“It Can’t Happen Here.” That was the title of a 1935 novel by American author Sinclair Lewis. It chronicled the rise of demagogue Buzz Windrip to the presidency, and the opposition to the regime led by Vermont newspaper editor Doremus Jessup. The novel was written as fascism ruled in Germany, Italy, and soon in Spain, and shortly before the failed fascist coup against Roosevelt. Windrip’s program to make America great again may sound familiar: as one on-line source summarized the book: “A charismatic, populist politician who wins the presidential election by promising economic recovery, traditional values, and a return to patriotism. Once in office, he disbands Congress, silences the press, and establishes a brutal totalitarian regime backed by a paramilitary force called the Minute Men.” Sinclair Lewis’ point was that it could happen here; and this week, at the UN, the President of the United States announced that it was happening here, right now. In an article linked below, the Nation magazine’s Sasha Abramsky described Trump’s speech as “impersonating Hitler.” Watching the speech I felt the same way: 1938 has come around again.
Or has it? I’m reading the new book by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor called “End Times Fascism.” They argue that what we are experiencing now is not a repeat of the fascism of the 1930s, as horrible as that was, but a new chapter, powered by more advanced technology and incorporating end-times lunatics like many AI leaders and the Christian Zionists, for whom the “end of the world” is a welcome milepost on the way to personal salvation and fulfillment. Klein and Taylor argue that these trends are integrated via the person of Trump into his MAGA base, thus governing with a highly factious coalition that cannot meet people’s real needs and will not fulfill their end-times fantasies. For Klein and Taylor, “It Can’t Happen Here” has been overtaken by “Something Even Worse is Happening Now.” Clearly, electing Democrats in November may be a critical step in the right direction, but it is very, very far from stopping this new edition of fascism.
MAD KING TRUMP AT THE UN
Trump Impersonated Hitler at the United Nations
By Sasha Abramsky, The Nation [September 25, 2026]
---- At the UN this week, as part of the annual gathering of world leaders at the general assembly, Trump railed against supranational organizations such as the International Criminal Court; threatened to “annihilate” and cast into an unrelenting hell the Iranian state and the tens of millions of people who live there; boasted about seizing Venezuelan oil fields; peremptorily embraced the might-is-right notion that “to the victor belong the spoils”; intimated that he would extend his tender mercies to Cuba next; and pledged, despite growing public unease, to turbocharge the AI revolution so as to lock US dominance in place from here to kingdom come. The irony was lost on no one that the US president had chosen the United Nations—the founding mandate of which, in the aftermath of world war, was to create international cooperation to help defuse conflict—to unfurl his most odious, nationalist sentiments. This was, quite simply, Hitler updated for the digital age [Read More]
(Video) “New Low in U.N. History”: Trita Parsi on Trump’s Threat to Annihilate Iran at General Assembly
From Democracy Now! [September 23, 2026]
---- The annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly opened this week in New York City. On its opening day, President Trump in his address to all 193 U.N. member states threatened to annihilate Iran. “This is probably a new low in U.N. history,” says Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, joining us in our New York City studio ahead of the second day of the General Assembly. As Trump pushes for even more sanctions on Iran, “what you’re most likely to see in that scenario is that the Iranians will counter-escalate” in what threatens to become an “endless war.” Parsi also comments on the U.S. military’s growing reliance on artificial intelligence for strategic and targeting decisions, Trump’s upcoming meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping and the Trump administration’s flouting of international law. [See the Program]
KISHA SKIPPER FOR WESTCHESTER COUNTY LEGISLATURE!
CFOW has endorsed Kisha Skipper for election in the (Yonkers) district 15 for the county legislature. Kisha is the president of the Yonkers NAACP and an active voice in the community. She has spoken at several CFOW rallies, and we are on the same page in terms of program, etc. To learn more about her and her campaign, go to her campaign website - https://www.kishaforwestchester.com/. And of course she NEEDS MONEY – To make a donation to her campaign, go here.
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!
This week’s Rewards for stalwart newsletter readers are brought to you by the fabulous group Playing for Change. Beyond the music itself, we can appreciate the collective, worldwide effort that brings so many people together in harmony. This week’s song is PfC’s rendition of Bob Dylan’s “All along the Watchtower.” I was inspired to feature Playing for Change this week after watching a video posted by PfC yesterday called “Behind The Song: All Along The Watchtower.” V interesting to me. To hear more from Playing for Change, here is a link to a mix that starts out with their cover of Bob Marley’s “One Love.” Enjoy!
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
FEATURED ESSAYS
Exit and Exception [Trump’s “Board of Peace”]
By Noura Erakat, Boston Review [September 24, 2026]
---- It has now been ten months since the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 2803 establishing a “ceasefire” in Gaza and approving the U.S.-led Board of Peace to oversee its reconstruction and governance. While the arrangement stipulated that Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and Hamas disarmament would be a phased process, Israel rejected the terms after Hamas agreed to them. … Several aspects of the Board stand out in sharp relief: its absolute illegality in international and U.S. law; its imposition of what a legal expert calls an “illegal trusteeship” over Gaza; its likely function as another failed enterprise for the Trump dynasty to launder and make money. But it also reflects a new form of global governance that has the potential to serve as an alternative to the United Nations: the exit model. Other models of exit seek to free capital from the cumbersome demands of popular democracy. The Board of Peace is a form of escape, too—in this case, though, from a cumbersome international legal order. In the name of “efficiency,” the Board seeks to establish an exceptional legal regime not regulated by existing international law and human rights norms. It has no temporal or geographic limitation, indicating its potential for application beyond Gaza. It operates according to rules of its own making with little to no oversight. And, unlike other forms of exit shepherded by billionaires and tech elites, the Board of Peace bears the precedent-setting imprimatur of the UN. The exit model is being built in Palestine but may be intended for the world. [Read More]
Egypt’s Warning to Israel – [Before October 7, 2023]
By Vivian Salama, The Atlantic [September 25, 2026]
[FB – This has become a major issue in the up-coming election in Israel. Why was Israel unprepared for the Hamas attack? – This is a user-friendly version of “What did Netanyahu know and what did he do/not do about it?”]
---- [On September 26, 2023] a chartered Cessna jet linked to Egypt’s intelligence service had touched down at Ben Gurion Airport, about 30 miles away. The jet rolled to a stop in an isolated section of the airport used for sensitive diplomatic and security missions. Abbas Kamel, Egypt’s intelligence chief and one of the region’s most influential security officials, had come to Israel on a most sensitive mission. Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood–aligned terrorist group that controlled Gaza, appeared to be mobilizing for a major attack, Kamel said, according to Israeli, Egyptian, Arab, U.S., and European officials who were briefed about his visit after October 7. The window to prevent a disaster was closing. He recommended that the Israeli government grant Hamas economic concessions to avert conflict. His message, according to one former Israeli official later briefed on the visit, was: If you don’t change course, Gaza is going to blow up in your faces. Kamel didn’t provide Israeli officials with a date or specific information on what turned out to be a multipronged attack on Israel less than two weeks later, on October 7. … What the Israeli officials did with Kamel’s warning remains an open question three years after the most devastating surprise attack in Israel’s history. But officials from seven different countries I spoke with said that Kamel’s visit should have set off alarms across the top ranks of the Israeli government. … Meanwhile, the trauma of October 7 lives on for Israelis. And bereaved families from that day continue to search for answers about how Hamas was able to engage in a devastating attack on Israel that appeared to catch the government completely by surprise. [Read More]
STOPPING TRUMP FROM STEALING THE ELECTION
Trump’s Final Battle to Sabotage the Midterms
By Marjorie Cohn, Truthout [September 23, 2026]
---- After the 2020 presidential election that resulted in a clear victory for Joe Biden, Donald Trump tried mightily to overturn the outcome. He has persistently insisted to this day that he won and Biden lost. On January 6, 2021, Trump ordered then-Vice President Mike Pence to violate his constitutional duty to certify the duly elected electors before the joint session of Congress by counting only some of the electoral votes from certain states and returning the rest to state legislatures. But Pence refused to obey Trump — and, in response, MAGA fanatics threatened him with execution by hanging. Court after court rejected Trump’s entreaties to reverse the results of the election. Now it appears that Team Trump may be poised to undertake a similar tactic to prevent Democrats who prevail in the midterm elections from being seated in the House of Representatives. In an explosive op-ed in The New Republic, former Judge Michael Luttig, a noted conservative, argues that the “catastrophic end [of U.S. democracy] could well come on January 3, 2027, when Trump and his Republican congressional allies wage the final battle in Trump’s determined war to corrupt America’s democracy and deliver a lasting political victory over the Democrats for his MAGA Republican Party.” [Read More] - ALSO OF INTEREST - “The Supporters Urging Trump to Declare Martial Law for the Midterms,” by Yvonne Wingett Sanchez and Michael Scherer, The Atlantic [September 23, 2026] [Link].
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
(Video) “Gilded Rage”: Author Jacob Silverman on Elon Musk & Right-Wing Extremism in Silicon Valley
From Democracy Now! [September 24, 2026]
---- “One of the features we see in … a lot of the billionaire tech elites is a real kind of anger,” says Jacob Silverman, author of Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley. “They’re angry at what they see as the excesses of woke culture and liberal and lefty politics. … And they’re angry that they don’t have free rein to enact the world they want to enact, and that includes areas like AI.” Silverman also discusses how tech elites like Peter Thiel and David Sacks are shaping the Trump administration’s approach to technology. [This is Part 2 - Extended interview with Jacob Silverman, author of Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley.] [See the Program]
In the Age of AI, Nuclear Weapons Abolition Is a Renewed Imperative
By Ivana Nikolic Hughes, The Nation [September 21, 2026]
---- The revelation that artificial intelligence (AI) may pose an existential threat to humanity has hit the Internet and the airwaves like a storm, surprising some, and leading others to debate the merits of the claims or the intentions of the leaders and employees of AI companies who are sounding the alarm. … What has surprised me over the past few weeks is the contrast between the amount of attention this previously underrecognized risk—real, perhaps, but still hypothetical—has received compared to an existential threat that we have been living with for decades, that of nuclear war. Moreover, even when elaborating on how exactly AI could eviscerate humanity, nuclear weapons are often not mentioned, though they would arguably be the easiest way by which current adventurous AI agents could stumble into destroying human civilization. today’s nuclear weapons are far more powerful than the earliest atomic bombs the United States used to attack Japan. … With AI as a threat to end humanity, AI regulation will not be enough. As long as we have nuclear weapons, the job of ending humanity will continue to be as easy as the push of a button, the recitation of a few codes, or an AI agent hacking into a nuclear command and control system. Read More]
THE US-ISRAEL WAR AGAINST IRAN
(Video) Seven Months Into the Iran War: A Conversation with John Mearsheimer & Trita Parsi (Sept. 21, 2026)
From the Community Alliance 4 Peace and Justice [September 21, 2026]
---- As the U.S.-Iran war grinds into its seventh month, we sat down with two of the sharpest voices in international relations — Dr. John Mearsheimer and Dr. Trita Parsi — to take stock of where things stand in the war. We examined emerging regional dynamics including the Saudi-Ansar Allah (Houthi) conflict, prospects for diplomacy, and global ramifications. [See the Program]
THE WAR ON PALESTINE
The Ethnic Cleansing of Gaza is now a Mainstream Plan
By Anne Irfan, Informed Comment [September 22, 2026]
[FB – Anne Irfan is the author of “A Short History of the Gaza Strip” (2025)]
---- With major elections looming in both the US and Israel, fractures over Gaza are increasingly prominent on both sides of the American political spectrum. Adding fuel to the fire, Israeli government figures recently reiterated calls for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. After National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir set out a plan to permanently expel all Palestinians from the Strip, Defense Minister Israel Katz confirmed that Israel was ready to remove the Palestinians “by every way possible.” Of course, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine is nothing new – far from it. The state of Israel’s very foundation depended on the deliberate forced migration of at least 750,000 Palestinians during the original Nakba of 1947-49. Since then, Israel has continually expelled and displaced Palestinian communities across and beyond historic Palestine – leading many to speak of an ongoing Nakba that has unfolded over nearly eight decades now. [Read More] – ALSO OF INTEREST - “Gaza’s Horizon: Shattered Order and Regional Renewal,” by M. Reza Behnam, Znet [September 22, 2026] [Link].
The Democrats’ Policy on Palestine Is Detached From Reality
By Peter Beinart, New York Times [September 23, 2026]
---- As the party looks toward the midterms and beyond, Democrats should do more than pledge to stop subsidizing Israel’s crimes. They must also stop supporting Palestinian authoritarianism — whether practiced by Hamas or by Mahmoud Abbas, the longtime president of the Palestinian Authority and leader of Fatah — and champion the right of Palestinians to choose their own leaders. … Democrats should make Mr. Barghouti’s release a central part of their agenda in the run-up to 2028. They should also go further and call for allowing Palestinians to choose who runs in their elections, even though that probably means letting Hamas compete, either on its own or as part of a broader coalition. That prospect would outrage Israel’s supporters, and prove unpopular among many Americans. But no Palestinian election can be credible if the United States and other outside powers dictate who can take part. And the Fatah dominated P.L.O. can never regain its position as the representative of all Palestinian people if Hamas — one of the two largest Palestinian parties — remains outside of it. [Read More]
A restored history of Jewish anti-Zionism — and the loss it cannot repair
By Yahia Lababidi, +972 Magazine [September 22, 2026]
---- Benjamin Moser’s new book recovers a tradition of dissenters who paid a price for opposing Palestinian dispossession, even as they could not prevent it. Few words in contemporary public life have undergone so rapid and punitive a narrowing as “anti-Zionism.” Once a contested political position, argued across Jewish religious and ethical traditions, it now arrives pre-condemned, treated less as a historical idea than as evidence of moral contamination. The word no longer describes only a position regarding nationalism or statehood; it has become an instrument of foreclosure, capable of collapsing distinctions and histories into accusation. That collapse happened fast. ... Benjamin Moser’s “Anti-Zionism: A Jewish History” sets out to recover that tradition. [Read More]
THE WAR ON CUBA
American Hegemony in Action: The Oil Blockade on Cuba
By Dominick Conidi, Znet [September 25, 2026]
---- Since the beginning of 2026, the United States has maintained an oil blockade on Cuba. Through the capture of president Nicolas Maduro and the subsequent seizing of most Venezuelan oil, as well as the threat of tariffs on countries who sell oil to Cuba (mainly targeting Mexico), Cuba has been forcibly deprived of the world’s most critical resource. This cruel escalation, on top of the already existing embargo, has edged Cuban society to the brink of collapse. Infant mortality rates have doubled. Nationwide blackouts are recurring. Trash heaps have built up all around the island. Tourism has collapsed. Doctors are losing power during crucial medical procedures. The United States has once again engineered a humanitarian crisis. This current blockade is the U.S compounding its penalty on Cuba for choosing its own development path, one outside the purview of capitalist interests. [Read More]
THE STATE OF THE UNION
Trump Is Destroying Public Health. Democrats Need to Fight Back.
By Greg Gonsalves, The Nation [September 25, 2026]
---- The damage [RFK, Jr. and Office of Management and Budget Russel Vought] have done and will continue to do is without parallel in American history. Their actions will cost lives, make people sick, and set back research and innovation in the United States for a generation or more. And it is time to stop treating them like ordinary political actors. Vought and RFK Jr. are out-of-control zealots with no rational policy goals. To treat them otherwise is to invest their deep sociopathy with credibility. … While I think it’s critical to catalogue what these men have wrought, it’s more important to try to stop them. ... If the Democrats win control over one or both chambers of Congress this fall, they must act decisively to reverse as much of the Trump-era damage as possible. No half-measures will be sufficient; the Democratic inclination for everything to be bipartisan needs to be weighed against the real costs in human lives and suffering that this kind of political deal-making entails. Otherwise, the Democrats will be complicit as deaths continue to mount from this Administration’s policies. We need to play hardball, even if it rubs the denizens of Capitol Hill the wrong way. [Read More] - ALSO OF INTEREST is this excellent article, “U.S. Rejects U.N. Declaration on Preparing for Future Pandemics,” by Apoorva Mandavilli, New York Times [September 25, 2026] [Link].
Stunning’ Level of Support for Universal Health Care: Jayapal
By Whitney Curry Wimbish, The American Prospect [September 21, 2026]
---- Medicare for All is a winning policy supported by the vast majority of Democratic voters that can give the party a boost, including in battleground states, according to a new survey from Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and her political action committee. The Medicare for All PAC survey found that not only do 94 percent of Democratic voters support a universal public health insurance program, but so do a majority of moderate and independent voters. It also found that Medicare for All is a winning issue in battleground states, where Jayapal said progressives are constantly told to moderate their messaging on universal health care. Overall, 60 percent of participants said they favored Medicare for All, up from 54 percent in a similar but not identical survey last year. Even in the more conservative battleground districts, support remained at 55 percent, “well ahead of partisanship in those districts,” Jayapal told reporters on a call last week. [Read More] – ALSO OF INTEREST - “Why Medicare for All Is Now Possible,” by Rebecca Delay, The Progressive [September 24, 2026] [Link]
How Trump Has Lowered the Wages of American Workers
By Lawrence S. Wittner, Znet [September 23, 2026]
---- On June 6, 2025, Donald Trump’s White House staff issued an upbeat statement proclaiming that what it called the “Trump Effect” was creating “higher pay for American workers.” The reality, though, is that Trump, during his second term in office, has deliberately reduced the wages of millions of workers and, despite substantial inflation, frozen the wages of millions more. In March 2025, kicking off his assault on workers’ wages, Trump rescinded a Biden administration executive order that had increased the minimum wage that federal contractors must pay their workers who are employed in government services. … During 2026, the Trump administration took additional action to lower the wages of American workers. It adopted policies that deprive workers of wage, salary, and overtime protections by facilitating their misclassification as independent contractors rather than as employees. The administration also rescinded another Biden-era regulation that made overtime pay available to increased numbers of salaried workers. Consequently, 4.3 million salaried employees no longer qualify for the time-and-a-half pay for overtime work, a policy established by the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. [Read More]
OUR HISTORY
Was “Defund the Police” Crazy? A reckoning with the “woke” years.
By Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, The New Yorker [September 1, 2026]
---- It has been more than six years since the largest wave of protests in American history, which also took place during the deadliest pandemic in a century. At the center of those protests was a demand that funding be shifted from police departments to public institutions and services geared toward mitigating poverty. Activists abbreviated their demand as the slogan “Defund the police.” … Though “defund the police” continues to be characterized as the height of “woke” excess, the D.S.A.’s core ideas around enhancing social services and redistributing wealth remain highly popular. In late 2025, sixty-four per cent of Americans said that the federal government should insure health coverage for everyone. … Pew also found that fifty-two per cent favor more aid to the needy even if it increases federal debt, and that a majority of Americans supported higher taxes on large businesses and corporations and those with household incomes above four hundred thousand dollars. … When it comes to defunding the police, activists have largely achieved the first part of what they imagined to be a two-part process: a significant majority of Americans now believes that robust funding for social programs can help bring down crime rates. I... But agreement that social spending can help bring down crime doesn’t necessarily answer the question of what to do about the institution of policing. And this is the sticking point that left-wing politicians want to avoid. [Read More]
A Superb American Artist Is Finally Getting Her Due [Lee Krasner]
By Mary Gabriel, New York Times [September 25, 2026]
[FB – Mary Gabriel is the author of “Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art.”]
---- Krasner was married to the artist Jackson Pollock, and Krasner and Pollock were, in mid-20th-century New York, at the heart of the artistic movement that would become Abstract Expressionism. At that time, the only label more detrimental to a talented artist’s career than “woman” was the handle “wife.” Indeed, when a female artist was married to a man who also made art, critics, curators, art dealers and historians reflexively dismissed her as, at best, an acolyte, and at worst, a hobbyist. The result of that disregard is a woefully familiar narrative: The heroic male artist is supported (financially, emotionally and thus creatively) by a faceless figure — “the artist’s wife” — who, having sacrificed her own creative aspirations, basks gratefully in the glow of his genius. The history of art — not the history as it is taught, but as it was lived — is full of women who did not sacrifice themselves. It is the story of audacious, fierce individuals who dared to be their artist selves and be a wife, a lover, in short, whoever they wanted and needed to be, no matter the difficulties — women like Louise Bourgeois, Dorothea Tanning, Ruth Asawa and, of course, Lee Krasner. [Read More]
