have chosen from to respond to Trump’s decision to blow up Iran and now possibly the world economy beginning 75 days ago. Reports indicate Rubio argued against the invasion, not on moral grounds it was a criminal war, but on practical grounds it would fail. When Trump brushed asides Rubio’s concerns and pulled the trigger, dutiful Rubio hopped off the Peace Train and grabbed a First Class seat on Trump’s War Train.

Once started, Rubio offered one of the most disingenuous, disgusting rationales for war in American history. Rubio said the US had to attack Iran first. Why? Because we knew Israel was going to attack Iran and if they did, Iran would attack their best buddy America. By attacking first, the US would suffer less casualties. Of course, Rubio omitted that all along the US and Israel planned a one, two sucker punch on Iran while in peace negotiations with them.

Rubio sadly followed up on what till then had been the worst precedent in US history of a Secretary of State abdicating his job responsibility promoting peace to support his President’s rush to criminal war. On February 5, 2003, George W. Bush’ Secretary of State Colin Powell shamelessly told the UN a blizzard of lies Iraq had WMD, intended to use them, and time was running out for the world to stop them. Forty-four days later Bush launched his war that Powell, with his enormous but fake credibility, made possible. The belief was, ‘If Colin Powell says war is necessary, then war it is.’

Alas, Rubio should have gone back 88 years earlier than Powell’s disgrace to channel instead predecessor William Jennings Bryan. On June 9, 1915, President Woodrow Wilson’s Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan resigned. After the British liner Lusitania was sunk May 7, Bryan sent Germany a conciliatory note requesting restraint and high level diplomacy to keep the European war from drawing in the US. Bryan was mindful Germany neither attacked nor threatened America far across its Atlantic mote. Wilson was furious and penned a much stronger note that Bryan refused to sign out of conscience, resigning instead.

Bryan’s principled plea for peace did not prevent Wilson’s disastrous declaration of war on Germany 22 months later. But had Rubio bluntly told Trump he would resign and go public with his opposition to a clearly unwinnable war, Trump might have pulled back from the catastrophe he’s unleashed.

It took two and a half years for Colin Powell to admit his perfidy in enabling America’s horrific Iran war that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and over 5,000 US and allied troops. “I, of course, regret the U.N. speech that I gave, which became the prominent presentation of our case. I never saw evidence to suggest a connection between the September 11, 2001 terror attacks in the United States and the Saddam regime. I’m the one who presented it on behalf of the United States to the world, and (it) will always be a blot on my record. It was painful. It’s painful now.”

Don’t expect Marco Rubio to ever apologize for helping bring on what will likely become the most disastrous war in America’s 250 years. Rubio has been a fervent, lifelong promoter of senseless, endless US wars and US exceptionalism. He has always demonstrated the exact opposite of what a decent, peace promoting Secretary of State should be.

May 20, 2026 Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, USA | Leave a comment