This afternoon President Trump responded to Iran’s reply to a US memo on ending the war, calling the Iranian response “totally unacceptable.” Whether this is a negotiating ploy or a prelude to renewed fighting remains to be seen.
Negotiating proposal exchanged recently between Iran and the US have not been officially released, and so we have only a general idea of the demands made by both sides. A week ago Aljazeera published what they thought was the official Iranian proposal, which essentially repackaged their demands into three phases, with the first phase focused on the mechanics for ending the fighting and opening the contested sea lanes. Today Iran responded to the US counter-proposal, described as a 14-point plan, which was far more extensive in the concessions sought from Iran. Apparently Iran stated its willingness to export some (but not all) of its enriched uranium, and to have a moratorium on further enrichment. In addition to substantive issues, Iran and the US are also negotiating over how to negotiate. While we may learn much more soon, we are very much in the dark about what issues are on the table and what Trump means by “totally unacceptable.”
The question of whether, and if so how, the United States would renew and escalate its war on Iran is also not clear. Much is made of Trump’s forthcoming trip to China, and how this might affect his attitude toward peace v. war. Iran has also been clear that any ceasefire moving towards negotiations would depend on Israel stopping its aggression in Lebanon. Even if Trump thinks that the end of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon is fine with him, we don’t know if Israel would cooperate with US direction or remain committed to any promises it makes in this regard.
While support of the war on Iran is very low among Americans, peace action – both in the streets and in Congress – is also very weak. We peace activists have to put in some overtime to have any effect on the apparent drift towards renewed war. Please call Rep. Latimer - (202) 225-2464, Sen. Gillibrand - (202) 224-4451, Sen. Schumer – (202) 224-6542, and Rep Lawler - (202) 225-6506 and state strongly the need for maximum pressure on Trump to stop this dangerous, stupid war. Thanks.
SOME COMMENTS ON THE US-ISRAEL WAR ON IRAN
(Video) Trump’s War on Iran & Strait of Hormuz Crisis Reveal “Limits of American Imperial Power”
From Democracy Now! [May 5, 2026]
---- We speak with Middle East history professor Toby Jones about the ongoing crisis in the Strait of Hormuz, where overlapping blockades by Iran and the United States have disrupted shipping and the wider global economy since the start of the war in late February. Jones says this latest conflict is part of a decades-long project by the United States to exert imperial control over the oil-rich region, but that it’s now in danger of a strategic loss signaling a deeper imperial decline. “Through an unprovoked assault on Iran, Trump has accelerated, or at least clarified, the real limits of American imperial power,” says Jones. “He’s definitely put the United States in a much more vulnerable and weakened position globally as a result of this war.” [See the Program]
Trump knows he lost the Iran war, and is now desperate to find a way out
By Mitchell Plitnick, Mondoweiss [May 8, 2026]
---- Recent U.S. moves indicate that Donald Trump has finally recognized the disastrous mistake he made by listening to Benjamin Netanyahu and launching the war on Iran. Now he is looking to cut a deal, but Israel won’t make it easy. Trump has finally been forced to admit that Iran has the superior deterrent power because of the geography of the region and its preparedness for this conflict, built up over four decades. He also had to confront the reality that even his weak legal justification for the war on Iran without congressional authorization had expired, as it reached the 60-day limit allowed by law. If he tried to get congressional approval, he might well fail, and even if he succeeded, it would be a Pyrrhic victory. Republicans who voted to continue the war would suffer severe, perhaps lethal, blows at the ballot box as a result. If he continued the war anyway, he would face increasing pressure from within his own party. But the fact is, he doesn’t want to continue the war. It is a political and financial sinkhole that has yielded him absolutely no gains. [Read More]
(Video) Israel’s strategy of ‘permanent war’: A race against time?
From Aljazeera (“The Bottom Line”) [May 3, 2026]
---- Political analyst Daniel Levy says US policy is so ‘marinated’ in Israeli narratives, the two are indistinguishable. Israel is in a race against time to “lock in its domination” across the Middle East, argues former Israeli negotiator Daniel Levy. Levy, president of the US/Middle East Project, tells host Steve Clemons that Israel’s strategy of “permanent war” allows for only two types of countries in the region: either dependent, or “too collapsed, failed and fragile to pose any challenge”. Israel can try to block a US-Iran deal by advocating for “just one more major military operation” against Iran, and “heating things up” with constant attacks on Lebanese and Palestinians despite ceasefires on paper, Levy says. [See the Program]
NEWS NOTES
Columbia alumnus Mahmoud Khalil, who was arrested on bogus immigration charges after he participated in the Columbia pro-Palestine actions last year, is now threatened again with deportation. His complicated situation re: deportation is now being “expedited” by the Trump people. For details, check out this Thursday article from the New York Times.
Israel has long maintained “strategic ambiguity” about its nuclear weapons program. Not a member of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (unlike Iran), Iran is suspected of having 70+ nuclear warheads. The US collaborates with Israel in this ambiguity, claiming that it doesn’t know if Israel has nuclear weapons or not. Last week 30 House Democrats (not including Rep. Latimer) sent a letter to Trump stating what is commonly known about Israel’s nuclear program and demanding that the government clarify Israel’’s nuclear record. You can read the congressional letter here.
“It’s Bisan from Gaza and I’m Still Alive.”
This is the title of a long-running blog by Gazan Bisan Owda, who reports about daily life in Gaza - during the war, during the genocide, and now during the “ceasefire.” She shows us the destruction and the life of people continuing despite all. Check out her latest post.
The Trump people continue to blow up small boats in the Gulf of Mexico and the eastern Pacific Ocean, falsely claiming that they are taking “drugs” from Colombia to the USA. A military strike last Monday brought the number of deaths in these incidents to 184. Why are the Trump people doing this? Two knowledgeable journalists try to answer this question here.
Last Tuesday “Border czar” Tom Homan threatened to dramatically expand immigration enforcement operations in New York if the state passed a package of sanctuary-like legislation. While “sanctuary” does not mean “safety” for immigrants pursued by ICE, the laws limit the amount of cooperation police and municipal authorities are supposed to give ICE in their pursuit of whoever. The laws passed the legislature and were signed by the Governor; and now we will see. For Politico’s story, go here.
Recommended. I would like to call your attention to (and encourage you to read) a recent book called Muskism: A Guide for the Perplexed. In user friendly language it details the several phases of Musk’s career (South Africa, cars, rockets, satellites, Mars, AI, etc.) and shows how his work is changing and has been changed by the US political system. There are many copies in the library system. Quinn Slobodian, one of the two authors, described all this recently on Democracy Now!
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!
Apparently the Taiwanese jazz singer PonPon Chen because famous when she sang
“The World News Polka” at the conclusion of an ABC newscast. IMO her style is very appealing, as in her renditions of jazz oldies such as “Them There Eyes,” “But Not for Me,” and “Frim-Fram Sauce.” Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
CFOW WEEKLY READER
FEATURED ARTICLES & ESSAYS
Vibe to Heal America: Go to May Day and see what we can be together.
By Hamilton Nolan, Substack [May 9, 2026]
---- On my way from Brooklyn to the May Day rally in Washington Square Park yesterday, I saw all the people working who make New York City work. The Mexican construction crew sitting in a line against a concrete wall on my block, covered in dust, taking a break from building the building across the street. The woman selling them lunches out of a big plastic cooler. The woman pulling hot metal trays out of the steam table at the restaurant on the corner. The women with paper masks on at the nail salon on Flatbush Ave. … The immigrant mother with a toddler on her back selling gum and candy out of a box. Everybody. The workers! They were still working. All the rest of us were marching for them. … All of this in New York City was but one of many, many May Day rallies all across this great land. Serious ones. They shut down the schools in Chicago. They swarmed the airport in San Francisco and the Amazon offices in Manhattan and the intersections in DC. Thousands of teachers marched in North Carolina, and thousands of students walked out all over the place. More than four thousand May Day demonstrations nationwide, according to May Day Strong organizers. That’s a lot. That’s enough that if you hear anybody say, “People should do something,” you can say to them, fairly, “They did. Did you?” [Read More] ALSO OF INTEREST is “May Day was even more important than you think,” by Daniel Hunter, Waging Nonviolence [May 5, 2026] [Link].
How the Rush to Mine the Metal of the Future Echoes America’s Colonial Past
By Johanna Hansel, et al., Inside Climate News [May 3, 2026]
[FB – This is an amazing article, long and wonkish, about the intersection of the modern gold rush for Lithium and Native American lands. Fascinating.]
---- Trina Lone Hill wasn’t surprised that mining companies had found lithium in South Dakota’s Black Hills. Gold and uranium had drawn drillers to the Lakota Sioux tribe’s hallowed ground in these western highlands years ago. Now, with this new mineral powering the global green-energy transition, the tribe’s historic preservation officer had one thought: “Here we go again.” About 1,000 miles away in southwest Nevada, Joe Kennedy, of the Timbisha Shoshone tribe, watched a sacred stream fade after a lithium-mining company began drilling in search of the mineral—all while his tribe fought to prevent a second company from boring into the aquifer beneath its reservation. And in western Arizona, Brandon Siewiyumptewa, of the Hualapai Tribe, witnessed fissures crack open the earth and drain a spring sacred to his people after another mining company had drilled into land they warned would be too fragile to touch. [Read More]
We Are Watching the Rise of Democratic Fascism
By Carolin Amlinger and Oliver Nachtwey, Jacobin Magazine [May 2026]
--- Bertolt Brecht predicted it in 1942: American fascism would be democratic in the American fashion. He was right. That’s precisely what makes it so hard to stop. … During his first term, that question appeared to be settled. Despite his noxious rhetoric, Trump’s track record in office was more or less what could be expected from a Republican president, and with his loss in 2020, it seemed US politics would largely return to normal. That is, until January 6, 2021, when a mob whipped up by Trump’s conspiracy-mongering about a stolen election stormed the Capitol in an attempt to prevent the peaceful transition of power. By then, it should have become clear that Trump was more than just another populist with authoritarian leanings. But was he, then, a fascist? … Fascism is a drastic, historically charged word that is often used merely to provoke a moralistic reaction. In analytical terms, however, it is entirely appropriate to treat fascism as something that is not — or is no longer — exclusively historical. A tsunami of political regression is sweeping across the Western world, and episodes of violence are on the rise, whether shootings of Black Lives Matter activists, the storming of the Capitol, the right-wing riots in the UK, or death threats against politicians in provincial Germany. [Read More]
AFTER THE VOTING RIGHTS ACT, WHAT?
(Video) “Gerrymandering Arms Race”: GOP Rushes to Erase Black Representation After SCOTUS Guts Voting Rights
From Democracy Now! [May 7, 2026]
---- “The country’s most important civil rights law no longer effectively exists, and that’s going to have ramifications on American democracy for a very long time.” Mother Jones correspondent Ari Berman reacts to the Supreme Court’s recent 6-3 decision rejecting key principles of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Since the court issued its ruling last week, Republican-controlled states have begun to redraw their voting maps in a “gerrymandering arms race” that “could lead to the largest drop in Black representation since the Jim Crow era,” explains Berman. “We’re returning to the days of literacy tests and poll taxes — not through those devices, but through specifically trying to eliminate Black office holders. And Southern legislators are very clear they are going to do this. They feel unshackled by the Supreme Court ruling. They are being pressured by President Trump to do it, and they feel like all the guardrails are off right now.” [See the Program]
ALSO OF INTEREST - (Video) “How to Stop Trump From Interfering in the Midterm Elections,” from Zeteo, [May 10, 2026] [Link]; and “The Supreme Court Ends Multiracial Democracy as We Know It,” The Intercept [May 8, 2026].
THE WAR ON PALESTINE
The Immeasurable Endurance of the Women of Gaza
By Huda Skaik, The Nation [May 7, 2026]
---- Women possess an invaluable strength—a resilience built on survival, not choice—and the women of Gaza have had to be especially strong. Since Israel’s genocide began in October 2023, they have endured one of the most severe humanitarian crises in modern history. The numbers are harrowing: Over 12,400 Palestinian women have been killed in Gaza in the last two-and-a-half years, alongside more than 18,500 children. These deaths are not just statistics—they represent lives shattered, families torn apart, and an entire community living in the shadow of destruction. Yet, even in the face of such brutality, Gazan women persist. They carry their communities, serving as pillars of endurance amid the ruins of a society that has been all but erased … But in overcrowded displacement camps, in shelters exposed to the elements, and in makeshift homes that barely offer protection, they persist—not out of choice, but because there is no alternative. They are mothers who comfort children through amputations without anesthesia, daughters who bury their parents, and wives who carry the unbearable grief of losing a husband in a single air strike. Their suffering is both physical and psychological, yet they continue to care for the next generation, even as their own bodies give way to exhaustion. [Read More]
ISRAEL’S WAR ON LEBANON
(Video) Israel’s Destruction of Southern Lebanon Turns Villages into “Moonscapes”
From Democracy Now! [May 6, 2026]
---- The Israeli military issued new evacuation orders in southern Lebanon on Wednesday, warning residents of 12 towns and villages, including some north of the Litani River — beyond its current zone of occupation — to leave their homes. Those warnings were followed by reports of airstrikes in the south. Israel and Hezbollah agreed to a fragile temporary ceasefire in mid-April that has since been extended, but fighting has continued at a lesser scale. More than 1 million Lebanese, nearly one-fifth of Lebanon’s population, have been displaced. “So this is dozens of villages that now no one can technically access. They’re calling it a ‘forward defensive zone,’” says Lylla Younes, an investigative journalist based in Beirut. “There’s nothing defensive about it. It’s an offensive operation, and they’re using the word ‘cleanse’ to describe what they’re doing there. They’re just bulldozing homes.” [See the Program] – ALSO OF INTEREST - “Netanyahu’s Hezbollah War Masks a Mission of Destruction,” by Robin Andersen, Informed Comment [May 5, 2026].
THE FLOTILLA TO GAZA
(Video) Gaza Flotilla Participant Details “Cruelty” of Israeli Abduction at Sea; Two Activists Still Detained
From Democracy Now! [May 4, 2026]
---- We get a firsthand account of the violent raid, arrest and detention of members of the Global Sumud Flotilla, after Israeli forces intercepted the humanitarian mission in international waters Thursday. “We were held in a makeshift prison with shipping containers and barbed wire. Many people were subject to aggressive physical force. Of the 56 aid-carrying vessels attempting to break Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza, more than a third were seized by the Israeli military,” recounts flotilla member Hannah Smith. Some flotilla members had to be rescued after one boat was “left sinking,” Smith reports. Two members, Saif Abukeshek of Spain and Thiago Ávila of Brazil, are now being held without charges in an Israeli prison. [See the Program].
ALSO OF INTEREST - “Terror on the Mediterranean: Israel’s Abduction of Thiago Ávila and Saif Abu Keshek Exposes the Zionist Project’s True Face, Once Again,” by Michael Leonardi , Counterpunch [May 8, 2026] [Link]; and “Is Israel’s interception of the Global Sumud Flotilla legal?” from Aljazeera [May 4, 2026] [Link].
WAR ON CUBA?
History of U.S.-Cuba Turmoil & the Possibility of a Full-Scale War
By Peter Bohmer, Znet [May 9, 2026]
---- The Trump administration is serious about overthrowing the Cuban government and its political economic structure. What can be done to stop it? On Mayday, 2026, Trump signed an executive order authorizing additional sanctions on financial institutions and other corporations from around the world trading or investing in Cuba. Trump said, “We will be taking it (Cuba) over almost immediately.” … Trump announced a blockade of oil to Cuba and stiff tariffs for any country delivering oil to Cuba with US warships around it. The two main suppliers had been Mexico and Venezuela. They and other nations have stopped shipping oil to Cuba except one big shipment by Russia in late March of this year. The U.S., while threatening an invasion and assassination of its leaders and/or bombing of Cuba is already conducting an act of war by this blockade. This is both a continuation of the 66-year-old U.S embargo of Cuba and a further tightening and escalation. There is an increased U.S. military presence in the Caribbean, and the U.S. continues to have a naval base at Guantanamo on Cuban soil. [Read More]
THE CLIMATE CRISIS
The World Is About to Get a Preview of Life in 2035
By David Wallace-Wells, New York Times [May 6, 2026]
---- A climate monster is growing right now in the Pacific Ocean, perhaps the most fearsome El Niño since before scientists even began modeling them. They now know the pattern quite well: A marine heat-wave in the Pacific Ocean scrambles global weather and produces in some places more intense droughts and in others more intense rainfall and flooding; disruptions to hurricane patterns and monsoon seasons, which can cause widespread crop failures; and much more punishing heat. The El Niño building right now, and expected to crest around the end of next year, arrives on top of all our global warming. And it appears stupendously intense — almost certainly stronger than the “Super” El Niño of 2015-16, and perhaps the most intense since the epochal El Niño of 1877. The global consequences of that climatic event were so devastating that the environmental historian Mike Davis called them “Late Victorian Holocausts.” [Read More]
ALSO OF INTEREST - “Trump Is Losing a Second War: The Iran debacle is accelerating the shift away from fossil fuels,” by Paul Krugman, Substack [May 5, 2026] [Link]; and “Why Is New York Running Away From Renewables?” by Zephyr Teachout, The Nation [May 4, 2026][Link].
THE STATE OF THE UNION
(Video) Abortion Rights Movement Shifts to “Plan C” as Court Restricts Mifepristone by Mail
From Democracy Now! [May 4, 2026]
---- In a major blow to abortion access, a federal appeals court decision siding with the state of Louisiana has placed major restrictions on the abortion pill mifepristone. The medication, used in roughly two-thirds of all abortions in the U.S., can no longer be sent by mail or prescribed through telemedicine. But previous abortion restrictions show that curtailing access doesn’t reduce the prevalence of abortions. Instead, they make the procedure more dangerous, and even deadly. “They’re trying to stop the unstoppable. And as a result, these restrictions are pretty draconian and increasingly absurd,” says The Nation’s abortion access correspondent Amy Littlefield, who also explains what alternate steps patients and providers can now take to access medication abortion. The decision is expected to be challenged at the Supreme Court, making the anti-abortion movement “top of mind once again in a midterm election year.” [See the Program]
Why is being a mother so expensive in the United States?
By Alia Chughtai and Marium Ali, Aljazeera [May 10, 2026]
---- For millions of women in the United States, being a mother comes with an extraordinary price tag. From the earliest stages of pregnancy through childbirth and into years of childcare, expenses for healthcare, delivery and raising a child are significantly higher in the US than in most other wealthy countries. Even basic needs like medical care and childcare can place a major burden on families. At the same time, the US has one of the highest maternal mortality rates among high-income nations at 18.6 deaths per 100,000 live births, compared with fewer than three in countries such as Norway, Ireland, Switzerland and Italy. Black women are about three times more likely to die from childbirth complications. In 2023, the maternal mortality rate was 50.3 per 100,000 live births for Black women, compared with 14.5 for white women and 12.4 for Hispanic women, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). As people celebrate Mother’s Day in the US, Al Jazeera breaks down the cost of giving birth, maternity leave policies and childcare costs in the country compared with the rest of the world. [Read More]
OUR HISTORY
The True History of Mothers’ Day
By Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American [May 10, 2026]
---- If you google the history of Mother’s Day, the internet will tell you that Mother’s Day began in 1908 when Anna Jarvis decided to honor her mother. But “Mothers’ Day”—with the apostrophe not in the singular spot, but in the plural—actually started in the 1870s, when the sheer enormity of the death caused by the Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War convinced writer and reformer Julia Ward Howe that women must take control of politics from the men who had permitted such carnage. Mothers’ Day was not designed to encourage people to be nice to their mothers. It was part of women’s effort to gain power to change society. The Civil War years taught naïve Americans what mass death meant in the modern era. Soldiers who had marched off to war with fantasies of heroism discovered that newly invented long-range weapons turned death into tortured anonymity. Men were trampled into blood-soaked mud, piled like cordwood in ditches, or withered into emaciated corpses after dysentery drained their lives away. The women who had watched their hale and healthy men march off to war were haunted by its results. They lost fathers, husbands, sons, and brothers. The men who did come home were scarred in both body and mind. Modern war, it seemed, was not a game. [Read More]
(Video) They Called Zionism “The Most Evil Enemy of the Jewish Proletariat”
(Molly Crabapple and Joshua Zimmerman on the Jewish Labor Bund)
From Peter Beinart [May 10, 2026]
---- Our guests are Molly Crabapple, author of the newly released, New York Times bestseller, Here Where We Live is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund, and Joshua D. Zimmerman, Professor of History and Chair in Holocaust Studies at Yeshiva University, and author of Poles, Jews, and the Politics of Nationality: The Bund and the Polish Socialist Party in Late Tsarist Russia, 1892–1914. We discuss the history of Jewish socialism in Eastern Europe and its legacy for debates about Zionism, antisemitism, and socialism today. [See the Program]
