The post An Important Message to CounterPunch Readers appeared first on CounterPunch.org.| CounterPunch.org
More than half of new ICE recruits failed an open-book test after taking a course on Immigration and the Fourth Amendment. This pervasive constitutional ignorance might seem like a grave disorder for a law enforcement agency, but under the current dispensation, it is likely a prerequisite for the position. The Trump administration doesn’t want its ICE agents hesitating to cuff a 6-year-old or tear gas a teacher trying to shield her student because it might violate some civil right or anothe...| CounterPunch.org
There is no question that DJT is a destroyer. Consider the separation of powers. He has appointed intensely loyal followers to key legal positions, often ordering them to act contrary to legal precedent. Over forty prosecutors have been fired and flimsy charges have targeted political opponents, including the Attorney General of New York, Letitia James, and California Senator Adam Schiff. Trump is destroying the separation of powers and the objective rule of law. More The post Trump’s Destr...| CounterPunch.org
Gaza does not mark the end of the settler colonial project. It marks, I fear, its final phase. Western states, enriched by their own occupations and genocides — in India, Africa, Asia, Latin America and North America — are returning to their roots as they face a global climate crisis and the obscene levels of social inequality that they engineer and sustain. More The post Israel’s “Internationally Enabled Crime” appeared first on CounterPunch.org.| CounterPunch.org
A New York City woman wearing a navy blue polka-dot dress has gone viral for her defiant resistance to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents during a raid in lower Manhattan on October 21, 2025. More The post Rage Against the ICE Machine appeared first on CounterPunch.org.| CounterPunch.org
While our cultural memory about the McCarthy era romances the refuseniks, hundreds of Americans did comply with the Red Scare, identifying colleagues or associates as communists to protect themselves or preserve their careers. The Levin Center for Oversight and Democracy reports that of the more than 500 people who were called to testify in front of Joseph McCarthy’s Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, only about 100 invoked the Fifth Amendment, refusing to answer questions on ...| CounterPunch.org
Catherine Connolly (born 1957) only became involved in active politics in 1999. Michael D. Higgins, the outgoing president of Ireland (2011-2025), encouraged Connolly to join the Labour Party and stand for election. Both Connolly and Higgins (known in Ireland as Michael D) come from Galway, a city on the west coast of Ireland. Connolly was More The post The Left Wins the Irish Presidential Election in a Landslide appeared first on CounterPunch.org.| CounterPunch.org
Too much month and not enough check plagued the U.S. poor and working class before the federal government shutdown and funding lapse. To wit, business is booming for America’s car repossession industry. In fact, there were 769,925 car repossessions for the third quarter of 2025 versus 706,383 for this year’s second quarter. “If all of More The post U.S. Poor and Working Class Distress Grows appeared first on CounterPunch.org.| CounterPunch.org
Monsters don’t always come wrapped in the trappings of horror or myth. Most often, monsters in the real world look like ordinary people. They walk among us. They smile for the cameras. They promise protection and prosperity even as they feed on fear and obedience. All is not as it seems. We are living in More The post The Vampire State: Feeding on Our Fear, Freedom and Finances appeared first on CounterPunch.org.| CounterPunch.org
Instead of satirising nuclear war – a possible if difficult thing to do – the time has come to satirise the laying off and furlough of those who solemnly monitor and maintain such machinery fit, not for preserving life so much as ending it at a fiery, radiated terminus. If it’s not possible to totally disarm More The post Furloughing Workers for Armageddon: Trump, Nuclear Weapons and the NNSA appeared first on CounterPunch.org.| CounterPunch.org
What kind of a shutdown is this, anyway? Congress has deadlocked over the terms of funding the government, so (in theory, at least) there is a government shutdown in which all federal operations are supposed to be shuttered. But Trump ordered staff to continue processing oil and gas leases and permits to drill on public More The post What Kind of Shut Down is This? appeared first on CounterPunch.org.| CounterPunch.org
Theodore Roosevelt, an advocate of ‘big stick diplomacy’, viewed Latin America as the United States’ backyard – a place where it could intervene at will. At the slightest threat to American interests, he would send in the marines – to Honduras, the Dominican Republic, Cuba. In 1903 Washington sponsored a separatist movement in Panama, then More The post Give Him the Prize! appeared first on CounterPunch.org.| CounterPunch.org
In Marshalltown, Iowa, the spirit of American entrepreneurship is alive and well. Residents have opened businesses, among them a grocery store offering fresh food that’s created dozens of jobs. Many of these small businesses are owned, managed, and staffed by immigrants. They’re boosting the local economy and improving the quality of life. Together, people in More The post An Immigration Success Story in the Heartland appeared first on CounterPunch.org.| CounterPunch.org
Poetry is not easy to compose, nor is it easy to write about. Like music, poetry requires a certain immersion into the composition one hears via their ears or their eyes and assimilated inside their mind. If the ability to immerse oneself is not available for perhaps more temporal reasons, appreciating poetic and musical compositions More The post Poetry is Not an Expression of the Party Line appeared first on CounterPunch.org.| CounterPunch.org
More than a century ago, from a Berlin prison cell where she was confined for her uncompromising opposition to the slaughter of the First World War, Rosa Luxemburg warned, “Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism.” Her diagnosis remains no less salient today. In the United States, we long ago chose More The post Socialism or Barbarism appeared first on CounterPunch.org.| CounterPunch.org
The secretary general of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, does not mince words in the Guardian: “Devastating consequences now inevitable but emissions cuts still vital, says António Guterres in sole interview before Cop30”(October 28, 2025). The Conference of the Parties (COP) is the highest United Nations decision-making body for treaties on the environment. Artificial intelligence gets More The post Environmental Ruin appeared first on CounterPunch.org.| CounterPunch.org
Creativity, the creative discovering of the genius of man ….ought to be restored its sacred significance. –Nicolai Berdyaev, Salvation and Creativity .. negating creativity in the world, ye hand over the fate of the world to the Anti-Christ. –Ibid Creativity is…a tremour-shock, in which the everyd...| CounterPunch.org
I was drawn to the childcare profession because of my love for children. I just love seeing their smiling, hopeful faces, watching them grow and learn, and welcoming the trust and love they bring to us every day. At the same time, working in this field can be challenging. Babies and young children require a More The post Childcare Can be Free and Universal appeared first on CounterPunch.org.| CounterPunch.org
Trump and his Republican sycophants have been busy telling us that we shouldn’t be bothered by Trump’s demolition of the East Wing and his plans for a now $350 million ballroom. (The price tag keeps rising, it had been $200 million.) While many of us were upset about Trump’s destruction of a historic landmark with More The post The Taxpayers’ Tab for Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful New Ballroom appeared first on CounterPunch.org.| CounterPunch.org
Nearly a century ago, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt led a campaign of bold investment to electrify rural America. Until recently, we were on track to do the same for broadband internet in this century. Before President Trump’s second term, our country was on the cusp of a breakthrough. Billions in federal funding was set to More The post Rural America Needs Dependable Broadband, Not More Handouts for Billionaires appeared first on CounterPunch.org.| CounterPunch.org
“I have often made the point that to foster the economic status and pride of members of our minority groups, we must seek to involve them more fully in our private enterprise system… To do this, we need to remove commercial obstacles that have too often stood in their way—obstacles such as the unavailability of More The post The Hollowing Out of America’s Only Agency for Minority Business appeared first on CounterPunch.org.| CounterPunch.org
I’ve been thinking in recent days about Venezuela and the United States because of current events but also because of an event that occurred in Venezuela’s capital twenty-three years and six months ago. Trump Attacking Venezuela The current events in question should occasion no surprise. I am referring of course to the Trump regime’s clear More The post Stop the Trump Coup appeared first on CounterPunch.org.| CounterPunch.org
When Trump nominated private equity billionaire (and campaign donor) Stephen Feinberg to be the deputy secretary of defense, critics pointed out that his sprawling business ties represented obvious conflicts of interest. But in an administration that enthusiastically embraces nearly unimaginable levels of corruption, it was just a matter of time before we would read stories More The post Private Equity Meets the Pentagon appeared first on CounterPunch.org.| CounterPunch.org
With every cell of my being and with every fiber of my memory, I oppose the death penalty in all forms. I do not believe any civilized society should be at the service of death. I don’t think it’s human to become an agent of the angel of death. Elie Wiesel (1928-2016) Holocaust survivor and More The post Opposing the Death Penalty in All Forms: From the Tree of Life to Gaza appeared first on CounterPunch.org.| CounterPunch.org
On a beautiful fall Saturday, residents in Floyd County, Indiana packed a church to ask city council members about the local budget. One county over, mothers shared concerns about a new data center, rising utility costs, education cuts, and corporate tax giveaways. Neither meeting was filled with policy experts — just neighbors who wanted to More The post Democracy Begins Where We Live appeared first on CounterPunch.org.| CounterPunch.org
Washington D.C., March 30, 2029 Tourists gathered on the National Mall in record numbers this week to admire the newly unveiled Trump Monument. Originally erected in 1884 to honor a little-known American president, the 555-foot-tall granite and marble obelisk has been gilt in tasteful celebration of President-for-Life Trump. The monument is just the latest project More The post Americans Flock to Mall for Unveiling of Trump Monument appeared first on CounterPunch.org.| CounterPunch.org
Former allies are distancing themselves from Tucker Carlson after the ex-Fox host interviewed podcaster Nick Fuentes on his YouTube show. A white nationalist, Fuentes is a 27-year-old political commentator whose clips have gone increasingly viral on social media — especially Instagram. Fuentes’s army of followers, who he endearingly calls “Groypers,” love him for his open More The post Tucker Carlson is a Coward appeared first on CounterPunch.org.| CounterPunch.org
In these troubling times, when many countries experience the unlimited abuse of people’s civil liberties, it is useful to remember the value of individual acts of human courage. During Argentina’s “Dirty War” (1976-1983), thousands of opponents to the military ruling the country were killed or “made to disappear,” a euphemism for those whose fate was More The post A Lesson for Our Times appeared first on CounterPunch.org.| CounterPunch.org
Leftists I know are generally reluctant to talk about sin. This is understandable in my view. If you’re about my age, there wasn’t a vibrant, religious left in your formative years. As a result, such talk often sounds fundamentally conservative. Of course, spiritually-inspired leftism has a long history. Socialists like Eugene Debs and civil-rights leaders More The post Yes, Meat Eating is a Sin appeared first on CounterPunch.org.| CounterPunch.org
Across Jamaica, streets are littered with torn-off roofs, splintered wood and other debris left in the wake of Hurricane Melissa. Downed power lines have| CounterPunch.org
Recently, Donald Trump shared a video known as the “Flying King”-- an AI-generated spectacle in which he pilots a fighter plane emblazoned with the words “King Trump,” raining brown sludge, representing excrement, onto a group of protesters below. This grotesque display seems to be a direct response to the widespread “No Kings” protests, where citizens reject his self-proclaimed sovereignty. Some of Trump’s supporters hailed the video as “performance art,” a way of “owning...| CounterPunch.org
Ten thousand soldiers on board 10 US warships, including a nuclear submarine, several destroyers and a missile cruiser, patrol the southern Caribbean in what is the largest US military build-up in the region in decades. At least seven boats allegedly transporting drugs have been bombed, resulting in the extrajudicial killing of more than 32 people. More The post The US Warships Off Venezuela Aren’t There to Fight Drugs appeared first on CounterPunch.org.| CounterPunch.org
The wish to be credulous is central to the fraudulent scheme. The one playing the fraud can always rely on some connivance and collaboration from the tricked and the gulled. Many an art curator is bound to turn scarlet at the prospect that their expertise was utterly subverted by a counterfeiter of Picasso and Matisse. More The post Fake Boats and Bogus Admirals appeared first on CounterPunch.org.| CounterPunch.org
On October 4th, 2025, in an interview with Axios, President Trump stressed that one of the main goals behind his Gaza plan was to restore Israel’s international standing. “Bibi took it very far and Israel lost a lot of support in the world,” Trump said. “Now I am gonna get all that support back.” Under More The post The World Confronts the Genocide Washington is Trying to Bury appeared first on CounterPunch.org.| CounterPunch.org
The problem of centralized power The United States is broken, and it’s time to think about what comes next. Images of the White House East Wing demolition that have filled our eyes in recent days are a visual expression of a broader reality. The constitutional order of the U.S. is shattered. A lawless president backed More The post The U.S. is Broken. Time to Think About What Comes Next appeared first on CounterPunch.org.| CounterPunch.org
The October 24 decision by the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF) to end the ‘grey list’ stigmatization against the banking systems of South Africa, Mozambique, Nigeria and Burkina Faso raises tough questions about these societies’ self-interest, in contrast to the real winners from the move: free-wheeling financiers of capital flight, of drugs and of (alleged) More The post A Western Financial Whip Was Lifted From South Africa’s Back – But Now We Need Another appeared ...| CounterPunch.org
Are Donald Trump and his associates planning a coup if they lose control of Congress following a possible Democratic victory in the 2026 elections? And, if not in ’26, what about 2030 election? In anticipation of losing the ’26 Congressional election, Republican governors in an increasing number of states – including Texas, Missouri, Indiana, Kansas, More The post The Failed Coup d’État of 2026? appeared first on CounterPunch.org.| CounterPunch.org
Yes, in the ever more ominously unsettled (dis-)United States of Donald J. Trump, I recently went to the “hate America” rally in New York City. Or at least that’s what Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson insisted it was. Who knew that so unbelievably many Americans, millions of us across the United States, would “hate” More The post No Kings, the Second Time Around appeared first on CounterPunch.org.| CounterPunch.org
With 2.1 million cattle in Montana, one might expect Governor Gianforte and our congressional delegation to know where cattle actually get brucellosis. But unfortunately, the governor and delegation appear locked into outdated, unscientific, and unsupported false assumptions that wild Yellowstone bison have transmitted brucellosis to cattle. They have not. The grim result of these false More The post Elk, Not Wild Bison, Have Transmitted Brucellosis to Montana Cattle in Every Case appeare...| CounterPunch.org
This past March, I wrote an article (You Are Here) comparing the moves the Trump administration made to the rise of Nazism in Germany. My only mistake was underestimating the speed by which the transformation would occur. Here we are, seven months later, and the takeover by the authoritarian Trump regime is essentially complete. Literally More The post Dystopia Now appeared first on CounterPunch.org.| CounterPunch.org
The burying ground looks like an abandoned lot. Holding the remains of upward of 22,000 enslaved and free people of color, the Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground in Richmond, Virginia, established in 1816, sits amid highways and surface roads. Above the expanse of unmarked graves loom a deserted auto shop, a power substation, a massive More The post The Disgraceful History of Erasing Black Cemeteries in the United States appeared first on CounterPunch.org.| CounterPunch.org
Prologue The Roosevelt poster on freedom is timeless. I thought about its message while on the Parthenon. In early October 2025, I was on the Acropolis admiring the Parthenon, its beauty and architectural perfection. The Athenians built the Parthenon to celebrate their victories over the Persians in 490 and 480 and 479 BCE, decisive victories More The post Untouched by Time: The Beauty and Vision of Freedom appeared first on CounterPunch.org.| CounterPunch.org
So my appeal to you in these desperate hours for the Republic is an appeal to reason, an appeal to the importance of facts, an appeal to political independence and free thought, an appeal for the value of doing the work without fear of retribution, even though it may be coming. More The post Let the Work Speak for Itself appeared first on CounterPunch.org.| CounterPunch.org
President Trump is rattling his saber against Colombian President Gustavo Petro to punish him for accusing the U.S. government of murdering Venezuelan fishermen. Trump has boasted of the killings by the U.S. military but claims all the targets were drug smugglers. Trump has threatened to suspend all U.S. government handouts for the Colombian government. Trump warned that Petro that he "better close up" cocaine production "or the United States will close them up for him, and it won't b...| CounterPunch.org
The nature of the United States’ relationship with Israel defies logic and reason. It is a parasitic one-sided benefit, entangled in the tentacles of organized influence, manipulation, financial power, and media control. Israel contributes next to nothing of tangible benefit to America’s security, strategic value, or economy, yet Washington continues to design its foreign policy and moral compass around Israel. It is so absurd it borders on sorcery. More The post How Israel-First Jewish A...| CounterPunch.org
“Common sense (which, in truth, is very uncommon) is the best sense I know,” the 18th-century British writer Lord Chesterfield advised his son. But common sense doesn’t stay that way. While it appears to most people to be something solid and steady, it changes from age to age, defined and redefined by the push and pull between More The post Toward a New Common Sense of Abundance appeared first on CounterPunch.org.| CounterPunch.org
Recently, a friend was asked, “What church do you go to?” to which he replied he was an atheist. I heard his response and was left contemplating what that means today and in this historical moment. What did his declaration have to do with what we were doing on Saturday mornings on a street in More The post We Need More Political Atheists appeared first on CounterPunch.org.| CounterPunch.org
Since August, U.S. warships, fighter planes, and troops have deployed in Caribbean waters off Venezuela and in Puerto Rico. Venezuela’s neighboring countries in Latin America and the Caribbean area are reacting variously. Many oppose U.S. aggression, but at a distance. Others are either non-committal or accepting. Colombia and Brazil are backing Venezuela – or soon More The post Brazilian Workers Lead in Offering Solidarity to Venezuelans under US Attack appeared first on CounterPunch.org.| CounterPunch.org
In the wild, a mouse or rat leads a precarious life. In the city, they dodge traps, poisons, and broom-wielding humans. In the countryside, they face owls, shotguns, and more poison. As Australia’s deputy prime minister once declared during a nationwide mouse plague, “The only good mouse is a dead mouse.” Yet even that grim existence More The post The Lab Mouse Paradox: Why Science Still Depends on Animals Who Don’t Represent Us appeared first on CounterPunch.org.| CounterPunch.org
This week’s news brings us another story that’s starting to get very old — especially for Montana’s existing residents. Namely, the City of East Helena finds itself unable to “meet the demand” for water for the 6,250 new homes plus new businesses that theoretically will be built on former ASARCO lands the city annexed when More The post Montana Can’t ‘Meet the Demand’ to Supply More Water to New Developments appeared first on CounterPunch.org.| CounterPunch.org
In the past few weeks, the US military has killed around thirty people in cold blood. The murders occurred on boats traveling in waters on both sides of Latin America and were undertaken without any warning to the crews on the boats. The rulers in Washington DC claim that those in the boats were involved More The post True Crime: Murder on the High Seas appeared first on CounterPunch.org.| CounterPunch.org
Trump hasn’t taken $2 trillion from taxpayers yet, but we should be prepared for that possibility. The story, which cannot possibly be given too much attention, is Trump’s demand that his Justice Department hand him $230 million because he doesn’t like the way he was treated over alleged crimes. This is straight-out theft from the More The post Treasury’s $2 Trillion Payment to Trump? It’s Very MAGA appeared first on CounterPunch.org.| CounterPunch.org
It is no secret that Donald J. Trump, head of the American Empire, desperately wanted the Nobel Peace Prize. For months, he had been lobbying for it, presenting himself as a peacemaker. A “humanitarian who can move mountains with the sheer force of his will”. His lust for the prize, driven at least in part by the fact that Barack Obama won it in 2009, led Pakistan’s government to publicly nominate him in June as a means of gratifying his ego. And the recent Gaza ceasefire deal he broker...| CounterPunch.org
A staggering racial disparity occurs when cases get to the sentencing phase. If you are Black in this country, you have a higher chance of being sentenced to death. To put a fine point on it, Black people make up 13% of the U.S. population, but there are over 41% of them on death row. So that’s one reason anyone who loves justice and fairness should be against the death penalty, but there is another. One that Angela Davis pointed out in her book Are Prisons Obsolete?| CounterPunch.org
There are enough problems in the world without getting into an intergenerational American dust-up. But if journalists like Emily Holzknecht and Binyamin Appelbaum and their recorded speakers want to go after their elders, this Baby Boomer from the Bronx is ready to tussle. If the New York Times columnists and interviewees want to pin the world’s problems on Baby Boomers like me in “Thanks a lot, Boomers,” they’d better be ready for some pushback. As Aretha Franklin sang: “R-E-S-P-E-...| CounterPunch.org
—Göteborg, Sweden. The Christianization of Scandinavia took place over a few hundred years and was completed by the early 12th century thanks to Sigurd| CounterPunch.org
We're not afraid, we're not trembling and our objective as journalists remains the same as it was in the 1990s when the first CounterPunch newsletter went to press: to question the received wisdom, call out political cant and cliches, expose injustices and follow the money wherever it leads and into whoever’s pockets it stuffs. As CounterPunch founder Ken Silverstein, still one of the best investigative journalists around, said: “We’re journalists, not ideologues. Everyone is fair game....| CounterPunch.org
The story of British abolitionism, its many failures and long overdue success, is a lesson in the limits of reform. Lacking a wider context of change, reform in one sector is likely to fail or be indefinitely delayed. British radicalism in the 1790s was confined to a small number of groups with just a few hundred (or at most a few thousand) supporters in a population of nearly 10 million. It could not marshal anything close to the strength necessary to effect radical goals of general slave em...| CounterPunch.org
The facts show that, in this six-decade-plus crime against humanity, Indonesia has been the tool of other interests, that the role of the United Nations (by which I mean some of its dominant powers and personalities) has been particularly egregious, and this is surely one of the reasons why the West Papua genocide has continued sub rosa, deliberately silenced, for more than sixty years. There are many aspects of the UN betrayal because they belong to big-power politics, and they’re convolut...| CounterPunch.org
It’s the largest living structure on Earth, 3,000 individual reefs, 900 islands, 1,430 miles, and it may be collapsing. Alas, The Great Barrier Reef Annual Summary Report of Coral Reef Conditions, 2024-2025 presents a dire picture, the poorest condition ever, the worst report in recorded history. Moreover, mass bleaching of coral has been confirmed in 83 countries. Something is seriously wrong with the oceans; this is too anomalous, too massive to ignore as a passing one-off event. More The...| CounterPunch.org
Christianity is back and it's more violent than ever. I speak, of course, of the late capitalist tent house revival of Christian Nationalism amongst the| CounterPunch.org
Before Trump ever landed in the White House in 2016, the United States represented less than 5% of the world’s population. The U.S. has over 750 military| CounterPunch.org
Can a play influence public perception of our shared atomic history enough to shift the conversation away from a presumed nuclear “renaissance” and into a| CounterPunch.org
Andy Mahler, the valiant defender of America’s backwoods, lived in and learned from the forests he spent much of his life fighting to protect from senseless destruction and corporate exploitation. When much of the mainstream environmental movement wrote off rural people, Mahler built a powerful movement among them: decentralized, democratic and rooted in place. Mahler was a visionary, whose capacity for empathy, for both humans and the natural world, was matched only by his steely refusal t...| CounterPunch.org
I had come from the State Library on my bike, a long-term rental courtesy of an excellent and cheap Dutch company called Swapfiets with outlets in many| CounterPunch.org
“Adjunct,” a feature length movie, realistically covers much of what happens in the life of a higher education teacher who could be labeled an adjunct, a| CounterPunch.org
Some of those who pay attention to electoral politics in the United States think the system those politics define and delineate can still be| CounterPunch.org
An American friend visiting London last week asked me to recommend some “movies” to him. Only later did I realise how loaded a question it was. Cinema has| CounterPunch.org
“We can have a world that runs on a resource that’s available to everyone everywhere.” - Bill McKibben There’s a renaissance of nature powering the world,| CounterPunch.org
Global political history is punctuated by state entities that, after vanishing from the international stage, have reemerged in new forms—sometimes| CounterPunch.org
China has transitioned from one of the poorest nations in the world to the second-largest economy with nuclear-armed forces growing at a record pace. Over the past 40 years, China has had the world’s fastest-growing economy with annual growth rates that often exceeded 10% a year. China’s economy grew over five percent in the first half of this year; the U.S. economy expanded by one percent. Meanwhile, U.S. tariff policy is losing friends around the world.| CounterPunch.org
the civilian operation of nuclear power plants also places future generations at military risk. I have written that, historically, nuclear reactors were “born violent.” That is to say, they were invented by the Manhattan Project in the early 1940s to manufacture plutonium for use in nuclear weapons, and were instrumental in killing almost 100,000 people in 1945. The “first” American commercial atomic plant in Shippingport, PA that went critical in 1958, was actually the 14th industria...| CounterPunch.org
