It appears that the Trump/MAGA coalition is trembling, perhaps on the edge of collapse. Trump’s personal popularity is down. His support among the Republican majority in Congress is no longer unanimous. His recent attempt to counter arguments from the Democrats about “affordability” were ludicrous, “divorced from reality” remarked an economics expert on Democracy Now! The Epstein Files, the White House “ballroom,” the daily exposure of graft and corruption within Trump’s cabinet and among his billionaire supporters – all of this has combined to make Trump lose control of the media narrative. What is he to do?
Last week congressional action to pass a War Powers Resolution against war on Venezuela failed by a very slim margin. The essentially gives Trump congressional approval for war; and now that Congress has adjourned for Christmas vacation there are no remaining “checks and balances” to stop this war except for mass citizen protest.
This afternoon Trump is scheduled to meet in Florida with Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. Given the salience of the US terror attacks on Venezuela-bound ships and ships carrying oil for export, it may be that this afternoon’s meeting will result in a significant expansion of Trump’s war against Venezuela. It might even mark the beginning of an attack on Venezuela territory, perhaps with the intention of killing Venezuela’s president Maduro.
On Saturday The Washington Post published a convenient scorecard for the US military assets (ships, planes, Marines, etc.) hovering off Venezuela’s shores [Link]. As of this morning, the US Coast Guard is in pursuit of three more ships bound for/leaving Venezuela. So far, US terror attacks have targeted 28 Venezuelan boats, killing more than 100 people. While there is little that Venezuela can do to stop this, it may be that the Deep Thinkers in the Trump White House are fearing that the media story of terror attacks is getting old, and that it is time to complete the running-jump by attacking the Venezuela homeland.
Where will the Venezuela War take us? People who remember the Iraq War and the Afghanistan War – and for oldsters the Vietnam War – are well aware that in war one thing leads to another, and that many roads lead to war crimes and genocide. Last week on Democracy Now! Historian Greg Grandin raised the possibility of “a path to WWIII.” People, this is no joke. We (and the world) may be in serious trouble. Work for peace.
SOME ESSAYS ILLUMINATING THIS WEEK
(Video) Continued War in Gaza & the West Bank - In conversation with Ilan Pappé and Mariam Barghouti
From The Rights Forum [The Netherlands] [December 17, 2025] – 1 hour+
---- Israeli historian Ilan Pappé, author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine and other prominent works, has played a crucial role in challenging the dominant Western narrative that presents Israel as a liberal democracy born in innocence. His work exposed the foundational violence and displacement at the heart of the Israeli state project. Palestinian journalist Mariam Barghouti documents from her home in the occupied West Bank how the process of dispossession and erasure continues today — through military occupation, segregation, and control over every aspect of Palestinian life. Yet in the Netherlands, as in much of the West, politicians and major media outlets largely cling to a sanitized image of Israel that bears little resemblance to reality. Poll after poll, however, shows that a growing majority of Dutch citizens wish to break with this long-held but false ideas about Israel and support meaningful action for Palestinian liberation. Why, then, does a just policy toward Palestine remain so elusive? [See the Program]
Extrajudicial Killings From Barack Obama to Donald Trump
By Medea Benjamin, Code Pink [December 18, 2025]
---- The Trump administration is now carrying out extrajudicial assassinations at sea, including “double taps.” With the latest December 15 strikes, 95 people have been blown to bits in the bombing of 25 boats. Meanwhile, the administration is refusing to release the memo that supposedly explains the legal basis for these killings or to release the video showing the September bombing that killed two shipwrecked sailors who survived an initial strike. But let’s be clear: the actions of the Trump administration are not an aberration – they are the logical sequel to Obama’s drone killings. If Obama could kill a 16-year-old American boy without accountability, why wouldn’t Trump believe he has the same power to snuff out the lives of civilians with no due process? [Read More]
A War No American Needs: Confrontation with Venezuela Brings Neither Security nor Benefit
By Greg Pence, Antiwar.com [December 19, 2025]
---- The United States finds itself at a moment when the gap between power and prudence has rarely been more visible. As American society grapples with structural inflation, deep social fragmentation, a crisis of institutional credibility, and the steady erosion of public trust, renewed talk of military confrontation with Venezuela is once again circulating within Washington’s political and security circles. In recent months, this rhetoric has intensified, driven in part by President Donald Trump and influential figures around him – most notably Senator Marco Rubio – who have pushed an increasingly confrontational line toward Caracas, bringing the country closer to the threshold of conflict. These developments are not the product of a genuine threat, but rather reflect a dangerous habit in U.S. foreign policy: transforming domestic deadlock into external military adventure. The central question is both simple and decisive: who exactly is this war for, and what purpose is it meant to serve? [Read More]
ZOHRAN MAMDAMI FOR NEW YORK
Zohran Mamdani Vs. the Real Estate State
By Samuel Stein, Jewish Currents [December 17, 2025]
---- As Zohran Mamdani prepares to take office on January 1st, the enemies of New York’s mayor-elect are already maneuvering to thwart his historically ambitious agenda. Outgoing Mayor Eric Adams is leading the charge, taking last-minute action aimed at “Mamdani-proofing” city government and preventing or forestalling the sweeping housing reforms that helped propel the young socialist to victory. … Already, the first set of traps is being laid by Adams in broad daylight. How else is New York’s City Hall booby-trapped to prevent progress on housing? What forces barricade the staircase, and what snipers lie in wait for a mayor who dares challenge the real estate state? [Read More]
NEWS NOTES
In Northampton, Mass., 4 “elderly activists” are on trial for protesting weapons manufacturer L3Harris. Civil disobedience is their “crime.” One of the protesters is CFOW stalwart Nick Mottern. An interesting article in a Northampton newspaper highlights how & why civil disobedience comes together, works its magic, and (often) ends up in court. Thanks Nick!
What happened to refugees from Nazi Europe if/after they escaped to the USA? An interesting article in The New York Times recounts the story of the “stammtisch” (regular gathering) where refugees convened for discussion and speaking German and friendship, before closing down this week after 82 years. CFOW stalwart Janet Gerson frequently attended these gatherings, and has some commentary amplifying The Times’ story here.
Boats to Gaza! The Freedom Flotilla Coalition met in Dublin, Ireland recently to set out its plans for more humanitarian aid sailings to Gaza in the coming year. The coalition formed in 2010 (the year of the Mavi Marmara boat massacre, in which the Israeli military killed 10 aid-passengers). Read about the Coalition’s history and plans here.
Last week marked the 85th birthday of the late music-protest leader Phil Ochs. Stalwart SS sent me a notice along with a suggestion to link Phil’s timely (sadly) song that protested the 1965 US invasion of the Dominican Republic. So here it is.
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!
Once again, our Christmas-time Reward for stalwart newsletter readers features John McCutchen performing his composition, “Christmas in the Trenches.” The song memorializes the events during World War I, when in 1914 (the first year of the war) German and British (Scottish) troops joined together to celebrate Christmas, singing carols and trading personal items. You can see a re-enactment here and read some history here. Needless to say, the fraternization of front-line troops scared the bejeezus out of the commanding officers on both sides, and steps were taken to guard against anymore “peace-making from below.” By the end of the war, almost 10 million soldiers and almost 7 million civilians were killed, starved, died of wounds, etc. – And so the Christmas-in-the-trenches soldiers had the right idea, and their officers and the politicians who sent them to war were insane.
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW WEEKLY READER
FEATURED ARTICLES & ESSAYS
Trump’s ‘End of History’ Moment
By Patrick Lawrence, Scheer Post [December 17, 2025]
---- The Trumpster is not yet finished his first year back in the White House, and I cannot imagine how our crumbling republic will survive three more years of this man-child and the misfits and miscreants with whom he has surrounded himself. And it occurs to me lately that neither I nor anyone else is supposed to imagine any kind of future — good, bad, in the middle — beyond Jan. 20, 2029, when President Trump will no longer be president. The future will not be the point by then. By then we are supposed to be living in an imaginary past that we won’t have to imagine because the imaginary past will be the actual present. It is not quite three months since Trump issued an executive order designating “antifa,” the more or less fictitious “organization” of antifascists, a “domestic terrorist organization.” … Three days after the antifa executive order, The White House made public a National Security Presidential Memorandum titled “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence.” NSPM–7. [Read More]
The Growing Protests Against Rapacious Data Centers
By Ron Knox, The Nation [December 16, 2025]
---- The growing collective outcry against corporate control suggests there’s something far larger going on: Americans, fed up with decades of declining fortunes, have found a common and culpable enemy in the powerful companies that control so much of our lives and politics. While populism has been rising in America for years, this moment feels different. Resistance is happening everywhere, not just in liberal big cities or in communities known for their activism. The broad backlash against corporate power today bridges partisan lines and channels a philosophy that has been core to America since its founding. It is the worldview of anti-monopoly, brought to life in city halls and community hearings nationwide…. Resistance toward this corporate degradation of our lives is everywhere and growing by the day. In just three months this year, local opposition has killed or stalled 20 data center projects, worth around $98 billion in investment, according to the watchdog group datacenterwatch.org. More than 160 communities around the country, from the urban core of Chicago to the quiet streets of Monterey Township in Michigan, have passed rules and ordinances to stop new dollar stores from opening. Opposition to endlessly-expanding warehouses and logistics facilities—often to be operated by Amazon—has spread from coast to coast, largely led by local residents and business owners worried about the facilities’ risks to workers and the environment. Where Amazon-run logistics facilities exist, worker uprisings have challenged the company’s poor pay and dangerous working conditions. [Read More]
Inside Chicago’s Neighborhood ICE Resistance
By Melissa Gira Grant, The New Republic [December 14, 2025]
---- The crackdown is vast, the stakes could hardly be higher, and the response from Chicagoans has been profound and far-reaching. The mayor signed an executive order designating city-owned property as “ICE Free Zones.” A federal judge required some of those overseeing the operation, such as Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino, to testify under oath, and set schedules for them to update the court on the operation. But neither political nor legal interventions have managed to meaningfully interrupt what’s going on. ICE-free zones, residents report, do not stop ICE. And the slow-moving legal system can’t prevent agents from violating residents’ constitutional rights; indeed, the system largely functions to offer redress after the fact. … ICE or migra watch is a practice that grew out of the community defense strategies developed by the Black Panthers in the late 1960s, which inspired cop-watching across the country. It is most visible on the streets, where pairs or teams document law enforcement in their own neighborhoods. Participants used to use handheld video cameras; now their cell phone cameras do the job. But the work extends beyond the moments the officers are recorded. Over time, through direct experience, cop-watch groups come to understand patterns of policing. Some track and request public records of law enforcement activities to learn more. They educate their neighbors about their rights when police stop their cars or come to their doors, and coordinate care and outreach to support neighbors harmed by policing. [Read More]
(Video) The Last Doctor Standing [Gaza]
From Aljazeera World [December 2025] – 47 minutes
---- In a besieged hospital in Gaza, Dr Hussam Abu Safia fights to save lives amid a blockade, personal tragedy and detention, triggering global calls for justice. This award-winning documentary follows him and his wife Albina inside the besieged hospital, where their family lived for months after Israeli forces threatened their home. Facing a blockade on medicine, food, water and fuel, Abu Safia treated waves of war‑wounded patients, forced to choose who might live or die. The cost was personal: his son Ibrahim was killed, another son Idris was injured, and the doctor himself was wounded. Yet he refused to leave. In December 2024, Kamal Adwan was bombed and stormed; staff were detained and tortured. Abu Safia remains in “administrative detention” without charge. The film closes with global calls for his release, a testament to resilience in the face of devastation and genocide. [See the Program]
ALSO OF INTEREST - “In Sudan’s Recent History,” by Rebecca Gordon, Tom Dispatch [December 2025] [Link]; “Surprising Lessons for the U.S. Resistance to Trump In Sudan’s Recent History,” by Rebecca Gordon, Tom Dispatch [December 2025] [Link]; “Chile at the Crossroads,” by Peter Kornbluh, The Nation [December 19, 2025] [Link]; and “A Harvard scholar’s ouster exposes a crisis of institutional integrity,” by Eric Reinhart, The Guardian [UK] [December 17, 2025] [Link].
THE WAR ON PALESTINE
(Video) What will Trump do to protect the Gaza ceasefire deal?
From Aljazeera [“Inside Story”] [December 19, 2025]
---- Daily Israeli breaches of the Gaza ceasefire agreement threaten the entire peace process, says the Qatari prime minister, who helped broker the deal signed by Donald Trump. So, what’s gone wrong -- and what might the US president do to get it back on track? [See the Program]
Land Grab: Israel’s Escalating Campaign for Control of the West Bank
By Michael D. Shear, et al., New York Times [December 20, 2025]
---- The far-right Israeli government has been transparent about its mission: to sabotage what diplomats call the two-state solution and its goal of an Israeli and a Palestinian nation living side by side. “Every town, every neighborhood, every housing unit,” Bezalel Smotrich, the ultra-right-wing finance minister, said recently, “is another nail in the coffin of this dangerous idea.” For years, the United Nations, the United States and much of the Western world have warned that the continuous expansion of Israeli settlements would eventually make the establishment of a contiguous Palestinian state impossible. Across the West Bank, there is desperation among Palestinian villagers and farmers as they watch the takeover of their lands at a pace never seen before. And there is fear that the changes are already becoming irreversible. We spent more than two months in a dozen villages in the West Bank, meeting with Palestinian families, local officials, Bedouin farmers and young human rights activists, often visiting from abroad. We watched as groups of young Israeli settlers showed up in Palestinian villages to harass or intimidate them. [Read More]
If Gaza Resistance Ends: What History Tells Us About the Palestinian Fate
By Ramzy Baroud, Antiwar.com [December 16, 2025]
---- US President Donald Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’ is reportedly set to be announced before the year’s end. This news coincides with increasing reports that the US administration is serious about pushing forward the second phase of the Gaza ceasefire. However, many critical questions remain unanswered. How can a governing council be superimposed on Gaza when Palestinians are unified in their rejection of any new form of Western mandate over their lives? Furthermore, how can the proposed ‘International Stabilization Force’ (ISF) operate in Gaza without total clarity regarding its mission? If the ISF ends up serving primarily as an Israeli line of defense, the entire project will collapse before it begins. … Those who continue to entertain the Israeli narrative regarding Gaza must confront this historical record and acknowledge two crucial, enduring realities. First, Israel’s violence is fundamentally driven by its settler-colonial ambitions, not merely by Palestinian resistance. Second, Palestinian resistance is a deeply rooted historical imperative – the native population’s determined struggle for self-liberation from foreign occupation. Only by abandoning the reductionist language that frames Israeli wars as simple responses to armed groups can we arrive at a profound understanding of events in Palestine, Israel’s true motives, and the legitimacy of the Palestinian struggle. [Read More]
ALSO OF INTEREST - “Israel has continued its assassination campaign in Gaza despite the ceasefire,” by Tareq S. Hajjaj, Mondoweiss [December 18, 2025] [Link]; “UN’s IPC: Gaza out of Famine for Now, but Severe Malnutrition Continues, as Newborn dies of Hypothermia,” by Juan Cole, Informed Comment [December 20, 2025] [Link]; and (Video) “Dirty secret of Israel’s weapons exports – They’re tested on Palestinians in Gaza,” from Aljazeera [December 21, 2025] – 3 minutes - [Link].
THE WAR IN UKRAINE
The Death of Ukraine’s Dream of NATO Membership
By Ted Snider, Antiwar.com [December 15, 2025]
---- Ukraine’s dream of NATO membership is dead. It died, surprisingly, not on the battlefields of Ukraine nor at the negotiating table with Russia. It died in a document written in the White House to be sent to Congress to explain America’s national security vision. The 2025 National Security Strategy of the United States of America, dated November 2025, was released on December 4. Embedded unimposingly, without fanfare, in a section on The Regions called Promoting European Greatness, and not even in the section that discusses the war in Ukraine, the Security Strategy quietly states the priority policy of “Ending the perception, and preventing the reality, of NATO as a perpetually expanding alliance.” Those fourteen words seem to have pulled the plug on a dream that was already on life support. That policy priority found expression in point 7 of Trump’s 28 point peace plan that states that “Ukraine agrees to enshrine in its constitution that it will not join NATO, and NATO agrees to include in its statutes a provision that Ukraine will not be admitted in the future.” Since it was first promised at the 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest that Ukraine and Georgia “will become members of NATO,” the dream has been an unrealistic one. It did not take into account the real wishes of Ukraine, NATO or Russia, and it did not take into account previous promises already made by NATO and Ukraine. At the time of the Bucharest summit, the U.S. may have wanted NATO membership for Ukraine, but only 20% of Ukrainians did. [Read More] – ALSO OF INTEREST “‘Minimum Victory’”[Ukraine], by Linda Kinstler, New York Review of Books [December 20, 2025] [Link].
WAR ON VENEZUELA?
US Relied on Illegal Sanctions to Seize Venezuelan Oil Tanker
By Marjorie Cohn, Truthout [December 15, 2025]
---- “We have just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela — a large tanker, very large, the largest one ever seized actually,” Donald Trump told reporters on December 10, describing the escalation of his apparently impending illegal war and regime change in Venezuela. Attorney General Pam Bondi ceremoniously released a video clip of the U.S. Marines and National Guard rappelling down from two helicopters onto the tanker. In seizing the “Skipper,” the Trump administration relied on sanctions the U.S. had imposed on the Venezuelan oil tanker. Bondi said a seizure warrant was executed by the U.S. Coast Guard, FBI, Pentagon, and Homeland Security Investigations. “For multiple years, the oil tanker has been sanctioned by the United States due to its involvement in an illicit oil shipping network supporting foreign terrorist organizations,” she stated. But those sanctions are illegal and cannot provide a lawful basis for the U.S. to seize this vessel. Although claims in the corporate media that Venezuelan oil is subject to “international sanctions” are ubiquitous, nothing could be further from the truth. When a country takes it upon itself to impose sanctions without Security Council approval, they are called unilateral coercive measures, which violate the UN Charter. [Read More]
WAR ON IRAN?
Trump, Netanyahu ‘quietly planned’ Iran war since February: Report
From The Cradle [December 18, 2025]
---- US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu jointly coordinated the June war against Iran months prior, while organizing a deception campaign in the media aimed at presenting Washington as opposed to Tel Aviv’s plans against Tehran, sources told the Washington Post on 17 December. According to the sources, Netanyahu met Trump in February and gave him four options for how an attack on Iran could happen. “The Israeli prime minister first showed Trump what the operation would look like if Israel attacked alone. The second option was for Israel to take the lead, with minimal US support. The third was full collaboration between the two allies. The last option was for the US to take the lead,” the report said. [Read More]
WAR WITH CHINA?
China and the Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine
By Tings Chak, Znet [December 18, 2025]
---- On 10 December 2025, U.S. forces seized the oil tanker Skipper off the coast of Venezuela, carrying over a million barrels of crude. “Well, we keep [the oil],” President Trump told reporters. Venezuela’s foreign ministry called it “blatant theft and an act of international piracy,” adding: “The true reasons for the prolonged aggression against Venezuela have finally been revealed. It has always been about our natural wealth, our oil.” That same day, on the other side of the world, China released its third Policy Paper on Latin America and the Caribbean—the first since 2016—outlining a vision of partnership “without attaching any political conditions.” The timing captures the choice now facing Latin America. Two documents released within a week—Trump’s National Security Strategy (NSS) on 5 December and China’s policy paper five days later— lay bare fundamentally different approaches to the hemisphere. [Read More]
THE CLIMATE CRISIS
(Video) “Destroying Knowledge”: Michael Mann on Trump’s Dismantling of Key Climate Center in Colorado
From Democracy Now! [December 22, 2025]
---- Climate scientists and meteorologists are sounding the alarm after White House budget director Russell Vought announced the Trump administration will break up the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, known as NCAR. “He is executing the playbook of Project 2025,” says Michael Mann, scientist and co-author of Science Under Siege. Without NCAR, “we will not have the sorts of observational data and climate models that we need to inform climate policy.” [See the Program]
Thousands of glaciers to melt each year by mid-century, study finds
From Aljazeera [December 16, 2025]
---- A scientific study published on Monday in Nature Climate Change warned that unless governments take action now, the planet could reach a stage of “peak glacier extinction” by mid-century with up to 4,000 melting each year. About 200,000 glaciers remain in the world, and about 750 disappear each year. That rate could rise more than five fold if global temperatures soar by 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) from pre-industrial levels and accelerate global warming, according to the report, which predicted only 18,288 glaciers would remain by the end of the century. [Read More] ALSO OF INTEREST - “’We cannot Negotiate with the Melting Point of Ice:’ World’s Ice Sheets shed 640 bn. Tons in 12 Months,” by Chris Stokes, et al., The Conversation [December 19, 2025] [Link].
CIVIL LIBERTIES
‘Throwback to McCarthyism’: Trump DOJ Moves to Treat Leftist Dissent as Criminal
By Stephen Prager, Common Dreams [December 18, 2025]
---- The Trump administration is about to embark on a massive crackdown on what it describes as a scourge of rampant left-wing “terrorism.” But the US Department of Justice (DOJ) memo ordering the crackdown has critics fearing it will go far beyond punishing those who plan criminal acts and will instead be used to criminalize anyone who expresses opposition to President Donald Trump and his agenda. … [Reporter] Klippenstein said that “where NSPM-7 was a declaration of war on just about anyone who isn’t MAGA,” the memo that went into effect Thursday “is the war plan for how the government will wage it on a tactical level.” [Read More]
(Video) “Terror & Fear”: Trump Moves to Denaturalize Citizens, End Birthright Citizenship, Halt Visa Lottery
From Democracy Now! [December 19, 2025]
---- The Trump administration is ramping up efforts to strip more naturalized immigrants of their U.S. citizenship, with The New York Times reporting that officials are seeking 100 to 200 cases per month. The news comes less than two weeks after the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case to decide the constitutionality of President Trump’s executive order aiming to end birthright citizenship. “During the first Trump administration, they had 25 [denaturalization] cases per year, and … for the 15 years before the first Trump administration, they had fewer than 15 cases per year,” says Mae Ngai, professor of Asian American studies and history at Columbia University. “So this is an incredible escalation.” [See the Program]
THE STATE OF THE UNION
(Video) Homelessness Is About Affordability: Author Patrick Markee on the Housing Crisis in “New Gilded Age”
From Democracy Now! [December 16, 2025]
---- New York City housing advocate Patrick Markee’s new book, Placeless: Homelessness in the New Gilded Age, looks at homelessness through the lens of housing affordability. Homelessness, which affects millions across the United States, “has roots in structural economic changes, right-wing economic policies and systemic racism,” explains Markee. “There’s a reason that other advanced capitalist countries in this world … don’t have the levels of homelessness that we have, and that’s because, there, government plays a much larger role in creating and even owning affordable housing.” [See the Program]
