Hello All - Last week the Israeli government broke the ceasefire in Gaza with a day of mayhem in which they killed 104 people, including 46 children. The attack came, according to Israel, in response to the death of an Israel soldier, though Hamas stated that they were not involved. Israel’s attack illustrates how fragile the Gaza ceasefire is, and how vulnerable it is to Israeli power. Is renewed war inevitable?
Palestinian observers note that Israel has broken a ceasefire many times in the past decades. According to Palestinians, on 125 occasions Israel has violated the ceasefire that came into effect on October 15th. Since that time, Israel has killed on average 8 people per day. The promised 600 trucks of food and medicine have dwindled to less than 100 per day. After a month of “ceasefire,” starvation faces many. Nor have the border crossings been open, also promised in the agreement, so Palestinians cannot leave or enter Gaza. 58 percent of Gaza is still occupied by Israel, while 2 million Palestinians have what’s left.
Despite Israel’s violations of the “peace plan,” some commentators feel that Trump, and only Trump, has the power to force Netanyahu to continue the ceasefire, allow more food trucks into Gaza, and abide by the terms of Trump’s 20 Point Peace Plan. Will the Trump people use this power to enforce the ceasefire? It is horrible, of course, that “peace” for Gaza depends on Trump’s whims and short attention span. But that is our reality today.
ILLUMINATING THE WAR THIS WEEK
A Lynch Mob in the Olive Fields—and the State Behind It
By Jasper Nathaniel, Infinite Jazz [November 2, 2025]
[FB – Jasper Nathaniel grew up in Hasting and is now a journalist/investigative reporter. This article about what he did and saw during an olive harvest in the West Bank includes many short videos, which themselves became part of international news as the story of the savage attack by “settlers” reached the media. Please check this out.]
---- I’ve just returned home after three weeks in the West Bank. I have more material than I know what to do with—photos, videos, audio recordings, notes, interviews—but I’m still struggling to envision how to convey the sheer terror in the olive fields this season. To start, I want to pull on some threads from the incident two weeks ago, when I—and many Palestinians—came very close to being lynched by a mob of Israeli settlers. …The past two olive harvests have been marked by violence and meager yields, carried out under the constant threat of settler attacks. This year, Turmus’ayya’s farmers decided to move as one—heading out together on Sunday, October 19, hoping that safety in numbers might hold. On the morning of October 19, I joined the farmers. We knew there would be confrontations, but no one anticipated the scale or ferocity of what followed. [Read More]
What’s behind Israel’s new plan to divide Gaza in two
By Muhammad Shehada, +072 Magazine [Israel/Palestine] [October 31, 2025]
---- Since the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas came into effect, the Trump administration has been hailing the beginning of a new chapter in Gaza. “After so many years of unceasing war and endless danger, today the skies are calm, the guns are silent, the sirens are still, and the sun rises on a Holy Land that is finally at peace,” the president declared during his speech at the Knesset earlier this month. But facts on the ground reveal a dramatically grimmer reality and shed light on Israel’s new plan for the enclave’s permanent subjugation. With the so-called “Yellow Line,” Israel has divided the Strip in two: West Gaza, encompassing 42 percent of the enclave, where Hamas remains in control and over 2 million people are crammed in; and East Gaza, encompassing 58 percent of the territory, which has been fully depopulated of civilians and is controlled by the Israeli army and four proxy gangs. Under the Trump plan, this line was intended as a temporary marker — the first stage in Israel’s gradual withdrawal from the Strip as an International Stabilization Force assumed control on the ground. Instead, Israeli forces are digging in, reinforcing the division with earthworks, fortifications, and barriers that suggest a move toward permanence. … Even after failing to achieve mass expulsion through direct military assault, Israel’s leadership is now pursuing the same outcome through attrition and engineered despair, using rubble, siege, and periodic bombing as instruments of demographic redesign. The prospect of ethnic cleansing has not disappeared with the ceasefire; it has merely evolved into a new policy, disguised and normalized through bureaucratic planning. [Read More]
Israel’s “Internationally Enabled Crime”
By Chris Hedges, Counterpunch [October 31, 2025]
---- 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. As the world breaks down, as the climate crisis drives millions and then tens of millions and then hundreds of millions of people north, in a desperate search for survival, the genocide in Gaza, which Israel is slow walking until it can resume its usual murderous pace, will replay itself over and over and over until the fragile social and environmental networks that hold the global community together disintegrate. The refusal to extract ourselves from fossil fuels, the steady saturation of the atmosphere with carbon dioxide emissions (CO2), ensures soaring temperatures in which most life, including human life, will eventually be unsustainable. [Read More]
THE MAMDANI CAMPAIGN
(Video) Zohran Mamdani - Reimagining NYC Through Safety and Affordability
From The Daily Show [October 28, 2025]
---- New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani sits down with Jon Stewart to discuss building a campaign on delivering politics that “aspire for more than what you’re living through,” ensuring his tax plans aren’t just popular but unprecedented, taking safety beyond the NYPD to job and housing security, reaching the hearts of young voters with inviting rhetoric, and whether the days of endorsements deciding elections have come to an end. [See the Program]
Zohran Mamdani’s historic run will also help free Jews, and U.S. politics, from Zionism
By Philip Weiss, Mondoweiss [October 31, 2025]
---- Zohran Mamdani’s historic run for New York mayor is a huge moment for Jewish identity, giving a boost to Jews who argue that Judaism is not synonymous with Zionism. According to polls, two out of three young Jews are expected to vote for Mamdani, and overall, a substantial minority of Jews will support him (43 percent). These Jews accept or even celebrate Mamdani’s Palestinian solidarity. Mamdani takes positions that were previously a third rail in politics: He supports BDS against Israel, he says Israel committed a genocide in Gaza, and he says he would seek to arrest Netanyahu as a war criminal if he came to New York. … If Mamdani does what he’s expected to do – win with Jews on the dais — anti-Zionists will gain a strong voice inside the Jewish community to raise important questions: Why is Jewish nationalism an article of religious faith — and not just some ethnosupremacist ideology, no different from Jim Crow? Is it good for Jews to be associated with apartheid and ethnic cleansing and the massacres of children? [Read More]
NEWS NOTES
16-year-old Mohammed Ibrahim is a Palestinian American. He was kidnapped by the Israeli army in February in the West Bank, and has been in prison ever since. Instead of acting promptly to free him, US “officials” are dragging their heels. The prison conditions are reported to be terrible. Mohammed has been barred from speaking to his family. Please read this article from The Intercept, and if so moved, please call our congressional representatives to ask them to take some action. Call Rep. Latimer - (202) 225-2464, Sen. Gillibrand - (202) 224-4451, and Sen. Schumer – (202) 224-6542. Thanks.
This week, while in South Korea, Trump ordered his military to resume nuclear testing. He falsely stated that “everyone else is doing it,” and the US needed to catch up. On Democracy Now! this week, Dr. Ira Helfand, former president of Physicians for Social Responsibility and a leading campaigner against nuclear proliferation, said the White House must “clarify” Trump’s statement and urged further efforts towards disarmament. Commenting on nuclear disarmament, he said “This idea is dismissed sometimes as being unrealistic. I think what’s unrealistic is the belief that we can continue to maintain these enormous nuclear arsenals and expect that nothing is going to go wrong, Our luck is going to run out at some point.” [See the Program]
An Israeli sniper assassinated Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh 3 years ago. Despite strong evidence that the shooting was deliberate, the US deferred to Israel in refusing to attribute any blame. This week, on Democracy Now!, a retired US Army colonel who was involved in the investigation disclosed details about the cover-up.
True confession, I am fascinated by claims that the “interstellar object” – aka a comet – may be not a rock, but a “manufactured thing” coming from a far-away star system. The regular science media treats the whole thing as just a VERY unusual comet, but Harvard professor Avi Loeb writes frequently that this thing might be a space craft of sorts. In August, shortly after this “comet” was first seen, Loeb wrote an interesting short note, “What Should Humanity Do on the Day After an Interstellar Object is Recognized as Technological?,” which you can read here. What would happen if “we” realized “we” were not alone?
CFOW NUTS & BOLTS
Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. Weather permitting we meet for a protest/rally each Saturday in Hastings, at 12 noon at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.) The Northwest Yonkers Neighbors for Black Lives Matter holds a Monday afternoon vigil at 5:30 pm at the corner of Warburton Ave and Odell. The CFOW newsletter can be read on Substack, and is archived at https://cfow.blogspot.com, and news of interest and coming events is posted on our CFOW Facebook group. Another Facebook group focuses on the climate crisis. If you would like to join one of our Zoom meetings, each Tuesday and Thursday at noon, please send a return email for the link. If you would like to support our work by making a CONTRIBUTION, please make out your check to “Frank Brodhead,” write “CFOW” on the memo line, and send your check to CFOW, PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706. Thanks.
REWARDS!
The Rewards for stalwart newsletter readers this week reflect the “hard times” imposed by Trump and his fascist clique on people across the USA. First up is a personal favorite, “Hard Times Come Again No More,” by Stephen Foster (1854) and sung by Mavis Staples. Iris Dement’s “Our Town” memorializes the destruction of small town rural America now devastating millions in “the heartland.” And in 1988 Leonard Cohen saw what was coming, and gave us “Everybody Knows.” Indeed, hard times.
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW WEEKLY READER
FEATURED ARTICLES & ESSAYS
Why Trump Is Allowing Food Stamp Funding to Run Out
By Joel Berg, The Nation [October 30,2025]
---- On the same day that Trump pledged to CNN that he would continue SNAP payments in November, his own Department of Agriculture (USDA) said the government wouldn’t. The next day, the USDA used its website to double down on the SNAP shutdown, using lies about immigrants and a false smear against transgender Americans in a partisan message that clearly violated the federal Hatch Act prohibition on using tax dollars for partisan purposes. Even if Trump or the GOP Congress or the Democratic attorneys general suing the government over the debacle succeed in ending the SNAP shutdown, there will still be a significant delay in the delivery of November’s SNAP benefits. …While progressives should push governors and state legislatures to take emergency steps to ameliorate the impact of the shutdown, the only real solution is to pressure Trump and congressional Republicans to compromise with the Democrats on a plan that both reopens the federal government and prevents tens of millions of Americans from suffering from huge spikes in their healthcare premiums. After all, if people have to spend hundreds of more dollars per month on healthcare, they will have far less to spend of food, so those premium hikes would also increase hunger. That’s why this healthcare fight is also an anti-hunger fight. We must all hang tough and win. [Read More]
(Video) Mass Killings Reported in Sudan as RSF Seizes El Fasher; 460 Killed at Hospital
From Democracy Now! [October 30, 2025]
---- Sudan’s military is accusing the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces of killing at least 2,000 people since seizing control of El Fasher in the Darfur region, including some 460 at the Saudi Maternity Hospital. Meanwhile, tens of thousands have fled. “What’s happening is no less than a … campaign of destruction and annihilation,” says Mathilde Vu, Sudan advocacy manager at the Norwegian Refugee Council, speaking to Democracy Now! from Kenya. What’s unfolding in El Fasher is “the sum of all our fears,” adds Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health. He urges the United States to put pressure on the United Arab Emirates, which has backed the RSF in the civil war as the group carries out “acts that are tantamount to genocide.” [See the Program]
The True Story of U.S. Economic Sanctions Against Cuba
By Salim Lamrani, Znet [November 1, 2025]
---- On October 29, 2025, for the 33rd consecutive year, during the United Nations General Assembly, 165 countries demanded the lifting of the United States’ unilateral economic sanctions that have been strangling the Cuban population since 1960. Unlike the previous year—when only Israel sided with Washington in opposing the resolution presented by Havana—this time five other nations yielded to the strong pressure exerted by the Trump administration: Argentina, Hungary, North Macedonia, Paraguay, and Ukraine. Twelve other countries chose to abstain. Unanimously condemned by the international community every year since 1992, this state of siege gravely affects the well-being of the entire Cuban population—particularly the most vulnerable—and remains the principal obstacle to the country’s development. From March 2024 to February 2025, U.S. economic sanctions cost Cuba $7.55 billion—a 50 percent increase compared to the previous year—representing more than $20 million per day and nearly $15,000 per minute. [Read More]
Muslim surveillance: The real story behind the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism
By James Renton, Middle East Monitor [October 28, 2025]
---- In May 2016, an organisation of Western governments headquartered in Berlin, called the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), adopted a definition of anti-Semitism that incorporates anti-Zionism. That definition has become the pre-eminent benchmark for identifying anti-Semitism by governments, public bodies and universities across the global North. Due to its conflation of anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism, the IHRA is also a flashpoint in the global struggle over Palestine/Israel. Despite the definition’s political importance, much remains unknown today by both supporters and opponents regarding its origins, not least because the IHRA’s archives remain closed, and many public documents have been taken offline. … In the early years of the War on Terror, I have discovered, Western governments were anxious to protect what they had carefully established as a core part of the meaning of liberal democracy – its very purpose – after the end of the Cold War: the memorialisation of the Holocaust. As Western states came to see Israel as the ultimate totem of Holocaust memory, they, in turn, began prioritising the protection of its reputation as essential for the security of their own political system after 9/11. When leaders in the global North label attacks on Israel as attacks on democracy itself, this is the history of what they mean. … Once the War on Terror began, however, the international picture changed dramatically. [Read More]
ALSO OF INTEREST - “The Left Wins the Irish Presidential Election in a Landslide,” by Vijay Prashad, Counterpunch [October 31, 2025] [Link]; and “The Silent Victim: Warfare’s Enduring Environmental Scars Across the Middle East,” by Hosein Pabarja, Counterpunch [October 29, 2025] [Link].
THE WAR ON PALESTINE
Francesca Albanese names over 60 states complicit in Gaza genocide
From The Cradle October 29, 2025]
---- The UN special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, told the General Assembly on 28 October that 63 countries, including key western and Arab states, have fueled or were complicit in “Israel’s genocidal machinery” in Gaza. Speaking remotely from the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation in Cape Town, Albanese presented her 24-page report, ‘Gaza Genocide: A Collective Crime,’ which she said documents how states armed, financed, and politically protected Tel Aviv as Gaza’s population was “bombed, starved, and erased” for over two years. Her findings place the US at the center of Israel’s war economy, accounting for two-thirds of its weapons imports and providing diplomatic cover through seven UN Security Council vetoes. The report cited Germany, Britain, and a number of other European powers for continuing arms transfers “even as evidence of genocide mounted,” and condemned the EU for sanctioning Russia over the war in Ukraine while remaining Israel’s top trading partner. [Read More]
It’s No Longer Possible to Be a Palestinian in the West Bank
By Gideon Levy, Haaretz [Israel] [October 26, 2025]
---- In the West Bank, no one has heard about the cease-fire in Gaza: not the army, not the settlers, not the Civil Administration and, of course, not the 3 million Palestinians who live under their tyranny. They do not feel the end of the war in the slightest. From Jenin to Hebron, there is no cease-fire in sight. For two years there has been a reign of terror in the West Bank under the cover of the war in the Strip, which serves as a dubious pretext and a smoke screen, and there is no sign that it is about to end. All the draconian decrees imposed on Palestinians on October 7 remain in effect; some have been made harsher. The settler violence continues, as does the involvement of the army and the police in the riots. In Gaza fewer people are being killed and displaced, but in the West Bank everything continues as if there were no cease-fire. [Read More]
Gaza ‘scholasticide’: We mourn our universities as one mourns an old friend
By Ghada Abu Muaileq, Middle East Eye [October 25, 2025]
---- By the end of that winter, all 19 universities in Gaza had been destroyed. Around 80 percent of their buildings were reduced to rubble. Four universities were completely obliterated, and ten others suffered severe or moderate damage. These attacks deprived nearly 88,000 university students of their education. Last month, UN agencies reported that Israel had destroyed or damaged 95 percent of Gaza’s educational facilities, depriving more than 650,000 children of learning for over two years. UN agencies and rights groups have condemned this systematic destruction as “scholasticide” - a deliberate annihilation of education. [Read More]
ALSO OF INTEREST - “Terms of Surrender: The Conspiracy to Obstruct Justice in Palestine,” by Craig Mokhiber, Foreign Policy in Focus [October 30, 2025] [Link]; “The rise of global boycotts against Israel’s genocide in Gaza,” by Alia Chughtai, Aljazeera [October 28, 2025] [Link]; “Peace in Gaza Depends on Palestinians’ Right to Remain – and Return,” by David Vine, Foreign Policy in Focus [October 29, 2025] [Link]; “From the Margins to the Mainstream: How the Gaza genocide transformed U.S. public opinion,” by Adrienne Lynett and Mira Nabulsi, Mondoweiss [October 26, 2025] [Link]; and “A Minefield in Gaza,” by Ariel Gold, Fellowship of Reconciliation [October 27, 2025] [Link].
THE UKRAINE WAR
The Risk of a Radical Escalation Leading to Actual Conflict Between NATO and Russia Grows
By Anatol Lieven, The Nation [October 28, 2025]
---- The future of Ukraine and Russia, of European security, and of US-Russian relations now all hang on a few small half-ruined towns in the northwestern part of Donetsk province. Indeed, given the continued risk of a radical escalation leading to actual conflict between NATO and Russia, the stakes may be higher even than that. The Russian government continues to demand that Ukraine withdraw from this territory as part of a peace settlement, and during a visit to Russia this month, very nearly everyone I talked with said that it is politically impossible for President Putin to give up this demand, even if the Trump administration were to offer major concessions on wider security issues. Equally, every Ukrainian I have talked to in recent months has said that it is politically impossible for the Ukrainian government to accede to this. Almost all the other key issues can be resolved by the Trump administration in direct negotiation with Russia if Trump can come up with a concrete set of proposals. Not this one. How on earth did we get to this point? [Read More]
WAR WITH VENEZUELA?
Trump Is Moving Relentlessly Toward Illegal War in Venezuela
By Marjorie Cohn, Truthout [October 30, 2025 ]
---- As the Trump administration continues to murder people in small boats on the high seas and mounts the largest U.S. military buildup in decades in the Caribbean, it is moving inexorably toward an all-out, illegal attack and forcible regime change in Venezuela. Despite Team Trump’s feeble attempts to legally justify its ocean strikes, which have now killed 57 people since early September, those extrajudicial killings are also unlawful. … Although Trump’s stated rationale is preventing drugs from Venezuela entering the United States, Venezuela isn’t even mentioned in the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s National Drug Threat Assessment 2024 … In addition to its increasing numbers of murders of alleged drug smugglers at sea, the Trump administration is positioning tremendous military firepower for what appears to be an imminent attack on Venezuela. Hegseth ordered the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft-carrier strike group with five destroyers to deploy to the region to “bolster U.S. capacity to detect, monitor, and disrupt illicit actors and activities that compromise the safety and prosperity of the United States,” according to a Pentagon spokesperson. … Both the UN Charter and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights guarantee the right to self-determination. That means no forcible regime change. [Read More]
Can Trump’s War Be Prevented? [The War Powers Act]
By Mark Weisbrot, The Nation [October 30, 2025]
---- On October 8, a War Powers Resolution that would have required an end to unauthorized US military operations in the Caribbean was introduced by Senators Adam Schiff and Tim Kaine. It was blocked by a vote of 51-48. But now there is another one, introduced in the Senate on October 16, to block the US military from engaging in a war in Venezuela. Republican Senator Rand Paul joined Kaine and Schiff on this War Powers Resolution. There is also pressure from within the military, which also gets noticed. On October 16th, Admiral Alvin Holsey, the Commander of SOUTHCOM, announced that he would retire in two months. He oversees US military operations in Central and South America (and the Caribbean). He had two more years left in his position, and it is unprecedented for someone with his current responsibilities to quit in the middle of an operation like the one that is currently taking place in the hemisphere. This is a pretty big deal. It indicates that there is some division in the military about this potential war. [Read More]
THE CLIMATE CRISIS
Change course now’: humanity has missed 1.5C climate target, says UN head
An interview with UN Secretary-General António Guterres
From The Guardian [UK] [October 28, 2025]
---- Humanity has failed to limit global heating to 1.5C and must change course immediately, the secretary general of the UN has warned. In his only interview before next month’s Cop30 climate summit, António Guterres acknowledged it is now “inevitable” that humanity will overshoot the target in the Paris climate agreement, with “devastating consequences” for the world. He urged the leaders who will gather in the Brazilian rainforest city of Belém to realise that the longer they delay cutting emissions, the greater the danger of passing catastrophic “tipping points” in the Amazon, the Arctic and the oceans. “Let’s recognise our failure,” he told the Guardian. “The truth is that we have failed to avoid an overshooting above 1.5C in the next few years. And that going above 1.5C has devastating consequences. Some of these devastating consequences are tipping points, be it in the Amazon, be it in Greenland, or western Antarctica or the coral reefs. He said the priority at Cop30 was to shift direction: “It is absolutely indispensable to change course in order to make sure that the overshoot is as short as possible and as low in intensity as possible to avoid tipping points like the Amazon. We don’t want to see the Amazon as a savannah. But that is a real risk if we don’t change course and if we don’t make a dramatic decrease of emissions as soon as possible.” [Read More]
Why We Shouldn’t Care What Bill Gates Has to Say About the Climate Crisis
By Bill Mckibben, Common Dreams [November 1, 2025]
[FB – Last week billionaire Bill Gates published a statement titled “Three tough truths about climate.” He addressed it to those who will be attending the UN climate summit meeting in Brazil later this month. The statement said that great progress had been made on the climate issue, and that the challenge now facing humans was poverty and disease. This is Bill McKibben’s reply.]
---- Any conversation about Bill Gates and climate should begin by acknowledging that he’s been wrong about it over and over again. … So—if we were listening to people on the grounds of whether they had a good track record, the world would not spend a lot of time on Gates and climate. But if you have a hundred billion dollars all is forgiven, and so there has been lots of fawning coverage. The fact that Gates framed all this in a way designed to appeal to the president is so obvious that it hardly bears mentioning (the richest men in the world have all been sucking up to him, so no extra shame here); let’s instead just go to the heart of his argument. Which is weak in the extreme. [Read More]
CIVIL LIBERTIES
Feds Say Kat Abughazaleh “Impeded” ICE Agents. That Would Put Her on the Right Side of History.
By Natasha Lennard, The Intercept [October 29 2025]
---- In yet another overreaching and nakedly political prosecution, the Justice Department on Wednesday indicted Democratic Illinois congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh on federal charges for taking part in a nonviolent protest outside a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility near Chicago. The government claims that Abughazaleh, alongside five other protesters, “impeded and interfered with an officer of the United States.” All six protesters are also charged together as alleged members of a “conspiracy” to prevent the officer from discharging his duties. Let’s be clear: If six people nonviolently protesting outside a government facility constitutes a criminal conspiracy, all First Amendment-protected activity is at risk. [Read More]
How Designating Antifa as a Foreign Terrorist Organization Could Threaten Civil Liberties
By Thomas E. Brzozowski, Just Security [October 27, 2025]
---- Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) designations are one of the most powerful legal instruments in America’s counterterrorism arsenal. Originally conceived to combat international terrorist networks like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (ISIS), these designations trigger sweeping financial sanctions, severe criminal penalties, and extensive surveillance authorities. President Donald Trump’s comments at a White House roundtable on “Antifa” earlier this month make it likely that his administration will designate this decentralized anti-fascist movement as an FTO — a move that would create an unprecedented expansion of counterterrorism authorities into the domestic political space. … To understand why an Antifa FTO designation would be so consequential, one must first grasp the extraordinary scope of authorities that such designations unleash. The FTO system was deliberately constructed to maximize governmental power against international terrorist threats. Created by the 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, the framework provides the executive branch with extraordinary authorities that are designed to dismantle terrorist networks quickly and comprehensively. [Read More]
THE STATE OF THE UNION
Make No Mistake: Trump Is Trying to Steal the Midterms
By Jeet Heer, The Nation [October 31, 2025]
---- Donald Trump, a man who loves nursing grievances and plotting revenge, has never gotten over losing the 2020 presidential election. To this day, he refuses to admit that he was defeated fair and square, preferring the comforting fantasy that the election was stolen. The 2020 myth has become central to Trump’s political identity. It fueled his efforts to overturn the election results leading to the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. His posture as a noble victim of injustice helped keep the MAGA movement together during the Joe Biden years. And it allowed him to frame his victory in 2024 as nothing less than a triumph over political evil. Now, with Trump in the White House and both Congress and the Supreme Court currently in supine Republican hands, the president has immense power in Washington. But his desire for revenge has not been satiated. Nor has his desire to permanently control the political system. [Read More]
