the DON JONES INDEX…
	GAINS POSTED in GREEN LOSSES POSTED in RED 4/24/76… 15,601.90 4/17/76… 15,592.58 6/27/13... 15,000.00
(THE DOW JONES INDEX: 5/1/26... 49,652.14; 4/24/26... 49,411.50; 6/27/13… 15,000.00)

LESSON for FRIDAY, MAY 1, 2026 – “RHYTHMS OF REVOLUTION!”

Today is May Day which, in terns of politics... local to global... connotes unease, uprisings and even, from time to time, revolution... violent or not.

Our title, and ATTACHMENT “A”, therefore, derives from a misprint at a vinyl record corporation where Phil Ochs’ “Ringing of Revolution” was misprinted “Rhythms”... one of those rare cases were a mistake improved upon the original... both the original and the cover (by folk due Jim and Jean – enhanced by additives from other songs of the time), however, similar as to their root lyrics, as begin...

In a building of gold, with riches untold

Lived the families where the country was founded

And conclude...

But away from the crowds the flames told the town

That only the dead are forgiven

As they vanished inside the rhythm of revolution

Confusion, even mistakeliness, also abides as cause the addictionarios at Merriam Webster to differentiate the terms “mayday” and “May Day” although each has its separate connotations of urgency.

“Mayday is an internationally recognized distress signal; it comes from the French m'aider (help me). May Day is a spring holiday...” often a festive occasion for fun springtime activities, like the maypole and picnics; a day when we can see summer and sprinklers and Popsicles right around the corner (ATTACHMENT ONE); “and, in some places,” M-W adds, a “celebration of working people” (or something stronger). The terms sound similar, but they have different origins. They are not spelled the same way.

Mayday is an “internationally recognized radio word to signal distress” which first came into English in 1923 and supplanted the older distress signal S.O.S. because, according to the Times of London of 2 Feb. that year, ships as used Morse Code were being joined by aircraft whose radio communications sometimes confused confusion-prone pilors and ATCs (a century before the shutdown daze) who could not distinguish between the letters “S” and “F”.

“Supposedly, mayday was coined by Frederick Stanley Mockford, a senior radio officer in Croydon, U,K,” being as it was the French equivalent of “M’aidez” or “Help Me!” but the MW dictionarios allowed that they have been “unable to substantiate that claim.” Regardless, the United States formally adopted it as their official radiotelegraph distress signal in 1927, so there it stands.

“May Day”, on the other hand, dates further back in its more innocuous and festive implications —back to the 13^th century England, in fact, according to MW— but, its usage is as “American as baseball and apple pie”, albeit stemming from the “pre-Christian holiday of Beltane, a celebration of rebirth and fertility.” Its deployment by “anarchists and socialists” in the labor unions of the Golden Age at the turn of the (20^th) century inspired Eric Chase of the International Workers of the World to attribute its origins to an 1884 labor convention where the workers (who later because the American Federation of Labor, AFL) proclaimed that "eight hours shall constitute a legal day's labor from and after May 1, 1886." (ATTACHMENT TWO)

At the time, when asserting the rights of working men (let alone women) often provoked lethal response, the AFL was considered moderate, even collaborationist by the more radical Knights of Labor who, in turn, were deemed sellouts by the socialists and anarchists.

In a proclamation printed just before May 1, 1886, nearly four decades after Marx and Engels published their Communist Manifesto, one publisher appealed to working people with this rhythmic plea:

· Workingmen to Arms!

· War to the Palace, Peace to the Cottage, and Death to LUXURIOUS IDLENESS.

· The wage system is the only cause of the World's misery. It is supported by the rich classes, and to destroy it, they must be either made to work or DIE.

· One pound of DYNAMITE is better than a bushel of BALLOTS!

· MAKE YOUR DEMAND FOR EIGHT HOURS with weapons in your hands to meet the capitalistic bloodhounds, police, and militia in proper manner.

The general strike, as followed, remained peaceful for two days until police and armed Pinkerton agents battled steelworkers at the McCormick Reaper Works in Chicago after which, during an “inflammatory” but peaceful rally at Haymarket Square, a bomb was thrown at police who then fired back into the crowd – the I.W.W. estimating “seven or eight civilians” and an equal number of police were killed

“No one knows who threw the bomb, but speculations varied from blaming any one of the anarchists, to an agent provocateur working for the police.”

Eight anarchists were arrested and convicted of murder – four were hanged, a fifth committed “revolutionary suicide” and the other three imprisoned until “pardoned six years later by Governor Altgeld, who publicly lambasted the judge on a travesty of justice.” Still, the U.S. government “tried to curb the celebration and further wipe it from the public's memory by banning general strikes eighty years ago and establishing ‘Law and Order Day’ on May 1.”

“(P)eople fought for the rights and dignities we enjoy today, and there is still a lot more to fight for,” Carr concluded. “The sacrifices of so many people can not be forgotten or we'll end up fighting for those same gains all over again. This is why we celebrate May Day.”

A further perspective from the AFSC (the Quakers!) last week looked forward to today as “a time to honor the struggles and achievements of the labor movement.” (ATTACHMENT THREE)

Rick Wilson of the AFSC detailed a history that mostly coincided with Carr’s I.W.W. accounting. “Unfortunately,” he now feels compelled to add, “the movement has been under constant attack since the early 1980s. Corporate interests, politicians, and others have promoted fear and hatred over solidarity. Those attacks have intensified in recent years.”

The Quakers have joined this year’s May Day Strong to rally for a Day of Action tomorrow, in support of an agenda for taxing the wealthy, against war and ICE and supporting democracy over authoritarianism.  

Local activities are expected to include at least 65 cities hosting May Day strikes, including nurses in New Orleans and Wichita, while many small businesses will also close for the day in support. (Payday Report, April 23, ATTACHMENT FOUR)

See the PR interactive map tracking the May Day Strike movement, already scanned by over 30,000 viewers, here. 

American May Day strikes and protests, tallied up by the liberal British Guardian U.K. (as their own King Charles and Queen Camilla wine and dine with President Trump and colonial influencers in Washington), expect more than 3,500 actions across the country – from street protests to walkouts – “under the banner of workers over billionaires, taxing the rich, demanding ICE out, money for people not wars, and expanding democracy”, according to Neidi Dominguez, founding executive director of Organized Power in Numbers and executive team member of May Day Strong – a successor to the “No Kings” protests in March.

Sorry, Charlie.

Questions and answers from GUK (ATTACHMENT FIVE) upon today’s activities include...

WHO IS ORGANIZING MAY DAY STRONG?

The May Day Strong coalition is made up of a formidable list of unions, Democratic Socialists of America chapters, pro-democracy groups such as Indivisible (who have jumped on board to amplify the May Day message), and labor, racial justice, anti-war, pro-democracy, climate justice, immigrant rights and reproductive justice organizations.

WHERE CAN I FIND MAY DAY STRONG EVENTS IN MY AREA?

May Day Strong’s website has a searchable map to help people find May Day actions and sign up to host their own

IS IT A GENERAL STRIKE (AND DOES THAT MATTER)?

No – at least not in 2026. It will take years to organize a full-on, sustained general strike in the US – which is why 2028 has emerged as a target date. Rather, May Day Strong organizers are amplifying the call for “no work, no school, no shopping”. The passage of the 1946 Taft-Hartley Act “essentially outlawed the general strike and severely limited workers’ ability to strike in solidarity with one another. The US hasn’t seen a true general strike since.”

GUK’s Kim Kelly reports that the tactic remains “a potent lever for political change in other countries, such as India and Italy.” Experience across the world “suggests that it may take such an action – or at least the credible threat of one – to reverse authoritarianism in the US,” according to Eric Blanc, an assistant professor of labor studies at Rutgers University.

WHAT IS THE MAY DAY 2028 GENERAL STRIKE?

In April 2024, Shawn Fain, president of the UAW, publicly called on all unions, across industries and sectors, to align their contract expiration dates for 1 May 2028. If those unions’ contracts expire, so do the no-strike clauses that many contain, Kelly reportes; “with no contract, there’s nothing stopping members from going on strike. If it just so happens that thousands – or millions – of workers find themselves in that situation on the same day, well, there’s not much the law can do to stop it.”

“The fact is: without workers, the world stops running,” Fain wrote in an op-ed for In These Times. “A successful general strike is going to take time, mass coordination, and a whole lot of work by the labor movement,” thus the delay until the Presidential election year.

WHAT IS THE HISTORY BEHIND MAY DAY?

As noted above, today is the one hundred fortieth anniversary of May Day, which is now “an official holiday in 66 countries and is celebrated informally in many others, marked by marches, parades, strikes and demonstrations. However, in the US, 1 May is designated “Loyalty Day”; the workers’ holiday, Labor Day, has been relegated to the first Monday in September. And, yes, the lack of recognition for May Day is very much intentional.”

Fox News, typically, called the prospects of a May Day strike... targeted or general... the work of Communists and Democrats, warning that “...(a)s chants for a communist revolution and May Day strikes echoed from New York to Minnesota, the 'No Kings' movement sees a growing ideological shift to more radical rhetoric!” (Tuesday, March 30^th, ATTACHMENT SIX)

As Fox News Digital reported, about 500 organizations with an estimated combined annual revenue of about $3 billion sponsored and organized the Saturday, March 28^th demonstrations, creating a centralized protest apparatus even while organizers tried to market the activists as "grassroots." Indivisible Project, “a nonprofit whose work is often marketed with just the first word of the group's name, has received $5 million in recent years from billionaire ubiquitous George Soros' Open Society philanthropy arm,” said the Fox – but that was dwarfed by the generosity of Neville Roy Singham, “an American-born tech tycoon now based in Shanghai, promoting messaging critical of U.S. democracy and sympathetic to China’s political model.”

Singham, who sold his tech company for approximately $800 million in 2017, has provided $22.4 million to the No Kings particle men at People's Forum, $1.3 million to CodePink (whose and $1.1 million to BreakThrough BT Media Inc. “The ANSWER Coalition and Party for Socialism and Liberation have received support through their relationships with the People's Forum.”

The nefarious No Kings network includes traditional Democratic advocacy organizations, like Indivisible, MoveOn and the American Federation of Teachers, alongside openly socialist and communist groups such as the Party for Socialism and Liberation, Freedom Road Socialist Organization and local chapters of the Communist Party USA, including the Twin Cities Communist Party USA club, which endorsed the St. Paul rally.

By early Sunday, Press TV, the propaganda arm of the Islamic Republic of Iran, leveraged news of the protests to tell readers: "Regime change begins at home’: No Kings, No War protests held across US."

Across the country, from Los Angeles to New York City, pro-communist Americans marched alongside traditional center-left Democrats in an alliance that many mainstream media outlets largely portrayed simply as anti-Trump protests.

The ideological adherents themselves, however, were not shy about their beliefs.

In Times Square, members of the Revolutionary Communists of America chanted: "There is only one solution — communist revolution," while waving red flags bearing the hammer and sickle.

“As the rally wound down and crews dismantled stage equipment,” Fox reported, “the protest grounds began to empty.

“A demonstrator propped a Party for Socialism and Liberation sign against a porta-toilet.

“Nearby, two American flags lay discarded in the grass beside a heap of garbage bags, an emptied bag of Cheez-It visible among the trash.”

The AI definition of “revolution” encompasses “sudden, fundamental, and often violent change in a government, social institution, or established order”... justified by “inequality, economic mismanagement, and lack of political voice, often resulting in new social orders, governmental structures, or systemic reforms,” and derives from the Latin revolutio ("a turn around"). (Overview: ATTACHMENT SEVEN) Descriptions of causes, types, impacts and outcomes are listed as are alternate apps including the merching of beauty/skincare products (Revolution Beauty), pet health products (Zoetis Revolution) as “help protect dogs and cats from harmful parasites...” or Revolution Dancewear which “partners exclusively with dance studios and programs to boost your revenue and make it easy to sell dancewear and costumes to your students.”

In its explanation of the potentiality of an Iranian revolution, the Perry World House contended that the conditions for an insurrection portended “a resounding rejection of the existing political system in Iran” which, unfortunately for some 30,000 martyrs in failed pro-democracy protests, failed to topple a chaotic regime, nonetheless able to overcome both the wishes of its own people and the military assault by a nation with, arguably, the (still) strongest armed forces in the world.

“The turmoil in Iran follows a storied tradition of revolutions,” according to Perry correspondent Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet (January 13, 2026, ATTACHMENT EIGHT), who ventured several comparisons in France, Haiti and Russia – all of which “arose from unique sets of sociopolitical circumstances, yet (sharing) common features: a regime stripped of legitimacy and a populace undaunted and set to defy it.

“In 18th-century France, ingrained inequalities exposed the drawbacks of monarchical rule, leading to the revolt of the Third Estate. In Saint-Domingue, enslaved peoples fought back when their inhumane subjugation after centuries of violent colonial rule made the status quo untenable. In 1917, the Russian Romanov dynasty fell because of the combined pressures of war, famine, and political paralysis.”

The afterlives of revolutions — whether in France, Haiti, or Russia – Kashani-Sabet ventured, “were not unambiguously hopeful.

“The French Revolution brought the Reign of Terror along with citizens’ rights. Haiti gained freedom but suffered crushing isolation. Russia’s revolution supplanted one manifestation of imperial rule with another.

“Revolutions do not come with guarantees.” Nor are revolutions attempted always validated (despite the Perry contention that “they reinforce one crucial point: States cannot rule without the consent of the people”). The people in Iran despise their regime, but lack the quality that sets the amorphous mutant ninjahidists that pundits are now calling the “principlists” apart from humanity – not mere indifference to the sufferings of people, but an actual... and religiously-based... determination to usher them into Paradise through death at the hands of American devils.

Of course, this veneration of martyrdom does not extend to themselves. Consequently, the regime can carry on, probably hoping that the blockade in Hormuz and consequent damage to the enemy economy (and political danger to President Trump) may eventually provoke Djonald UnHinged to lose his temper, carpet bomb the cities, kill a few millions and drive the people back into support (howsoever qualified) of their leaders.

It’s not exactly patriotism, rather it’s the drought of despair.

An exhaustive draft document by, of all nostalgic assemblages, the ridiculous Revolutionary Communist Party which – under the thumb of its self-important cult leader Bob Avakian in the prior century – has apparently staggered up to stand and deliver a sober (if not comradely) view of a nation (the U.S.) and some values (democracy, compromise, domestic tranquilty) better suited for the dumpster of history.

“This year marks 250 years since the first American Revolution. Yet the American ruling class has no grounds for celebrating the occasion. The country they have ruled for a quarter millennium is teetering on a catastrophe,” begins the RCP’s new, post-Avakian manifesto. (April 8^th, ATTACHMENT NINE)

“We are living through a historical pivot,” the RCommies say. “On the global stage, US imperialism has lost the hegemonic grip it once held. In the space of 25 decades it has matured from colonial infancy, to unrivaled colossus, to the irreversible frailty of senile decay.

Singled out for Commie ridicule is an academic... not, of course, one of those Buckley boys or UChicago ‘con-mystics but, rather, left-liberal academic Mark Fisher and his book Capitalist Realism which, for all the “postmodern jargon in its pages”, concludes that it is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism.

His evidence that, not only the “pitchforks and riots” but labor itself was barren, given that the year 2009 “saw just five major work stoppages—the lowest strike figure in US history. From all of this, Fisher concluded that the class struggle was over. Apparently, the capitalists had won.”

As the sole “genuine Marxists” left standing, “we took the long view of the process and examined what was unfolding beneath the surface...” and, in our in our 2008 US Perspectives document, predicted that there would be a “colossal and perhaps surprisingly rapid shift to the left.”

And, in some quarters... some universities, some alternate media (and, especially, social media), a few polls (including a survey by right-wing enemies like Cato), and in the streets, where the RCP cites, and more or less takes credit for, three mass movements – these being...

“The 2020 George Floyd uprising (which) brought 26 million people to their feet against racism and police terror...”

“The Gaza solidarity movement against Israel’s genocidal slaughter (which) mobilized over 2,100 protests across 500 cities, according to a Harvard study” (and also engendered the strange confluence... if not alliance... between the far left and neo-Nazi anti-Semites), and...

The “spontaneous mass resistance against ICE and other masked federal agents in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Minneapolis (which) culminated in the first de facto general strike in an American city in 80 years.

Of course, this left-wing renaissance could not have been possible without President Donald Trump, whose bizarre domestic and foreign adventures have tanked his own standing in the polls, enabled the rise of “democratic Socialists” like New York’s Zorro (Mamdani) and threaten to pull his slim Congressional majority off his head like a cheap rug. The RCP epithets, like others, almost seem to celebrate his idiocy, recklessness and personal gas grandeur as have even Tucker Carlson and MTG howling out for decapitation.

Unfortunately for many... fortunate for partisans of the far left... the Democratic party and its supporters in Congress, the media and academia are inept, chaotic, and wracked by infighting and despair; Fisher, the prophet of pessimism cited above, “took his own life three days before Trump was inaugurated for his first term,” and, so, “didn’t live to see the “brave new world” of the 2020s.”

Finding a role model on that old slaveholder (and miscegenetist) Tommy Jefferson, they bend ears to the unalienable right of the people to make a revolution, defending “the same revolutionary document that brought our rulers to power” yet also proclaimed the right to unseat them.” While Charles and Donnie trade polite pokes over Iran and the futility of NATO, the Declaration, a quarter of a millennium ago, stated that “when a long train of abuses and usurpations” on the part of the government threatens to reduce the people under the weight of despotism, then “it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

Our intent in this Lesson is to assess the possibilities of regime change through popular, not insider-based revolution, so we will leave the RCP to its work and continue with ours... while noting such national and international quirks as heighten the possibilities of change (from the reformative to the revolutionary) among the major powers of the world, including the United States.

The one aspect that the RC’s have identified... either overlooked or buried by the so-called neo-Progressives from the Democrat neo-liberals to AOC, Zorro, the Bern and the like is a differentiation or even... to use a much-maligned term... discrimination upon the utility of the capitalist model and remedies proposed therefrom (whether taxation or the firing squad). The mainstream liberals, even some humanitarian conservatives might all agree that the robber barons of the Gilded Age at the turn of the (20^th century) exploited their wage-slaves and the environment, often cheated customers and gleefully strove to bankrupt their competitors – but, at least, they produced. They made stuff. Steam and steel beams, beans and beef and beer, railroads and clothes, toys and shoes... not personally, of course, once they’d made their mark, but their directions, at least, added to what even critics might acknowledge as contributions to the Gross Domestic Product (which America still leads in volume, to this day, although recently challenged by the Chinese and other low-wage economies that MAGA believes can be suppressed with tariffs).

The gradual substitution of productive with parasitic capitalism has been recognized by the RCP, if not by others who should know better. The kernel of their lengthy tome can be extracted here...

“American finance capital is now far more concentrated than anything Lenin described in his masterpiece, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. With every major industry dominated by colossal monopolies, the market competition that funneled investment toward innovation at an earlier stage of the system has given way to parasitic stock buybacks and shareholder payouts. Since 1980, US corporate spending on factories, property, and equipment has declined by nearly 80% as a share of total revenue. Around 60% of profits now go straight to shareholder payouts, while corporate cash stockpiles approach $8 trillion...

“As a result, the smartest investment from a capitalist perspective is not to innovate, expand production, and hire more staff, but to gamble on the stock market.”

Sadly, the RCPeeps continue to fight progressives (a good term gone bad) in the kind of jealous infighting that emboldens the conservative right to advocate neo-Nazi policies, knowing that their opposition will be confused and disunited.

The election of Zohran Mamdabi as New York Mayor scared the pants off MAGA – even the President found a few good words about his youth and determination while denouncing his policies. But the far left considers him a greater enemy than Trump, his Congress, his courts and the billionaire donor class, seeing the Gotham election as a dilutivist disaster.

“Unfortunately for those who had sincere illusions,” the draft Perspectives concluded, “the results of Zohran’s first months in office also confirm the need for class independence, in a negative sense. He campaigned on a popular platform of taxing the rich, freezing rents, establishing city-run grocery stores with more affordable prices, and universal childcare. While the mainstream media and the political establishment advised him to moderate expectations and prepare to make “practical” compromises, we argued the opposite. All of his demands and then some were more than realistic—but only if he mobilized workers with class-struggle methods and placed the burden of cost on the billionaires and transformed this into a national struggle.

“He has opted instead to pursue a partnership with New York’s Democratic Governor, Kathy Hochul, who opposes raising taxes on her wealthiest constituents. Predictably, Zohran is facing a severe budget shortfall. Rather than utilize this as grounds for mobilizing a mass struggle with strike action, tenant organizing, and mass rallies, he has warned that he may be forced to place the bill at the feet of the working-class voters who put their faith in him last fall. If he continues down the route of class collaboration and playing by the rules of capitalism, all the energy and hopes he inspired will turn into bitter frustration.”

Not unlike the flimsier rich university kids who agitate against a variety of common peccadilloes from diet to language and so alienate the majority of Joneses who might otherwise be receptive to their messages, the more foolish liberals a degree or two right of the self-righteous Commies (who advocate, but do not act on the gallows and the shotgun with rare exceptions like Luigi Mangione, who diluted his message by shooting a health insurance troll in the back) have dreamed up a so-called solution to the suppurating inequality in the United States – a tax on billionaires, enacted or mostly proposed by states and localities of the blue persuasion. California, under outgoing Governor (and Presidential) wannabe Gavin Newsom (who, as a former San Francisco Mayor and heir to the Democratic machine that gained power by kissing the butts of real estate speculators and slumlords... like Trump... and thus purged many thousands of productive citizens from their fiefdom through unaffordable housing) is planning to hold a referendum on this scheme which... to be frank... will just drive businesses and their job to no tax states like Nevada (where they can sup frankly with rat packs and showgirls and gangsters while, amidst what the RCP calls an economy of “overproduction”, formerly working families are forced to beg, steal or starve as they hide from the clubs and chains of the police).

The DJI and its perhaps real, perhaps artificial third party candidate Jack “Catfish” Parnell, have a simpler, more ethical solution, as goes like this...

Federal taxation shall continue to be imposed – not upon accumulated wealth – but upon yearly income, including wages, personal profits and investment income. A surtax, however, will be levied on income derived from nonproductive and/or speculative sources that exceeds... let’s say $100,000 yearly... and rises, incrementally, until the billionaires pay the same five percent surtax on money they glean without producing anything of value as they would under existing proposals. Reciprocal treaties would be pursued to prevent the “offshoring” of wealth, and those who do so in person would have to face ICE, should they return.

But amidst the cacophony of posturing… not unlike alternate takes on Trump… condemns American workers to the same sort of helplessness as afflicts the majorities in Iran or Russia (probably not China as long as its economy doesn’t stop improving) and allows the billionaires a donkeylaugh or elephantine smirk at the 99 percent.

Some of history’s most successful insurrections... meaning regime change by domestic inhabitants as opposed to conquests by foreign powers... include the French, Mexican and Russian and, above all, the American Revolution, whose 250^th anniversary we celebrate this year (except for those with a perhaps valid contention that European colonials had no business coming to America.

Over the last hundred years, however, many similar revolutions in smaller, poorer states came as reaction to colonial conquests in the Mideast, Africa and Asia,

These... waged against colonial powers (mainly the U.K., Russia, Spain, Belgium and... in the case of IndoChina... the French) brought the United States into armed conflict after the failure of Cold War diplomacy, wherein disputed territories were divided between partisans making, as in North and South Korea and Vietnam, former compatriots into mortal enemies.

Conquest and revolution blurred in the case of the Souths – Korea and Vietnam, where popular uprisings (supported by the then-Soviet Union) fought the Norths, as well the leftover Vietnamese regime abandoned by France and then adopted by the United States, leading to our longest ground war ever, until exceeded by the even longer, but less lethal, Afghan occupation.

Enmity there persisted through the 20^th century with die-hards often calling to go back in and finish the job... some even advocating nuclear bombings against Hanoi or, after the conquest, Saigon. But, over the last few years, the challenge from China (also an enemy of the Russian-backed Vietnamese) has led to deals – grudging, at first, but gradually proving more beneficial to business interests on both sides.

In 2026, President Trump promised to remove Vietnam from its chip technology export control list and, on Feb. 20^th. also reaffirmed Washington’s commitment to a “strong, independent, self-reliant, and prosperous” Vietnam. (Rest of the World, March 2^nd, ATTACHMENT TEN)

Vietnam has sat on the restricted lists — along with China, Russia, and North Korea — since the Cold War. The removal would clear the way for Vietnam to move beyond assembling and packaging chips to manufacturing them, repositioning it as a chip industry partner for the U.S.

To Lam, Vietnam’s top leader, flew to Washington on February 20 to secure Trump’s promise to remove the country from export control lists. Five weeks earlier, he had attended a groundbreaking ceremony in Hanoi for Vietnam’s first domestically owned chip fabrication plant, run by state-owned giant Viettel. The facility in Hanoi “aims to start trial production by late 2027, making 32-nanometer chips, the kind that power cars, telecom networks, and industrial equipment.”

Viettel is seeking out other customers in the decadent West, aided by the turnaround support from the United States. Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh met Eduard Stiphout, a senior vice president at ASML, the Dutch company that makes the machines needed to produce advanced chips; globalizing their deal, the U.S. has pressured the Netherlands to stop selling ASML’s most powerful equipment to China, and turn to Vietnam as both supplier and customer.

“Vietnam has about 7,000 chip engineers today and wants 50,000 by 2030,” according to government targets provided to Rest of the World. “Qualcomm has opened its third-largest global research center in the country, and Amkor has invested $1.6 billion in a packaging plant, its largest anywhere. Analysts expect the country’s share of global chip packaging to rise to almost 9% by 2032 from 1% in 2022.”

Another country where newfound prosperity is undercutting intimations of popular discontent, let alone revolution, is Mexico... which has some experience with armed regime changes which, in fact, will be on display Tuesday in America at the Cinco de Mayo celebrations occurring here and there.

Cinco de Mayo, in fact, is not the anniversary of Mexico’s war of independence from Spain but, rather, stems from a brief occupation by France during the American Civil War – an “excursion” that came to a sudden and violent end for the “Emperor” Maximilian once the United States were united once again and is celebrated as much or more so by Americans than Mexicans.

The nation has had its ups and down since the deposition of dictator Diaz and his surrogate Huerta, who overthrew and executed the democratically elected Francisco Madero. Civil war broke out between the bloodthirsty “moderate” Carranza, revolutionaries Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata (all of whom were assassinated) and a parade of successors, who gradually brought the country back to stability, if not prosperity.

Millions of Mexicans voted with the feet – many ending up in the United States where they now, battle the armies of ICE. Border crossings have plummeted, for which President Trump takes credit, but at least some of the change has been a stunning (and mostly ignored) improvement in the Mexican economy under democratically elected President Claudia Sheinbaum, a woman and a Jew who, in her one year in office after six years of Morena Party predecessor Obrador, has afforded constituents a little celebrating of their own.

The last seven years have been quite an improvement, according to Jeremy Rose of the Pearls and Irritations website (Feb. 3^rd, ATTACHMENT ELEVEN) who cited Sheinbaum’s speech before 600,000 supporters in Mexico City’s Zocalo Square in which she declared the end of Mexican “neoliberalism” (meaning a rule of the rich against the working classes) and touted her accomplishments, which Rose called “quite a list... 13 million people lifted out of poverty; the minimum wage increased by 125 per cent; Indigenous and Afro-Mexican communities allocated budgets to run their own affairs; a locally produced people’s electric car about to roll off production lines; a new fast rail system crossing the country; a national park spanning 14 million acres across Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala; a 37 per cent drop in homicides; and on it went.”

With Sheinbaum’s approval rating over 70% (largely ignored by American media) Mexicans are largely choosing to remain at home and prospects of another revolution, or even an electoral backsliding, are remote.

After the illegal abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on 3 January, President Trump turned his sights on Mexico, declaring Sheinbaum to be a “tremendous woman, she’s a very brave woman, but Mexico is run by the cartels.”

Having designated the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels as terrorist organisations at the beginning of his second term in office, Trump had already signalled the possibility of military intervention in Mexico under what he calls the “Donroe Doctrine” and Rose termed “the geopolitics of a gangster state.”

“I don’t think we’re necessarily going to ask for a declaration of war,” he said. “I think we’re just gonna kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. We’re going to kill them. They’re going to be, like, dead.”

Sheinbaum’s response to both the Venezuelan intervention and the implied threat to Mexican sovereignty was resolute and principled:“We categorically reject intervention in the internal affairs of other countries. The history of Latin America is clear and compelling: intervention has never brought democracy, never generated well-being, nor lasting stability.”

“Only the people can build their own future, decide their path, exercise sovereignty over their natural resources, and freely define their form of government.”

America may be, in the view of many arrayed in the left, right and center, a failing state, but our biggest adversaries, the People’s Republic of China and Putin’s dictatorship in Russia are also losing ground.

China has suffered from Trump’s tariff wars and the cutoff of badly needed oil from the Gulf, but the economic boom prior to the 20’s had been significant enough to crowd any inklings of regime change to the back of the bus – the newfound ability to consume things, and even eat, gaining supremacy over abstractions like freedom and democracy although the RCP still considers Beijing the best of a bad lot as far as economic planning (by the government, of course) goes.

And that leads to the root rot of the Marxist dream… you can establish a Dictatorship of the Proletariat but within a generation, at best, a year or two, at worst, the elevated will realize that it’s more fun to be a dicator than a proletarian, and enforce their privilege accordingly.

Russia, however, is in a more precarious state with Mad Vlad (a vain megalomaniac, rather like his American counterpart) having to juggle promises, excuses, patriotism, repression and the goal of restoring the hegemony and glamour of the Soviet Union (but without that impractical Communist malarkey about prosperity and the rights of workers).

It might be a losing battle, according to a ghost from May Day Past... the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) posting its nostalgic and somewhat snarky remembrances on Wednesday last (ATTACHMENT TWELVE) behind its cheerleading of the American No Kingers and their ilk.

In 1902, the year he wrote What Is to Be Done?, Vladimir Lenin, the most important theorist/activist of what became the Communist (Marxist-Leninist) wing of the socialist movement, wrote: “It should have been added that in our country May Day also becomes a demonstration against the autocracy, a demand for political liberty. Pointing to the international significance of the holiday is not enough. It must also be linked with the struggle for the most vital national political demands.”

As the mass social democratic parties grew, as Lenin would observe, “a struggle was raised in all the social democratic parties, between the revolutionary and opportunist wings.” The coming of the First World War led the vast majority of social democratic parties in countries at war to support their governments. In the Czarist Russian Empire, the revolutionary socialist (Bolshevik) wing of the already divided Russian Social Democratic Labor Party actively opposed the war and transformed the conflict to first overthrow the Czarist royalty and then turn the regime change into a socialist revolution.

Even after the fall of the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Treaty allies (1991), May Day demonstrations continue to be held in these countries by increasing numbers.

In the People’s Republic of China, the nation with the world’s largest population, May Day has been seen as the most important national holiday since its inception with an estimated 340 million people traveling and participating in both recreational and political events last year.

Even in these times of fascistic reaction, led globally by Trump’s “Make America Great Again” regime, May Day this year will reach hundreds of millions of people with its commitment to the struggle for working class unity, peace, and socialism. In the words of the International, May Day, like the working class itself, unites the people of the whole world.

The Muslim (Sunni) majority governments of the Mideast, however, are united in silence and, since the start of the war, according to the Brookings Institute (Jan. 15, ATTACHMENT THIRTEEN) the politics of regime and personal survival. Even as the wealthier Saudis and Gulf States enjoy American-like prosperity among their upper classes, “(t)he scale of violence deployed by Iran’s security forces against protesters has been staggering, even by the standards of the Islamic Republic,” and indiscriminate attacks by the principlist Iranian Shiite regime upon the infrastructure and civilian populations of the Gulf State have been only exacerbated by the prosecution of war by the United States and Israel as is subsequently unfolding.

Back in January, regional powers appear(ed) focused on preserving the status quo—“passing messages to the Trump administration in hopes of deterring another costly U.S. intervention or regime-change operation.” This impulse had brought together unlikely actors: Iran’s former adversaries, such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, alongside onetime champions of the Arab uprisings like Turkey and Qatar, “all quietly backchanneling for an off-ramp” that turned out to be a dead end, once America attacked.

Most regional powers are themselves autocratic, Brookings opined — and deeply wary of mass protest. “Iran’s uprising (was) leaderless and driven by broad social grievances, evoking uncomfortable memories of the Arab Spring,” the Brooksters wrote, and fellow Ash Aydıntaşbaş charged that Tehran’s repression was not an aberration “but part of a shared regional playbook: criminalize dissent, securitize society, and frame protests as foreign conspiracies.”

Ash called the result: “moral asymmetry.”

Sharan Grewal’s takeaway highlighted Iran’s Islamic Republic as “a tough regime for protests to topple” owing to oil wealth, ideologically loyal security forces, and some genuine popular support, it has been able to put down four mass uprisings in the last two decades.

Since, the oil wealth has been compromised by the American blockade, compelling hide and seek missions to Russia and China, the only card on their table is the ferocity of repression and the hope (not unjustified) that comfort loving Americans will vote out Trump’s allies in 2026 and the devil himself in 2028 or... even better... that Djonald DisRespeced loses his temper and launches air strikes that kill thousands, even millions of civilians and drive them back into the embrace of the Revolutionary Guard as suggested above by the Perries (Attachment Eight).

Grewal’s comparisons to Tiananmen Square, Syria or even Iran itself in 1978’s overthrow of the Shah fail, however, because the “principlists” have instilled... through faith or coercion, as above... the memes of martyrdom into Iranians as sustains the regime. Answered, too, was Steven Heydemann’s question as to whether the regime could kill enough Iranians to hold onto power. There is no enough, and his fear that that the Administration’s “bomb-first” plan “could be the prelude to something even worse” has come true, and the worst is still to come.

Mara Karlin also noted the collapse of life in Iran and speculated on the return of Reza Pahlavi, the shah’s son (the one thing that could actually turn the sentiments of the people back to the regime) and her belief that ending the Iranian regime could easily “take a very long time” seems one of the better outcomes for Americans. More germane is Michael O’Hanlon’s quoting Colin Powell’s Vietnam advice that “civilian policymakers” like to “try a little bit of force, and if that doesn’t work, try a little more.”

Other Brookings comparisons down the toilet include the January contention that Gulf States fear Israel more than Iran and that the United States will long tolertate the oil prices crisis engendered by Hormuz.

To the argument that Iran could be like Venezuela, it now appears that the only winners on that bet are the insider gamblers, who took to Polymarket, Kalshi and the such... betting on limited prospects for which they already had insider information.

PBS (April 12, ATTACHMENT FOURTEEN) disclosed the new players on Polymarket, making “highly specific, well-timed trades” betting there'd be an announcement about a halt in fighting for April 7. Some quickly pocketed awards, which amounted to hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits combined.” Others, whose calculations were more general, are still awaiting payouts “as an end to the deadly conflict still seems uncertain.”

Prediction markets, PBS explained, “let people wager on just about anything — from basketball games to elections. And among more jarring bets recently, the fate of the U.S. and Israel's war against Iran.”

The timing and subjects of such trades have fueled concerns about potential insider trading — with calls increasing among lawmakers for investigations. “Popular platforms, including Polymarket, have rolled out added guardrails in efforts to combat insider trading recently, but critics say it isn't enough”; President Donald Trump's administration, however, “has already thrown its support behind company operators — and sued three states over their efforts to regulate them further.”

One of the president's sons, Donald Trump Jr., holds advisory roles at both Polymarket and Kalshi.

Guardrail guards answer to the “Trump-controlled” Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) which, supposedly, can bar event contracts related to war, terrorism and assassinations which, experts say, “could put some prediction market trades — including those related to the Iran war — on added shaky ground.” Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Ca) is seeking “an outright ban of these kinds of trades” and SCOTUS is also poking its nose into the gambling.

The Polymarket odds machine on Iran’s regime falling before December 31, 2026 is presently listing the probability of a “No” at 79.5%, owing to its history of “brutal crackdowns by security forces, internet blackouts, and executions, preventing escalation into revolution.” (ATTACHMENT FIFTEEN)

The specifics are that the core structures of the Islamic Republic (e.g. the office of the Supreme Leader, the Guardian Council, IRGC control under clerical authority) must be “dissolved, incapacitated, or replaced by a fundamentally different governing system or otherwise los(e) de facto power over a majority of the population of Iran. This could occur via revolution, civil war, military coup, or voluntary abdication, but only qualifies if the Islamic Republic no longer exercises sovereign power. Routine political events such as elections, reforms, or leadership succession do not qualify. Internal coups or power shifts that preserve the Islamic Republic’s core structures also do not qualify.”

Polymarket reports that the bet “has generated $16 million in total trading volume since the market launched on Nov 3, 2025. This level of trading activity reflects strong engagement from the Polymarket community and helps ensure that the current odds are informed by a deep pool of market participants” (presumably not, however, gamblers coddled by Trump, WarSec Hegseth or other Administration administrators).

For those who’d prefer to place their money on the odds of Bad Vlad being ousted in Russia, Gennady Zyuganov, the longtime leader of Russia’s Communist Party (yes, they’re still operative over there and, in fact, enjoying something of a revival) said that people “could rise up and stage a revolution like the Bolsheviks did in 1917.”

The ZyugMan told the lower house of parliament that a meeting Putin convened with his ministers was the gloomiest in a long time, according to Reuters. “If you (the government) do not urgently adopt financial, economic and other measures, by autumn a repeat of what happened in 1917 awaits us,” he said. “We don’t have the right to repeat that. Let’s take some decisions.” (Fortune, April 25, ATTACHMENT SIXTEEN)

This, of course, begs that question as to why he should be so shy – after all, 1917 got them into power in the first place. But times and reasons change – and, while Fortune denies signs of a popular uprising, “the Kremlin has recently cracked down on internet access recently as Russia suffers heavy casualties in Ukraine while inflation prompts consumers to complain about the cost of living.

“Meanwhile, Ukraine’s advances in drone technology have also enabled it to strike deep into Russian territory, targeting oil infrastructure to prevent Moscow from fully exploiting the spike in crude prices,” and also cutting off fuel supplies for Putin’s military.

Another outdated, now obsolete opinionation by Rich Lowry of the National Review also failed to take into account the revolutionary suicidal beliefs of the “principlists” when he predicted that Iran might be able to “cajole Trump into negotiations, but they will never be able to push him around, and they disregard his threats at their peril.” (Jan. 13, 2026, ATTACHMENT SEVENTEEN)

To the contrary, because they have proven that they will fight to the end even as Supreme Leader Khameini Junior languishes in his zombification, Trump may be facing an “embarrassment” on the order of the seizure of our diplomatic personnel in November 1979 and the end of Jimmy Carter’s rescue attempt by the U.S. military in April 1980 that ended in abject failure at a staging area in Iran dubbed Desert One.

Politico (March 1, ATTACHMENT EIGHTEEN) played a little Tehran Hold ‘Em as to the Trump administration’s gamble... even after the massacres... that the Iranian people “will soon take over the regime change process, resume protesting and successfully remove a greatly weakened government.”

Foreign Editor Danial Block spoke to political scientists and Iranian experts, all of whom said that they would love to see “people power” usher in new leadership in Tehran, but also expressed deep skepticism that Trump’s massive air campaign could produce a successful uprising.

For starters, they told Block, “aerial bombing campaigns have a terrible record at fomenting regime change in any state. Second, Iran has powerful repressive organs with a lot of experience in putting down popular unrest. In addition, Iran’s bureaucracy has been expecting — and preparing for — American attacks for generations. And even if Washington does successfully fracture or defang the Islamic Republic, exhausted and shocked Iranians may be too frightened or focused on survival to flood the streets. The country’s political opposition remains weak, and it is famously fragmented.”

In a theological pivot to Iraq in 1991, when President George H. W. Bush solicited Kurds and Shiites to rise up against the Sunni-dominated government, Saddam Hussein Saddam’s forces “deployed helicopters, artillery and ground troops against their own citizens. They then slaughtered upwards of 50,000 Iraqis in less than five weeks. The uprising was put down, and Saddam held onto power for another 12 years.”

Bombing failed in NoKo in that civil war, in North Vietnam after and in Bill Clinton’s 1998 bombing of tiny Serbia which failed to drive Slobodan Milosevic from power. It took another 16 months, and a fraudulent election, before he was forced to leave office.

“Bombings have never led people to take to the streets and topple their leader,” said Robert Pape, a political scientist at the University of Chicago who studies air power and regime change,

Instead, bombings often prompt citizens to turn against the domestic opposition — no matter how much they hate the leader. “Even the hint that you are siding with the attacking state is used by rivals to stab you in the back,” Pape told Block, asking liberals to consider how Americans might respond if Iran killed Trump and then encouraged the Democratic Party’s supporters to seize power; conservatives might imagine what would have happened if Iran did the same to Barack Obama. “Just because you don’t like your country’s leaders, it doesn’t mean that you want to side with an external enemy who deposes them,” Pape said.

Especially if the alternative seems to be Reza Pahlavi, son of the brutal dictator Iranians kicked out in 1979 – now posing as a prince of peace. Who is gonna buy that?

The second reason is that bombings by themselves rarely fully decimate a government’s repressive capacity. “In order to save the pro-democracy protesters, you’ve got to be right there,” Pape said. “You have to have troops on the ground.”

And that means hundreds of thousands of boots on the ground, plus their shoelaces, weaponry, K-9s, K-rations, MRE and vehicles... probably requiring a return to the draft. Would any President risk his political or (given Luigi Mangione and, now, Cole Allen) personal future? Not even Trump!

For the few, the brave, and more revolutionary martyrs on the side of the people, the regime “has multiple institutions that are capable of and responsible for mowing down demonstrators. It has large weapons stockpiles that it has spread out across the country, in part because it expected U.S. hits. That means no matter how far America and Israel go in dropping bombs, they will struggle to truly neuter its security forces.”

“The regime as we know it is no longer going to exist,” said Sanam Vakil, the director of Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa Program. “It’s going to evolve into something else.” Too much of the government has been destroyed for it to carry on as it was.

But that doesn’t mean it will change for the better — or that ordinary Iranians will have a say in what follows.

“I think people are just trying to digest and think about what’s coming next,” Vakil said. “They are going to be focusing on their own survival.”

As to Russia, ZyugMan in the Times of London 4/23/26, addressed the Muscovian Parliament – such at is – warning “we’ve told you ten times — the economy is bound to collapse. The first quarter was a complete disaster.” (ATTACHMENT NINETEEN)

That the Communists, still second-biggest party in parliament, portray themselves as heir to the ideas of Lenin and Karl Marx, they is widely seen as a part of the Kremlin’s pseudo-opposition, whose aim is to provide Russians with the illusion of democracy.

However, the Kremlin has struggled in recent weeks to keep a lid on dissent. Zyuganov’s comments came after Victoria Bonya, a Monaco-based Russian model and former TV star, accused the Kremlin of failing to tackle a swathe of problems from the economy to internet restrictions.

The Kremlin denied Bonya’s claim that President Putin was being kept in the dark by officials who were too “afraid” to tell him the truth about Russia’s mounting troubles.

“You know what the risk is? People will stop being afraid, and they’re being squeezed into a coiled spring, and that one day that coiled spring will snap,” Bonya said, but made no mention of the war in Ukraine.

Fortunately for Mad Vlad, the opposition is consumed with infighting and petty jealousies.

Zyuganov complained that while the Kremlin had responded to Bonya, it had ignored his party’s appeals to take action. “We did everything we could to support Putin, his strategy, his policies. And then this lady from Monaco — they listened to her!” he said.

His concerns about a repeat of the 1917 revolution that ushered in seven decades of communist rule sparked mockery. “These aren’t communists — they are some kind of anti-communists,” Abbas Gallyamov, a political analyst, said. “Some strange kind of communist,” added Yuriy Butusov, a Ukrainian journalist.

Bonya’s comments prompted a ferocious verbal assault by Vladislav Solovyov, a Russian state television presenter. “It’s not up to this worn-out harlot to open her dirty mouth,” he said on air.

The model hit back swiftly, promising to launch a petition to have Solovyov taken off air. “I want to ask a question to all of us women — when did we miss the moment when women began to be insulted on federal TV channels?” she said.

She also posted an AI-generated video that portrayed her as Spiderwoman beating up Solovyov and Vitaly Milonov, a pro-Kremlin MP who had suggested she was a prostitute or high-priced escort.

However, Bonya was careful not to criticise Putin himself, leading to suggestions that her comments were orchestrated by the Kremlin as an attempt to show that the authorities are responsive to problems. While Putin’s critics say the Russian leader is increasingly out-of-touch with ordinary people’s concerns and instead obsessed with the war in Ukraine and the “glories” of the Soviet era, Vlad, on Wednesday, cozied up to the Commies by renaming the FSB Academy in Moscow to honour Felix Dzerzhinsky, the Soviet Union’s first secret police chief.

Dzerzhinsky founded the Cheka, a forerunner to the KGB, in 1917. His agents killed tens of thousands of alleged “class enemies” during what became known as the Red Terror. A statue of him was torn down in Moscow in 1991 during pro-democracy protests before the collapse of the Soviet Union. The FSB Academy bore his name from 1962 until 1993.

He also compared the Kremlin’s “special military operation” in Ukraine to the Soviet Union’s defeat of Nazi Germany and praised women and children for “knitting socks” for soldiers at the front.

While the United States and Israel still hold court in the courts of the world, with Russia and Iran still pariahs and the Chinese looking on, with interest, Reed Rubinstein in the Office of the Legal Adviser at the U.S. State Department contended that Operation Epic Fury was legal, under international law, because the United States is acting “well within the recognized contours of international law relating to the use of force and self-defense. This legal assessment is grounded in facts demonstrating Iran’s malign aggression over decades, particularly in Iran’s escalatory attacks against the United States, Israel, and others in the region for years, which precipitated an international armed conflict that predated U.S. combat operations on February 28 and that continu(e) to this day,” the day being a week ago Tuesday (ATTACHMENT TWENTY).

Rubinstein cited, first: that Iran has been responsible for “countless armed attacks against the United States, both through its own military and through its partners and proxies” since 1979, secondly: that the regime has for decades maintained a clear and public position that Israel must be annihilated, fomenting terror attacks against Jews, Israel, and Israeli interests worldwide, and third: Iran’s extensive, long-term support of Hizballah, Hamas, the Houthis, and various Iran‑aligned militia groups in Iraq and Syria “has enabled those terrorist organizations to carry out destabilizing attacks against Israel (and) the United States,” as well as against other Gulf states and, even, Argentina – as well as the owners and operators of maritime vessels in the Strait of Hormuz.

Contending that Operation Midnight Hammer had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program in June, 2025, Sec. State Rubio now argues that attacks against the zombie nukes need not be considered a “fresh” use of force” that must be “justified anew under the jus ad bellum principles” of the U.N. Security Council, citing ten American petitions as listed in the Attachment and DoS contended that it was “only after multiple attempts at negotiation failed that the United States resumed operations in this conflict,” and that the lawyers “should account for the immense destructive power of nuclear weapons, the danger posed by ballistic delivery systems, the conduct of the relevant State actor, and the likelihood of other opportunities to mitigate the threat in the future.”

Concluding that Iran “has acted as any reasonable observer would have expected—lashing out against its neighbors, targeting Israeli civilians, murdering its own people, unlawfully closing the Strait of Hormuz, and wreaking havoc throughout the region,” the regime’s outrageous, albeit predictable behavior “only further underscores the fundamental necessity, utility, reasonableness, and lawfulness of Operation Epic Fury’s mission and goals.”

At home, the Trump regime seems to have pacified murmurs of SCOTUS opposition – the day before yesterday, all six of the Court’s Republican-appointed jurists greenlighted the revision... critics say overturning... of the 1964 Voting Rights Act in a test case of the gerrymandering controversy that validates and extends what the same, and other critics, call the disenfranchisement of minority voters – another issue likely to be addressed by today’s protests.

With May Day still officially MAGAnatized as “Loyalty Day” labor leader Shawn Fain said: “It’s time we reclaimed May Day for the working class.”

The Eurasia Group, think tankers, called our present day “a time of great geopolitical uncertainty. Not because there’s imminent conflict between the two biggest powers, the United States and China—that isn’t even a top risk, it’s a red herring this year. There’s not (yet, at least) a second Cold War, with a rising China remaking the global system to its own liking, the Americans and allies resisting. Nor do tensions between the United States and Russia threaten to spiral out of control despite a war raging in Europe, the result of Vladimir Putin’s longstanding grievances against the US-led order.

“The United States is itself unwinding its own global order,” they concluded. The world’s most powerful country is in the throes of a political revolution.

Eurasia chose twelve indicators of revolution (ATTACHMENT TWENTY ONE), adding that: “In our lifetimes, we have never witnessed an American president so committed to and so capable of changing the political system and, accordingly, the United States’s role in the world. Franklin D. Roosevelt was the closest and, as you’ll see in the report, the comparison is lacking. Whether Donald Trump’s revolution succeeds or fails, the implications for the United States and the broader world will be felt for a generation.

Citing the usual suspects, EG note that the world today bears witness to some 60 active conflicts, the most since World War II. “And while some will resolve into ceasefires, few will become stable. Because at a time of disruption, most everyone is concerned principally with making sure their own house is in order… (a)ll of which is happening in the midst of extraordinary technological revolution, an AI boom that represents the greatest opportunity and danger humanity has ever created. And it comes with next to no governance, alignment, or coordination.

What a time to be alive!

As to the potential of further wild cards... like the actions of lone wolf assassins or wolfpack Congressthings succeeding in imposing a partisan slant upon things to come... Politico, as 2026 began, proposed fifteen “Black Swan” events of the new year... “unlikely but entirely plausible thing(s) that could happen in 2026 that could completely upend American life”... some of which have either already happened or have, in their gravity, exceeded the best, or worst, expectations. (ATTACHMENT TWENTY TWO)

Many of these were proposed in response to the still growing promise and threats from AI as have forced Joneses to reconsider their view on “what is real”.

WAR AND PEACE

Specifically, on issues of war and peace, Black Swan #5 raises the prospect of the Grim Reaper collecting either of the Messrs. Trump or Putin (both of whom have exceeded the average life expectancy afforded men) will test the untested Veep Vance in the former case while, in Russia, what would follow would be “chaos with a conclusion that nobody could credibly game out with confidence.

These outcomes span an unusually wide spectrum” according to Swanster Alec Ross, a distinguished professor at the University of Bologna, Italy who ventures, on the one hand, that there could be an attempt to dial down Russia’s military activity and dial up its economy as a sort of post-Putin reset... or things could get even worse, with someone like Nikolai Patrushev — a longtime Putin adviser and a member of the siloviki (Bad Vlad’s sock puppets) — taking control. Old Nick’s also well past Russian male life expectancy and has “not just a willingness but an appetite to put Russia’s nuclear arsenal to work.”

LABOR, TECHNOLOGY and EQUALITY

On the domestic and economic fronts, Amy Webb (CEO of Future Today Strategy Group, NYC-based “strategic foresight advisory firm”) asks us to consider the implications of a “tech mogul” proposing “Patriotic Innovation Zones”... semi-autonomous corporate territories where companies get tax breaks, regulatory exemptions and de facto control over local governance... a “hyper-capitalist moonshot: part factory-town revival, part Silicon Valley fever dream, part culture-war trophy.”

But beneath the spectacle, no one — not the states, not the companies, not Washington — believes that Patriotic Innovation Zones (PIZ, as they’re now known) were designed for resilience; “they were designed for short-term virality... virtuality?... virility?... and election optics,” and are quietly architecting a future “where automation in myriad forms — not human labor (and its concomitant wages) — is the real endgame.”

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED

One Swan has already been achieved... Andrew Yang, failed Democratic presidential candidate (now CEO of new wireless carrier Noble Mobile) ventured that “the event that could derail 2026 is political violence leading up to the midterms.”

A candidate gets shot and wounded or killed while on the trail. Some officeholders call for peace or perspective, while others grimly warn that something... a Golden Ballroom, perhaps... is necessary to defend the country from tyrants. “Threats against candidates on both sides skyrocket in the days immediately afterwards, and several local candidates drop out because they are tired of having their family on the run or under armed guard.”

CHECK, CHECK AND CHECK.

The Last Swan (#15) by Jonathan Stevenson, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies and Managing Editor of Survival, referenced another compendium of troubles... in fact, THE Troubles in Northern Ireland where a young Prince Charles saw British Army troops massacre fourteen unarmed civilians and wound many more on Jan. 30, 1972 – thereafter known as “Bloody Sunday”.

Ireland’s Troubles “resonate ominously in contemporary America,” Stevenson contended, “with President Donald Trump deploying National Guard and active-duty U.S. troops to heavily Democratic cities, a violent backlash could send America in a similar direction.”

“Agitators and protests” will gather today, boycotting work, school and shopping in May Day demonstrations driven by the "Workers Over Billionaires" motto according to Fox News. (April 29^th, (ATTACHMENT TWENTY THREE)

"The history of May Day in America is rooted in Chicago," bragged Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson. "It was in our city that workers organized around the simple demand of an eight-hour workday and raised the consciousness of a gilded nation through the Haymarket Strike." 

With the central theme surrounding the American worker against the billionaire class, economists are skeptical that a single-day boycott has any impact at all on large companies and the so-called elite.

"If you're talking about [non-perishable activities], like going to the movies, you'll go see the same movie on Saturday," University of Maryland Economics Professor Emeritus and former chief economist at the U.S. International Trade Commission Peter Morici told Fox News Digital. 

Morici noted that if consumers boycott purchases for a single day, they will purchase the same products and shop at the same venues regardless of a one-day strike.

"Somebody will go to store B instead of store A," Morici explained. "All this is a bad storm and a way for the left wing getting everybody riled up."

"It's not a hit on the billionaires," Morici added. "You're angry about your circumstances. So what do you do? You burn the place down and make your circumstances worse. The local shops that are going without a day. The very people they want us to patronize are the people that could get hurt."

Chicago Mayor Johnson (above) bragged on his entry into a coalition of mayors from cities across the United States yester (In These Times, ATTACHMENT TWENTY FOUR) to sign the Haymarket Declaration—a joint recognition of May Day and the anniversary of the Haymarket Affair in Chicago.

In the attached transcript, Johnson described his version of the May Day (aka International Worker’s Day) history and drew comparisons to the present day “challenges” of “rising costs, unemployment, a lack of affordable housing, and new challenges brought on by the federal government’s decision to gut programs like SNAP, Medicaid, and Medicare.”

And in a sideways slap at Our President, he exhorted the attendant Mayors (see Attachment for list) to remain unified in our effort to stand up for democracy, adding “while the federal government falls short of its responsibilities and authority, city government is stepping up to lead.”

Early reports today promote the premise that May Day, “No Kings” and other protests in the U.S.A. were largely peaceful and a good venting time was to be had before the usual suspects went back to their usual perfidies – and a few more as we’ll note next week but Over There… (where President Trump has just re-upped tariffs on the EU and NATO for not helping him in Iran) the Fox, as expected, trolled the millions of Old World workers as commies and degenerates (ATTACHMENT TWENTY FIVE) who are guilty, at least, of “a troubling moral inversion” Heritage Foundation cracker Nile Gardner reflected, if not treason or murder by seashells like James Comey or slandering poor Melania like Jimmy Kimmel.

"The United States is fighting to defend the free world against tyranny, and yet across Europe and beyond we are seeing protesters direct their outrage at America and its allies instead of the brutal regimes driving so much of this global instability," Gardiner said. "That should deeply concern anyone who cares about the future of Western civilization."

Fox found the Euro May Day protests even viler and more deadly – as a “growing global pattern” turns them into “arenas for broader ideological and geopolitical confrontation.”

Emma Schubart, Research Fellow at the Henry Jackson Society, a London-based think tank, warned that May Day demonstrations increasingly serve as platforms for ideological movements extending beyond labor activism.

"The May Day demonstrations across Europe increasingly feature Islamist elements. Militant anti-war, anti-capitalist rhetoric is now routinely accompanied by Palestinian flags and explicit anti-Israel slogans," Schubart said, adding that far-left activism and Islamist-linked networks are increasingly converging under broader anti-Western narratives.

"These May Day protesters,” Gardiner said, “should be demonstrating against the brutal tyranny in Tehran instead of protesting against U.S. military action, and this is an illustration of the complete moral vacuum that exists in Europe today."

The German journal DW also reported on the global protests, albeit less venomously… reporting that the most violent demonstrations occurred in Turkey, where riot police reportedly used tear gas and water cannon to disperse demonstrators, blocking roads in the central Mecidiyekoy and Besiktas districts leading to Taksim, the Cumhuriyet daily wrote. (ATTACHMENT TWENTY SIX)

Less violent, but also loud and boisterous demonsrations occurred in Argentina where the former Trump ally Bolsonaro is being put on trial and in Germany itself, where unions are “urging for the preservation of the eight-hour workday and secure pensions, as well as the introduction of higher taxes on the rich (which might lead to a reverse migration back to America).

Finally, an optimistic Ruth Conniff of the Wisconsin Examiner (yesterday, ATTACHMENT TWENTY SEVEN) recalled a twenty year anniversary of strikes in opposition to Rep. James Sensenbrenner’s federal bill that proposed “making unauthorized presence in the U.S. a crime punishable by mandatory prison sentences,” generating public opposition that Christine Neumann-Ortiz, executive director of Voces de la Frontera, the Milwaukee-based immigrant workers’ rights group compared to an earthquake that “shelved that terrible bill and put the conversation of immigration reform back on the table.”

Andy King, managing director of the Fair Immigration Reform Movement (FIRM) said on a May Day press call this week. His group’s May Day demands include no more funding for ICE and Border Patrol, permanent protections and a pathway to citizenship for immigrants, and stopping the construction of megawarehouses for the mass detention of human beings. 

The fear-mongering about immigrants coming from the Trump administration is not an accident, Neumann-Ortiz said during the same call. “It’s a strategy to divide us, to scapegoat and to distract from the real challenges working families face, and in particular, the growing control of our economy by billionaires.”

On the other hand, Wisconsin U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson gave a video conference supporting the elimination of the filibuster to get Democrats out of the way to pass the SAVE America Act, which will severely curtail voting rights on the thoroughly disproven theory that undocumented immigrants are voting in large numbers and swaying U.S. elections. 

Conniff accused the proposal of being a tool of the right-wing populism that purports to defend the interests of blue collar workers, “but is, in fact, investing in the immiseration of the vast majority of Americans, the theft of their healthcare, their education, their wages and workplace protections, for the benefit of oligarchs like Johnson, who couldn’t care less if people suffer, sicken and die, so long as he remains rich. 

“I don’t think people can put up with this for much longer. The inhumane treatment of regular, hardworking people, the pain and waste of the greed-driven regime we are living with should turn the stomach of every American.

“May Day,” she concluded, “is a sign of hope.” 

	IN the NEWS: APRIL 24th, 2026 to APRIL 30th, 2026
Friday, April 24, 2026 Dow: 49,447.43	President Trump orders any Iranian mine-laying boats in Hormuz to be sunk and says that he feels “no pressure” to continue talks. Iran says it will send its foreign minister Araghchi to Islamabad, but only to talk to the Pakistanis, not Americans. He will go to the Correspondents’ Dinner and engage with the haters; SecPress Karoline Leavitt says the night will be “interesting”. When MAGAnauts call on him to pardon Ken Van Dyke, the soldier who gambled on Maduro’s capture, he waffles, but compares the gambler to Pete Rose, saying he bet on his own team; if he’d bet against America, he’d have had “a problem.” There’s better news on the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire which is holding although both sides fire off occasional missile or drone strikes. Gaza will be allowed to hold its first elections since 2006 with Hamas sympathizers on the ballot, but Israel says it’ll overturn any results they don’t like. Ukraine/Russia war slogs on. At home, the Dept. of Justice says it will bring back firing squads to execute prisoners convicted of this or that – as also poison gas and the electric chair. But not for Fed Chairman Powell... since he’s so close to retirement, they just drop the charges.
Saturday, April 25, 2026 Dow: Closed	As Leavitt predicts, the Correspondents’ Dinner is “interesting” – a lone gunman attacks the hotel where the dinner and speeches are transpiring. He shoots a Secret Service agent, but is shot, himself, arrested and identified as Cole Allen, who took a train from Torrance, CA to Chicago, then another to Wsshington and checked in early to avoid having his shotgun, pistol and knives detected and confiscated. The President and other dignitaries are escorted out and, although Djonald UnDeterred wants to go back and give his speech, the Secret Services tells him he’ll have to wait and try another day. Elaborately formal men and women of the media chase Trump back to the White House where he gives an abbreviated speech and says that the night was beautiful because partisans of the right and (mostly) left helped each other and an aura of comradeship manifested. Investigators get busy. Earlier in the day, Iranian-American talks are revived, then killed again with Islamabad is under lockdown and Iran apparently stiffed on account of new Israeli attacks on Lebanon. CBS calls it a “game of chicken”. Congressthings propose legislation to allow SNAP recipients to buy hot rotisseries chickens at taxpayer expenxt (the dead birds now must be cold to qualify). Perhaps a deal to legalize the chickens while banning junk foods can be arranged?
Sunday, April 26, 2026 Dow: Closed	It’s Talkshow Sunday and there’s plenty of chatter about the Correspondents’ Dinner shooting; as well as plenty of revelations from investigators. Allen now seems a lone wolf; an engineer, video game developer and teacher who wrote... go figure... a Manifesto!... in which he calls himself “a friendly Federal assassin.” On ABC’s “Week”, Acting AyGee Todd Blanche says “the system (Secret Service, mostly) worked and it should be applauded.” Blames social media for enabling Allen. TV-conomist Elizabeth Shulze says that gas prices disproportionately affect low-income Americans and that the longer the war lasts, the longer the recovery will take. Former Deputy SecState alleges we are blockading ourselves, and strengthening Russia and China, so we have to get back to true diplomacy – with true Experts. Richard Hanes of CFR says Trump will be blamed for his war of choice and consistently underestimating Iran. Other think tankers say Iran is now run by Revolutionary Guard hard hardliners in a “culture of resistance” and they will never give up. so the American options are escalation, surrender or drift, Round Tabler Chris Christie says that the best outcome would be a return to condtions before the war. Liberal Donna Brazile says Americans are afraid of inflation; Jason Riley of the Wall Street Journal says we have to “tone down the rhetoric” and that “ending the war” is not “winning the war.” Christie tells Trump, “if you’re gonna do it, get it done,”, Brazile says “we don’t have the serious diplomats we need to win.” Blanche, doing double duty, defends the Second Amendment against gun controllers, saying Allen wanted to stop public events, but failed on “Face the Nation”. At Trump’s press conference, the President says the shooter “was probably a pretty sick guy,” mentions that he went to No Kings meetings and was influenced by “the hate speechof the emocrats. Ben Sasse, former Senator (R-Nb) now dying of cancer says he became a Republican to honor Lincoln and Reagan, but Trump is surrounded by “weird people”.
Monday, April 27, 2026 Dow: 49,097.65	President Trump denies the allegations of Washington Hilton wannabee assassin Cole Allen, asserting: “I am not a pedophile” and calls politics “a dangerous profession”. Allen’s student describe teacher Allen as “intelligent and friendly”; ABC pundit Jonathan Karl says his cowardly colleagues panicked, one, Vladimir Dutier says the political and media dignitaries were luckier than ordinary victims of school shootings who had neither Secret Service nor police protection. Further commentary on the shooting noted the hotel’s previous indicents (like the wounding of Ronald Reagan outside) and Trump exploited the incident to call for taxpayer funding of his Golden Ballroom. Twelve of the eighteen cabineteers in the Line of Succession were present. Oil prices rise overnight as peace talks fail again and the dual American/Iranian Hormuz blockade tightens with Iranians meeting with Putin instead of Trump. Congress points out that the 60 day war threshold will expire today, Trump expected to ignore it. Pregnant SecPress Karoline Leavitt blames Hakeem Jeffries for the nation’s ills; the White House now says that building their Golden Ballroom will prevent future lone wolf and/or terror attacks on American politicial, celebrity and other elite party people.
Tuesday, April 28, 2026 Dow: 49,141.43	King Charles and Queen Camilla arrive in Washington to sip tea and gossip with Donnie and Melania. In Congress, he calls the Founding Fathers (who stole the colonies away from his ancestor, George III) “bold, imaginative rebels with a cause” but gently chides POTUS for doing too much against Iran but not enough to help Ukraine, saying “American words matter, but actions matter more,” while ignoring the questions of rude reporters about Brother Andrew. In the wake of the Correspondents’ shooting, more Republican join the chorus saying that Trump’s Golden Ballroom should be paid for by taxpayers. Deputy AyGee Blanche re-indicts James Comey for posting a picture of seashells arranged to form the numbers 8647 which, he warns, is a terroristic threat to kill Trump. Latenite comedian Jimmy Kimmel says Melania was glowing like “an expectant widow” and starts a war of words with sad old Rudy G. and brings about threats by the Trumply FCC to shut down not only his show, but the entire ABC network. California puts a billionaire tax initiative on the November ballot causing billionaires to say they will move if it passes and take their companies and jobs with them. Google’s Sergei Brin says he fled Communism in 1979. Democrats in Congress want to raise the Federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $25/hr which, say critics will cause business to replace humans with robots.
Wednesday, April 29, 2026 Dow: 48,881.81	Willie Nelson turns 93, frustrating Health Nazis and inspiring weedy words of wonder defending marijuana. Cam and Charlie give Djonald a golden bell to ring when he wants to, the King tells a few G-rated jokes and then they’re off to New York City to visit Ground Zero while Trump stays in Washington to promote his latest self-glorification scheme – slapping a picture of Himself on all new passports. Later in the afternoon, outgoing Fed Chair Powell takes one last slap against Himself, refusing to lower the interest rate and also saying that he will remain Chairly until successor Warsh is confirmed by a hostile Congress. Meanwhile the wars go on, Hormuz remains closed, inflation crawls upwards and midterm polls show that Americans hate everybody. There’s some cause for cheer, however, some oily experts maintain... the United Arab Emirates drop out of OPEC, making America, again, the world’s largest producer of fossil fuels. DefSec turned WarSec HegSeck blames the $25B cost of the war so far (about 3% of Elon Musk’s net worth) on Democrats as Musk sues former partner Open AI’s Sam Altman (net worth a piddlin’ $3.5B) for stealing a charity. Cowboys and Indians also in the news... tornadoes batter Dallas and environs as “Dancing With Wolves” co-star Nathan Chasing Horse is accused of using his status as a Medicine Man cult leader to indulge in his pedophiliac desires (as also does a “beloved” Santa Claus impersonator in Florida).
Thursday, April 30, 2026 Dow: 49,652.14	SCOTUS on party line 6-3 vote overturns the 1964 voting rights act after white people in Louisiana claim reverse racism. Three losing judges call it racism, Judge Alito calls it a “correction”. La Gov. Jeff Landry then cancels his state primary elections to draw a whiter map, earning praise from POTUS. On his last day in merica before flying off to Bermuda, Charles greets Lionel Richie and Ana Wintour while Cam reads “Winnie the Pooh” to Harlem children before they visit military cemeteries. DefSec Hegseck calls the war protesters failures as his 60 day Iran extension expires tomorrow. Most believe he and Pres. Trump will defy the provision and the Court will support them. Dems charge his warnings about nuclear “capabilities” which he amends to have meant “ambitions”. Congress finally reaches a deal on the remaining shutdown... sending money back to DHS except for the ICE migrant sweeps. Observers call it a defeat for Trump.

THE DON JONES INDEX

CHART of CATEGORIES w/VALUE ADDED to EQUAL BASELINE of 15,000

(REFLECTING… approximately… DOW JONES INDEX of June 27, 2013)

Gains in indices as improved are noted in GREEN. Negative/harmful indices in RED as are their designation. (Note – some of the indices where the total went up created a realm where their value went down... and vice versa.) See a further explanation of categories HERE

ECONOMIC INDICES		(60%)
CATEGORY	VALUE	BASE	RESULTS by PERCENTAGE				SCORE		OUR SOURCES and COMMENTS
INCOME	(24%)	6/17/13 revised 1/1/22	LAST	CHANGE		NEXT	LAST WEEK	THIS WEEK	THE WEEK’S CLOSING STATS...
Wages (hrly. Per cap)	9%	1350 points	4/17/26	+0.161%		5/26	1,896.65	1,896.65	https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/average-hourly-earnings 37.38
Median Inc. (yearly)	4%	600	4/17/26	+0.044%		5/8/26	1,128.74	1,129.24	http://www.usdebtclock.org/ 51,944 977 52,000
Unempl. (BLS – in mi)	4%	600	4/17/26	-2.33%		5/26	542.60	542.60	http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000/  4.3
Official (DC – in mi)	2%	300	4/24/26	+0.09%		5/8/26	204.32	204.13	http://www.usdebtclock.org/    7,670 680 687
Unofficl. (DC – in mi)	2%	300	4/24/26	+0.09%		5/8/26	238.79	238.57	http://www.usdebtclock.org/    14,331 350 363
Workforce Participation Number Percent	2%	300	4/24/26	-0.022% -0.038%		5/8/26	295.76	295.65	http://www.usdebtclock.org/    In 162,716 706 670 Out 105,148 189 218 Total: 267,864 888 60.746 .723
WP % (ycharts)*	1%	150	4/24/26	+0.162%		5/26	150.22	150.22	https://ycharts.com/indicators/labor_force_participation_rate 61.90
OUTGO	(15%)
Total Inflation	7%	1050	4/24/26	+0.9%		4/26	911.77	911.77	http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm     +0.9
Food	2%	300	4/24/26	+0.0%		4/26	259.19	259.19	http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm     +0.0
Gasoline	2%	300	4/24/26	+21.2%		4/26	206.83	206.83	http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm    +21.2
Medical Costs	2%	300	4/24/26	+0.3%		4/26	270.10	270.10	http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm     +0.3
Shelter	2%	300	4/24/26	+0.0%		4/26	239.10	239.10	http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm     +0.0
WEALTH
Dow Jones Index	2%	300	4/24/26	+2.21%		5/8/26	374.30	382.57	https://www.wsj.com/market-data/quotes/index/ 48,578.92 49,652.14
Home (Sales) (Valuation)	1% 1%	150 150	4/24/26	-2.69% +2.71%		5/8/26	129.54 267.74	129.54 267.74	https://www.nar.realtor/research-and-statistics Sales (M):  3.98 Valuations (K):  408.8
Millionaires (New Category)	1%	150	4/24/26	+0.04%		5/8/26	136.90	136.96	http://www.usdebtclock.org/    24,164 180 191
Paupers (New Category)	1%	150	4/24/26	+0.024%		5/8/26	135.14	135.11	http://www.usdebtclock.org/    36,829 842 851
GOVERNMENT	(10%)
Revenue (trilns.)	2%	300	4/24/26	+0.09%		5/8/26	473.79	474.22	http://www.usdebtclock.org/    5,432 440 445
Expenditures (tr.)	2%	300	4/24/26	+0.042%		5/8/26	291.93	291.81	http://www.usdebtclock.org/    7,111 115 118
National Debt tr.)	3%	450	4/24/26	+0.061%		5/8/26	346.70	346.49	http://www.usdebtclock.org/    39,128 161 185
Aggregate Debt (tr.)	3%	450	4/24/26	+0.072%		5/8/26	370.43	370.16	http://www.usdebtclock.org/    107,477 589 667
TRADE	(5%)
Foreign Debt (tr.)	2%	300	4/24/26	-0.11%		5/8/26	254.03	253.76	http://www.usdebtclock.org/    9,462 477 487
Exports (in billions)	1%	150	4/24/26	+4.20%		5/26	195.91	195.91	https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/current/index.html 314.8
Imports (in billions))	1%	150	4/24/26	-4.17%		5/26	138.64	138.64	https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/current/index.html 372.1
Trade Surplus/Deficit (blns.)	1%	150	4/24/26	+4.89%		5/26	247.48	247.48	https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/current/index.html 57.3
ACTS of MAN	(12%)
World Affairs	3%	450	4/24/26	+0.2%		5/8/26	469.61	470.55	UAE quits OPEC and will be the recipient of Israeli “Golden Dome” tech. Australia wants to tax tech giants like Google, Meta and Tik Tok to fund print journalism. Jalisco cartel leader and corrupt politicians arrested in Mexico. Revolution in Mali. Former SoKo President Yoon Suk Yeol to seven years in prison for resisting arrest. Sagrada Familia church completed in Barcelona after 140 years.
War and terrorism	2%	300	4/24/26	-0.1%		5/8/26	283.74	283.45	Wars in Hormuz, Lebanon and Ukraine continue, oil tanker blockade causing average gas prices to rise over $4.30 in US and rise faster in California and Europe. Somalian jihadist arrested for stabbing Jews in London, 18 year old girl accused of plotting to attack Texas synagogue.
Politics	3%	450	4/24/26	nc		5/8/26	454.72	454.72	Many states start holding midterm party primaries. Correspondents’ Dinner shooting used to make taxpayers pay for Golden Ballroom. Kid Rock gets a gumment-paid copter ride
Economics	3%	450	4/24/26	-0.1%		5/8/26	428.34	427.91	Frontier and Avela Air following Sprit into bankruptcies while, on the ground, Smoky Bones and Fat Brands franchises expire, but Little Caesar prospers with drone deliveries. MicroSoft offers buyouts to 7% of employees, META just throws out 10% of its. Uber/Joby offer Air Taxi service for rich new Yorkers, 7 min from JFK to midtown for $150. Jet Blue accused of surveillance pricing, as are several grocers. Corpus Christi to be first American city to go broke.
Crime	1%	150	4/24/26	-0.2%		5/8/26	203.97	203.56	Insane “street takeovers” with guns, cars and fire being promoted on social media. Amish pastor kills baby at retreat in Missouri. Two cops shot in Chicago hospital, one killed. College shootings at Virginia Tech and NCAA champ Indiana. Police in Phoenix accused of DUI quotas. Singer D4VD, already accused of murder, now charged with child porn.
ACTS of GOD	(6%)
Environment/Weather	3%	450	4/24/26	+0.1%		5/8/26	279.14	279.42	Temperatues and storms moderating in West but severe weather now moving into Midwest with tornadoes striking Oklahoma and Kansas and wild fluctuations in the East. Welcome rain finally begins on the Georgia /Florida line. Killer Asian Needle Ants invade America.
Disasters	3%	450	4/24/26	+0.2%		5/8/26	464.00	464.92	Before rain comes, Georgia and Florida homes burned down up to over 120, wildfires strike Miami suburbs andAlabama orders burn ban. A second hot air balloon crashes – this after hitting power lines over a Califonia casino. Tourist killed during snake charming act in Egypt; Indonesian trainwreck kills 15, injures 90 but school kids drive bus after driver collapse and all survive Mass. roller coaster malfunction, Yonkers hirise fire. Baby born on Delta flight from Atlanta to Portland.
LIFESTYLE/JUSTICE INDEX		(15%)
Science, Tech, Education	4%	600	4/24/26	nc		5/8/26	621.69	621.69	Japan replacing airline workers with robots. Maine governor vetos bill banning big data centers. Musk/Altman custody feud over AI is going to court.
Equality (econ/social)	4%	600	4/24/26	-0.1%		5/8/26	670.36	669.69	Partisans disagree over whether Supremes have destroyed or just clarified the 1964 Voting Rights Act as states begin an orgy of gerrymandering. MAHA Moms revolt over pesticides in food, breaking with their hero, RFK Junior.
Health	4%	600	4/24/26	nc		5/8/26	414.63	414.63	Ghirdelli cocoa drinks recalled for salmonella, Elecric sox from Costco recalled for burning feet. Chinese “cyclorphine” called ten times stronger than fentanyl. New hair loss drug being tested; genetic therapy curing deaf children, a two-year-old visits the White House.
Freedom and Justice	3%	450	4/24/26		nc	5/8/26	479.68	479.68	DoJ re-indicts James Comey for threatening Trump with seashells. FDA reduces medical marijuana prison time. In the courts, Taylor Swift sues deep fakers, old cold cases drag on.
CULTURAL and MISCELLANEOUS INCIDENTS			(6%)
Cultural incidents	3%	450	4/24/26	+0.1%		5/8/26	590.17	590.76	Michael Jackson biopic wins at box office with Prada coming after him onight. Other big sezuels upcoming include Toy Story 5, and, in 2027, Miami Vice. Megan Thee Stallion quits “Moulin Rouge” after romantic beakup. New York Times’ selection of 30 greatest living songwriters garners outrage after snubs of Billy Joel and Neil Diamond. Jay Z will charge $12,000 for his concert tickets. NBA and NHL playoffs continue as MLB season opens; multiple college football stars accused of gambling. Sebastian Sawe breaks 2 hr. mark at London Marathon. “Renegade” is tomorrow’s Ky. Derby favorite. RIP: “Voice” contestant Dylan Carter; Nedra Talley Ross (last of the Ronettes);
Miscellaneous incidents	4%	450	4/24/26	+0.1%		5/8/26	551.20	551.75	Merchers say ‘90’s nostalgia “brings back the calm”. Kelloggs will bring back cereal with toys inside. Mountain Dew rebrands as American Dew. Public outrage against another creep in Tampa snatching home run ball from little girl forces him to return it. Elephant turns tables, kills elephant hunter.
US stocks capped their best month since 2020 on Thursday as investors assessed a fresh batch of key economic data (for example, Feddie Powell’s last stasis) and Big Tech earnings results that fueled optimism about the AI demand boom. Quacking quibblers scribble that this can’t last... the economy will collapse... but it keeps chooglin’ on.

The Don Jones Index for the week of April 24^th through April 30^th, 2026 was UP 9.32 points

The Don Jones Index is sponsored by the Coalition for a New Consensus: retired Congressman and Independent Presidential candidate Jack “Catfish” Parnell, Chairman; Brian Doohan, Administrator. The CNC denies, emphatically, allegations that the organization, as well as any of its officers (including former Congressman Parnell, environmentalist/America-Firster Austin Tillerman and cosmetics CEO Rayna Finch) and references to Parnell’s works, “Entropy and Renaissance” and “The Coming Kill-Off” are fictitious or, at best, mere pawns in the web-serial “Black Helicopters” – and promise swift, effective legal action againth parties promulgating this and/or other such slanders.

Comments, complaints, donations (especially SUPERPAC donations) always welcome at feedme@generisis.com or: speak@donjonesindex.com.

ATTACHMENT ONE – FROM MERRIAM WEBSTER

WHERE DOES THE WORD 'MAYDAY' COME FROM?

The amazing origin of a famous distress call

WHAT TO KNOW

Mayday is an internationally recognized distress signal; it comes from the French m'aider (help me). May Day is a spring holiday and, in some places, a celebration of working people. The terms sound similar, but they have different origins. They are not spelled the same way.

May Day: a day we in the northern hemisphere have historically reserved for fun springtime activities, like the maypole and picnics; a day when we can see summer and sprinklers and Popsicles right around the corner; a day that can't help but bring to mind...airplane pilots calling for help?

Mayday is an internationally recognized radio word to signal distress. It's used mostly by aircraft and boats, and most of us are happily only familiar with it through TV and fiction. It appears as both an interjection ("Mayday! Mayday!") and to modify a noun ("a mayday signal"). The May Day that refers to the first of May has been in English for a very long time—back to the 1200s, in fact—but it’s not what inspired the call for help.

Mayday first came into English in 1923. There was a lot of air traffic between England and France in those days, and evidently there were enough international problems over the English Channel that both parties wanted to find a good distress signal that everyone would understand. But surely there already was a distress signal that everyone understood? There was—S.O.S.—but there were some problems with it:

Owing to the difficulty of distinguishing the letter "S" by telephone, the international distress signal "S.O.S." will give place to the words "May-day", the phonetic equivalent of "M'aidez", the French for "Help me."
—"New Air Distress Signal," The Times [London], 2 Feb. 1923

SOS was most commonly used in telegraphic communications, where the unmistakable pattern of SOS in Morse code (...---...) was easy to remember and easy to decipher. SOS was used predominantly by ships that were in distress. Aircraft, by comparison, used radio and not telegraph as their primary means of communication, and when in distress, a pilot wouldn't have time to clarify to anyone listening that they meant S as in "Sam" and not F as in "Frank." A short, easily understood word that couldn’t be mistaken for something else was necessary.

The Times article goes on to say that the new distress call was tested by an RAF "flying-boat" whose engines had failed over the Channel. They gave the signal three times and said their engines had failed, and radio operators in Croydon and Lympne received and transferred the signal to Dover, which sent out help.

Supposedly, mayday was coined by Frederick Stanley Mockford, a senior radio officer in Croydon, but we’ve been unable to substantiate that claim.

The call spread well beyond the Channel; the new distress signal's use was reported as far away as Singapore. In 1927, the United States formally adopted it as an official radiotelegraph distress signal, helpfully explaining in Article 19 of their resolution that mayday corresponds "to the French pronunciation of the expression m'aider."

ATTACHMENT TWO – FROM I.W.W.

THE BRIEF ORIGINS OF MAY DAY

By Eric Chase - 1993.

Most people living in the United States know little about the International Workers' Day of May Day. For many others there is an assumption that it is a holiday celebrated in state communist countries like Cuba or the former Soviet Union. Most Americans don't realize that May Day has its origins here in this country and is as "American" as baseball and apple pie, and stemmed from the pre-Christian holiday of Beltane, a celebration of rebirth and fertility.

In the late nineteenth century, the working class was in constant struggle to gain the 8-hour work day. Working conditions were severe and it was quite common to work 10 to 16 hour days in unsafe conditions. Death and injury were commonplace at many work places and inspired such books as Upton Sinclair's The Jungle and Jack London's The Iron Heel. As early as the 1860's, working people agitated to shorten the workday without a cut in pay, but it wasn't until the late 1880's that organized labor was able to garner enough strength to declare the 8-hour workday. This proclamation was without consent of employers, yet demanded by many of the working class.

At this time, socialism was a new and attractive idea to working people, many of whom were drawn to its ideology of working class control over the production and distribution of all goods and services. Workers had seen first-hand that Capitalism benefited only their bosses, trading workers' lives for profit. Thousands of men, women and children were dying needlessly every year in the workplace, with life expectancy as low as their early twenties in some industries, and little hope but death of rising out of their destitution. Socialism offered another option.

A variety of socialist organizations sprung up throughout the later half of the 19th century, ranging from political parties to choir groups. In fact, many socialists were elected into governmental office by their constituency. But again, many of these socialists were ham-strung by the political process which was so evidently controlled by big business and the bi-partisan political machine. Tens of thousands of socialists broke ranks from their parties, rebuffed the entire political process, which was seen as nothing more than protection for the wealthy, and created anarchist groups throughout the country. Literally thousands of working people embraced the ideals of anarchism, which sought to put an end to all hierarchical structures (including government), emphasized worker controlled industry, and valued direct action over the bureaucratic political process. It is inaccurate to say that labor unions were "taken over" by anarchists and socialists, but rather anarchists and socialist made up the labor unions.

At its national convention in Chicago, held in 1884, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (which later became the American Federation of Labor), proclaimed that "eight hours shall constitute a legal day's labor from and after May 1, 1886." The following year, the FOTLU, backed by many Knights of Labor locals, reiterated their proclamation stating that it would be supported by strikes and demonstrations. At first, most radicals and anarchists regarded this demand as too reformist, failing to strike "at the root of the evil." A year before the Haymarket Massacre, Samuel Fielden pointed out in the anarchist newspaper, The Alarm, that "whether a man works eight hours a day or ten hours a day, he is still a slave."

Despite the misgivings of many of the anarchists, an estimated quarter million workers in the Chicago area became directly involved in the crusade to implement the eight hour work day, including the Trades and Labor Assembly, the Socialistic Labor Party and local Knights of Labor. As more and more of the workforce mobilized against the employers, these radicals conceded to fight for the 8-hour day, realizing that "the tide of opinion and determination of most wage-workers was set in this direction." With the involvement of the anarchists, there seemed to be an infusion of greater issues than the 8-hour day. There grew a sense of a greater social revolution beyond the more immediate gains of shortened hours, but a drastic change in the economic structure of capitalism.

In a proclamation printed just before May 1, 1886, one publisher appealed to working people with this plea:

· Workingmen to Arms!

· War to the Palace, Peace to the Cottage, and Death to LUXURIOUS IDLENESS.

· The wage system is the only cause of the World's misery. It is supported by the rich classes, and to destroy it, they must be either made to work or DIE.

· One pound of DYNAMITE is better than a bushel of BALLOTS!

· MAKE YOUR DEMAND FOR EIGHT HOURS with weapons in your hands to meet the capitalistic bloodhounds, police, and militia in proper manner.

Not surprisingly the entire city was prepared for mass bloodshed, reminiscent of the railroad strike a decade earlier when police and soldiers gunned down hundreds of striking workers. On May 1, 1886, more than 300,000 workers in 13,000 businesses across the United States walked off their jobs in the first May Day celebration in history. In Chicago, the epicenter for the 8-hour day agitators, 40,000 went out on strike with the anarchists in the forefront of the public's eye. With their fiery speeches and revolutionary ideology of direct action, anarchists and anarchism became respected and embraced by the working people and despised by the capitalists.

The names of many - Albert Parsons, Johann Most, August Spies and Louis Lingg - became household words in Chicago and throughout the country. Parades, bands and tens of thousands of demonstrators in the streets exemplified the workers' strength and unity, yet didn't become violent as the newspapers and authorities predicted.

More and more workers continued to walk off their jobs until the numbers swelled to nearly 100,000, yet peace prevailed. It was not until two days later, May 3, 1886, that violence broke out at the McCormick Reaper Works between police and strikers.

For six months, armed Pinkerton agents and the police harassed and beat locked-out steelworkers as they picketed. Most of these workers belonged to the "anarchist-dominated" Metal Workers' Union. During a speech near the McCormick plant, some two hundred demonstrators joined the steelworkers on the picket line. Beatings with police clubs escalated into rock throwing by the strikers which the police responded to with gunfire. At least two strikers were killed and an unknown number were wounded.

Full of rage, a public meeting was called by some of the anarchists for the following day in Haymarket Square to discuss the police brutality. Due to bad weather and short notice, only about 3000 of the tens of thousands of people showed up from the day before. This affair included families with children and the mayor of Chicago himself. Later, the mayor would testify that the crowd remained calm and orderly and that speaker August Spies made "no suggestion... for immediate use of force or violence toward any person..."

As the speech wound down, two detectives rushed to the main body of police, reporting that a speaker was using inflammatory language, inciting the police to march on the speakers' wagon. As the police began to disperse the already thinning crowd, a bomb was thrown into the police ranks. No one knows who threw the bomb, but speculations varied from blaming any one of the anarchists, to an agent provocateur working for the police.

Enraged, the police fired into the crowd. The exact number of civilians killed or wounded was never determined, but an estimated seven or eight civilians died, and up to forty were wounded. One officer died immediately and another seven died in the following weeks. Later evidence indicated that only one of the police deaths could be attributed to the bomb and that all the other police fatalities had or could have had been due to their own indiscriminate gun fire. Aside from the bomb thrower, who was never identified, it was the police, not the anarchists, who perpetrated the violence.

Eight anarchists - Albert Parsons, August Spies, Samuel Fielden, Oscar Neebe, Michael Schwab, George Engel, Adolph Fischer and Louis Lingg - were arrested and convicted of murder, though only three were even present at Haymarket and those three were in full view of all when the bombing occurred. The jury in their trial was comprised of business leaders in a gross mockery of justice similar to the Sacco-Vanzetti case thirty years later, or the trials of AIM and Black Panther members in the seventies. The entire world watched as these eight organizers were convicted, not for their actions, of which all of were innocent, but for their political and social beliefs. On November 11, 1887, after many failed appeals, Parsons, Spies, Engel and Fisher were hung to death. Louis Lingg, in his final protest of the state's claim of authority and punishment, took his own life the night before with an explosive device in his mouth.

The remaining organizers, Fielden, Neebe and Schwab, were pardoned six years later by Governor Altgeld, who publicly lambasted the judge on a travesty of justice. Immediately after the Haymarket Massacre, big business and government conducted what some say was the very first "Red Scare" in this country. Spun by mainstream media, anarchism became synonymous with bomb throwing and socialism became un-American. The common image of an anarchist became a bearded, eastern European immigrant with a bomb in one hand and a dagger in the other.

Today we see tens of thousands of activists embracing the ideals of the Haymarket Martyrs and those who established May Day as an International Workers' Day. Ironically, May Day is an official holiday in 66 countries and unofficially celebrated in many more, but rarely is it recognized in this country where it began.

Over one hundred years have passed since that first May Day. In the earlier part of the 20th century, the US government tried to curb the celebration and further wipe it from the public's memory by establishing "Law and Order Day" on May 1. We can draw many parallels between the events of 1886 and today. We still have locked out steelworkers struggling for justice. We still have voices of freedom behind bars as in the cases of Mumia Abu Jamal and Leonard Peltier. We still had the ability to mobilize tens of thousands of people in the streets of a major city to proclaim "THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE!" at the WTO and FTAA demonstrations.

Words stronger than any I could write are engraved on the Haymarket Monument:

THE DAY WILL COME WHEN OUR SILENCE WILL BE MORE POWERFUL THAN THE VOICES YOU ARE THROTTLING TODAY.

Truly, history has a lot to teach us about the roots of our radicalism. When we remember that people were shot so we could have the 8-hour day; if we acknowledge that homes with families in them were burned to the ground so we could have Saturday as part of the weekend; when we recall 8-year old victims of industrial accidents who marched in the streets protesting working conditions and child labor only to be beat down by the police and company thugs, we understand that our current condition cannot be taken for granted - people fought for the rights and dignities we enjoy today, and there is still a lot more to fight for. The sacrifices of so many people can not be forgotten or we'll end up fighting for those same gains all over again. This is why we celebrate May Day.

ATTACHMENT THREE – FROM AFSC

RECLAIMING MAY DAY

May Day grew out of worker struggles for dignity and basic rights. Today, those demands are as urgent as ever.

By Rick Wilson Apr 23, 2026

May 1 is celebrated around the world as International Workers Day, a time to honor the struggles and achievements of the labor movement. 

Ironically, May Day has been less observed in the United States than in other countries, despite its U.S. origins. But that has begun to change in recent years—and we invite you to be part of that change.  

The struggle for workers’ rights has always been about human dignity. It’s about ensuring all people—regardless of background—have access to good jobs, food, housing, and health care. It’s about treating all people with respect in the workplace and beyond. These demands are as relevant today as they ever were.  

First, some history. May Day was born in the context of the long struggle over something basic: how many hours a day could bosses demand from working people. In the early days of the Industrial Revolution, it was not unusual for workers of all ages and genders—including children—to work 16 hours per day, under dangerous conditions, for poverty wages. Economies benefited the powerful, not everyday people.  

In 1884, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions—a precursor to the American Federation of Labor—issued a proclamation. It declared: “Eight hours shall constitute a legal day’s labor from and after May 1, 1886.” Workers rallied behind the popular slogan, "Eight Hours for Work, Eight Hours for Rest, Eight Hours for What We Will!"  

Thousands of workers walked off the job. But that was only the beginning. 

Chicago was the epicenter. On May 3, police fired on peaceful striking workers at the McCormick Reaper Works Factory, killing at least two workers. The following day, protesters gathered at Haymarket Square to demonstrate against the killings. As the rally wound down, police showed up in force and ordered the group to disperse. An unknown person threw a bomb. Gunfire followed. When the smoke cleared, seven police officers and several civilians were killed, while dozens of others were injured. 

In the aftermath, labor and radical organizations experienced a wave of repression. Martial law was declared. Labor leaders were rounded up. Labor newspapers were shut down. 

Eight men suspected of anarchy were arrested on conspiracy charges. Of these, four people—August Spies, Albert Parsons, Adolph Fischer, and George Engel—were executed by hanging. Louis Lingg died by suicide before the sentence could be carried out. Samuel Fielden, Oscar Neebe, and Michael Schwab were imprisoned, though eventually pardoned. 

It is the consensus of historians that none of these men were responsible for the bombing. Dyer Lum, a friend of those executed, wrote at the time that the eight “dared to defend their beliefs when tried for an act, of which it was openly admitted they were not personally guilty.” 

In 1889, the Second International—a loose federation of social democratic and labor organizations—designated May 1 as International Workers Day. They wanted to commemorate the Haymarket tragedy and the broader struggle for an eight-hour day. It stuck. 

That was only one episode in a long saga of struggle, with advances and retreats in the face of opposition from political and economic elites. Over the decades, the U.S. labor movement has made enormous progress. It has won better wages, benefits, and safer working conditions—while also supporting public policies to protect workers and marginalized communities. These weren’t just labor victories. They represented progress toward an economy that works for all people, not just those at the top. 

Unfortunately, the movement has been under constant attack since the early 1980s. Corporate interests, politicians, and others have promoted fear and hatred over solidarity. Those attacks have intensified in recent years.  

Meanwhile, many communities still lack adequate access to food, housing, health care, and education. Even as governments spend billions on war, corporate tax breaks, and systems of repression. The collective struggle to ensure all people have what they need to thrive continues to be as urgent as ever.  

For over a century, AFSC has supported workers, and we continue that work today.  

More people in the U.S. are reclaiming May Day as a day to celebrate workers’ rights. This year, May Day Strong, a coalition of hundreds of organizations, including AFSC, is calling for a May 1st day of action. We urge people to rally, march, and strike to support an agenda that includes taxing the wealthy to put working families first. We are speaking out against war and ICE in communities. And we are demonstrating against authoritarianism and in support of democracy.  

Join our coalition by taking the Workers over Billionaires pledge today. Commit to action this May Day and beyond. 

It’s time to show up.

ATTACHMENT FOUR – FROM PAYDAY REPORT

MAP: 85 CITIES HOSTING MAY DAY GENERAL STRIKES & GROWING

 BY Mike Elk  Apr 23, 2026  

Folks, 

Greetings from the Burgh, where I just got back from an exciting week covering preparations for May Day in LA. 

I just turned in a long story to a major publication looking at how the LA Labor Federation and others are preparing for May Day, which hopefully will be out soon.

65 Cities Hosting May Day Strikes

According to Payday Report’s Strike Tracker, we have now found that unions will be hosting walkouts in at least 65 cities across the United States. Hundreds of unions are involved, and the list is growing as groups like Indivisible lead their support to the movement. (See our most recent story “May Day General Strike Movement Continues to Grow”)

This shows that the movement is growing rapidly, with hundreds of local unions and community groups signing on to support the group.  

The list is still growing, and we would appreciate it if you could email melk@paydayreport.com with any tips on the growing movement

See our interactive map tracking the May Day Strike movement, already scanned by over 30,000 viewers. 

1,000 New Orleans Nurses to Strike 

Nationwide, the National Nurses union is one of the few major unions to support the May Day Strike. 

“Nurses never back away from a fight,” National Nurses United President Mary Turner told Payday Report in a story earlier this month. (Read our story from earlier this month  “May Day General Strike Movement Continues to Grow”)

Over 1,000 nurses at the University Medical Center New Orleans were inspired to begin a five-day strike on May Day. They say that they are frustrated by the employer’s refusal to agree to a first union contract after nearly two years of bargaining. 

“I never would’ve imagined that UMCNO and LCMC management would drag this out for as long as they have,” says nurse Umer Mukhtar, RN. “We want a contract that allows us to provide the best care possible to the people of New Orleans. LCMC apparently doesn’t believe that laws about good-faith bargaining apply to them, so we are striking to hold them accountable to get what our patients deserve.”

For more, check out the National Nurses United website. 

Wichita Nurses to Picket on May Day 

Nurses at Ascension Via Christi St Francis and St Joseph in Wichita, Kansas also intend to hold a one-day informational picket on May Day. Nurses say that they are protesting unsafe and unnecessary cost-cutting by the hospital system. 

“The hospital must do more to protect patients and staff. Dangerous weapons find their way into the hospital all the time,” says Carol Samsel, an RN in the critical care unit at St. Joseph. “This month, a live grenade was found in a patient room. We need a weapons detection system now.” 

Many Small Businesses Will Participate in the May Day Strike 

Finally, many small businesses are expected to participate in the strike. 

During the MInnesota General Strike, 100,000 marched in -30 temperatures as major school districts, and at least 700 businesses closed across Minnesota. More than 300 solidarity actions were held nationwide, according to Payday Report’s strike tracker.

Now, many businesses, particularly businesses in immigrant communities, which have been negatively affected by the decline in customers, plan to close their businesses in solidarity. 

“I’m writing today in the hope that it encourages others to join us — because protests require participation to be effective,” wrote bicycle store owner Kelly Mack in a letter to the Evanston Roundtable. “Choosing not to open our doors on a day ‘in season’ is not a decision we take lightly — especially as we emerge from a year in which we’ve faced ongoing challenges, including increased costs due to tariffs, higher operating expenses, and the constant pressure of competing with Amazon, alongside the broader decline of small brick-and-mortar businesses.” 

For more, check out the Evanston Roundtable. 

Links & News Headline Elsewhere

· 700 defense contractors in upstate New York stripped of their union rights by Trump

· US warns it will run out of money to pay airport security workers in coming weeks

· Virginia governor’s amended collective bargaining bill would leave workers’ rights optional and large public-sector pay gap unaddressed

· Wisconsin judge rejects motion to block union elections at Madison, West Allis clinics

· Argentine airport workers go on a 24-hour strike

· Domestic workers legally recognised in Indonesia after '22-year struggle'

· Finally, a study finds that Minnesota workers lost $240 million during the ICE surge there due to fear of working and shopping 

Alright folks, that’s all for today.

ATTACHMENT FIVE – FROM GUK

WHAT IS MAY DAY STRONG, THE ‘NO WORK, NO SCHOOL, NO SHOPPING’ PROTESTS AGAINST TRUMP?

Day of action to support workers set for 1 May – who is organizing May Day Strong, and how can people join?

By Kim Kelly

Wed 22 Apr 2026 09.00 EDT

Anyone who attended one of the 3,000 No Kings protests in March might have learned of the latest effort to protest against Trump administration policies: May Day Strong.

The single-day protest on 1 May is taking its cue from the massive day of action that shut down Minneapolis in January by asking Americans not to shop, work or go to school. Rallies, marches and teach-ins will also take place across the country.

“The labor movement in our country cannot advance while ignoring the assault on democracy,” said Neidi Dominguez, founding executive director of Organized Power in Numbers and executive team member of May Day Strong.

“And the pro-democracy movement can’t ask working people to defend abstract principles while they can’t afford housing, paying bills or accessing healthcare. We need a national movement that does both. That’s why labor and community organizations are throwing down hard this May 1.”

WHAT IS MAY DAY STRONG?

Organizers are expecting more than 3,500 actions across the country – from street protests to walkouts – “under the banner of workers over billionaires, taxing the rich, demanding ICE out, money for people not wars, and expanding democracy”, said Dominguez.

Since 2024, the May Day Strong coalition has been hosting Solidarity School organizing trainings, sharing toolkits and encouraging people to set up their own May Day events. The labor unions involved are already using their institutional muscle to help, too: the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) successfully fought to have 1 May declared a “day of civic action” in the city, and the National Education Association (NEA) has posted a handy May Day planning guide on its website.

The goal is “a nationwide day of economic disruption”, organizers said – by bringing business as usual to a halt, protesters will show how powerful the working class can be when it flexes its collective muscle.

WHO IS ORGANIZING MAY DAY STRONG?

The May Day Strong coalition is made up of a formidable list of unions, Democratic Socialists of America chapters, pro-democracy groups such as Indivisible (who have jumped on board to amplify the May Day message), and labor, racial justice, anti-war, pro-democracy, climate justice, immigrant rights and reproductive justice organizations.

That intersectional approach is a core aspect of their work, Dominguez said: “There’s more of us than there are of them. We just have to organize ourselves together.”

WHERE CAN I FIND MAY DAY STRONG EVENTS IN MY AREA?

IS IT A GENERAL STRIKE (AND DOES THAT MATTER)?

No – at least not in 2026. “A general strike is basically a work stoppage that paralyzes multiple major industries,” said Eric Blanc, an assistant professor of labor studies at Rutgers University.

That’s not what May Day Strong is planning for this year. As many organizers have noted, it will take years to organize a full-on, sustained general strike in the US – which is why 2028 has emerged as a target date.

Rather, May Day Strong organizers are amplifying the call for “no work, no school, no shopping” that anchored Minnesota’s Day of Truth and Freedom on 23 January, bringing millions of protesters out to demand an end to ICE’s occupation in their cities.

General strikes are rare in the US, though historically they have been one of organized labor’s most powerful tools. In 1877, railroad workers launched a strike that paralyzed the nation; in 1919, workers in Seattle shut down the city for five days. Minneapolis saw its own general strike in 1934, when unionized truck drivers brought the city to a standstill and lit a signal fire for other workers across the midwest to organize.

However, the passage of the 1946 Taft-Hartley Act essentially outlawed the general strike and severely limited workers’ ability to strike in solidarity with one another. The US hasn’t seen a true general strike since.

The tactic remains a potent lever for political change in other countries, such as India and Italy. “Experience across the world suggests that it may take such an action – or at least the credible threat of one – to reverse authoritarianism in the US,” said Blanc.

WHAT IS THE MAY DAY 2028 GENERAL STRIKE?

That inconvenient piece of anti-labor legislation is exactly why the United Auto Workers’ call for a May Day general strike in 2028 has generated so much excitement. The union and its lawyers are well aware of those legal constraints, which is why they had to find a loophole.

In April 2024, Shawn Fain, president of the UAW, publicly called on all unions, across industries and sectors, to align their contract expiration dates for 1 May 2028. If those unions’ contracts expire, so do the no-strike clauses that many contain; with no contract, there’s nothing stopping members from going on strike. If it just so happens that thousands – or millions – of workers find themselves in that situation on the same day, well, there’s not much the law can do to stop it.

Several major unions, including the CTU, the NEA, the American Federation of Teachers and the American Postal Workers Union, have already pledged to join them. The May Day Strong coalition is also working to support the 2028 general strike by giving non-union organizations a way to get their members ready to participate.

“The fact is: without workers, the world stops running,” Fain wrote in an op-ed for In These Times. “A successful general strike is going to take time, mass coordination, and a whole lot of work by the labor movement. As working people, we must come together. We can no longer allow corporations, politicians and borders to divide us.”

WHAT IS THE HISTORY BEHIND MAY DAY?

May Day, or International Workers’ Day, was first celebrated in the US in 1886, when anarchist labor organizers Lucy and Albert Parsons led 300,000 striking workers in Chicago on the first American May Day parade. While the first of May has a much older history rooted in ancient pagan rites and the changing seasons, in a political context it has since become known as a global day of celebration, struggle and remembrance for the working class.

May Day is an official holiday in 66 countries and is celebrated informally in many others, marked by marches, parades, strikes and demonstrations. However, in the US, 1 May is designated “Loyalty Day”; the workers’ holiday, Labor Day, has been relegated to the first Monday in September. And, yes, the lack of recognition for May Day is very much intentional. This has been a source of frustration for labor’s left flank for decades, and the recently renewed focus on 1 May as a day of collective action nods to labor’s history as well as its future.

As Fain said: “It’s time we reclaimed May Day for the working class.”

ATTACHMENT SIX – FROM FOX NEWS

COMMUNISTS, DEMOCRATS USE #NOKINGS RALLY TO CALL FOR MAY DAY STRIKE: 'SHUT IT DOWN'

As chants for a communist revolution and May Day strikes echoed from New York to Minnesota, the 'No Kings' movement sees a growing ideological shift to more radical rhetoric

By Asra Q. Nomani  Published March 30, 2026 7:00am EDT | Updated March 30, 2026 7:02am EDT

Communist, socialist groups join 'No Kings' protests in Minnesota

Members of the Revolutionary Communist Party, Socialist Workers Party and more spoke to Fox News Digital during Saturday's "No Kings" demonstrations in the Twin Cities.

St. Paul, MINN. – From Times Square to here in Minnesota's state capital, communist and socialist activists at the nationwide "No Kings" protests escalated their anti-America campaign and openly called for a nationwide economic strike on May 1, an international communist holiday known as May Day, as key Democratic activists joined their call.

At the rally here in St. Paul, organizers, speakers and activists distributed communist literature, waved flags from socialist governments and revolutionary movements, and urged demonstrators to transform the day's protests into a nationwide shutdown of work, school and commerce.

By early Sunday, Press TV, the propaganda arm of the Islamic Republic of Iran, leveraged news of the protests to tell readers, "Regime change begins at home’: No Kings, No War protests held across US."

As Fox News Digital reported, about 500 organizations with an estimated combined annual revenue of about $3 billion sponsored and organized the demonstrations, creating a centralized protest apparatus even while organizers tried to market the activists as "grassroots."

The network included traditional Democratic advocacy organizations, like Indivisible, MoveOn and the American Federation of Teachers, alongside openly socialist and communist groups such as the Party for Socialism and Liberation, Freedom Road Socialist Organization and local chapters of the Communist Party USA, including the Twin Cities Communist Party USA club, which endorsed the St. Paul rally.

500 GROUPS WITH $3B IN REVENUES ARE BEHIND THE #NOKINGS PROTESTS AND COMMUNIST CALL FOR 'REVOLUTION'

Offstage at the celebrity-filled "No Kings" protest in St. Paul, activists with the Party for Socialism and Liberation sold a manifesto, "Socialist Reconstruction: A Better Future for the United States," filled with Marxist teachings.

Yards away, near the main stage, Kevin Dwire a candidate for the U.S. Senate from the Socialist Workers Party, sold copies of the "Communist Manifesto" by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the 1847 work that would transform the next century's global politics. The group says it is "part of the continuity of revolutionary Marxism," tracing back to Marx, Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky.

In the middle of the lawn, flags for the Islamic Republic of Iran, Venezuela and Cuba flew next to a flag of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, a self-described Marxist group.

In the back of the lawn, a young man who identified himself only as "Mason" championed the teachings of the Revolutionary Communists of America. A young woman nearby sold copies of Socialist Alternative, which describes itself as a "revolutionary organization working to build a movement for a democratic, socialist society."

'NO KINGS' CALLS ITSELF LEADERLESS, BUT ITS OWN INTERNAL DOCUMENTS TELL A VERY DIFFERENT STORY

Across the country, from Los Angeles to New York City, pro-communist Americans marched alongside traditional center-left Democrats in an alliance that many mainstream media outlets largely portrayed simply as anti-Trump protests.

The ideological adherents themselves, however, were not shy about their beliefs.

In Times Square, members of the Revolutionary Communists of America chanted: "There is only one solution — communist revolution," while waving red flags bearing the hammer and sickle.

The common refrain from these groups was a call for a nationwide strike on May 1, the traditional May Day holiday long embraced by communist and socialist movements as a day of mass political action.

At the St. Paul rally, that call received support from the stage.

Ezra Levin, the co-founder of Indivisible, the protest's key organizer, joined the communist call for a national strike and urged protesters to prepare for economic disruption on May Day, similar to a shutdown that saw limited success in Minneapolis during protests on Jan. 23 against Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

"I want everyone here to put this on their calendar… It is a tactical goal, an escalation… It is an economic show of force, inspired by Minnesota’s own day of truth and action," Levin told the crowd.

Levin continued: "On May 1, on May Day, we are saying, ‘No business as usual.’ No work, no school, no shopping. We’re going to show up and say, 'We’re putting workers over billionaires and kings.’"

While Indivisible has participated in May Day coalitions before, the prominence of socialist organizations in the protest ecosystem illustrates the growing influence of the far left within networks that overlap with mainstream Democratic political organizing.

Indivisible Project, a nonprofit whose work is often marketed with just the first word of the group's name, has received $5 million in recent years from billionaire George Soros' Open Society philanthropy arm.

POWER COUPLE OF CHAOS: HOW A TYCOON AND ACTIVIST BUILT A 'REVOLUTIONARY BASE' AT THE HOUSE OF SINGHAM

Meanwhile, some of the openly pro-communist groups marching alongside Democratic activists are connected to a global activist network funded by Neville Roy Singham, an American-born tech tycoon now based in Shanghai, promoting messaging critical of U.S. democracy and sympathetic to China’s political model.

That network includes media and organizing hubs such as the People’s Forum, BreakThrough BT Media Inc.'s BreakThrough News, CodePink, the ANSWER Coalition and the Party for Socialism and Liberation, which have received funding and support through the Singham network. 

Over the years, Singham, who sold his tech company for approximately $800 million in 2017, has provided $22.4 million to People's Forum, $1.3 million to CodePink and $1.1 million to BreakThrough BT Media Inc. The ANSWER Coalition and Party for Socialism and Liberation have received support through their relationships with the People's Forum.

 The network has funded conferences, media outlets and activist organizations promoting narratives that portray the United States as a "fascist" and "hyper-imperialist" power while defending the authoritarian governments of China, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The theme echoed throughout the protests, where demonstrators warned of rising "fascism" in the United States.

In the hours after the protests ended, the activist networks celebrated the demonstrations online. In Los Angeles, CodePink posted video showing its banner in the middle of a protest where demonstrators chanted: "Hey, hey, ho ho, Donald Trump has got to go."

BreakThrough News shared videos from protests in San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Houston and Gainesville, Florida, declaring: "Massive demonstrations took place as part of the ‘No Kings Day.’"

The outlet blasted what it described as Trump’s "right-wing agenda of endless wars and deportations."

The ANSWER Coalition circulated video showing Indivisible, CodePink and the Party for Socialism and Liberation marching together in Chicago, writing that the "people of Chicago take the streets to stand against Trump’s agenda."

Indivisible Chicago responded with three fire emojis, revealing the emerging synchronicity between traditionally Democratic groups and openly pro-communist organizations.

The ANSWER Coalition operates out of the People’s Forum in New York City, which also celebrated the demonstrations online with the caption, putting its stamp on the day: "No Kings Day NYC."

Leaders tied to some of these activist groups, including CodePink co-founders Jodie Evans and Medea Benjamin, have participated in delegations to Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, North Korea and China, strengthening relationships with governments frequently at odds with U.S. foreign policy. Evans married Singham in 2017, as he started funding this network in the U.S.

A demonstrator leaned a Party for Socialism and Liberation sign against the porta-toilet at the end of the "No Kings" protest in St. Paul, Minn. (Asra Q. Nomani/Fox News Digital)

Back in St. Paul, even some socialist activists expressed skepticism about those alliances.

Dwire, the Socialist Workers Party leader selling copies of Marx’s manifesto, shook his head when discussing China’s political system. "China socialism is capitalism," he said.

The young activist from the Revolutionary Communists of America also distanced himself from China’s government, describing it as a betrayal of communist ideals, while he openly embraced communist ideology. "We are against imperialism," he told Fox News Digital.

As the rally wound down and crews dismantled stage equipment, the protest grounds began to empty.

A demonstrator propped a Party for Socialism and Liberation sign against a porta-toilet.

Nearby, two American flags lay discarded in the grass beside a heap of garbage bags, an emptied bag of Cheez-It visible among the trash.

ATTACHMENT SEVEN – FROM AI OVERVIEW

A revolution is a sudden, fundamental, and often violent change in a government, social institution, or established order. It occurs when masses overthrow a ruling power, creating profound political and social shifts. Key causes include inequality, economic mismanagement, and lack of political voice, often resulting in new social orders, governmental structures, or systemic reforms. 

Key Aspects of Revolution

· Definition & Etymology: Derived from Latin revolutio ("a turn around"), a revolution signifies a rapid, complete, and often violent upheaval that replaces a government or completely transforms a society. 

· Main Causes: Revolutions are rarely simple events. They often stem from:

o Political Discontent: Government inability to manage political crises or respond to demands for representation.

o Social & Economic Inequality: Inequality, rapid modernization, and oppressive state structures.

o External Factors: War, state crises, or elite alienation from the government. 

· Types of Revolution:

o Political Revolution: A change in the leadership or structure of government (e.g., American Revolution).

o Social Revolution: A complete change of both state structures and social structures (e.g., French Revolution).

o Non-violent Revolution: Regime change achieved through widespread protests and mass mobilization, such as the "People Power" movement in the Philippines. 

· Impact on Society: Revolutions fundamentally alter power dynamics, often restructuring class systems, land ownership, and individual rights. 

· Potential Outcomes: These range from the establishment of new governments and rights to prolonged civil conflict and economic instability. 

· Types of Change: While often political, the term is applied to radical shifts in society, such as the "Industrial Revolution," which changed economic and technological conditions. 

Other Meanings:

· Rotation: A turning or rotating, as on an axis.

· Astronomy: The orbiting of one heavenly body around another.

· Brand Name: Also refers to beauty/skincare products (Revolution Beauty) and pet health products (Zoetis Revolution).  Revolution - Wikipedia

In political science, a revolution (Latin: revolutio, 'a turn around') is a rapid, fundamental transformation of a society's class...

Revolution for Pet Owners - Zoetis Petcare

Trusted by Vets to Help Protect Dogs and Cats From Harmful Parasites for Over 25 Years. Revolution provides broad coverage…

Revolution Dancewear

https://www.revolutiondance.com

Revolution partners exclusively with dance studios and programs to boost your revenue and make it easy to sell dancewear and costumes to your students.

ATTACHMENT EIGHT – FROM PERRY WORLD HOUSE

IRAN’S PROTESTS: IS THIS A REVOLUTION IN THE MAKING?

By Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet January 13, 2026

Revolutionary movements rarely call themselves revolutions. Observers usually affix such labels to them after the fact. Instead, revolutions typically ignite when disenfranchised peoples take to the streets to reject an autocratic regime. Iran today is experiencing such turmoil.
Over the past two weeks, Iranians throughout the country, from diverse social classes and backgrounds, have protested economic mismanagement, water and power shortages, and, most recently, an internet and communications blackout, signaling a profound crisis of legitimacy for the Islamic Republic of Iran. A sharp drop in the value of the Iranian currency, the Rial, against the dollar sparked the protests. Thousands have died and been wounded in clashes with government security forces. The demonstrations and chants in the streets reveal the depth of people’s anger and show that these grievances are not just about prices or policy failures, but a resounding rejection of the existing political system in Iran.

The turmoil in Iran follows a storied tradition of revolutions. The French Revolution, the Haitian Revolution, and the Bolshevik Revolution all arose from unique sets of sociopolitical circumstances, yet they shared common features: a regime stripped of legitimacy and a populace undaunted and set to defy it. In 18th-century France, ingrained inequalities exposed the drawbacks of monarchical rule, leading to the revolt of the Third Estate. In Saint-Domingue, enslaved peoples fought back when their inhumane subjugation after centuries of violent colonial rule made the status quo untenable. In 1917, the Russian Romanov dynasty fell because of the combined pressures of war, famine, and political paralysis.

Iran’s protests strike congruent cautionary notes. Corruption, economic duress, and the absence of human rights have pushed people to the brink. Pathways for change have narrowed to near irrelevance. The state crackdown through violence, arrests, information blackouts, and executions confirms that its power rests on coercion, not consent.

Crucial differences set apart the current uprisings from past revolutions. Iranian demonstrators are fighting for their rights in the digital age, even as the state attempts to sever those connections. This tumult is less overtly ideological than some previous revolutions. Though unpredictable, this movement is increasingly tied to the rising figure of Reza Pahlavi – the son of a deposed and controversial monarch, and therefore, a representative of the ancien régime.

For decades, Reza Pahlavi was dismissed by Western academics and analysts, with some justification. They viewed the monarchy as an anachronism incompatible with Iran’s contemporary revolutionary ethos. Yet his growing popularity, despite lingering controversies, signals a profound disconnect between the claims of many pundits abroad and the sentiments of protestors in the streets. Pahlavi’s appeal, in part, also lies in his symbolic status as the total repudiation of the very dogma that birthed the Islamic Republic.

This dissonance stems from competing frameworks. Many analysts and academics in the West (usually left-leaning)—some of whom were staunch supporters of the Islamic Revolution themselves or children of revolutionaries—often interpret Iranian politics through ideology and the two extreme ends of the political spectrum. They have frequently argued that monarchist nostalgia is marginal, atavistic, ultranationalist, and sentimental. Some attribute more sinister motives, given the emergence of “Make Iran Great Again” (MIGA) supporters and their overt alignment with the Trump administration. The MIGA/MAGA association has fueled suspicions that monarchist sympathies are not merely nostalgic but embedded in shifting geopolitics, raising concerns about foreign interference in Iran from the United States and Israel, as demonstrated in the twelve-day war last June. Such political divides deepen the polarization within the Iranian diaspora and complicate efforts to build a unifying opposition narrative.

In addition, Iranian (and Iranian-American) leftist intellectuals and activists who profess to embrace progressive politics have sometimes skewed conversations about Iran in policy circles. They cling to statist narratives of the Islamic Revolution, even as they reject the outcomes of 1979, and often dismiss, in reductionist fashion, alternative viewpoints as Westernized, pro-monarchist, Islamophobic, or ultranationalist, and therefore illegitimate. Their outsized influence in liberal establishments and the media has dominated academic circles and framed policy assumptions, reinforcing a binary that privileges revolutionary ideals over pragmatic possibilities. These voices—many acting as political and academic gatekeepers to exclude dissenting thinkers—have long advocated for reform from within, but, at the same time, they have marginalized and silenced other progressive perspectives that demand a fundamental political overhaul in Iran, without reverting to monarchy. The persistence of their ideological, revolutionary filter highlights a profound disconnect between an entrenched and vocal faction of the diaspora in the West and the lived experiences of people inside Iran, whose survival and stability have been badly compromised in favor of dogma and political doctrine. Iranian demonstrators are acting on pragmatism and desperation—reaching for any alternative to a regime that has badly failed them. This gap between so-called expert narratives and popular demands has only added to the frustrations of people in Iran.

At the same time, other opposition figures, notably Nobel laureate Narges Mohammadi and several prominent activists, are proffering alternative leadership and calling for human rights and democratic reform. However, these voices have not galvanized the public in the same way, reflecting uncertainty about how to unify the movement and deliver tangible results. This uneven reception highlights the fragmented nature of Iran’s opposition and the challenges of consolidating leadership during a chilling moment of crisis.

Revolutions sometimes find leaders amidst crises. This may be one of those instances in Iran, given the complexity of its current political environment. Revolutions also incite foreign nations to action. It would be naïve to think that foreign governments are watching the Iranian protests with disinterest. While the regime’s supporters call out Israel and America for their meddling in Iran and the region, especially after Israel’s unprovoked attack on Iran during nuclear negotiations, their criticism of Russian and Chinese involvement remains subdued. Meanwhile, Beijing has responded cautiously to the protests, prioritizing its self-interests, whereas Russia has sharpened its tone in response to President Trump’s entreaties to the Iranian people.

***

The afterlives of revolutions — whether in France, Haiti, or Russia – were not unambiguously hopeful. The French Revolution brought the Reign of Terror along with citizens’ rights. Haiti gained freedom but suffered crushing isolation. Russia’s revolution supplanted one manifestation of imperial rule with another. Revolutions do not come with guarantees. However, they reinforce one crucial point: States cannot rule without the consent of the people.

Iran’s uprising will chart its unique course, and it may still confront violence and suppression. To whitewash this transformative moment, however, is to misconstrue the nature of cataclysmic political change. Revolutions—including the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom movement that laid the groundwork for today’s protests—emerge when a collective consciousness decides that the system in charge has forfeited its right to represent them.

For Iran, that moment, unmistakably, is now.

ATTACHMENT NINE – FROM RCA (REVOLUTIONARY COMMUNISTS OF AMERICA)

US PERSPECTIVES 2026: THE COMING AMERICAN REVOLUTION

Revolutionary Communists of America

https://communistusa.org/us-perspectives-2026-the-coming-american-revolution/

April 8, 2026

Here we present the Revolutionary Communists of America’s draft document, “US Perspectives 2026: The Coming American Revolution.” It was unanimously adopted by the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communists of America, to be debated at the upcoming Third Congress of the Party on May 30–31.

The aim of this process is to facilitate a Party-wide discussion on our political perspectives and organizational tasks, and to determine the direction of the Party over the next period. If you are a member of the RCA but you are not yet registered for the Congress, there is no time to wait. And, if you agree with these perspectives but you are not yet a member of our organization, join us!

Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

—Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

This year marks 250 years since the first American Revolution. Yet the American ruling class has no grounds for celebrating the occasion. The country they have ruled for a quarter millennium is teetering on a catastrophe.

As they survey the state of the nation from the bird’s-eye view of their skyscraper penthouses and corporate boardrooms, from their gilded halls of power, and their remote luxury islands, they see a picture of decline. As they look at this country’s position in the world, the mood of its population, perception of its institutions, quality of its political leadership, and its economic trajectory, they have no reason for optimism in the years ahead.

We are living through a historical pivot. On the global stage, US imperialism has lost the hegemonic grip it once held. In the space of 25 decades it has matured from colonial infancy, to unrivaled colossus, to the irreversible frailty of senile decay. Its strength has waned for decades, but in the 2020s, the gradual downward slope has started to tip into free fall. When future historians look back on the country’s curve of rise and decline, they’ll identify this decade as the tipping point.

Capitalism’s historical mission has come and gone. The next American revolution is approaching.

A glimpse into the future

In 2009, the left-liberal academic Mark Fisher wrote a book titled Capitalist Realism. For all the postmodern jargon in its pages, its premise was simple and pessimistic: it is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism. His book summarized the ideological blindness, empiricism, and despairing resignation that defined the outlook of the “left” of the early 21st century.

Partly, his views reflected the malaise of the time. The financial heart of world capitalism had just stopped beating, only to be revived with taxpayer dollars. Wall Street was bailed out, while millions of workers lost their jobs, homes, and life’s savings. Where was the righteous fury of the working class? Where were the pitchforks and riots? The year 2009 saw just five major work stoppages—the lowest strike figure in US history. From all of this, Fisher concluded that the class struggle was over. Apparently, the capitalists had won.

He was wrong.

At the time, the genuine Marxists in the US were a miniscule force. But we took the long view of the process and examined what was unfolding beneath the surface. We understood that the 2008 crisis would have a profound impact on the consciousness of the American working class, even if it wasn’t expressed immediately and overtly.  The illusions in the system would deteriorate, and the pent-up class anger would find an expression. Eventually, as we predicted in our 2008 US Perspectives document, there would be a “colossal and perhaps surprisingly rapid shift to the left.”

We were right.

The world has changed drastically since then. As we enter the second quarter of the 21st century, tens of millions of Americans are wide open to communist ideas. A 2025 Cato/YouGov survey is just the latest in a stream of recent polls announcing similar findings: 62% of young people in the US say they hold a “favorable view” of socialism, while 34% say the same of communism. Among residents of large US cities, 28% of people of all ages hold a favorable view of communism.

The shift in public opinion has also been expressed on the streets. Three mass movements have erupted across the US in the last six years. The 2020 George Floyd uprising brought 26 million people to their feet against racism and police terror. The Gaza solidarity movement against Israel’s genocidal slaughter mobilized over 2,100 protests across 500 cities, according to a Harvard study. And the spontaneous mass resistance against ICE and other masked federal agents in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Minneapolis culminated in the first de facto general strike in an American city in 80 years.

The political sea change of the past decade has coincided with the Donald Trump era. As an individual, he encapsulates the distorted contradictions of American politics and the dilemma facing the bourgeoisie. At one and the same time, he’s a billionaire specimen par excellence of the “Epstein class,” and an outsider to the ruling institutions he now dominates. He’s a New York City real-estate gangster, a reality-TV personality, vindictive narcissist, and political misfit in the Washington establishment. He cynically rode a wave of “populist” anger to the White House only to spend hundreds of millions remodeling it with gilded adornments and an opulent ballroom.

Trump is both a symptom of the decline of the US-led postwar liberal world order and its accelerant. He’s both a critic of the foreign policy pursued by US imperialism for decades and a reckless imperialist warmonger. He has fatally undermined the legitimacy of institutions like the news media and destroyed trust in the integrity of elections. He has gleefully dispensed with the decorum and propriety of high office, indulging in crude insults, trolling memes, and brazen lying.

In short, he’s not the man the ruling class wants in the control room. They see him as impulsive, unreliable, unpredictable, and irresponsible. But the ruling class has the leadership it deserves. The fact that he made it to the Oval Office—twice—speaks volumes about the abhorrent alternative offered by the Democratic Party. A vast swathe of the American electorate has decided that whatever else is on the ballot, the Washington status quo is the greater evil.

Decades of accumulated discontent make a return to the pre-2016 political landscape impossible. The chaotic turbulence of the Trump era is part of the price the capitalists must pay for 2008, and for the half-century of misery to which they have subjected significant layers of the working class since the end of the postwar boom. They have no way out, no way to lower tensions, no way to ease the discontent or recover the stability of the past.

Given the innumerable ways the world has changed over the past two decades, would Mark Fisher stand by his 2009 outlook today? We’ll never know. After a long battle with depression, he took his own life three days before Trump was inaugurated for his first term. He didn’t live to see the “brave new world” of the 2020s. He didn’t get to cheer as BLM spread from coast to coast in 2020. He never heard the names Aaron Bushnell, Luigi Mangione, or Renee Good. He thought the capitalists had gotten away scot-free with 2008, as with so many other crimes. He didn’t understand the forces working quietly beneath the surface of events, preparing the minds of millions to turn against this system. He didn’t meet the generation of workers who grew up in a post-2008 economy, or hear the way they talk about the billionaires. He didn’t see the path the US was traveling.

But Marxists are armed with the tools to understand the direction of history. And we can see what’s yet to come. Anyone who watched the barricades go up in the streets of Minneapolis in January 2026 will have caught a glimpse of the future. Anyone who watched the general strike procession, who marveled at the sight of tens of thousands of workers marching triumphantly through the city in -20°F weather to show their defiance of the federal government, got a preview of the scenes that will play out across the country in the years to come. Anyone who woke up to the news of Alex Pretti’s murder the very next morning, anyone whose heart sank while watching the footage of his execution, who felt the horror inside them turn into a throbbing rage, got a preview of the coming revolution, coursing through their veins.

This year marks a quarter millennium since Thomas Jefferson declared the unalienable right of the people to make a revolution. The same revolutionary document that brought our rulers to power proclaims the right to unseat them. It stated that “when a long train of abuses and usurpations” on the part of the government threatens to reduce the people under the weight of despotism, then “it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

It is fitting that this was also the year that the working class began to fully see the Epstein class for what it is. Some of the darkest suspicions of the most cynical conspiracy theorists as to the depravity of the elites turned out to be spot on. As if the anti-elite resentment and class hatred that has been accumulating for decades needed another source of fuel. A Financial Times columnist anxiously warned of the danger that “public moral outrage will further corrode faith in US democracy,” adding that a budding Lenin “might see the files as kindling awaiting a revolutionary spark … How can you throw the bums out when they span the system?” The natural answer to his rhetorical question is clear: then you must overthrow the whole system.

A historically exhausted mode of production

The United States is on an inexorable path toward revolution. This is not due to Donald Trump’s provocations or the actions or decisions of any particular politician or billionaire. It won’t be avoided by electing a more competent or skillful bourgeois administration. Every social system in history has its limitations and constraints. Every mode of production has a rise and fall, ultimately determined by its ability to develop the productive forces. It is in this sense that the capitalist mode of production has run its course, and long ago exhausted its potential to move humanity forward. At the deepest level, this is the root cause of the pervasive sense of social decline that  expresses itself in countless metrics, from economic data measuring our falling living standards, to the subtler forms of social and national disintegration expressed in the crises of mental health and deaths of despair.

When the bourgeois revolutions toppled the feudal order and unleashed the productive forces that had been constrained under its domination, their revolutionary historical role was twofold. On the one hand, they created national markets corresponding to nation-states with borders, central governments, and national infrastructure for developing industrial economies. On the other hand, their laws enshrined private ownership of the means of production—profit-driven market competition that induced capitalists to continually invest a portion of their capital into improving productive technique through scientific research and technological innovation.

Marx vividly expressed this astonishing transformation in The Communist Manifesto:

The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalization of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground—what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labor?

However, these once-progressive features—the nation-state and private ownership of the means of production—have since turned into their opposite. From great advantages, they have become the greatest obstacles to further progress. The task of the coming revolution is to remove these obstacles and bring humanity’s productive  potential to the next level.

Competition between nations and blocs of nations over labor, resources, markets, territories, trade routes, supply chains, and finance capital will be replaced by global coordination and rationalization of the key economic levers of every nation. These will be treated as the collective patrimony of the workers of the world whose labor built this mighty productive capacity to begin with. Democratic planning and workers’ management in every industry will be combined with the highest achievements of technology and the combined scientific research of the entire planet. Virtually overnight, this will unleash material abundance and a breathtaking improvement in living conditions. This is the true power of the rousing finale of the Manifesto: “Workers of the world, unite!”

A materialist view of today’s tectonic shifts

These are the conclusions that flow from historical materialism—the only scientific approach humanity has yet produced for understanding the real movement of history. The materialist method shines a light on the historical juncture we’re passing through with dizzying speed in the 21st century. Processes that were unfolding gradually for decades are now coming out into the open.

The most fundamental tectonic shift in the global balance of power is the relative decline of US imperialism and the rise of Russia, and above all, China as new superpowers. The magnitude of this change is difficult to overstate. Ever since World War II, US imperialism’s domination of the world market—and its supremacy in  industry, finance, trade, research, engineering, manufacturing, energy, international diplomacy, and military strength—has been the linchpin of world relations. After the collapse of the USSR, the American ruling class enjoyed a brief period of unprecedented dominance—and the corrupting hubris that inevitably accompanies such power.

What is unfolding before our eyes is not merely the unraveling of the post-Cold War unipolarity of the last 30 years, or even the post-WWII world order of the last 80 years. It is bigger than that.

For four centuries, the world market developed under the domination of Western European powers—the Spanish, Dutch, and British Empires—before being overtaken by their American offshoot. Now the clout of Western Europe is in free fall, and the US is not far behind on the slippery slope.

China has overtaken the US in many key industrial, trade, research, engineering, manufacturing, and energy sectors. The world’s four largest banks are Chinese. It controls global supply chains and critical minerals with vital military and commercial applications. And it is vigorously campaigning to unseat America in terms of international diplomacy and multilateral institutions, not to mention the US dollar’s reserve-currency status. The China-led BRICS bloc is emerging as a potential alternative to the “collective West.” Given its own internal contradictions, however, the extent to which it will succeed remains to be seen.

Vietnam, India overtaking China?

A century ago, Trotsky described the changing balance of power between declining British imperialism and rising American imperialism:

During the war the gigantic economic domination of the United States had demonstrated itself wholly and completely. The United States’ emergence from overseas provincialism at once shifted Britain into a secondary position … the fundamental antagonism in the world is that between Britain and America, and all the other antagonisms which seem more acute and more immediately threatening at a given moment can be understood and assessed only on the basis of this conflict of Britain with America.

Though historical analogies have their limits, these words aptly describe the fundamental antagonism in world relations today. The two imperialist world wars of the last century laid bare the new relationship of global power that had been gradually taking shape. Over the last four years, the wars in Ukraine and now Iran have served a similar function. The entire planet can now see that US military might—and by extension, that of NATO—is no longer superior to its rivals. The difference between projecting overwhelming power and applying it worldwide has been exposed.

Under Biden, US imperialism provoked the Ukraine proxy war against Russia in a desperate gamble. Their aim was to exhaust Russia militarily, strangle it economically through sanctions, and if possible, achieve regime change in Moscow. The installation of a pro-Washington regime in Moscow would facilitate their efforts to do the same against China. But the wager backfired and achieved the opposite result, draining Western equipment and munitions, exposing NATO’s weakness, and contributing to “regime change” in Washington in the form of Trump 2.0.

After blaming his predecessor for starting a war that “never would have happened” on his watch, Trump doubled down on Biden’s disastrous mistake. Trump’s Iran War is merely Act II of the same worldwide drama. The former casino magnate spun the roulette wheel, hoping to secure Venezuela-style regime change in Tehran. His aim was to quickly and painlessly remove a key piece from the chess board. But his gamble backfired badly and could lead to the ejection of US bases from the Middle East altogether. Far from counteracting the decline of US imperialism, these wars of choice have only sped up the process.

What is the underlying reason for this dramatic shift? The Western imperialists treat China’s rise like something that snuck up on them due to tactical errors by US foreign policy. “We let them get too powerful … We shouldn’t have moved our manufacturing base overseas … We shouldn’t have let China join the World Trade Organization.” These impotent laments express the arrogance of a decaying empire, but they explain nothing. The waning position of US imperialism—along with the other advanced economies of the “Western world” roughly coinciding with the OECD countries—is ultimately a result of the impasse of global capitalism.

American finance capital is now far more concentrated than anything Lenin described in his masterpiece, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. With every major industry dominated by colossal monopolies, the market competition that funneled investment toward innovation at an earlier stage of the system has given way to parasitic stock buybacks and shareholder payouts. Since 1980, US corporate spending on factories, property, and equipment has declined by nearly 80% as a share of total revenue. Around 60% of profits now go straight to shareholder payouts, while corporate cash stockpiles approach $8 trillion.

Overproduction looms in every sector of the economy. Why lay out huge sums of capital to build factories and hire more labor when most industries already have more capacity than they can profitably utilize? In the 1960s, US capacity utilization stood at 87%; today, it is 76%.

During the postwar decades, when the world market was rapidly expanding, the capitalists could generally assume that there would be more effective demand tomorrow than there is today. This assumption no longer holds true. For several decades, GDP growth rates in all Western economies have slowed to a crawl. From annual growth of over 5% in the 1960s, the OECD average has plunged to 1.7% in the 2020s. As a result, the smartest investment from a capitalist perspective is not to innovate, expand production, and hire more staff, but to gamble on the stock market. It is this feverish speculation that has inflated the AI bubble to dizzying heights.

For the West, globalization has gone into reverse. The growth rates of the postwar boom will not be restored within the limits of capitalism. This trend cannot be reversed any more than a decrepit old man can become young again.

If the problems plaguing Western capitalist economies boil down to the basic exhaustion of capitalism—the breakdown of the market’s ability to incentivize productive investment—then what explains the apparent dynamism of the core BRICS countries? After all, China and Russia are both capitalist countries, as are Iran, India, and Brazil.

It’s no accident that the two rising superpowers spent a large part of the last century as workers’ states with centrally planned economies. Despite the bureaucratic deformations and the lack of workers’ democracy and control, the advances in the Soviet Union and China nevertheless proved the superiority of economic planning over the anarchy of the market, surpassing the rate of industrialization of any capitalist country. And although both countries underwent a capitalist counterrevolution towards the end of the 20th century—a catastrophic collapse in Russia, a bureaucratically managed transition in China—they inherited certain advantages from the previous system.

Both countries exhibit a significant degree of state intervention and public ownership of certain key sectors, and especially in China’s case, even a degree of economic planning. In a limited sense, this has allowed significant long-term investment in strategic industries to an extent that Western capitalist markets have failed to achieve. On top of this, US-led sanctions designed to isolate and weaken these countries have had the opposite effect, pushing them together into a wide-ranging series of strategic agreements for collaboration on multiple fronts.

In short, the relative dynamism of the large powers within the BRICS is a result of historical conditions that have allowed them to partially and temporarily mitigate the two fundamental barriers holding back world capitalism: private property of the means of production and the nation-state.

Overproduction: the basic capitalist contradiction

By no means does this indicate that China and Russia have overcome the underlying contradictions of capitalism, or that they will make endless strides forward in all the fields in which they have overtaken the West. Nor does it mean that China will replace the US as the world’s hegemon and become the “world policeman” of the 21st century.

For one, the BRICS are not a single nation-state, but a trading bloc that has banded together in response to US bullying. Aside from the advantage it provides in the face of an erratic and aggressive declining Western world order, there is no inherent mutual interest binding these capitalist countries into a permanent union. Each BRICS member still has its own ruling class, national industries and markets, regional ambitions, and particular spheres of influence. They also have their own working classes to pacify. In the game of capitalism, not everyone can be a winner. At a certain point, these fault lines will inevitably assert themselves, just as the European Union is now at risk of breaking apart and pulling in different directions.

Furthermore, the world market has finite limits. The restoration of capitalism in the former planned economies brought hundreds of millions of consumers and low-wage workers into the global market. This expansion of the world economy provided a temporary respite that has run its course. Today, the limits of the world market have been truly maxed out—and there are no more “leases on life” on the horizon, i.e., no large populations holding out on the margins of the world market. Capital has finally nestled everywhere, saturating the entire planet to an unparalleled degree. With nowhere else to turn, the world market is cannibalizing itself as the capitalists seek to export crisis and social unrest to their rivals.

China’s success provides history’s most vivid example of capitalism’s fundamental contradiction: overproduction. The purchasing power of the world market is now too narrow to absorb the full volume of products that China is capable of producing. China exported a record $3.7 trillion worth of goods last year—a figure roughly equivalent to the GDP of the entire world in 1972. And the only way to get those commodities into consumers’ hands is by expanding debt, which merely postpones the day of reckoning.

A third of the world’s physical products are now made in China. The output of some Chinese industrial regions now satisfies global demand for a variety of goods. For example, China produces over half the world’s steel, 70% of lithium-ion batteries, 90% of solar panels, and 90% of global rare-earth refining. Chinese capitalists can sell these and other commodities more cheaply than their competitors. This risks ruining the manufacturing base of every country that trades with China.

As Marx and Engels explained, “The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which [the bourgeoisie] batters down all Chinese walls.” Trump’s tariff war is nothing but the US ruling class’s frenzied drive to defend and revive their uncompetitive national industries by trying to rebuild a battered Chinese wall of their own. But it’s too little, too late.

This highlights the absurd predicament at the heart of the global economy. In effect, Chinese capitalism has become too advanced for the limits of the world market. Its manufacturing sector is “too strong,” “too efficient,” “too sophisticated.” Its industrial infrastructure and global supply chains are “too integrated and precise.” These extraordinary advances in the productive forces are colliding with the narrow limits of capitalist profit-making. What happens when, inevitably, the glut of commodities no longer finds a market? Sooner or later, as Marx and Engels pointed out, recurring crises of overproduction are unavoidable.

In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity—the epidemic of overproduction. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilization, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce.

At humanity’s fingertips is an immense technical capacity that could be harnessed to feed, house, and educate billions, shorten working hours, eradicate diseases, and produce the needs of life in abundance. Under capitalism, all of this progress is instead expressed in a vicious global trade war, and, increasingly, open wars.

Trump is a slave of history

“What is Trump trying to do?” “What does he want?” “What’s his plan?” “Does America First mean America everywhere?” “Is he retrenching to the Western Hemisphere? Or starting a new forever war in the Middle East?”

Without a doubt, the world has struggled to make sense of Trump’s policies. This is partly a deliberate attempt on his part to keep the public—including foreign rivals—guessing what he’ll do next. Mostly though, it’s because he’s making it up as he goes, rather than following a coherent strategy based on any kind of consistent ideological outlook. Trump shows all the zigzagging hallmarks of an eclectic, impressionistic, and erratic decision-maker. He is surrounded by “yes” men and women, and is rarely challenged by mediocrities like Vance, Gabbard, Hegseth, Bessent, and Miller. They stumble from one risky misadventure to another, with mixed messages blasting from the White House, and U-turns on one issue after another.

In the early days of his second term, amid the flurry of executive orders, the outrageous press conferences in the Oval Office, and the efforts to “flood the zone” with daily memos and directives, a significant layer of his base took this “shock and awe” as a sign of energetic action and real change. They were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, and many assumed that he was operating on the basis of a mysterious and sophisticated “4D chess” strategy.

A year later, only a rump of the most diehard MAGA loyalists still believe this. His every move has blown up in his face. The poorly choreographed circus of gags and gimmicks seen at February’s State of the Union can’t alter the underlying truth. Eventually, reality catches up with the “narrative.”

His historic “Liberation Day” tariffs only caused supply-chain chaos and paralyzing uncertainty for US manufacturers—a far cry from the industrial renaissance he promised. US importers and consumers have paid 96% of the tariffs, and 70% of Americans, including 64% of Republicans, say the tariffs have made them pay more for their purchases.

For all his bluster in the tariff showdown with China, Trump blinked first. It was revealed that China was positioned to forgo access to the US consumer market for longer than the US was prepared to forgo Chinese imports and industrial components. Trump justified his retreat by pointing out that the bond market got “a little yippy.” In other words, his game of chicken nearly crashed the US dollar when holders of Treasury bonds deemed his government to be a risky lender and began pulling their money out. For the first time in history, all three credit rating agencies downgraded America’s credit score.

Although the Supreme Court found his tirade of tariffs to be unlawful, he is trying to continue them via different avenues. Stymied on the trade-war front, Trump turned to domestic police terror. He calculated that deploying masked federal agents to conduct high-profile immigration raids in some of the country’s largest cities would shift attention away from the “worst consumer confidence since 2009” headlines. For a while, it did. But when “Border Patrol Commander At Large” Gregory Bovino’s cross-country tour of brutality and teargas went too far and provoked a furious class-war response in Minneapolis, Trump had to back down from that project, too.

Many on the left equate Trumpism to fascism. In reality, this is merely a faithful expression of bourgeois democracy which has always meant the dictatorship of the capitalist class over the exploited majority, ultimately enforced through state repression and violence. Whatever his personal inclinations may be, Trump is not in a position to construct a fascist regime. The movement in Minnesota exposed the state’s weakness, showing that the balance of forces in the US overwhelmingly favors the working class. Trump is an expert at distracting and  diverting attention, and prefers to double down and go on the offensive whenever possible—but there are clear limits to how far he can go.

Bovino and Kristi Noem were removed, ICE’s thugs were drawn down, and operations scaled back. By March 2026, the White House was advising Congressional Republicans to stop talking about “mass deportations” in the runup to the midterms. Indiscriminate brutality and the murder of civilians wasn’t polling well.

Steve Bannon, the MAGA ideologue and disgraced Epstein confidant, attributed Trump’s 2024 victory to three pillars: “Stop the forever wars, seal the border and deport the illegal aliens, and redo the commercial relationships in the world around trade deals.”

To this, we could add the number one issue of the last few years: the cost of living crisis. Exit polls on election day showed that seven-in-ten voters felt “dissatisfied or angry” about the direction of the country. The same number rated the condition of the economy as “poor,” while 75% reported that inflation had caused hardship for their families. In the end, nearly 80% of voters who said the economy was their top concern voted for Trump.

In other words, Trump has betrayed every promise he made to his voters. On the campaign trail, he made bombastic speeches about a new “golden age” that would usher in “the best jobs, the biggest paychecks, and the brightest economic future the world has ever seen.” There is a stark contrast between the expectations he whipped up and the reality of his second term.

In 2025, there was a net loss of 113,000 manufacturing jobs. Energy bills increased 13%, despite Trump’s pledges to slash electricity bills in half. In January 2026, a poll by Washington Post, ABC News, and Ipsos revealed that six in ten respondents disapproved of Trump’s handling of the economy, while 46% said the cost of living was the worst they can ever remember. This view was held by 37% of Trump voters. And this was before the war on Iran and the global spike in fuel prices.

In our 2008 US Perspectives document, drafted before Obama had even won the Democratic primaries, we wrote the following:

The next President of the United States of America will not get to pick and choose his or her agenda. The agenda will be set by the crisis facing the capitalist system both at home and abroad. Bush ran on an “America First” domestic agenda, but was forced by events to become the most aggressive imperialist in US history. The next occupant of the White House will inherit an increasingly unstable world and an economic downturn of unknown depth or duration … [As] the “American Dream” is transformed into an “American Nightmare,” more and more people will begin to question the very system that leads to such instability.

This was true about the Bush and Obama years, and it applies even more to Trump. George W. Bush was forced to abandon his own “America First” domestic agenda in favor of launching forever wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with an $8 trillion price tag. On the campaign trail, Obama opposed these extended quagmires, then bought into them once in office, surging tens of thousands of troops into both countries. As Obama was taking office, US personnel in Iraq moved into a new embassy the size of the Vatican City—the largest in the world. Despite declaring a withdrawal from Iraq in 2011, thousands of troops remain there to this day.

Likewise, Trump criticized Biden’s war in Ukraine, and cast the Democrats as the party of warmongers and neocons, only to follow in their footsteps. “My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker,” he declared in his victory speech. Opposition to the disastrous and costly forever wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had been a key component of Trump’s anti-establishment appeal. Now it’s one more MAGA faultline where he’s bleeding support.

The desires, plans, and preferences of individual presidents are no match for the objective requirements of the capitalist system they defend. Amid the luxuries of wealth and high office, Trump is tossed to and fro by historical forces outside his control. “A king is the slave of history,” Tolstoy wrote in War and Peace. The same is true of American presidents.

Was Trump just another neocon all along?

When it comes to mixed messages from the Trump White House, his “America First” foreign policy has been the most contradictory. In the “alternative media” circles of geopolitical commentators who champion “multipolarity”—many of them disillusioned former military, intelligence, and diplomatic officials—Trump’s victory was initially greeted with naive optimism. They hoped he would take on the neocon establishment and pursue “peaceful coexistence.”

To some extent, their misreading of Trump’s plans was understandable. After all, his administration initially appeared to signal a change of course from Biden’s policy. His criticism of the Ukraine War and NATO seemed to indicate his intention to abandon the postwar alliance with Western Europe—which he more or less did—and to end the Ukraine fiasco by conceding to Russia its territorial gains—which he didn’t.

Marco Rubio’s interview with Megyn Kelly in January 2025 appeared to frankly acknowledge the end of America’s unipolar dominance, and the need for the US to stop policing the world. JD Vance’s speech at the Munich security conference the following month echoed the same themes and even cast Europe as a greater liability than BRICS: “The threat I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s the threat from within.”

Around the same time, Washington, DC was in the throes of an internal purge, with Elon Musk’s “DOGE kids” conducting audits and laying off federal workers. Entire agencies like USAID were stripped down or shuttered altogether. It seemed as though Trump, having learned his lesson from being hemmed in by the entrenched bureaucracy of the federal government during his first turn, was determined to remake it in his own image. Long gone were figures like Iran-hawk John Bolton, who Trump fired in 2018 and later criticized: “I think he’s incompetent, all he wants to do is go to war with everybody.”

In December, 2025, the White House released its National Security Strategy (NSS) document, further emphasizing the intention to retrench to the Americas. With remarkably explicit language, it laid out the “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine: the US would assert control of “our Hemisphere” and would not tolerate  Russian or Chinese footholds of any kind.

After years of neglect, the United States will reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American  preeminence in the Western Hemisphere … We will deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere.

A month after its release, as if to prove his intention by turning words into deeds, Trump attacked Venezuela. He mobilized 20% of the US Navy in the largest buildup of military force in the region since 1989 to kidnap two people: Nicolas Maduro and his wife. Trump was pleased with the quick “decapitation” operation, which was facilitated by insiders from the Venezuelan state apparatus.

The brazen abduction of the head of state of a sovereign nation was the culmination of months spent bombing unidentified civilians in speedboats. The Pentagon ordered “double tap” strikes to kill all survivors, though none of them had been charged with a crime. War on drugs! In addition to these war crimes, the US seized oil tankers outright in acts that can only be described as piracy. When the operation was complete, Trump declared his intention to “run the country,” effectively turning Venezuela into a US colony. Drunk on his victory and brimming with hubris, Trump wasted no time in threatening Cuba, Colombia, and Mexico with a similar fate, and proceeded to order a ruthless blockade to strangle Cuba.

All of this aligns with the plans laid out in the National Security Strategy, showing the bloody methods by which US imperialism intends to assert control over “its” hemisphere. Far from signaling a more peaceful order, multipolarity means increased “law of the jungle” brutality and instability in the scramble to carve up the “neighborhoods” of the world.

Then came Iran. If Trump’s strategy was to refocus on the Western Hemisphere, what explains his unprovoked war of imperialist aggression on the opposite side of the globe? He intervened in the Twelve-Day War and declared a hasty victory in June 2025, claiming to have “totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear capabilities. His justifications for launching a new war against Iran just months later have been notoriously contradictory.

Some of MAGA’s erstwhile champions, including Marjorie Taylor Greene, Tucker Carlson, and Megyn Kelly, have broken with the president on this and other issues, describing the war as a betrayal of “America First” principles. To one degree or another, they place the blame on Israel’s influence—in the person of Netanyahu or through the AIPAC lobby—for leading US policy astray. However, this inverts the relationship between US and Israel, confusing the attack dog for its master. The US’s nominal GDP is 50 times greater than Israel’s, which depends heavily on US subsidies for its survival. Israel would not last a month without this material support—totaling $3.8 billion annually. Minus this backing, Israel would cease to exist as a viable state.

To be sure, the reactionary Israeli regime has its own priorities. Given its size, population, industrial base, and history, Iran is a threat to Israel’s bid for territorial expansion and regional dominance. As an individual, Netanyahu has his own reasons for escalating the war, even if these make life more complicated for the US. If the war ends too soon, he faces removal from office, prosecution, and imprisonment. The Israeli political,  intelligence, and lobbying apparatus has undoubtedly campaigned feverishly for this war—as have the home-grown Zionist neocons within the US state apparatus itself.

The fact that so many people assume the tail is wagging the dog reflects US imperialism’s decline and inability to establish its preferred order in the region. History shows that when a great power weakens, its vassals gain greater room to maneuver.

The bigger problem with calling this primarily Israel’s war is that it lets Trump and US imperialism as a whole off the hook, as if they were well-intentioned victims duped by a malicious external actor. Though they may disagree on this or that detail, they are in lockstep on the fundamentals. Since the end of World War II, US imperialism has been the world’s “greatest sponsor of terror,” with Israel as its regional extension. As Joe Biden famously said, “If there were not an Israel, we’d have to invent one.” And they did, as the first order of business of the United Nations formed by the US after WWII. When the Iranian Revolution deposed the US-puppet regime of the Shah, it left US imperialism with one pillar to rest on. Israel has been its “unsinkable aircraft carrier” in the region ever since.

Despite his cynical “peace candidate” rhetoric, Trump was never a principled opponent of the neocon predilection for foreign interventions. To the limited degree that there’s a consistent thread in Trump’s thinking, a recurring theme in his statements going back to the 1980s was the complaint that America was “a sucker” being taken advantage of by its thankless allies, who should be made to pay up for military defense and access to the US market. He accused the leaders of US imperialism of being poor negotiators. His solution? Turn America’s “allies” into subordinate vassal states, starting with Europe. Relegate them to the position of a pain sponge for absorbing military costs, debt, and unemployment, and weaponize tariffs as to bully the world market into submission.

Trump is an “economic nationalist,” who combines anti-immigrant baiting at home with American chauvinism and protectionism abroad. He was never truly an isolationist looking to relinquish US imperialism’s grip on the world. He simply thought he had better ideas about how to hold onto unipolarity, which are now being put to the test.

That being said, Trump has few ideas of his own and a low political level, even for an American head of state. He differs from other elements of the US capitalist class in method and style, but not in terms of his objectives. He told war-weary voters what they wanted to hear when “Genocide Joe” was associated with Ukraine and the bloodbath in Gaza. But as the flag-draped coffins pile up, Trump—congenitally incapable of taking responsibility or accepting blame for anything—merely doubles down on his crude imperialist bluster.

IMPERIALIST CALCULATIONS

His impossible challenge is to slow down US imperialism’s decline on the world stage while preparing for a decisive showdown against China. The playbook for this strategy comes not from his “genius” mind but from earlier generations of imperialist strategists. This includes the ideas of Halford Mackinder, George Kennan, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Henry Kissinger, Paul Wolfowitz, and a host of other architects of the dark arts of imperialist domination.

Taken together, their views have coalesced into a Washingtonian orthodoxy for keeping US imperialism dominant: keep the Eurasian landmass from uniting; prevent a hostile coalition from rising to challenge the US; and keep a grip on the Middle East as a strategic energy and trade corridor and to weaken Russia and China. This is one reason the US-Israeli relationship has been treated as untouchable: letting go of it would mean ceding a key region to the rival bloc, which has the decided advantage of operating on its own continent.

The influence of these strategists is transmitted through intelligence agencies and think tanks like the Council on Foreign Relations, the Brookings Institution, RAND corporation, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Anyone with the time to comb through decades of thick policy papers published by these outfits will find that every modern war—including the ongoing wars in Ukraine and Iran—was first theorized and recommended in these behind-the-scenes blueprints.

Regardless of the intentions or campaign promises of this or that Democratic or Republican president, the real thread of continuity from one administration to the next is determined by the “Great Game” of the 21st century. Had Kamala Harris won the 2024 election, it is very likely that the same war would be playing out in more or less the same way. After all, Trump’s bellicose ravings against Iran are usually the only thing to receive bipartisan ovations from Congress.

To be sure, Netanyahu’s influence may have played a role in the timing of the war. Some within US and Israeli intelligence sources believed that Iran had been critically weakened by the Twelve-Day War, that the recent uprisings had put the regime on the back foot, and that 80% of the Iranian population would support a US-backed regime change effort. All that was needed to topple it was a little push. The mainstream media dutifully repeated all of this propaganda.

Trump appears to have been convinced that the odds were the best he’d ever get, and that it was now or never. Aided by heavy state investment and planning, America’s rivals are ramping up their military-industrial might at a pace the US’s profit-driven complex cannot match. The clock is ticking, and time is not on the side of US imperialism.

The recent wars have exposed the sorry state of US and NATO arms manufacturing, compared to the unanticipated industrial might of Russia and China. In particular, US air defense systems such as Patriot missiles and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptor stockpiles have been rapidly depleted, while Russia and Iran have piled up deep arsenals.

How did the world’s largest arms spender end up with such a deficient military industrial base? This, again, is explained by the senile nature of the capitalist market. In an effort to wring maximum short-term profits from a lucrative sector, they eroded it and squeezed its workforce, rather than investing in it for the long-term. In a word, Wall Street looted the Pentagon—and a steady stream of former-general lobbyists greased the wheels. Lockheed Martin, which produces THAAD missiles, once offered high salaries and benefits to its workers. Not anymore. In 2006 pensions were ended for new hires, who make $15 an hour. Employee turnover was 13% in 2023, compared to the national average of 3.8%. Meanwhile, Lockheed gave $6.8 billion to their shareholders in stock dividends in 2024—the same year the company had a backlog of unfulfilled contracts amounting to $176 billion. As Lenin explained in Imperialism, parasitism is characteristic of decaying monopoly capitalism.

ENERGY DOMINANCE AND “DE-DOLLARIZATION”

The struggle for control of the global energy market is another theater of the conflict. It’s no coincidence that three recent targets of US aggression have been BRICS-aligned petrostates—Russia, Venezuela, and Iran—which provided China with a third of its oil. US imperialism’s longstanding desire for regime change in Tehran is not just about toppling a hostile actor that obstructs US-Israeli regional hegemony in the Middle East. It’s also about removing a threat to US dominance over the global oil market, while cutting off China’s access. This is the world’s second largest oil-producing region, accounting for 29% of global output.

But the opportunity to inflict pain on China by cutting off this resource would not last long: the country is fast-tracking its energy self-sufficiency. As part of its recently completed 14th Five-Year Plan ending in 2025, China invested more in renewable energy than the rest of the world combined, reaching 85% energy independence. Here again, the “now or never” factor may have motivated Trump to act. Another year or two of postponement would only increase China’s leverage.

The fate of the petrodollar is also at stake in the fight for global energy dominance. After the collapse of the gold standard in 1971, and with the onset of the oil crisis in 1973, the US needed a new mechanism to keep the dollar at the heart of world trade. This was achieved when Nixon negotiated for Saudi Arabia—and by extension, the rest of the oil producers in the region—to sell oil exclusively in US dollars. This forced every country that needed to buy oil to stockpile large reserves of US dollars. It also incentivized the Gulf states to invest the dollars they earned from the sale of oil in US treasuries and other major American assets like infrastructure.

The growth of alternative financing mechanisms and trade among BRICS nations in currencies like the Chinese renminbi threatens to accelerate the trend of “de-dollarization.” Xi Jinping has made no secret of his desire for the renminbi to become a global reserve currency capable of challenging dollar dominance. While this will not be easily achieved, the dollar’s grip on global trade is not what it once was. Iran’s decision to allow oil through the Strait of Hormuz, as long as it is sold in yuan, is significant. On March 22, the Speaker of the Iranian Parliament announced that entities that invest in US treasury bonds will be considered legitimate military targets.

US national debt has now surpassed $39 trillion, and is growing by about $1 trillion every 100 days. This has only been exacerbated by the expensive military adventure in Iran. The only reason they had been able to get away with this level of borrowing for so long is precisely because, as the world’s undisputed imperialist power, US currency was considered a safe haven for global finance. But the dollar is no longer “as good as gold.” At the start of 2026, the world’s central banks held more gold than US Treasuries in their reserves for the first time in 30 years. In the year 2000, the US dollar represented 70% of global foreign currency reserves; it’s now down to 56%.

As a result, interest on the debt has tripled since 2020. The US government spends more money on debt repayment than on healthcare, education, or even the military. A further undermining of US bonds would shoot up interest rates, making it harder to continue borrowing in order to pay off already existing debt. It’s a vicious spiral that could lead to a full-blown financial crisis or even a default—unless the government embarks on massive  austerity. In other words, the ruling class faces no choice but to make workers pay in the form of deep cuts to healthcare, social security, education, and beyond.

WHERE IS MAGA GOING?

2016 sounded the death knell of the kind of conservatism that had dominated the GOP for decades. Trump’s MAGA takeover of the Republican Party effectively led to the extinction of the pre-2016 brand of conservatism—or its conversion into a current within the Democratic Party.

Before 2016, the now-defunct Weekly Standard was an important mouthpiece of American conservatism. It championed free market capitalism, “traditional values,” and the worldwide projection of aggressive military power through foreign invasions. Founded by neocon stalwart Bill Kristol, it took pride in calling itself the “in-flight” magazine of Airforce One under George W. Bush. After running for two decades, the magazine folded the year Trump won. Kristol ended up spearheading the “Never Trump” current in the GOP, which failed to gain momentum. He endorsed Biden in 2020 and Harris in 2024. Other self-avowed “Never Trumpers” like JD Vance and Lindsey Graham went the other direction; they kissed the ring at Mar-a-Lago and became “born again” Trumpers.

Ten years since Trump’s first term, MAGA’s momentum is failing. As we predicted in the November 2024 issue of The Communist:

Trump has overpromised, and given the crisis of the system, he will be forced to underdeliver. In fact, if  implemented, many of his proposals—such as mass deportations and sky-high tariffs—will only exacerbate the problems, and millions may end up with buyer’s remorse.

This is exactly what has played out. His tariffs were a flop and he has failed to tame inflation or boost the economy. His “Big Beautiful Bill” was a tax cut for billionaires and an increase in military spending, raising the federal debt even further. His terror campaign against immigrant workers provoked a historic backlash, depleted the workforce and led to net population decline—with zero benefits for native-born workers, who have watched unemployment tick upwards. Even his release of the Epstein files backfired. He was forced to make them public after reneging on his campaign promise, and his DOJ utterly botched the release, blatantly covering up for alleged perpetrators and revealing the names of victims. To this day, the coverup continues, with half the files still unpublished.

Does this mean we’re watching the death throes of MAGA? It seems likely that the movement won’t survive his second term as a viable electoral force. What gave Trumpism the appearance of invincibility wasn’t the political cunning of its figure head. It was the dogged loyalty of his base. As long as the faithful remained committed to Trump, trusted him, and gave him the benefit of the doubt, they would turn out reliably to vote for him and the candidates he endorsed. For a few electoral cycles, Trump held supreme leverage over his party. But everything has its limits. If his base becomes demoralized, if they feel betrayed, if they decide their hopes were misplaced, then this unholy cross-class alliance breaks down.

Polls indicate that a hardened core of MAGA “lifers” are sticking by their leader no matter what. Many of these voters may truly align themselves with his actions. But for the tens of millions of working-class people who voted for him merely because they hoped their living conditions would become more bearable, every major event since the 2024 election has served to erode their illusions.

According to a January 2026 poll by the Pew Research Center: “Only about a quarter of Americans today (27%) say they support all or most of Trump’s policies and plans, down from 35% when he returned to office last year. That change has come entirely among Republicans.” Trump voters under 30 have been the fastest group to break away. In the first eight months of Trump 2.0, his approval rating among this group suffered a 54-point net negative swing, according to a July 2025 CBS poll.

Alongside this process are indications that the “culture war” politics of recent years is losing steam on both sides of the bourgeois aisle. When Charlie Kirk was assassinated, the White House jumped at the chance to rally the base around a MAGA martyr. They packed a football stadium with 100,000 people for a prime-time spectacle that was part funeral, part Evangelical megachurch service, part MAGA rally, complete with fireworks. That same week, Vice President JD Vance made the bizarre decision to personally host an episode of Charlie Kirk’s podcast, where he alternated between nostalgic reminiscences and ominous vows of retribution against the violent menace of the “far left.”

It seemed all but assured that Kirk’s assassination would lead to a reactionary backlash, inflaming the culture war and cutting across the healthy fracturing of MAGA’s cross-class coalition. However, Kirk’s approval rating actually dropped posthumously as a curious public looked up his YouTube channel and was repulsed by his vile rants. Kirk was promptly forgotten. This goes to show how shallow the culture war divisions really run, compared to the deep-rooted class interests that ultimately underpin society. The average Trump voter doesn’t want blatant race-baiting or dehumanizing diatribes against trans people—most of them just want stable jobs, affordable housing, and for inflation to go down.

As part of the liberal media’s “soul-searching” in the wake of the Democrats’ punishing 2024 defeat, numerous columns acknowledged the waning appeal of identity politics. One such New York Times article, titled “Why We Got It So Wrong,” puzzled over how an overtly racist, sexist, xenophobic candidate managed not only to win the popular vote against Kamala Harris, but also a majority among white women and Latino men, and to gain significantly among Black voters as well, as compared to 2020. By contrast, Harris outperformed her billionaire opponent among voters who earn more than $100,000 per year.

While the right triumphantly declared that “woke is broke,” liberals and soft lefts lamented the apparent rightward shift of the country. We explained at the time that this was a mirage. Americans hadn’t become fundamentally more conservative, racist, or anti-immigrant—they were mostly just fed up with their falling living standards and an establishment that didn’t even acknowledge their discontent. A mass workers’ party providing a clear class explanation would cut across this distorted expression of legitimate anger. In its absence, Trumpism became the only force that tapped into the mood, manipulating it by combining reactionary scapegoating with promises of economic revival.

The liberal media had spent the Biden years talking about how great the economy was doing, and decrying gloomy public sentiment as an irrational “vibecession.” Harris talked up the wonders of Bidenomics, and when asked what she’d do differently if she were elected, blandly replied: “nothing comes to mind.” It doesn’t take a raging right-winger to cast an angry vote against politicians like this! For millions of people struggling to make ends meet, the idea that “America is already great!” was a spit in the face.

A Wall Street Journal article titled, “The New Driving Force of Identity Politics Is Class, Not Race,” got closer to the truth with the following observation:

New fault lines are emerging in American society based more on class than race. The shift helped deliver the White House to Donald Trump and could continue to alter the political landscape if more Americans identify themselves less in the context of race and gender and more as belonging to a certain economic class.

As if to complete the above idea, The New York Times correctly added a word of warning:

Mr. Trump’s victory amounts to a public vote of no confidence in the leaders and institutions that have shaped American life since the end of the Cold War 35 years ago … If Mr. Trump and his coalition fail to create something better than what they have replaced, they will suffer the same fate they’ve inflicted on the fallen Bush, Clinton, and Cheney dynasties. A new force for creative destruction will emerge, possibly on the American left.

By all accounts, millions have now verified through their own experience the abject failure of this administration “to create something better than what they have replaced.” The million-dollar question is: where will they turn now?

YOU CAN’T REPLACE SOMETHING WITH NOTHING

Even as Trumpism falls apart, the Democrats are more hated than ever. And for good reason. In the consciousness of wide swathes of the working class, and the youth in particular, the party has become synonymous with everything they hate about the status quo. The discontent that first fueled the rise of Trumpism grew out of the deindustrialization of Bill Clinton’s NAFTA and the post-2008 “jobless recovery” under Obama. The forever wars abroad, coupled with declining living standards at home, were a prelude to the dystopian pandemic lockdown, Ukraine debacle, Gaza genocide, and out of control inflation.

Trump’s appearance on the political stage in 2016 was mirrored on the left by the sudden rise of Bernie Sanders. This marked the entry of “democratic socialism” into the mainstream. But by running within the Democratic Party, he blew the opportunity to give the mass anger a leftward expression—not once, but twice. As a result, Trump was effectively handed a monopoly of anti-establishment messaging, while Sanders drifted rightward and was fully absorbed by the establishment.

In 2020, after sabotaging Sanders in the primaries, the Democratic Party chose one of the most colorless and uninspiring politicians in the nation’s history to run a “lesser-evil” campaign devoid of any message other than “vote for me—I’m not Trump!” The miserable experience of Trump’s first term had largely faded into the background by the end of Biden’s time in office. Biden’s one-term presidency crashed and burned after a catastrophic debate revealed his evident cognitive decline, belatedly forcing the Democrats to swap horses in midstream. By 2024, a significant layer of the working class decided that, given the options, Trump was the lesser evil after all.

Today, even as they appear poised to profit in the 2026 midterm from the Trump 2.0 disappointment, the Democrats are still polling at all-time lows. A March 2026 survey by NBC measured the popularity of a wide range of topics, people, and institutions. On the list were prominent public figures and politicians from both parties, technologies like artificial intelligence, and government agencies like ICE. The Democratic Party had the second-lowest level of support of any item on the list.

However, we can be sure that lesser-evilism will rear its head again. The defeatist assumption that the two-party system is an insurmountable fact of life has kept the class struggle in a political straitjacket for generations. But even this pillar of bourgeois stability will eventually crumble. Support for a third major-party alternative in the US has hovered around 60% since 2013.

According to research by Gallup last fall:

While 55% of Americans say they are at least “somewhat likely” to vote for third-party candidates, only 15% say they are “very likely” to do so. But when asked how they would vote if a third-party candidate they preferred was unlikely to win, more Americans say they would change their vote rather than stick with that candidate.

In the absence of a viable mass initiative to create such a party, which would require immense resources, large numbers, political clarity, and a nationwide campaign, this mood remains an abstract aspiration—for now. The labor leaders are entirely in bed with the bosses and have failed abjectly in their responsibility to represent the workers, not only in economic struggles, but in politics. However, they cannot hold the floodtide of class anger back forever. Sooner or later the dam will burst—but not of its own accord.

As difficult as the path may be, the effort to build a mass alternative must begin with modest inroads that pave the way for a decisive tipping point down the road. Even a handful of independent working-class candidates, if they adopted an aggressive class-struggle program addressing the burning needs of ordinary workers while exposing the hypocrisy and class interests of the two ruling parties, could gain an echo and build the needed momentum for a nationwide campaign. Above all, this will require unapologetic and uncompromising class independence. Not “progressive” politics, left-liberal reformism, class-collaborationist “democratic socialism,” or amorphous “anti-elite populism,” but a clear and consistent message that this is a matter of class against class.

Genuine class-struggle politics haven’t seen the light of day in mainstream American politics since the early 20th century. The heroic labor battles of the 1930s and 40s receded into distant memory during the prolonged upswing of the post-WWII boom. Decades of modest growth and relative prosperity blunted the edge of the class war and the fighting traditions were lost.

By the 1980s, when the capitalist offensive resumed in earnest, the timid union leadership rolled over and allowed the bosses to squeeze the workforce and extract one concession after another. Even the concept of class identity was deliberately blurred. Business-friendly labor leaders adopted chauvinistic “buy American” slogans, and cast unions as pillars of “middle-class” America. This degeneration of the labor movement has contributed to a feeling of helplessness at the thought of challenging the bosses in the workplace or at the polls.

We should not underestimate the negative role played by the present labor leadership in undermining the confidence of the working class. For example, despite the mass mood in favor of a general strike against ICE, the unions only called for a “day of action.” In the end, even without a militant and thoughtful leadership, the working class in Minneapolis achieved a partial victory against Trump and ICE in January.

The labor leaders should have broadcast this far and wide and turned this movement from a defensive one into an offensive one, and from a local movement into a national one. The working class would have made further gains and pushed the ruling class back. Instead, only our members and periphery really understand the meaning of this victory. The potential for a nationwide offensive by the labor movement remains. At a time when Congress and big business have dismal approval ratings of 16% and 22% respectively, labor unions poll at 68% support.

It is the task of communists to break down the psychological barriers and alien-class prejudices that hold the working class back from recognizing and exercising its tremendous potential power. The obdurate pessimism that has plagued several generations of the so-called “left” and the labor leaders is the result of a low political level, narrow provincialism, and a short historical memory. Cut off from the ideas of genuine Marxism for generations, the working-class movement was deprived of an advanced guard that could provide orientation and point the way forward.

Into the political vacuum stepped “left academics” and petty-bourgeois postmodernists, who managed to make a bad situation worse, injecting all manner of confusion. The rise of identity politics was a further setback that helped pave the way for the culture-war games of the two ruling parties, instead of placing workers on a class-war footing to confront them.

The RCA is steadily assembling and training the cadres who will lead this effort in the years ahead. From coast to coast, RCA branches play the role of training grounds providing the political education, historical lessons, and the practical skills that will allow our comrades to gain influence within the working class and become the backbone of tomorrow’s labor movement.

Conducting systematic work in the unions, building up class-struggle rank-and-file opposition currents that can raise the political level and advance an alternative to the business as usual bureaucrats, and eventually providing direct leadership to the struggles that will point the way forward for the working class nationally—these are the tasks that we are preparing for. In due time, as we gather sufficient numbers, we will be able to run candidates for office on the basis of revolutionary electoral campaigns that can tap into the boiling anger of the class and put forward the message that the working class is waiting desperately to hear: we need a party of our own as a first step toward winning political and economic power for the majority.

Zohran Mamdani and “left populism”

In the meantime, other forces will attempt to step into the gaping political vacuum. “Left populist” candidates are already cropping up within the limited parameters of the Democratic Party. Most of them combine an affordability message with anti-billionaire rhetoric, while stopping short of calling themselves socialists (let alone communists). In the wake of Zohran Mamdani’s upset victory in last year’s New York City mayoral race, and in the context of widespread grievance over Trump’s handling of the economy, we will likely see many more “left populist” or mild reformist campaigns of this sort.

Paradoxically, Zohran’s election contains lessons—which are lost on the reformists—that point to the need to break with the Democrats, not work within them. The fact that a quarter of New Yorkers identified themselves as “democratic socialists” in exit polls tracks with last year’s YouGov survey reporting that 28% of big city residents see communism favorably. People are not afraid of radical politics—on the contrary, they’re sick of the tepid status quo options they’re usually presented with. Zohran attracted large numbers, not because of the ballot line he was running on, but precisely because he appeared to come from outside the Democratic Party establishment, as opposed to the billionaire-backed Andrew Cuomo.

Zohran’s grassroots campaign managed to assemble 100,000 volunteer canvassers, bringing an unknown candidate who was polling at 1% at the start of the year to a resounding victory in the November 2025 election with a turnout of over a million votes. This shows that an energetic campaign with simple but bold demands and mass organizing can gain a wide echo and become a decisive factor, seemingly out of nowhere.

Unfortunately for those who had sincere illusions, the results of Zohran’s first months in office also confirm the need for class independence, in a negative sense. He campaigned on a popular platform of taxing the rich, freezing rents, establishing city-run grocery stores with more affordable prices, and universal childcare. While the mainstream media and the political establishment advised him to moderate expectations and prepare to make “practical” compromises, we argued the opposite. All of his demands and then some were more than realistic—but only if he mobilized workers with class-struggle methods and placed the burden of cost on the billionaires and transformed this into a national struggle.

He has opted instead to pursue a partnership with New York’s Democratic Governor, Kathy Hochul, who opposes raising taxes on her wealthiest constituents. Predictably, Zohran is facing a severe budget shortfall. Rather than utilize this as grounds for mobilizing a mass struggle with strike action, tenant organizing, and mass rallies, he has warned that he may be forced to place the bill at the feet of the working-class voters who put their faith in him last fall. If he continues down the route of class collaboration and playing by the rules of capitalism, all the energy and hopes he inspired will turn into bitter frustration.

The problem with populism is that it tries to appeal to “the people” in the abstract, regardless of their class. But it is precisely this lack of class independence that dooms them to failure. Even if they appear radical on the surface, such campaigns inevitably lead to disappointment over broken promises and dashed illusions, giving rise to cynicism, demoralization, and even more volatile expressions of desperation. Polarization always has two poles, and if “the left” is tarnished and seen as a dead end, some will lend credence to demagogues on the far right.

If a mass communist party were running candidates in the November midterms, it would undoubtedly do very well. In the absence of such an alternative, the population’s anger will be expressed as an anti-Trump and anti-Republican vote. Much can change in politics in a short time, but the Democrats are almost certain to do well in November. We could also see an uptick in protest votes for left-wing candidates like Kshama Sawant and the California Green Party’s candidate for governor, Butch Ware.

Should the Democrats win control of the House of Representatives and possibly even the Senate, they will tend to make deals with Trump, but there will be massive conflicts as well. The Democrats will have an eye on recapturing the White House in 2028. We can anticipate battles over the budget, government oversight, and possibly another round of impeachment. Communists will skillfully use this discord to put forward our ideas of class-independent politics, while the reformists tail the Democrats.

Furthermore, in the absence of a visible and successful point of reference for the class struggle, the sense that voting in elections is an ineffectual waste of time could give rise to more extreme forms of direct action, and even acts of individual terror.

Marxists oppose individual terror not for moralistic or pacifist reasons, but because it is counterproductive. It cuts across the urgent task of fostering working-class solidarity and confidence in our collective power to fight back as a class.

That being said, incidents such as the assassination of UnitedHealth CEO, Brian Thompson, and the apparent attempt to burn down Mar-a-Lago by 21-year old Austin Tucker Martin, are symptoms of deep frustration at the lack of political options. They are warning signs of a trend that could become more common as the crisis of society intensifies. Both Mamdani and Mangione are unmistakable products of the period we’re living through.

US ECONOMY ON A CLIFF’S EDGE

The fundamentals of the US economy are as unsound today as at any time since the Great Depression. Not only is another cataclysm of that scale not ruled out—it is all but inevitable. The factors that could tip the teetering system off the knife’s edge are many: the AI tech bubble, a collapse of the $2 trillion private credit market, the global energy crisis sparked by Trump’s war on Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, an extreme weather event, another pandemic, etc.

Gita Gopinath, former chief economist at the IMF, estimated that up to $35 trillion could be wiped out if the current AI bubble results in a crash along the lines of the last tech bubble.

I calculate that a market correction of the same magnitude as the dotcom crash could wipe out over $20trn in wealth for American households, equivalent to roughly 70% of American GDP in 2024. This is several times larger than the losses incurred during the crash of the early 2000s … The global fallout would be similarly severe. Foreign investors could face wealth losses exceeding $15trn, or about 20% of the rest of the world’s GDP.

Big Tech companies have accounted for one-third of US GDP growth over the past decade. Private companies are on track to spend $700 billion on the AI infrastructure buildout this year alone. Given the chronic overproduction and the resultant investment desert throughout the rest of the economy, this narrow slice of the market has generated an all-consuming vortex of capital. Harvard economist Jason Furman calculated that investment in information-processing equipment and software accounted for 92% of GDP growth in the first half of 2025. Without the spending on data centers, advanced chips, and other AI components, GDP would be flatlining and the US would already be in a technical recession. In other words, the entire economy is being propped up by a sector that has yet to turn a profit.

The buildout is on a scale unseen since the railroad boom of the early industrial revolution. Then, as today, a single market captured an enormous share of the nation’s capital investment. By the end of the 19th century, capital spending on railroads accounted for 60% of the stock market. The race for an ever-greater share of the market led to an uncontrollable stampede similar to the data center building frenzy we see today. The boom eventually led to a devastating bust: half of all railroad tracks that were built ended up abandoned as a cascade of bankruptcies devastated the railroad companies. The ensuing Panic of 1873—also known as “The Long Depression”—prepared the way for a strike wave that reached insurrectionary proportions across the US.

We don’t know exactly how the AI bubble will play out, but the disruption and social instability of its sudden burst could be staggering. For now, the highest-valued companies of all time—and along with them, the wealthiest capitalists in the history of our species—are swimming in the eye-watering profits of this speculative frenzy. The world’s wealthiest 500 capitalists increased their wealth by $2.2 trillion last year, thanks to this boom. The year before that, the richest 400 Americans saw their wealth grow by $1 trillion.

By contrast, the latest generation of the working class has truly been ground down. Millennials and Gen Z—who together comprise a majority of the US labor market—entered the workforce in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis. Since that period, the wealth of the top 0.1%—roughly 130,000 households—increased from $10 trillion to $14.4 trillion. The wealth of the bottom 50% has remained at or below $2.5 trillion for the last 20 years.

Working-class households have been hanging by a thread for years. During the Biden days, the government touted the official U-3 unemployment figure of 4%. Politico published an article that looked under the hood: “Voters Were Right About the Economy. The Data Was Wrong.” It turned out that this figure included homeless people doing occasional work as “employed.” And if one counted as unemployed “people who can’t find anything but part-time work or whose wages are below the poverty line,” the percentage shot up to a whopping 23.7%. In other words, nearly one in four workers was functionally unemployed.

And this was before Trump took office. Since the start of his new term, the job market has lost over a million jobs, and the economy has added fewer jobs than any year outside of a recession since 2003. The official U-3 unemployment has crept up to 4.4% while the broader U-6 figure suggests some 14 million workers are functionally unemployed as of spring 2026.

One-third of the population say they are skipping meals or driving less to pay for healthcare, and around 16% put off surgery or medical treatment because they can not afford it. 60% believe life in the US is getting worse while only 20% say they are getting better.

THE GATHERING STORM

The reality of American decline has never been more apparent. Never before have so many social metrics pointed to the same inevitable conclusion.

In September 2025, The Wall Street Journal published an article titled, “Faith in the American Dream Is Fading as Economic Pessimism Grips the Nation.” In alarming tones, it revealed the results of a poll showing that a record “70% of people said they believe the American dream—that if you work hard, you will get ahead—no longer holds true or never did.” The share of the population who say they have a good chance of improving their standard of living has fallen to just 25%, the lowest figure since surveys began asking that question in 1987.

Not only have living standards been squeezed for half a century, as measured by workers’ wealth and income—even workers’ lifespans are in decline. A Boston University study calculated 14.7 million excess deaths in the US when compared to rates in other high income countries from 1980 to 2023. This is driven primarily by rising mortality rates among working-age Americans. The decline in US life expectancy since 1980 is part of the widening “death gap” between rich and poor. The death rate—the ratio of deaths to overall population—in the poorest US counties has risen by 570% over the past 40 years.

Last year, the Harvard Youth Poll reported that just 13% of young people think the country is “headed in the right direction.” Their research also reveals the feeling of alienation stemming from society’s general decline: 58% of young adults find “little or no purpose or meaning” in their everyday lives. As one participant in the survey put it:

I would really like to have some sort of meaning from working towards a goal or cause that betters humanity as a whole. I see the world falling apart and no direction for humanity, and I’d like to do something about it.

Taken at face value it would be easy to draw pessimistic conclusions. However, as Marxists, we understand that beneath the surface of apparent doom and malaise, behind the moods that pollsters write off as apolitical apathy or dejection, something else is being prepared. The number of people who see a world on fire—and who feel a burning need deep inside to do something about it—is growing daily. All of the miseries and enraging injustices of life under a decaying system will not be wasted, but will fuel the rise of a new force in American politics.

As Lenin said in a speech to the Swiss socialist youth in January 1917, just on the eve of the Russian Revolution and the wave of revolution that swept over Europe in the proceeding years:

We must not be deceived by the present grave-like stillness in Europe. Europe is pregnant with revolution. The monstrous horrors of the imperialist war, the suffering caused by the high cost of living everywhere engender a revolutionary mood; and the ruling classes, the bourgeoisie, and its servitors, the governments, are more and more moving into a blind alley from which they can never extricate themselves without tremendous upheavals.

Just as in Russia in 1905, a popular uprising against the tsarist government began under the leadership of the proletariat with the aim of achieving a democratic republic; so, in Europe, the coming years, precisely because of this predatory war, will lead to popular uprisings under the leadership of the proletariat against the power of finance capital, against the big banks, against the capitalists; and these upheavals cannot end otherwise than with the expropriation of the bourgeoisie, with the victory of socialism.

The deep well of social discontent in US society will eventually find its expression as a bona fide working-class movement. We are unfazed by the fact that the American working class does not yet see itself as a political force with interests and demands of its own, let alone as the force that will take the reins of society. Life teaches—and the experience that tens of millions of workers will undergo in the coming period will drive more and more people towards class struggle, towards the labor movement, and towards the fight for socialist revolution.

The American Revolution of 250 years ago was preceded by a gradual shift in mass consciousness as the colonists began to see themselves no longer as subjects of the King. They began to recognize themselves as a separate people, and to see that their own interests were impossible to reconcile with the old order that ruled over them.

In our time, this process is repeating itself on a higher level. Millions have seen the face of the Epstein class that rules over us. They have begun to recognize the gulf that separates this handful of billionaires, who commit the most heinous crimes with impunity, who stand above the law, who hold the levers of power in their hands. They have watched politicians who promise peace launch one bloody war of aggression after another. They can see that the same people who bomb schoolfuls of children protect predators who traffic and abuse them.

Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, once wrote, “I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and is as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.” An almighty storm is being prepared, and when history presents the workers of this country with the opportunity to throw off this tyranny, we must ensure it isn’t missed.

As for former guru Avakian, Bob has moved to France, and now runs an Institute named after himself. How Presidential! - DJI

ATTACHMENT TEN – FROM REST OF THE WORLD

TRUMP OPENS FOR VIETNAM THE CHIP DOOR HE LOCKED ON CHINA

Washington’s move to lift export controls could turn Vietnam from a chip assembly hub into a manufacturing partner — and a strategic alternative to China.

By Indranil Ghosh 2 March 2026

· Vietnam started work on its first chip factory

five weeks before the deal.

· Major semiconductor makers already

assemble and package chips in the country.

· Trump promised to remove Vietnam from

chip technology export control list.

The U.S. is helping Vietnam build a chip industry designed to replace that of China.

On February 20, President Donald Trump said he would remove Vietnam from a strategic export control list that blocks the country from buying advanced technology from U.S. companies. Trump also reaffirmed Washington’s commitment to a “strong, independent, self-reliant, and prosperous” Vietnam.

Vietnam has sat on the restricted lists — along with China, Russia, and North Korea — since the Cold War. The removal would clear the way for Vietnam to move beyond assembling and packaging chips to manufacturing them, repositioning it as a chip industry partner for the U.S.

“For the semiconductor supply chain, this decision signals a transition for Vietnam from a back-end assembly hub to an upstream manufacturing and design partner,” Sujai Shivakumar, director of the Renewing American Innovation project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank, told Rest of World. “The U.S. is clearing the path for Hanoi to acquire high-end American tools and software essential for advanced chipmaking.”

The Joe Biden administration elevated Vietnam to a comprehensive strategic partnership in 2023. Trump has continued where Biden left off.

THE U.S. IS CLEARING THE PATH FOR HANOI TO ACQUIRE HIGH-END AMERICAN TOOLS.

“Each time I come back, I am genuinely impressed by the progress you have made,” John Neuffer, president of the Washington-based Semiconductor Industry Association, told Vietnamese officials during a January visit to Hanoi to attend a chip conference. He named Intel, Samsung, Qualcomm, Amkor, and Marvell as SIA members already on the ground in Vietnam.

To Lam, Vietnam’s top leader, flew to Washington on February 20 and secured Trump’s promise to remove the country from export control lists. Five weeks earlier, he had attended a groundbreaking ceremony in Hanoi for Vietnam’s first domestically owned chip fabrication plant.

Run by state-owned giant Viettel, the facility aims to start trial production by late 2027, making 32-nanometer chips, the kind that power cars, telecom networks, and industrial equipment. Rather than chase the most advanced chips, now made at 2 or 3 nanometers, Vietnam is focused on building an industry from scratch.

The Viettel plant was part of a wider blitz. On January 15, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh met Eduard Stiphout, a senior vice president at ASML, the Dutch company that makes the machines needed to produce advanced chips. The U.S. has pressured the Netherlands to stop selling ASML’s most powerful equipment to China, making the meeting a pointed signal from Hanoi.

Two days later, Finance Minister Nguyen Van Thang held a separate meeting with the same ASML delegation, discussing a training center and an official company presence in Vietnam. The speed of the run-up, from breaking ground to ASML meetings to a White House sit-down, suggested a coordinated campaign timed to give To Lam maximum leverage in Washington.

Vietnam has about 7,000 chip engineers today and wants 50,000 by 2030, according to government targets. Qualcomm has opened its third-largest global research center in the country, and Amkor has invested $1.6 billion in a packaging plant, its largest anywhere. Analysts expect the country’s share of global chip packaging to rise to almost 9% by 2032 from 1% in 2022.

While the chip commitment was one of several deals struck during To Lam’s Washington visit, it was the one with the longest horizon. Building a chip industry takes decades of investment, training, and infrastructure.

“The move reflects Washington’s effort to position Vietnam as a key Indo-Pacific counterweight to China,” Shivakumar said.

For the U.S., Vietnam is about building alternatives to China, and for Vietnam, it is about winning a seat at the table of the world’s most valuable industry. Every country caught between Washington and Beijing is now studying Hanoi’s move, wondering how to make one of its own. 

ATTACHMENT ELEVEN – FROM PEARLS AND IRRITATIONS

MEXICO’S POLITICAL TRANSFORMATION: THE REVOLUTION ISN’T BEING TELEVISED

By Jeremy Rose February 3, 2026

Mexico’s government has delivered falling violence, rising wages and broad social reform. Yet its record has attracted remarkably little attention in the English-language media, even as external pressure from the United States intensifies.

At the beginning of last month, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum stood in front of an estimated 600,000 supporters in Zócalo Square and reflected on the achievements of her first year in office and the seven years since the Morena Party, which she heads, came to power.

It was quite a list: 13 million people lifted out of poverty; the minimum wage increased by 125 per cent; Indigenous and Afro-Mexican communities allocated budgets to run their own affairs; a locally produced people’s electric car about to roll off production lines; a new fast rail system crossing the country; a national park spanning 14 million acres across Mexico, Belize, and Guatemala; a 37 per cent drop in homicides; and on it went.

Sheinbaum is Mexico’s first woman president, its first Jewish president, and a climate scientist who was part of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize–winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change team. In short, she has a story to tell, but it’s not one our media pays enough attention to.

That speech – where she declared the end of neoliberalism in Mexico – barely rated a mention in the world’s English-language press.

In fact, Sheinbaum’s extraordinarily popular first year in office – El País reports she has an approval rating of over 70 per cent – has been largely ignored by the English-language media, with three notable exceptions: when she was groped by a man on the streets of Mexico City last November, it made front-page news around the globe; a much-hyped series of “Gen Z” protests; and her dignified, and at times witty, responses to bellicose threats to Mexico’s sovereignty from the US president – which have seen her labelled the anti-Trump.

So why the lack of interest? Some possibilities, none of them edifying, spring to mind: if it doesn’t involve violence, Latin America rarely rates a mention in the media; Sheinbaum is a woman; and she’s left-wing. But for each of those, there’s at least one counter-example that suggests this isn’t always the case.

Argentina’s right-wing libertarian president, Javier Milei, is widely reported on despite coming from a country with little over a third of Mexico’s population and GDP. Milei is a poster boy for right-leaning pundits from Auckland to London.

Former New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern – leader of a country of just five million people compared to Mexico’s 130 million – was widely reported on while in office, and with the recent publication of her memoir has been the subject of more feature articles in recent months than Sheinbaum has generated in a year in office.

And finally, and perhaps most interestingly, there was the saturation coverage of Zohran Mamdani’s run and eventual victory in the New York mayoral election.

Sheinbaum’s successful campaign to become the equivalent of mayor of Mexico City – with a population significantly larger than New York’s – in 2018 was barely reported, despite running on a similarly left-wing, if notably more ambitious, platform.

Mamdani’s campaign and victory were newsworthy but, on any metric, less significant than Sheinbaum’s time in office. She is arguably the world’s most popular leader, delivering on promises more far-reaching and consequential than anything on offer in the Big Apple.

A promise by Mamdani to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should he visit New York – something he almost certainly cannot deliver on – was widely reported, while Sheinbaum’s support for resettling Palestinian children orphaned by Israel’s genocide in Gaza barely rated a mention. (Mexico has also joined South Africa’s International Court of Justice genocide case against Israel.)

The contrast between the saturation coverage of Mamdani and the paucity of coverage of Sheinbaum holds true for both conservative and liberal media. The Wall Street Journal ran 50-plus editorials and op-eds criticising Mamdani in the run-up to his election but just three or four on Sheinbaum in her first year in office, all focusing on her alleged failure to tackle violence and the cartels. (In fact, homicides are down, though still extremely high.)

Even Jacobin magazine, one of the few US outlets to provide in-depth coverage of Mexico’s so-called “Fourth Transformation,” has given far more coverage to Mamdani, with a recent podcast declaring New York the epicentre of global socialism.

Whatever the explanation for the scant coverage of Sheinbaum, the achievements and popularity of the Morena movement are worth talking about.

THE DONROE DOCTRINE’S THREAT TO MEXICO

There’s little doubt we’ll be hearing more about Mexico over the coming months, but the focus will almost certainly be on the threat from the north, not the achievements and promise of the Fourth Transformation.

After the illegal abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on 3 January, President Trump turned his sights on Mexico, declaring Sheinbaum to be a “tremendous woman, she’s a very brave woman, but Mexico is run by the cartels.”

Having designated the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels as terrorist organisations at the beginning of his second term in office, Trump had already signalled the possibility of military intervention in Mexico.

Sheinbaum’s response to both the Venezuelan intervention and the implied threat to Mexican sovereignty was resolute and principled:“We categorically reject intervention in the internal affairs of other countries. The history of Latin America is clear and compelling: intervention has never brought democracy, never generated well-being, nor lasting stability.”

“Only the people can build their own future, decide their path, exercise sovereignty over their natural resources, and freely define their form of government.”

Trump has other ideas, recently declaring that the US military could attack the cartels without congressional approval.

“I don’t think we’re necessarily going to ask for a declaration of war,” he said. “I think we’re just gonna kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. We’re going to kill them. They’re going to be, like, dead.”

Trump has dubbed the new era the Donroe Doctrine – a reference to his regime’s embrace of the Monroe Doctrine, named for President James Monroe, who declared the Western Hemisphere an area of US influence in the 1820s.

It was the beginning of more than 200 years of brutal interventions by the US state, including a war on Mexico that resulted in the US taking over approximately 1.36 million square kilometres of Mexican territory – about 55 per cent of the country.

Last year Trump hung a portrait of the country’s 11th president James Polk in the White House. Polk was responsible for the Mexican-American war of 1846-1848 which ended with the ceding of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, and parts of Colorado and Wyoming to the USA, in exchange for $15 million.

Trump has pointed to the portrait and told visitors. “He got a lot of land.”

His play on words with the Donroe Doctrine is characteristically narcissistic but also painfully accurate. It is the geopolitics of a gangster state.

In a world reeling from the criminal actions of that gangster state – from its continued bankrolling of genocide, to the extrajudicial killing of alleged drug smugglers, to SS-like round-ups of “foreigners” on its city streets, to threats to take over the sovereign territory of an ally – Mexico and its president, Claudia Sheinbaum, are a beacon of hope.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.

Jeremy Rose is a Wellington-based journalist. He spent a decade as a producer on RNZ’s Mediawatch, Ideas, and Sunday programs. He is a member of Alternative Jewish Voices.

ATTACHMENT TWELVE – FROM FROM COMMUNIST PARTY USA

MAY DAY: OVER A CENTURY OF WORKER RESISTANCE

BY: Norman Markowitz| April 22, 2026

In many lands for many centuries, May celebrations marked the coming of spring and the renewal of earth, crops, and life for the masses of people. In our time, May Day, the international holiday of the labor and socialist movements, developed out of labor’s struggle against exploitation and socialism’s dedication to the regeneration and empowerment of the working class. And May Day began in the United States, even though its capitalist class has always sought to erase that point from the consciousness of the American people.

May Day 2026 promises to be a day of massive labor-led all-people’s resistance to Trump’s racist, anti-woman, anti-democratic and anti-worker administration. This year’s May Day is an opportunity to say “No” to the chaos, war, and inhumanity of the MAGA/Trump policies and actions.

May Day’s roots are in the peaceful demonstrations of hundreds of thousands of U.S. workers in Chicago, New York, Pittsburgh, and other cities on May 1, 1886, for the eight-hour day. Supported by the Knights of Labor, the new American Federation of Labor, and by various labor anarchists and socialists, the demonstrations were denounced by the capitalist press as conspiracies to revive the Paris Commune in the U.S.

In Chicago three days after the May 1 demonstrations, labor anarchists organized a protest demonstration after the police killing of strikers at the McCormick Harvester plant.

After a bomb was thrown at the large contingent of police there to intimidate the demonstration, the ensuing police riot, national Red Scare, and arrest and trial of eight of the demonstration’s leaders (four were executed), made Haymarket an international symbol of capitalism’s war against the working class. With the Haymarket struggle as their precedent, an international Congress of Socialists, meeting in Paris in 1889 in the centennial of the French Revolution, designated May 1st as a day of demonstrations for the eight-hour day throughout the world.

As the socialist movement grew and a Second International of socialist parties developed in the 1890s out of the Paris meeting, May Day became an annual event, reflecting both workers’ pride and militancy. The importance of the first demonstrations was noted. Although Karl Marx had passed away earlier, Friedrich Engels noted of the first 1890 demonstrations in Britain, which took place on May 4 in honor of the Haymarket martyrs, “more than 100,000 in a column, on 4th May 1890, the English working class joined up in the great international army, its long winter sleep broken at last.”

As the May Day demonstrations grew, they interacted with the rise of the new socialist parties and the growth of the Second International. In the U.S., the depression which began in 1893 led Congress to establish a national Labor Day on the first Monday in September. Initially proposed by a social democratic trade unionist, it was seen by some as an “alternative to May Day,” but it soon became a complement to the May Day demonstrations.

In 1902, the year he wrote What Is to Be Done?, Vladimir Lenin, the most important theorist/activist of what became the Communist (Marxist-Leninist) wing of the socialist movement, wrote: “It should have been added that in our country May Day also becomes a demonstration against the autocracy, a demand for political liberty. Pointing to the international significance of the holiday is not enough. It must also be linked with the struggle for the most vital national political demands.”

As the mass social democratic parties grew, as Lenin would observe, “a struggle was raised in all the social democratic parties, between the revolutionary and opportunist wings.” The coming of the First World War led the vast majority of social democratic parties in countries at war to support their governments. In the Czarist Russian Empire, the revolutionary socialist (Bolshevik) wing of the already divided Russian Social Democratic Labor Party actively opposed the war and transformed the conflict to first overthrow the Czarist regime and then turn the revolution into a socialist revolution.

Soon, socialist parties were divided throughout the world between revolutionary and reformist factions. The Soviet revolution made May Day a national holiday and defined it as a day of struggle for proletarian (working class) internationalism and against imperialism and war.

As a new Third (Communist) International came into existence, it brought May Day’s message to the colonies and semi-colonies of the world, especially to the world’s two largest populations, China and India, as it sought to advance both national liberation and the development of Communist movements and parties globally.

In the interwar period, Communist and Socialist parties, while they never reunited and became rivals, continued to celebrate May Day along with working class organizations. In colonial regions, May Day demonstrations were often suppressed and their leaders arrested.

When Hitler established a full-fledged dictatorship following the Reichstag Fire in Germany (1933), he suppressed and imprisoned Communists, eliminated all independent trade unions, outlawed the use of the word proletarian and declared May First to be “National Day,” a national holiday celebrating the militarist and racist ideology of the regime. After the defeat of fascism and the collapse of the colonial empires following WWII, May Day became the most widely celebrated day in the world.

But May Day continued to be an expression of the class war between capital and labor. In the U.S., for example, May Day was not formally banned, but permits for demonstrations became nearly impossible to get. A 1950 May Day demonstration in New York’s Union Square was broken up by police with assaults and arrests of demonstrators. The Eisenhower administration declared May 1st “Law Day,” which had little success in stirring up conservative “law and order” demonstrations.

But opposition to Cold War repression, McCarthyism, grew by the 1960s and May Day demonstrations returned, with CPUSA activists playing a leading role.

Even after the fall of the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Treaty allies (1991), May Day demonstrations continue to be held in these countries by increasing numbers.

In the People’s Republic of China, the nation with the world’s largest population, May Day has been seen as the most important national holiday since its inception with an estimated 340 million people traveling and participating in both recreational and political events last year.

Even in these times of fascistic reaction, led globally by Trump’s “Make America Great Again” regime, May Day this year will reach hundreds of millions of people with its commitment to the struggle for working class unity, peace, and socialism. In the words of the International, May Day, like the working class itself, unites the people of the whole world.

The opinions of the author do not necessarily reflect the positions of the CPUSA

ATTACHMENT THIRTEEN – FROM THE BROOKINGS INST.

IS IRAN ON THE BRINK OF CHANGE?

Brookings experts weigh in

Aslı Aydıntaşbaş, Jeffrey Feltman, Sharan Grewal, Steven Heydemann, Mara Karlin, Michael E. O’Hanlon, and Shibley Telhami

January 15, 2026

· Muslim governments’ silence and the politics of regime survival

· A weaker Iran is bad for Hezbollah but good for Lebanon

· Iran’s uprising is at a turning point

· Will there be a day after in Iran?

· An uprising like no other

· Colin Powell’s warning

· Why Arab Gulf states fear US military action against Iran

· Muslim governments’ silence and the politics of regime survival

· A weaker Iran is bad for Hezbollah but good for Lebanon

· Iran’s uprising is at a turning point

· Will there be a day after in Iran?

· An uprising like no other

· Colin Powell’s warning

· Why Arab Gulf states fear US military action against Iran

· Aslı Aydıntaşbaş

· Sharan Grewal   

· Steven Heydemann

· Michael E. O’Hanlon 

· Shibley Telhami

The Turkey Project

As the Islamic Republic continues its violent crackdown on political protesters, Brookings Foreign Policy scholars examine whether this crisis will prove to be the tipping point for Iran’s government.

Aslı Aydıntaşbaş

MUSLIM GOVERNMENTS’ SILENCE AND THE POLITICS OF REGIME SURVIVAL

The scale of violence deployed by Iran’s security forces against protesters has been staggering, even by the standards of the Islamic Republic. Thousands have been killed since demonstrations began, with many more detained or tortured.

Yet across much of the Middle East, Muslim-majority governments have remained conspicuously quiet. Expressions of concern, if they exist at all, are carefully calibrated and devoid of moral condemnation. Instead, regional powers appear focused on preserving the status quo—passing messages to the Trump administration in hopes of deterring another costly U.S. intervention or regime-change operation. This impulse has brought together unlikely actors: Iran’s former adversaries, such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, alongside onetime champions of the Arab uprisings like Turkey and Qatar, all quietly backchanneling for an off-ramp.

Concerns about regional turmoil are understandable. The Middle East is exhausted after years of war in Syria, Yemen, and Gaza. A direct confrontation with Iran could draw in Israel and ignite a wider conflict. Gulf states fear disruptions to energy trade and retaliation from Tehran, while Turkey worries about refugees and the possibility that unrest could empower Iranian Kurds, creating a contiguous Kurdish zone stretching from Iran through Iraq to Syria.

But geopolitics alone does not explain the silence. Most regional powers are themselves autocratic—and deeply wary of mass protest. Iran’s uprising is leaderless and driven by broad social grievances, evoking uncomfortable memories of the Arab Spring. For governments that survived those uprisings through repression, co-optation, or external backing, the lesson was not reform but deterrence.

Publicly championing Iranian protesters would therefore set an awkward precedent. It would legitimize the idea that sustained street mobilization can bring down entrenched regimes—an idea most Arab governments, and increasingly Turkey, have worked hard to discredit at home. In this sense, Tehran’s repression is not an aberration but part of a shared regional playbook: criminalize dissent, securitize society, and frame protests as foreign conspiracies.

The result is a moral asymmetry—one to which Arab states and Israel appear equally prone. Muslim leaders and institutions such as the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, which have spoken daily about Gaza, have largely avoided condemning Tehran’s shoot-to-kill orders. Gaza rightly commands global outrage—but so does Iran. The silence on Iran suggests that, in today’s Middle East, solidarity stops where regime survival begins.

Jeffrey Feltman

A WEAKER IRAN IS BAD FOR HEZBOLLAH BUT GOOD FOR LEBANON

Hezbollah, the onetime crown jewel in Iran’s proxy network, is down but not out. Bashar al-Assad’s overthrow complicates Hezbollah’s arms smuggling, and Nicolás Maduro’s seizure seals a favored venue for money laundering and illicit gold transfers. Despite a November 2024 ceasefire, Israel, having already degraded Hezbollah’s arsenals and decapitated its leadership, continues to pound alleged Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, amidst unrelenting U.S. pressure for Hezbollah’s rapid disarmament.

Hezbollah’s biggest blow could be yet to come: losing Iranian support. Logistically, Iran already faces obstacles in supporting Hezbollah, not only because of Assad’s fall and Israeli intelligence penetration but also due to increased Lebanese vigilance (including searches of Iranian diplomatic baggage). The current Iranian protests could doom the Iranian-Hezbollah partnership altogether. 

If the regime collapses, whatever comes next—a successor government or internal struggle—will not prioritize Hezbollah (and may denounce the group to highlight the Islamic Republic’s misrule). Even if, as seems more likely, regime brutality quiets the Iranian streets for now, Iran’s leaders have no solutions to the economic catastrophe that provoked the protests—and diverting scarce funds to the “axis of resistance” could reignite popular rage.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi noted communications with the Trump administration, desperately hoping that nuclear diplomacy might this time (unlike in June) prevent U.S. military action. Given the wreckage of Iran’s nuclear program, Araghchi might find more interest in Washington with an offer to direct Hezbollah to disarm and demobilize.

Iran’s weakening and Hezbollah’s degraded capacities have already facilitated Lebanese initiatives that would have once been unthinkable. Last week, the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) announced the completion of the first of five disarmament phases (a move the Israelis called “encouraging” but insufficient). Breaking a decades-long taboo, the Lebanese government authorized direct civilian talks with Israel, with two rounds in December. In another unprecedented move, the LAF, responding to information from the U.S.-led mechanism set up under the November 2024 ceasefire, has raided private houses, searching for weapons. But Lebanon will not be truly sovereign until Hezbollah is forced to fully disarm and demobilize. This becomes easier as the Islamic Republic’s sponsorship weakens along with the regime.

Sharan Grewal

IRAN’S UPRISING IS AT A TURNING POINT

Structurally, the Islamic Republic is a tough regime for protests to topple. With oil wealth, ideologically loyal security forces, and some genuine popular support, it has been able to put down four mass uprisings in the last two decades. This time, however, intense pressure from sanctions, crippling inflation, a string of military defeats, a looming succession crisis, and the wild card of potential American intervention all make the regime’s survival more uncertain.

The regime, for its part, is not taking any chances, meeting the protests with an unprecedented level of repression. Even the official estimate of 2,000 people killed is significantly more than any of the previous four uprisings. The word “massacre” is undoubtedly appropriate.

In the history of revolution, massacres are often pivotal turning points, for good or for ill. They could crush the movement, like in Tiananmen Square. They could transform the struggle into an insurgency and civil war, like in Syria in 2011. Or they might embolden protesters to redouble their efforts, like in Sudan in 2019. Indeed, in Iran back in 1978, it was the massacre of Black Friday that galvanized the protests into revolution. If Iranians today take those lessons to heart, and double down on peaceful resistance, they may begin to demoralize the security forces and initiate a cascade of defections that collapses the regime. All revolutions seem impossible, until they become inevitable.

Steven Heydemann

WILL THERE BE A DAY AFTER IN IRAN?

The future of Iran’s embattled and weakened regime has never seemed more precarious. The most recent wave of mass protest, seemingly larger and more widespread than those that erupted in 2019 and 2022, may be a tipping point. Or not. Regime security forces killed an estimated 1,500 people in the “Bloody November” protests in 2019. The death toll in the current protests will likely be even higher. And thus far, the regime has shown few internal cracks. Nonetheless, there is far more uncertainty today than in earlier protest waves about whether the regime can kill enough Iranians to hold onto power. The depth of its economic and ecological crises, the weakening of its regional allies, and the aftermath of Israeli-U.S. strikes have created an unprecedented level of vulnerability for Iran’s leadership.

Whether President Donald Trump acts on his threats against the regime, and whether military action would have its intended effects—highly uncertain—it will be critical to assess what might follow the regime’s collapse, and how anything the United States does might affect the odds of a transition to something other than a more repressive replacement. The regime may be illegitimate in the eyes of many, if not most, Iranians, and the case for political transition is indeed compelling. Yet the administration’s bomb-first, plan-later approach—coupled with its lack of concern for what follows—will do little to help Iranians striving to build a better future.

Instead, it could be the prelude to something even worse.

Mara Karlin

AN UPRISING LIKE NO OTHER

Iran is undergoing the most dramatic upheaval since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Its economy is collapsing. Political frustration has mounted. This discontent is occurring against the backdrop of profound Iranian weakness across the region, given that its closest partners have been devastated or deposed, including Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Assad regime in Syria. And the 12-day war this summer further demonstrated the regime’s vulnerability, given how deeply Israel penetrated the Iranian leadership and its system, and how easily the American military attacked its major nuclear sites.

As massive protests engulf Iran, and the regime responds with violence and vitriol, there are four simultaneous dynamics that make this moment unique. First, the geography: protests are ubiquitous around the country. Second, the diversity of the protesters, who represent a wide range of Iranians. Third, there is some effort to rally around Reza Pahlavi, the shah’s son, who was overthrown by the Islamic Revolution in 1979. And fourth, the United States has threatened to use force in support of the protesters. Given that Trump previously authorized military strikes on Iran, these threats hold at least some credibility. How these four elements play out, and the extent to which the regime in Tehran continues responding with violence to protesters’ demands, will determine how this phase of the Iranian uprising develops. This may be the beginning of the end of the Iranian regime, but that journey could easily take a very long time.

Michael E. O'Hanlon

COLIN POWELL’S WARNING

Writing back in 1992, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Colin Powell warned in a famous Foreign Affairs article about a tendency of civilian policymakers that he’d observed in the Vietnam War: “They like to try a little bit of force, and if that doesn’t work, try a little more.” It is worth bearing that comment in mind today.

To be sure, the United States has sometimes successfully pushed strongmen out of power with limited uses of force and gotten better outcomes as a result. Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines in 1986 and Manuel Noriega in Panama in 1989-1990 come quickly to mind. (Earlier, there had also been several CIA-assisted coups—as in Iran, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Chile—though those usually wound up leading to worse governments in the end.) The verdict on Venezuela this year is still very much out.

But in the current context, with Trump asserting to use limited military force to protect civilians in Iran, a different set of cases comes to mind. Collectively, they caution against the expectation that a limited dose of force can make things better and stop the killing or improve the humanitarian situation. I would cite the following potential precedents as cautionary notes:

· Somalia 1992-1993, where what began as a humanitarian relief operation ultimately led to “Black Hawk Down.”

· Kosovo 1999, where a limited set of air strikes originally expected to protect the Kosovar Albanians from Slobodan Milosevic’s Serb militias led to a dramatic worsening of the situation until the air campaign was dramatically escalated (producing success after 2.5 months).

· Iraq 2003, where the initial American attempt at a “shock and awe” air campaign to drive Saddam Hussein from power failed; the United States wound up on the ground for more than eight years.

· Libya 2011, where an Obama administration decision to work with NATO allies to protect endangered Libyan civilians, which was predicted to be brief, lasted six months, ultimately contributing to the death of Moammar Gadhafi and anarchy (that continues to this day).

Where such operations have worked, as in Afghanistan in 2001 against the Taliban and in Iraq in 2014-2019 against the Islamic State, they required capable coalition partners on the ground, teamed with U.S. airpower and special forces. I am highly wary of getting involved in the current situation.

Shibley Telhami

WHY ARAB GULF STATES FEAR US MILITARY ACTION AGAINST IRAN

While Arab Gulf states have almost universally seen Iran as a major regional foe ever since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, they are not aligning with Trump’s threats to take military action against Tehran. Instead, they are counselling against a new war in their immediate neighborhood—even as they recognize that a regime they have long despised appears increasingly vulnerable.

One reason is obvious. A war could expand into their own territories, a risk that has led the Gulf states to favor containment and pressure over open warfare with Iran. Yet there is something even bigger today: The regional strategic picture has dramatically changed. For several Arab states—with the likely exception of the United Arab Emirates (UAE)—Israel is now seen as a bigger strategic threat than Iran. Thus, some Arab states fear that the collapse of the regime in Tehran will not only impact their economies and security but also make Israel the biggest strategic winner at their expense.

These fears have sharpened amid the evolving confrontation between Saudi Arabia (supported by Egypt and other Arab states) and the UAE in Yemen, Somalia, and Sudan. Saudi policymakers increasingly interpret the UAE’s interventions around the region as part of a growing strategic alignment with Israel—one that risks encircling them at a time when they fear Israeli regional hegemony. The Saudis still hope for improved future relations with Israel, but they have real fears that, regardless of the costs of U.S.-Iran military confrontation, the net result will enhance the prospect of Israel’s regional domination.

Certainly, it strains credulity to argue that Trump is being motivated by sympathy for the Iranian people, particularly after allowing the far greater horrors in Gaza to unfold for two years. But Washington’s effort to frame potential military action against Iran in humanitarian terms only deepens regional unease, as autocratic Arab regimes fear that such justifications could one day be turned against them.

ATTACHMENT FOURTEEN – FROM PBS

IRAN WAR PUTS PREDICTION MARKETS BACK IN THE SPOTLIGHT

Apr 12, 2026 5:06 PM EDT

Prediction markets let people wager on just about anything — from basketball games to elections. And among more jarring bets recently, the fate of the U.S. and Israel's war against Iran.

Shortly ahead of a fragile ceasefire agreement earlier this week, a new group of accounts on prediction market platform Polymarket made highly specific, well-timed trades betting there'd be an announcement about a halt in fighting for April 7. Some quickly pocketed awards, which amounted to hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits combined. Others are still awaiting payouts as an end to the deadly conflict still seems uncertain.

READ MORE: Trump administration backs Kalshi and Polymarket as states move to ban prediction markets

Regardless, the trades once again put the spotlight on a murky — and growing — world of speculative, 24/7 transactions now filling the internet. And some have raised questions about suspicious activity, including an anonymous Polymarket trader pocketing more than $400,000 following the U.S. military's capture of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January.

The timing and subjects of such trades have fueled concerns about potential insider trading — with calls increasing among lawmakers for investigations. Popular platforms, including Polymarket, have rolled out added guardrails in efforts to combat insider trading recently, but critics say it isn't enough.

Meanwhile, because prediction market wagers are categorized differently than traditional forms of gambling, tensions about government oversight have erupted. President Donald Trump's administration has already thrown its support behind company operators — and sued three states over their efforts to regulate them further.

Here's what we know:

HOW PREDICTION MARKETS WORK

The scope of topics involved in prediction markets can range immensely. Recently, there's been a surge of wages on elections and sports games. But some users have also bet millions on things like a rumored — and ultimately unrealized — "secret finale" for the Netflix's "Stranger Things," whether the U.S. government will confirm the existence of extraterrestrial life and how much billionaire Elon Musk might post on social media this month.

In industry-speak, what someone buys or sells in a prediction market is called an "event contract." They're typically advertised as "yes" or "no" wagers. And the price of one fluctuates between $0 and $1, reflecting what traders are collectively willing to pay based on a 0% to 100% chance of whether they think an event will occur.

The more likely traders think an event will occur, the more expensive that contract will become. And as those odds change over time, users can cash out early to make incremental profits, or try to avoid higher losses on what they've already invested.

READ MORE: A $400,000 payout after Maduro's capture put prediction markets in the spotlight. Here's how they work

Proponents of prediction markets argue putting money on the line leads to better forecasts and allow you to gauge public opinion as an alternative to polling. And some think there's value in monitoring prediction markets for potential news, particularly elections.

Still, prediction markets can also be wrong. People investing their money may be closely following certain events, but others could just be randomly guessing.

Who is behind all of the trading is also pretty unclear.

The companies running today's biggest platforms know who their customers are — as they collect personal information to verify identities and payments. But most users can trade under anonymous pseudonyms on public-facing websites, making it difficult for the world to tell who is profiting off many event contracts.

Critics also stress that the ease and speed of joining these 24/7 wagers leads to financial losses everyday, particularly harming users who may already struggle with gambling.

THE MAJOR PLAYERS

Polymarket is one of the largest prediction markets in the world. Users can fund event contracts through cryptocurrency, debit or credit cards and bank transfers.

Restrictions vary by country, but in the U.S., the reach of these markets has expanded rapidly over recent years, coinciding with shifting policies out of Washington.

While prediction markets have found backing from the Trump-controlled Commodity Futures Trading Commission, former President Joe Biden was more aggressive in cracking down. Following a 2022 settlement with the CFTC, Polymarket was barred from operating in the country. That changed under Trump late last year, when Polymarket announced it would be returning to the U.S. after receiving clearance from the commission. American-based users can now join a "waitlist" to access the platform.

READ MORE: Federal government sues three states for trying to regulate prediction markets

Meanwhile, Polymarket's top competitor, Kalshi, has been a federally-regulated exchange since 2020. The platform offers similar ways to buy and sell event contracts as Polymarket — and it currently allows event contracts on elections and sports nationwide. Kalshi won court approval just weeks before the 2024 election to let Americans put money on upcoming political races and began to host sports trading last year.

The space is now crowded with other big names. Major League Baseball inked a deal with Polymarket last month, following other partnerships in professional hockey and soccer. Meanwhile, sports betting giants DraftKings and FanDuel have launched their own prediction platforms. Trump's social media site Truth Social has also promised to offer an in-platform prediction market through a partnership with Crypto.com — and one of the president's sons, Donald Trump Jr., holds advisory roles at both Polymarket and Kalshi.

Last month, The Associated Press agreed to sell its U.S. elections data to Kalshi.

LOOSE REGULATION AND CALLS FOR REFORM

Because they're positioned as selling event contracts, prediction markets are regulated by the CFTC. That means they can avoid state-level restrictions or bans in place for traditional gambling and sports betting today.

"It's a huge loophole," said Karl Lockhart, an assistant professor of law at DePaul University who has studied this space. "You just have to comply with one set of regulations, rather than (rules from) each state around the country."

Sports betting is taking center stage. There are a handful of big states — like California and Texas, for example — where sports betting is still illegal, but people can now wager on games, athlete trades and more through event contracts.

A growing number of states and tribes are trying to stop this. But the Trump administration has already pushed back, maintaining that the CFTC has the sole authority to regulate prediction markets. Many lawyers expect litigation to eventually reach the U.S. Supreme Court.

Despite overseeing trillions of dollars for the overall U.S. derivatives market, the CFTC is much smaller than the Securities and Exchange Commission, which regulates the securities industry. And at the same time event contracts are growing rapidly on prediction market platforms, there have been sizeable workforce cuts and leadership departures. CFTC chairman Michael Selig is the sole member filling just one of five commissioner slots.

Meanwhile, Congress members from both sides of the aisle have introduced broad legislation for more guardrails in recent months. Soon after, Kalshi — which has maintained that it's always banned insider trading — quickly moved to bar political candidates from trading on their own campaigns, and preemptively block anyone involved in college or professional sports from contracts related to the sports they play or are employed by. Polymarket rewrote its rules to clearly say users cannot trade on contracts where they might possess confidential information, or could influence the outcome of an event.

The CFTC can also bar event contracts related to war, terrorism and assassinations, which experts say could put some prediction market trades — including those related to the Iran war — on added shaky ground, at least in the U.S. Lawmakers like Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff are seeking an outright ban of these kinds of trades.

Still, users might find ways to buy certain contracts while traveling abroad, or through connecting to different VPNs.

ATTACHMENT FIFTEEN – FROM POLYMARKET.COM

WILL-THE-IRANIAN-REGIME-FALL-BY-THE-END-OF-2026

This market will resolve to "Yes" if the Islamic Republic of Iran’s current ruling regime is overthrown, collapsed, or otherwise ceases to govern by December 31, 2026, 11:59 PM ET. Otherwise, this market will resolve to “No”. This requires a broad consensus of reporting indicating that core structures of the Islamic Republic (e.g. the office of the Supreme Leader, the Guardian Council, IRGC control under clerical authority) have been dissolved, incapacitated, or replaced by a fundamentally different governing system or otherwise lost de facto power over a majority of the population of Iran. This could occur via revolution, civil war, military coup, or voluntary abdication, but only qualifies if the Islamic Republic no longer exercises sovereign power. Routine political events such as elections, reforms, or leadership succession do not qualify. Internal coups or power shifts that preserve the Islamic Republic’s core structures also do not qualify.

Only a clear break in continuity—such as a new provisional government, revolutionary council, or constitution replacing the Islamic Republic will qualify. Partial loss of territory or challenges from rebel or exile groups will not qualify unless the Islamic Republic no longer administers the majority of the Iranian population within Iran. The resolution source will be a consensus of credible reporting. 

Trader consensus prices "No" at 79.5% implied probability for the Iranian regime falling before 2027, reflecting its demonstrated resilience amid recent crises. Widespread economic protests that erupted in late December 2025 and peaked in January 2026—resulting in over 500 reported deaths—were quelled through brutal crackdowns by security forces, internet blackouts, and executions, preventing escalation into revolution. The regime survived targeted strikes during the 2025-2026 war, transitioning to hardliner Mojtaba Khamenei as supreme leader while organizing hundreds of pro-government rallies in March-April to signal cohesion. U.S. officials express skepticism about imminent regime change despite leadership losses, with potential U.S.-Iran negotiations looming as a stabilizing factor for Tehran through 2026.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

WHAT IS THE "WILL THE IRANIAN REGIME FALL BEFORE 2027?" PREDICTION MARKET?

"Will the Iranian regime fall before 2027?" is a prediction market on Polymarket where traders buy and sell "Yes" or "No" shares based on whether they believe this event will happen. The current crowd-sourced probability is 21% for "Yes." For example, if "Yes" is priced at 21¢, the market collectively assigns a 21% chance that this event will occur. These odds shift continuously as traders react to new developments and information. Shares in the correct outcome are redeemable for $1 each upon market resolution.

HOW MUCH TRADING ACTIVITY HAS "WILL THE IRANIAN REGIME FALL BEFORE 2027?" GENERATED ON POLYMARKET?

As of today, "Will the Iranian regime fall before 2027?" has generated $16 million in total trading volume since the market launched on Nov 3, 2025. This level of trading activity reflects strong engagement from the Polymarket community and helps ensure that the current odds are informed by a deep pool of market participants. You can track live price movements and trade on any outcome directly on this page.

HOW DO I TRADE ON "WILL THE IRANIAN REGIME FALL BEFORE 2027?"?

To trade on "Will the Iranian regime fall before 2027?," simply choose whether you believe the answer is "Yes" or "No." Each side has a current price that reflects the market's implied probability. Enter your amount and click "Trade." If you buy "Yes" shares and the outcome resolves as "Yes," each share pays out $1. If it resolves as "No," your "Yes" shares pay $0. You can also sell your shares at any time before resolution if you want to lock in a profit or cut a loss.

WHAT ARE THE CURRENT ODDS FOR "WILL THE IRANIAN REGIME FALL BEFORE 2027?"?

The current probability for "Will the Iranian regime fall before 2027?" is 21% for "Yes." This means the Polymarket crowd currently believes there is a 21% chance that this event will occur. These odds update in real-time based on actual trades, providing a continuously updated signal of what the market expects to happen.

HOW WILL "WILL THE IRANIAN REGIME FALL BEFORE 2027?" BE RESOLVED?

The resolution rules for "Will the Iranian regime fall before 2027?" define exactly what needs to happen for each outcome to be declared a winner — including the official data sources used to determine the result. You can review the complete resolution criteria in the "Rules" section on this page above the comments. We recommend reading the rules carefully before trading, as they specify the precise conditions, edge cases, and sources that govern how this market is settled.

ATTACHMENT SIXTEEN – FROM FORTUNE

RUSSIA’S ECONOMY MINISTER ADMITS ‘RESERVES HAVE LARGELY BEEN USED UP’ WHILE COMMUNIST LAWMAKER WARNS OF 1917-STYLE REVOLUTION AS GDP SHRINKS

By Jason Ma April 25, 2026, 4:08 PM ET

The Kremlin offered more indications that it’s acknowledging Russia’s economy is in trouble after years of relying on military spending for growth.

Last week, Economy Development Minister Maxim Reshetnikov told a business conference that the economy “is not easy” and called for reallocating the workforce, which has been tight as Russia’s war on Ukraine and the boom in defense production have created labor shortages.

“Of course, it’s not easy to find staff, and salaries are rising,” he said. “But nonetheless, we coped with all of that somehow because somewhere in the economy there were reserves. Our current records show that these reserves have largely been used up; this truly is the situation and the macroeconomic situation is substantially more difficult.”

Reshetnikov added that the ruble has appreciated more than he would prefer and that interest rates are still too high despite a series of rate cuts from the central bank.

Businesses will have to figure out how to mange costs and spending while also boosting productivity, he said, citing advances in artificial intelligence.

On Friday, the central bank slashed the benchmark interest rate again, marking the fifth straight half-point reduction, to bring it down to 14.5%.

“A significant risk from external conditions is the situation in the Middle East,” Governor Elvira Nabiullina said at a briefing. “If the conflict drags on, the negative effects on the Russian economy will grow.” 

The latest cut came a week after Russian President Vladimir Putin made his concerns about the economy public as he vented frustration at ministers and demanded they offer solutions.

During a televised meeting on the economy on April 15, he revealed that GDP shrank by a combined 1.8% in January and February, adding that manufacturing, industrial production, and construction were negative.

“I expect to hear detailed reports today on the current economic situation and why the trajectory of macroeconomic indicators is currently below expectations,” Putin said. “Moreover, below the expectations of not only experts and analysts, but also the forecasts of the government itself and the central bank of Russia.”

The scolding follows a series of warnings over the past year that Russian officials and Kremlin allies in the private sector have raised.

They’ve sounded the alarm that a financial crisis could hit by the summer amid spiraling inflation and that consumers were having trouble servicing their loans, raising concerns of a crash in the banking sector.

The situation has grown so dire that a veteran lawmaker in Russia said that people could rise up and stage a revolution like the Bolsheviks did in 1917.

Gennady Zyuganov, the longtime leader of Russia’s Communist Party, told the lower house of parliament that the meeting Putin convened with his ministers was the gloomiest in a long time, according to Reuters.

“If you (the government) do not urgently adopt financial, economic and other measures, by autumn a repeat of what happened in ⁠1917 awaits us,” he said. “We don’t have the right to repeat that. Let’s take some decisions.”

To be sure, there are no signs of a popular uprising. But the Kremlin has recently cracked down on internet access recently as Russia suffers heavy casualties in Ukraine while inflation prompts consumers to complain about the cost of living.

 Sweden’s military intelligence chief also told the Financial Times that Russia’s economy is weaker than it appears, adding that its military-industrial complex is losing money, ravaged by corruption, and dependent on lending from state-run banks.

“They still have a systemic problem,” Thomas Nilsson said. “It’s not a sustainable growth model to produce material for the war that is then destroyed on the battlefield.” 

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s advances in drone technology have also enabled it to strike deep into Russian territory, targeting oil infrastructure to prevent Moscow from fully exploiting the spike in crude prices and cut off fuel supplies for Putin’s military.

A recent attack on a Russian refinery in Black Sea resort of Tuapse caused a fire that released huge amounts of smoke into the air. The black rain that later fell covered the town in drops of dark, oily toxins.

“The child played in the yard for 10 minutes. Their hands are completely covered in fuel oil,” one resident posted on Telegram.

ATTACHMENT SEVENTEEN – FROM FROM NATIONAL REVIEW

A 2026 IRANIAN REVOLUTION COULD REVERSE THE DEBACLE OF 1979

By Rich Lowry January 13, 2026 1:40 PM

301 Comments

The Iranians may be able to cajole Trump into negotiations, but they will never be able to push him around, and they disregard his threats at their peril.

The 1979 Iranian Revolution was one of the most stinging U.S. setbacks of the Cold War era.

A longtime ally that the U.S. depended on as a pillar of regional security, the shah, gave way to a theocratic regime based on hostility to America.

The revolutionaries stormed the U.S. embassy and seized our diplomatic personnel in November 1979. If that wasn’t enough of a national embarrassment, a dramatic rescue attempt by the U.S. military in April 1980 ended in abject failure at a staging area in Iran dubbed Desert One.

As the Islamic Republic totters on the precipice, struggling to put down countrywide ...

ATTACHMENT EIGHTEEN – FROM POLITICO

WILL IRANIANS RISE UP? HERE ARE THE ODDS.

Iranians despised the Ayatollah. That doesn’t mean they’ll side with the United States.

By Daniel Block 03/01/2026 02:01 PM EST

Daniel Block is an editor at Foreign Affairs.

According to Donald Trump, Iranians have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. “The hour of your freedom is at hand,” he declared, as U.S. and Israeli warplanes pounded Iranian cities and the compound of the country’s supreme leader. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will probably be your only chance for generations.”

Trump’s comments made clear that America is seeking regime change. After decades of high tensions, tough recriminations and one-off attacks, Washington finally decided to try getting rid of the country’s government altogether — and it thinks ordinary Iranians will rise up and finish the job.

The country’s population, after all, is clearly fed up with the Islamic Republic. Over the last decade, Iranians have repeatedly staged mass demonstrations against the regime. Those protests typically only go away after the government responds with horrific force. In December and January, for example, hundreds of thousands of Iranians spent weeks demonstrating — until Iranian security officials shot and killed thousands of them. But now, American and Israeli warplanes are attacking Iran’s military and security apparatus and destroying other government institutions. They have killed the country’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and many other top officials. The Trump administration seems to be betting that the Iranian people will soon take over the regime change process, resume protesting and successfully remove a greatly weakened government.

To gauge how likely that response might be, I spoke to political scientists and Iranian experts, all of whom would love to see “people power” usher in new leadership in Tehran. But they also expressed deep skepticism that even this massive air campaign could produce a successful uprising.

For starters, they told me, aerial bombing campaigns have a terrible record at fomenting regime change in any state. Second, Iran has powerful repressive organs with a lot of experience in putting down popular unrest. In addition, Iran’s bureaucracy has been expecting — and preparing for — American attacks for generations. And even if Washington does successfully fracture or defang the Islamic Republic, exhausted and shocked Iranians may be too frightened or focused on survival to flood the streets. The country’s political opposition remains weak, and it is famously fragmented.

Iranians, of course, do desperately want a better future, and they have been willing to protest under very difficult conditions. For an autocracy, the country has high levels of civic engagement. It is therefore possible that Iranians will succeed where other populations haven’t. But history suggests most of the country’s people will not heed Trump’s call, and that even if they do, they will have a hard time winning.

In February 1991, as the American military laid waste to the Iraqi armed forces, U.S. President George H.W. Bush made an appeal. Speaking on international television, Bush called on “the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside.” They didn’t act immediately. But as soon as America stopped the bombing, thousands of Kurds and Shiites across the country rose up against the Sunni-dominated government, hoping that Saddam’s battered regime and weakened military could finally be defeated.

It wasn’t. Instead, after the protests began, Saddam’s forces deployed helicopters, artillery and ground troops against their own citizens. They then slaughtered upwards of 50,000 Iraqis in less than five weeks. The uprising was put down, and Saddam held onto power for another 12 years.

The Iraqi experience is, unfortunately, typical of what happens when presidents have tried in the past to use aerial firepower to change governments. The United States knocked out 90 percent of North Korea’s power generation during the Korean War in hopes that it would help topple Kim Il-Sung. It didn’t. Washington plunged North Vietnam into darkness during the Vietnam War; that, too, failed. Even Bill Clinton’s 1998 bombing of tiny Serbia didn’t give the opposition movement space to drive Slobodan Milosevic from power. It took another 16 months, and a fraudulent election, before he was forced to leave office.

“Never,” Robert Pape, a political scientist at the University of Chicago who studies air power and regime change, replied when I asked whether what Washington was doing in Iran had succeeded elsewhere. “Bombings have never led people to take to the streets and topple their leader.”

There are two main reasons why air power has such a terrible record. The first, Pape said, is because bombings often prompt citizens to turn against the domestic opposition — no matter how much they hate the leader. “Even the hint that you are siding with the attacking state is used by rivals to stab you in the back,” he told me. To understand why, he asked liberals to consider how Americans might respond if Iran killed Trump and then encouraged the Democratic Party’s supporters to seize power; conservatives might imagine what would have happened if Iran did the same to Barack Obama. Just because you don’t like your country’s leaders, it doesn’t mean that you want to side with an external enemy who deposes them. The second reason is that bombings by themselves rarely fully decimate a government’s repressive capacity. “In order to save the pro-democracy protesters, you’ve got to be right there,” Pape told me. “You have to have troops on the ground.”

In Iran, both lessons hold value. Iran analysts frequently debate whether outside attacks could prompt a rally-around-the-flag effect, given how unpopular the government has been. Most analysts think that reactions will vary widely, and Iranians are known to be quite nationalistic and weary and wary of international interventions. As a result, experts said that even many Iranians who loathe Khamenei will not want to do what America is asking of them — especially given rising civilian casualties from the U.S. attacks.

To be sure, not everyone will feel squeamish. “There are those who, just out of sheer desperation, were hoping for a U.S. military intervention,” said Ali Vaez, the Iran project director at the International Crisis Group. They might be happy to take to the streets, as Trump asked them to. So might some of the people who are unhappy with the attacks but want a new government. Yet these Iranians could run into the second problem: the regime’s substantial capabilities. The Iranian state has multiple institutions that are capable of and responsible for mowing down demonstrators. It has large weapons stockpiles that it has spread out across the country, in part because it expected U.S. hits. That means no matter how far America and Israel go in dropping bombs, they will struggle to truly neuter its security forces.

“The U.S. would basically have to do what it did in Afghanistan and Iraq over the course of several years in the course of a couple of months,” Vaez told me. “I just don’t see how that would be possible.”

There’s one final obstacle to a popular revolution: Iran’s opposition is disorganized, weak and riven. “The Islamic Republic may have abjectly failed at providing its people with a functioning economy and decent standard of living, but it has been very effective at locking up its opponents. The country has a politically active diaspora, but it is particularly plagued by infighting—especially between those who want former Iranian crown prince Reza Pahlavi to take control of the country and those who oppose him. As a result, opposition forces will have a hard time coordinating and then overwhelming whatever regime institutions still exist. “

Already today, the regime has deployed militias on the streets in order to keep order and prevent upheaval,” Vaez said. Especially after watching thousands of people die at the regime’s hands in December and January — and then scores more die in U.S. and Israeli attacks — he was skeptical the Islamic Republic’s foes would be ready to come together and hold mass protests.

Bombing campaigns may never have incited a successful uprising, but there are cases where foreign air power has helped topple a dictator. In Libya, NATO began striking Muammar al-Gaddafi’s forces after Gaddafi began brutalizing his people. It proved critical. Around six months after the campaign began, rebel forces drove Gaddafi’s government from power.

 Most Read

1. Trump lashes out at ‘60 Minutes’ anchor for reading alleged gunman’s manifesto

2. Key question: How did armed man get so close to Trump WHCD event?

3. Becerra’s surge draws progressive backlash in California governor’s race

4. Clash over Trump family businesses entangles Senate crypto bill

5. 4 deadlines that could shape Trump’s next 5 weeks

Those rebel forces existed before the NATO bombings began. But it is a more optimistic precedent for those hoping this campaign will bring down the Islamic Republic. And at least some people are relatively bullish about the country’s future. Iran may not have an armed, organized opposition, but it does have deeply committed regime opponents. “Iranians are willing to make tremendous sacrifices to get rid of their leaders,” Behnam Taleblu wrote in a recent article outlining how a bombing campaign could open the door to an opposition takeover. He cited the death toll from the most recent protests, which some observers place at north of 30,000, as evidence of just how much demonstrators are prepared to give and how hard suppressing them has become. If the bombing campaign continues and extends to local police headquarters and lower-level commanders, Taleblu was optimistic that ordinary Iranians could, indeed, get rid of any regime remnants. “The Iranian people have the drive and determination needed,” he concluded.

So far, the American and Israeli attacks are certainly overwhelming. Decapitation strikes may have a poor track record at inciting regime change, but few governments have killed quite so many officials in quite so short a period as Jerusalem and Washington have in the attack’s first 36 hours. In addition to assassinating Iran’s leader — something the American campaigns in the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the first Gulf War never accomplished — Washington has taken out many of his top deputies. Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, is dead. So is Iran’s defense minister, the chief of staff of the armed forces, and the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. And bombs have killed enumerable officials lower down the chain of command. It’s impossible to say how, exactly, Iranians feel about all this on average. But videos have come out showing many people celebrating Khamenei’s death.

“We’re in a different place,” said Alex Vatanka, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute. “This is a moment where you start thinking about dreams.”

But it is still early days, and celebratory clips are not proof that a government-toppling uprising is near. (There have also been videos of Iranians mourning the supreme leader.) Even Taleblu told me that, although the United States and Israel were off to a good start, it was too early to say how things would play out. In fact, almost every Iran analyst I spoke to hedged when asked what might come next. The only thing they agreed on was that the country would be transformed. “The regime as we know it is no longer going to exist,” said Sanam Vakil, the director of Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa Program. “It’s going to evolve into something else.” Too much of the government has been destroyed for it to carry on as it was.

But that doesn’t mean it will change for the better — or that ordinary Iranians will have a say in what follows. It is possible, perhaps even more likely, that America and Israel have identified or will identify a cooperative regime insider who they will help take charge, as happened in Venezuela. (Alternatively, they might try to install someone from outside the country.) It is also possible that one of the Iranian regime’s many contingency plans will prove effective, and that the country is about to be governed by a new supreme leader. Those contingency plans could fail, but a different regime official or commander might unify the system’s surviving elements and ruthlessly consolidate power. Or the regime might fracture, and different groups will violently compete for control — as happened in Libya’s post-Qaddafi civil war.

Either way, Iranians will have to fight to have their voices heard. And in a moment of great chaos, facing great danger and disruption, protesting for democracy is unlikely to be their first concern.

“I think people are just trying to digest and think about what’s coming next,” Vakil said. “They are going to be focusing on their own survival.”

ATTACHMENT NINETEEN – FROM THE TIMES OF LONDON

RUSSIA’S COMMUNIST LEADER WARNS A 1917-STYLE REVOLUTION MAY BE ON THE WAY

Kremlin struggles to contain whispers of dissent as Putin’s approval ratings slip and a ‘Spiderwoman’ critic says people will lose their fear

By Marc Bennetts Thursday April 23 2026, 6.35am BST, The Times

Russia could face a rerun of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution unless it takes urgent steps to address rising discontent, the leader of the country’s Communist Party has warned.

“We’ve told you ten times — the economy is bound to collapse. The first quarter was a complete disaster. If you don’t urgently take financial, economic, and other measures, then in the autumn we’ll face what happened in 1917. We have no right to repeat that,” Gennady Zyuganov told parliament, referring to Vladimir Lenin’s capture of power after the toppling of Nicholas II, Russia’s last tsar.

Although Zyuganov’s party, the second-biggest in parliament, portrays itself as the heir to the ideas of Lenin and Karl Marx, it is widely seen as a part of the Kremlin’s pseudo-opposition, whose aim is to provide Russians with the illusion of democracy.

However, the Kremlin has struggled in recent weeks to keep a lid on dissent. Zyuganov’s comments came after Victoria Bonya, a Monaco-based Russian model and former TV star, accused the Kremlin of failing to tackle a swathe of problems from the economy to internet restrictions. Her 18-minute video has been watched more than 30 million times since she posted it last week.

The Kremlin denied Bonya’s claim that President Putin was being kept in the dark by officials who were too “afraid” to tell him the truth about Russia’s mounting troubles.

“You know what the risk is? People will stop being afraid, and they’re being squeezed into a coiled spring, and that one day that coiled spring will snap,” Bonya said. She made no mention of the war in Ukraine.

· Russia’s long-silent opposition is starting to show signs of life

Even Russia’s state pollster has admitted that Putin’s approval ratings have slipped to their lowest level since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Sixty-six per cent of Russians say they approve of his actions, a slump of 11 percentage points since December, according to Vtsiom. While the figure is high by western standards, the Kremlin has control over all national media and Russia has no genuine opposition parties.

The decline in Putin’s support has been caused in part by a ban on the Telegram messaging app, which is used by tens of millions of Russians, from ordinary people to business executives and soldiers, as well as other restrictions on the internet.

Zyuganov complained that while the Kremlin had responded to Bonya, it had ignored his party’s appeals to take action. “We did everything we could to support Putin, his strategy, his policies. And then this lady from Monaco — they listened to her!” he said.

His concerns about a repeat of the 1917 revolution that ushered in seven decades of communist rule sparked mockery. “These aren’t communists — they are some kind of anti-communists,” Abbas Gallyamov, a political analyst, said. “Some strange kind of communist,” wrote Yuriy Butusov, a Ukrainian journalist.

Bonya’s comments prompted a ferocious verbal assault by Vladislav Solovyov, a Russian state television presenter. “It’s not up to this worn-out harlot to open her dirty mouth,” he said on air.

The model hit back swiftly, promising to launch a petition to have Solovyov taken off air. “I want to ask a question to all of us women — when did we miss the moment when women began to be insulted on federal TV channels?” she said.

She also posted an AI-generated video that portrayed her as Spiderwoman beating up Solovyov and Vitaly Milonov, a pro-Kremlin MP who had suggested she was a prostitute or high-priced escort.

However, Bonya was careful not to criticise Putin himself, leading to suggestions that her comments were orchestrated by the Kremlin as an attempt to show that the authorities are responsive to problems. She has also sought to distance herself from Russia’s exiled opposition.

“I’m not with you, I’m with the people,” she said, in a tearful video post. “I don’t know what will happen to me … but this was worth it, because I couldn’t not use my voice … It would have been a betrayal of my Russian soul, if I hadn’t spoken out. I’m so glad our voice was heard [by the Kremlin].”

Putin’s critics say the Russian leader is increasingly out-of-touch with ordinary people’s concerns and instead obsessed with the war in Ukraine and the “glories” of the Soviet era.

On Wednesday, on Putin’s orders, the FSB Academy in Moscow was renamed in honour of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the Soviet Union’s first secret police chief.

Dzerzhinsky founded the Cheka, a forerunner to the KGB, in 1917. His agents killed tens of thousands of alleged “class enemies” during what became known as the Red Terror. A statue of him was torn down in Moscow in 1991 during pro-democracy protests before the collapse of the Soviet Union. The FSB Academy bore his name from 1962 until 1993.

Despite Russia’s failure to defeat Ukraine during more than four years of war, there is no sign that Putin is willing to scale back his ambitions. On Tuesday, he once more compared the Kremlin’s “special military operation” to the Soviet Union’s defeat of Nazi Germany and praised women and children for “knitting socks” for soldiers at the front.

Tatiana Stanovaya, an exiled Russian expert on the Kremlin, said that an “ageing, distant Putin” was at risk of losing control amid an “internal schism” brought about by the crackdown on the internet.

He “can neither make peace in Ukraine nor win the war he started”, she wrote in an article for the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Centre think tank. “Putin’s main selling point was always his strength. A weak Putin is of no use to anyone — including the country’s security establishment.”

ATTACHMENT TWENTY – FROM US STATE DEPT

OPERATION EPIC FURY AND INTERNATIONAL LAW

by Reed D. Rubinstein, Office Of The Legal Adviser April 21, 2026

On February 28, the United States Armed Forces launched Operation Epic Fury with a set of clear objectives: to “[d]estroy Iranian offensive missiles, destroy Iranian missile production, destroy [Iran’s] navy and other security infrastructure,” and, finally, ensure that Iran “will never have nuclear weapons.”

Epic Fury is only the latest round of an ongoing international armed conflict with Iran. As the United States has explained in multiple letters to the U.N. Security Council, including most recently on March 10, the United States is engaged in this conflict at the request of and in the collective self-defense of its Israeli ally, as well as in the exercise of the United States’ own inherent right of self-defense.

Critics have argued that the United States’s combat operations are inconsistent with the UN Charter. In truth, the United States is acting well within the recognized contours of international law relating to the use of force and self-defense. This legal assessment is grounded in facts demonstrating Iran’s malign aggression over decades, particularly in Iran’s escalatory attacks against the United States, Israel, and others in the region for years, which precipitated an international armed conflict that predated U.S. combat operations on February 28 and that continues to this day.

IRAN’S ATTACKS ON THE UNITED STATES, ISRAEL, AND OTHERS

Any serious legal assessment of U.S. combat activities must be anchored in the relevant material facts. Beginning with its founding in 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran has regularly attacked the United States, its interests, and its allies, including but not limited to Israel, directly and through proxies. The regime’s “revolutionary” Islamic ideology has been the justification for its decades-long pattern and practice of international terrorism and military adventurism, as well as its multibillion-dollar investments in developing the “Axis of Resistance” and ballistic missile, drone, and nuclear capabilities.

FIRST: Iran is responsible for countless armed attacks against the United States, both through its own military and through its partners and proxies. As context, Iran’s hostility toward the United States began with the 1979 Revolution, subsequent sacking of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, and the abuse and torture of American hostages for 444 days. It continued throughout the years that followed—from the bombing of the U.S. Marines in Lebanon in 1983, which killed 241 U.S. service members; to the Khobar Towers assault in 1996, in which 19 U.S. service members were killed and 500 other individuals were wounded; to the direction of IED attacks against U.S. soldiers in Iraq, which killed at least 600 Americans over a period of eight years.

Iranian-sponsored attacks against the United States intensified in 2019. Kata’ib Hezbollah (KH) and other Iran-aligned militias receiving support from and sometimes acting under the direction of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) fired  rockets at bases in Iraq where U.S. personnel were located, including in an attack that killed a U.S. contractor and injured Iraqi military officers in December 2019. KH also organized  a 2019 attack, approved by the IRGC, against the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad that inflicted significant damage, and senior U.S. government officials concluded at that time that the IRGC was actively developing plans for further attacks against U.S. military personnel and diplomats in Iraq and throughout the region. The United States responded in self-defense with a targeted strike that killed IRGC Commander Qasem Soleimani, but Iranian armed attacks continued. Between 2021 and 2024, there were well over 100 attacks against U.S. personnel and facilities in Iraq and Syria by the IRGC and its partners and proxies. All the while, Iran continued to publicly reiterate and privately pursue its lethal plotting operations against both U.S. officials and private citizens.

SECOND: the regime has for decades maintained a clear and public position that Israel must be annihilated.[1] To that end, the Islamic Republic has devoted massive human and financial resources in pursuit of this goal. The regime has organized, funded, and supported terrorist attacks against Jews, Israel, and Israeli interests worldwide. Following October 7^th attacks against Israel by the Islamic Republic-funded, trained, armed, and supported terrorist organization Hamas,[2] Iran attacked Israel directly, launching historically massive direct and indiscriminate ballistic missile strikes and drone swarms in April and October 2024.

The armed conflict between Israel and Iran has been ongoing since at least that point, and likely years earlier, as Israel underscored in its March 10, 2026, letter to the Security Council. Adding to the threat posed by these direct assaults on Israel, Iran has developed an illicit nuclear program that, if it led to the production of a nuclear weapon, would pose an immediate and present danger to the very existence of the State of Israel when coupled with Iran’s massive and expanding ballistic missile delivery capabilities.[3]

THIRD, Iran’s extensive, long-term support of Hizballah, Hamas, the Houthis, and various Iran‑aligned militia groups in Iraq and Syria has enabled those terrorist organizations to carry out destabilizing attacks against Israel, the United States, Argentina, and others, including countries seeking to freely exercise transit rights through the Strait of Hormuz. While the regime has, at times, concealed its role in certain attacks of this nature, the United States has established Iranian direction, control, and even active participation as a co-belligerent in some of the operations of those groups, as the United States explained in a February 5, 2024 letter to the Security Council. Furthermore, the Islamic Republic’s financial, equipment, training, and operational support for these terrorist organizations has intentionally empowered these groups to sow chaos in the region.

In late 2024, President Trump was again elected. During the early months of the second Trump Administration, the United States initiated negotiations in an intensive effort to resolve the underlying root causes of the ongoing conflict: the longstanding threat posed by Iran to U.S. interests in the region, including its continued proxy attacks on U.S. personnel and facilities and its illicit nuclear and ballistic missile programs. By June of 2025, however, it was clear that these efforts were fruitless.

II. AN ANALYSIS OF THE U.S. RESPONSE

Over many years, the Iranian regime engaged in a clear pattern of unprovoked aggression and direct and proxy attacks against Israel and the United States, while concurrently spending billions of dollars to operationalize its promise to destroy the former and continuously calling for “death” to the latter. That conduct established the factual basis and operative context for Operation Midnight Hammer, the U.S. military action that supported Israel in efforts to obliterate Iran’s nuclear program in June 2025. As indicated in its June 27 letter to the Security Council, the United States decided to act against the regime in collective self-defense of Israel, which, as described above, was undeniably already exercising its right of self-defense in response to an ongoing international armed conflict with the Islamic Republic. The June 27 letter built upon nine previous letters transmitted by the United States to the Security Council since 2021, including on February 27, 2021; June 29, 2021; August 26, 2022; March 27, 2023; October 30, 2023; November 14, 2023; November 28, 2023; December 29, 2023; January 26, 2024; and February 5, 2024.

Accordingly, the United States had an independent legal justification as a matter of jus ad bellum principles to enter into the conflict. But, as noted above, defensive U.S. actions could equally have been considered part of an ongoing international armed conflict between Iran and the United States itself, in which the United States was exercising its own, individual right of self-defense.

Some have argued that whatever the nature of the conflict with Iran that existed in June 2025, that conflict ended following the close of Operation Midnight Hammer, and that any further use of force must be considered a “fresh” use of force and justified anew under the jus ad bellum principles. But those critics have largely failed to acknowledge the facts—the clear pattern of ongoing Iranian attacks against the United States, Israel, and others in the region described above; the massive expansion of the regime’s offensive drone and ballistic missile capabilities; and its accelerated nuclear development—or to squarely address the legal question concerning when a conflict, once commenced, ceases.

According to the Department of War’s Law of War Manual, hostilities end when “opposing parties decide to end hostilities and actually do so, i.e., when neither the intent-based nor act-based tests for when hostilities exist are met.”^[4] Similarly, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross, the legal test for whether an international armed conflict has ended is whether, based on an assessment of the facts on the ground, there has been a “general close of military operations” that has ended military movements of a bellicose nature “so that the likelihood of the resumption of hostilities can reasonably be discarded.”^[5] Any assessment of whether an armed conflict has ended must be fact-based, taking into account both the intentions and the actions of the parties to the conflict.

Under either articulation of the customary international law standard for determining when an armed conflict has ended, the facts clearly support the proposition that the international armed conflict involving Iran, Israel, and the United States that was the subject of the June 27 Article 51 letter is ongoing.

As a threshold matter, the intense but ultimately fruitless attempts at negotiations by the United States in the first few months of the Trump administration, and again in late 2025 and early 2026, did not bring about an end to the conflict brought about by Iran’s continuing pattern of attacks between at least 2019 and 2024. States that attempt in good faith to resolve their disputes by peaceful means do not have their legitimate right of self-defense against an adversary extinguished by genuine but unsuccessful attempts to end a conflict. It was only after multiple attempts at negotiation failed that the United States resumed operations in this conflict.

Further, there is no evidence that any of the parties—Iran, Israel, or the United States—intended or decided to end either of the armed conflicts described above after the June 2025 operations. The parties did not make unilateral declarations concerning an end to hostilities, nor did they conclude any agreement related to the end of hostilities. After the June 2025 strikes, the parties observed a ceasefire to allow diplomatic negotiations to address the Islamic Republic’s continuing threat to the United States, Israel, and the region, but those negotiations failed. As was widely reported in the media, all parties—including Iran—continued to actively plan for further military engagements if diplomacy failed. The pause in hostilities during this period thus lacked the “stability” and “permanence” that must, as a matter of international law, be present to indicate an end to hostilities.

This legal approach is not, as some may argue, a conflation of the jus ad bellum and the jus in bello. For one, for purposes of a jus ad bellum analysis, there is no legal significance to the fact that the United States sent both a new notification to Congress under the War Powers Resolution and an Article 51 letter to the UN Security Council after operations resumed on February 28. Indeed, it is longstanding U.S. practice to submit such communications to both Congress and to the Security Council in situations where it is taking actions within the context of an ongoing armed conflict, and there are many such examples of it doing so.

But more fundamentally, if a conflict has not ended, then it must be ongoing. As a matter of international law, there is no requirement to continually reassess the jus ad bellum principles of necessity and proportionality in the context of an ongoing armed conflict. As former State Department Legal Adviser Brian Egan stated, “once a State has lawfully resorted to force in self-defense against a particular armed group following an actual or imminent armed attack by that group, it is not necessary as a matter of international law to reassess whether an armed attack is imminent prior to every subsequent action taken against that group, provided that hostilities have not ended.”[6] That principle applies equally once the United States has acted in self-defense against another State.

Even assuming arguendo that there was a jus ad bellum requirement to continually assess necessity and proportionality, those customary international law principles are satisfied here because of the scale and continued nature of the threat posed to the security of the United States and Israel. As the United States has previously explained: “A proper assessment of the proportionality of defensive use of force would require looking not only at the immediately preceding armed attack, but also at whether it was part of an ongoing series of attacks, what steps were already taken to deter future attacks, and what force could reasonably be judged as needed to successfully deter future attacks.”^[7] Proportionality does not require that a State exercising its right of self-defense must use the same degree or type of force used by the attacking State in its most recent attack. Indeed, even if initial attacks are limited in scope but the attacking State continues to present a significant threat or to perpetrate further attacks specifically calibrated to avoid a larger response, the defending State may be justified in responding through an operation sufficient to decisively end the conflict.

Consistent with that understanding, the United States also noted in its communication to the Security Council that any assessment of the imminence, gravity, and scope of the threat posed by the Iranian regime would need to account for the decades of consistently malign foreign and domestic conduct and the dangerous and destabilizing risks of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles in Iran’s hands. While the United States does not rely on a theory of imminence to justify its actions in this case—as described above, the United States believes that it and Israel were already engaged in an ongoing armed conflict with Iran as a result of the latter’s attacks—these factors are critically important in providing context for ongoing military operations.

Indeed, any legal analysis or process for determining the imminence of an attack and the proportionality of a potential response should account for the immense destructive power of nuclear weapons, the danger posed by ballistic delivery systems, the conduct of the relevant State actor, and the likelihood of other opportunities to mitigate the threat in the future.[8] The fact that these weapons are often developed in secret magnifies the potential danger to other States, which may not have the relevant intelligence reporting or opportunity to take measures to protect themselves against the potential use of such weapons before they are deployed. In considering the “imminence” of a nuclear attack, policy makers may also weigh the duration and gravity of repeated, public threats to eradicate other States and associated conduct, as well as defiance of international safeguards and attempts to develop capabilities to deliver a nuclear device. These statements and actions repeated over decades are often assertions of foreign policy objectives, not mere political slogans.

III. Conclusion

The operations recommenced in late February were part of an armed conflict with Iran that has been ongoing for years and, at the very least, since June 2025. Under well-established rules of international law, it is reasonable to conclude that this conflict did not end in the interim. And in an ongoing conflict, it is not necessary as a matter of international law to reassess whether an armed attack is imminent prior to every subsequent action taken against an adversary. Nor it is necessary to re-apply jus ad bellum standards of necessity and proportionality, although the actions taken by the United States would satisfy those principles if reapplied.

The United States has acted well within its international law obligations with respect to its use of force since operations began in late February. Iran, by contrast, has acted as any reasonable observer would have expected—lashing out against its neighbors, targeting Israeli civilians, murdering its own people, unlawfully closing the Strait of Hormuz, and wreaking havoc throughout the region. The regime’s outrageous, albeit predictable behavior only further underscores the fundamental necessity, utility, reasonableness, and lawfulness of Operation Epic Fury’s mission and goals.

---

[1] Prior to 1979, Iran and Israel maintained amicable relations. However, the Islamic revolution completely reversed this relationship. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic, denounced Israel as an illegitimate “Zionist regime” and severed all diplomatic relations. He wrote: “If the rulers of the Muslim countries truly represented the believers and enacted God’s ordinances, they would set aside their petty differences, abandon their subversive and divisive activities, and join together like the fingers of one hand. Then a handful of wretched Jews (the agents of America, Britain, and other foreign powers) would never have been able to accomplish what they have, no matter how much support they enjoyed from America and Britain.” Since then, calls for Israel’s total destruction have been deeply embedded in official rhetoric, military programs, state-sponsored education, and symbolic events such as Quds Day. 

[2] According to a West Point Center for the Study of Terrorism monograph, “there is little doubt that Iran’s financial aid, structuring of its proxies into more cohesive armed factions and then into umbrella organizations, and assistance through the supply of weapons increased the deadliness and extremism of its Palestinian proxies.” Without Iranian assistance and nurturing, these groups would not have been able to strike Israel as they did—armed capabilities supplied by Iran, such as a variety of UAV designs, rockets, demolition charges, and other munitions, were smuggled into Gaza and used to deadly effect. In summary, “Iranian assistance allowed its Palestinian proxies to amass the firepower, messaging know-how, and much of the hi-tech equipment necessary to carry out and propagandize the attack. Financial aid provided by Iran did more than keep Hamas operating as a governing body in Gaza; it was also directly piped into Hamas’ terror and military apparatus.”

[3] International law must acknowledge the uniquely destructive power of ballistic missiles with nuclear weapons. The inherent right to self-defense cannot rationally be construed to require a State to wait until a self-avowedly hostile actor has a nuclear warhead-tipped missile ready to launch before lawfully taking a disabling strike. Indeed, hesitation under these circumstances would render self-defense futile—practically speaking, the last effective opportunity to defend a civilian population from a nuclear attack by the Islamic Republic or other rogue regime would be before it obtains a nuclear weapon and the ability to attack with it. Any contrary rule would undermine deterrence and reward aggression.

[4] As further explained in the Law of War Manual, the usual indicators for a determination of termination include an agreement to end hostilities, usually in the form of a peace treaty; a unilateral declaration of one of the parties to end the war, provided the other party does not continue hostilities; the complete subjugation of an enemy State and its allies; or a simple cessation of hostilities. Law of War Manual, Sec. 3.8.1.

[5] See “Frequently Asked Questions: International Armed Conflict,” at https://www.icrc.org/en/article/faq-international-armed-conflict: “The declassification of conflicts must be based on the facts on the ground analyzed in light of the applicable IHL legal criterion. For the ICRC, this criterion is the general close of military operations. Hostilities must end with a degree of stability and permanence for the IAC to be considered terminated. A general close of military operations means not only the end of active hostilities, but also the end of military movements of a bellicose nature, including those that reform, reorganize or reconstitute, so that the likelihood of the resumption of hostilities can reasonably be discarded.”

[6] Brian Egan, International Law, Legal Diplomacy, and the Counter-ISIL Campaign, Speech at the American Society of International Law (April 1, 2016).

[7] William Taft, Self-Defense and the Oil Platforms Decision, 29 Yale Law International Journal 295 (2004).

[8] See Daniel Bethlehem, Principles Relevant to the Scope of a State’s Right of Self-Defense against an Imminent or Actual Armed Attack by Non-State Actors, 106 Am. J. Int’l L. 1 (2012).

ATTACHMENT TWENTY ONE – FROM THE EURASIA GROUP

TOP RISKS 2026

CHAPTERS

1 US political revolution

2 Overpowered

3 The Donroe Doctrine

4 Europe under siege

5 Russia’s second front

6 State capitalism with American characteristics

7 China’s deflation trap

7 AI eats its users

8 Zombie USMCA

9 The water weapon

Red Herrings

“Tariff Man” at large Deglobalization

Spheres of influence

Sell America

2026 IS A TIPPING POINT YEAR.

It’s a time of great geopolitical uncertainty. Not because there’s imminent conflict between the two biggest powers, the United States and China—that isn’t even a top risk, it’s a red herring this year. There’s not (yet, at least) a second Cold War, with a rising China remaking the global system to its own liking, the Americans and allies resisting. Nor do tensions between the United States and Russia threaten to spiral out of control despite a war raging in Europe, the result of Vladimir Putin’s longstanding grievances against the US-led order.

The United States is itself unwinding its own global order. The world’s most powerful country is in the throes of a political revolution.

In our lifetimes, we have never witnessed an American president so committed to and so capable of changing the political system and, accordingly, the United States’s role in the world. Franklin D. Roosevelt was the closest and, as you’ll see in the report, the comparison is lacking. Whether Donald Trump’s revolution succeeds or fails, the implications for the United States and the broader world will be felt for a generation.

For other countries, the United States has become unpredictable and unreliable.

Responding to this new reality has become an urgent geopolitical endeavor. Some will succeed: China is today in a stronger geopolitical position accordingly; so too are India and the Gulf states. Others will fail: Europe is now surrounded by adversaries and probably too late to remake itself effectively. Others will defend themselves, hedge their bets, and find ways to muddle through as best they can: Canada, Mexico, and much of the Global South.

In the interim, we’ll see a lot of instability. The world today bears witness to some 60 active conflicts, the most since World War II. And while some will resolve into ceasefires, few will become stable. Because at a time of disruption, most everyone is concerned principally with making sure their own house is in order.

All of which is happening in the midst of extraordinary technological revolution, an AI boom that represents the greatest opportunity and danger humanity has ever created. And it comes with next to no governance, alignment, or coordination.

What a time to be alive. And what a time to present our Top Risks report for 2026.

US POLITICAL REVOLUTION

The United States is experiencing a political revolution: President Donald Trump’s attempt to systematically dismantle the checks on his power, capture the machinery of government, and weaponize it against his enemies. Last year, we warned about the “Rule of Don”; what began as tactical norm-breaking has become a system-level transformation beyond partisan hardball or executive overreach—qualitatively different from what even the most ambitious American presidents have attempted (please see Box 1: Trump vs. FDR). With many of the guardrails that held in Trump’s first term now buckling, we can no longer say with confidence what kind of political system the United States will be when this revolution is over.

In Trump’s view, he overcame a rigged election, two partisan impeachments, dozens of unjust felony convictions, and two assassination attempts—one a whisker’s breadth from killing him—to stage the greatest political comeback in American history. President Trump sees the principal threat to him and his allies as domestic, not external, and he believes he has a mandate for retribution. The administration views this project not as an assault on democracy but as its restoration, a necessary purge of a political system captured by a deeply corrupt establishment that had already weaponized government against them. Over 77 million Americans voted for Trump in 2024, and many of them sympathize with that diagnosis: Among 2024 voters who said democracy mattered to their decision, a majority chose Trump—not because they saw him as a champion of democratic values, but because they believed the system was already broken and wanted someone who would disrupt it. “Trumpism” is structural, and at this most fundamental level, Trump’s supporters are getting what they asked for.

In 2025, the administration moved to politicize the state accordingly. Career civil servants were purged for political rather than performance-related reasons, from investigating corruption and providing unwelcome intelligence assessments to having ties to political enemies. Inspectors general, ethics watchdogs, and independent agency leaders were sacked.

The power ministries—especially the Justice Department Eurasia Group’s Governance Tracker captures this record, and the FBI—became fully political arms of the White plotting high-profile administration actions along two House, stripped of the operational independence that had dimensions: how much they break with established insulated them since Watergate. Media companies, law norms, and how much they erode institutional checks on firms, and universities faced investigations, lawsuits, and presidential power (please see chart below). Actions that threats designed to force compliance.score high on both are the most “revolutionary.” Many of the administration’s tracked actions cluster in that quadrant.

Checks have been weaker than expected. Congress largely went along with the administration’s policies. The Democratic Party, divided and leaderless, struggled to mount effective resistance. Most would-be Republican dissenters were cowed by the threat of primary challenges and political exile. The corporate media, fearful of retaliation, self-censored and softened its coverage—normalizing behaviors that would have seemed outrageous in 2017. Large media and tech firms chose to pay Trump millions to settle winnable lawsuits rather than face retaliation. Business and financial leaders, privately uncomfortable but unwilling to risk the consequences of speaking out, stayed silent. The administration did repeatedly lose in court, but it also exploited the gaps in a legal system that couldn’t keep pace with their actions. And the Supreme Court, one of the most effective and powerful checks on executive power, often acceded to Trump’s revolutionary push—not least because the conservative majority appears receptive to the administration’s maximalist conception of presidential power, known as unitary executive theory. The result, as the chart shows, is that most of the administration’s tracked actions have succeeded so far, including several in the revolutionary quadrant. Even actions that face legal challenges have often already achieved their strategic purpose: law firms and news organizations have been chilled regardless of whether the suits ultimately prevail.

In 2026, the revolution will continue. With only three years left and Democrats favored to take the House of Representatives in November’s midterm elections, Trump and his inner circle will grow more, not less, riskacceptant in their efforts to entrench the president’s power and cement his legacy before the window narrows. The machinery of government will be wielded aggressively against the president’s enemies. The administration has already launched investigations into Democratic fundraising platforms, donors, officials, and candidates. Companies that employ prominent critics will face investigations and regulatory retaliation; executives who criticize the White House will be singled out; foundations that donate to Democrats risk dragged-out fights over their tax-exempt status. The effect will be to make public criticism of and opposition to Trump costlier.

The jury system and the courts will remain a bulwark— convictions require indictments from grand juries and unanimous verdicts from randomly selected citizens, upheld by independent judges—but investigations and prosecutions will be draining enough to deter individual resistance and collective action at the margin. The strategy is already proving effective. Major Democratic donors face the threat of investigations and government retaliation. Foundations are scrutinizing grants that could be criticized as partisan. Large law firms are turning down clients who want to challenge Trump policies and doing billions of dollars in free legal work for the administration.

Media companies will be further cowed through lawsuits and regulatory threats—or co-opted as Trump-aligned investors win Washington’s approval to acquire major platforms in exchange for favorable coverage. The Ellison family’s takeover of Paramount gave it control of CBS; it signed a deal for TikTok’s US operations and is now pursuing CNN’s Warner Bros. Discovery. Combined with Elon Musk’s X, Rupert Murdoch’s Fox, and Trump’s own Truth Social, much of legacy and social media in the United States will be in pro-Trump hands.

As the midterms approach, the administration will move to tilt the electoral playing field in its favor. The White House’s unprecedented mid-decade redistricting push is a statement of intent, even if the net effect on the 2026 map will be small. So are the pardons for 2020 fake electors and the gutting of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the agency that helps states defend elections against cyberattacks. More consequential would be an assault on election infrastructure. An election denier now runs election security at the Department of Homeland Security. The Department of Justice has sued states that Trump lost in 2020, seeking voter roll data that could be used to purge voters or contest results. Federal monitors could be deployed to swing districts, as they were to California and New Jersey last November, for “election security.” In a worst-case scenario, emergency powers could be invoked to deploy federal troops to polling places in an attempt to suppress turnout. No such powers exist, but National Guard troops have already been sent to blue cities under various pretexts, and Trump has shown a willingness to act first and worry about the courts later.

Federalism will limit President Trump’s efforts. The Constitution gives Washington no role in elections, and state leaders of both parties have begun pushing back against federal overreach (though not without the administration threatening to withhold federal funding in retaliation). But if close races leave either the House or Senate in doubt, fraud allegations, contested certifications, and pressure on local officials to delay or refuse results will follow. Expect Trump to replicate his 2020 play, when he asked Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” enough votes to overturn his loss—except this time, some election officials may be loyalists willing to comply.

For all these efforts, Republicans are still likely to lose the House in November. Trump’s approval ratings are low, voters are unhappy with the economy, and history suggests the president’s party almost always loses seats. News cycles would then shift to impeachment efforts, oversight hearings, and gridlock. Trump’s support would erode, protests would grow, and his momentum would fade. But a Democratic House can only do so much to stop the revolution. It can subpoena but not compel; impeach but not convict; withhold funding, but Trump has found ways around Congress’s power of the purse. A Senate majority would matter slightly more, but Democrats are unlikely to flip that chamber. They need four seats on an unfavorable map, and every deterred donor, volunteer, and voter would make the climb steeper. And without a vetoproof supermajority, even a unified Democratic Congress couldn’t fully check a president who has proven willing to bypass it entirely—though such a result would further raise the odds the revolution fails by adding friction and signaling that resistance is popular, legitimate, and viable.

Some imagine that Trump’s growing unpopularity will compel moderation. That’s plausible: The Epstein files, Israel support, and redistricting have all exposed cracks in the MAGA coalition, and a souring economy or a blue wave could fragment it. Indeed, an increasingly multipolar global economy and China’s rare-earth leverage will force more caution on tariffs than Trump would otherwise like (please see Red herring: “Tariff Man” at large). But Xi Jinping can check the president in ways that Marjorie Taylor Greene and other domestic opponents cannot. Trump is more likely to respond to domestic setbacks, from sinking poll numbers to a defeat in November, as he did to his 2020 election loss: by doubling down. Except that as a lame duck surrounded by loyalists who can’t afford defeat any more than he can, the impulse to go for broke will be stronger.

Trump’s political revolution is ultimately more likely to fail than succeed, undone by a combination of belated institutional resistance, limited coalition fracture, and, not to be underestimated, the president’s own impulsiveness. But there will be no return to the status quo ante. The next president will inherit whatever expanded powers and weakened constraints Trump manages to entrench before 2029, and the grievances that fueled Trumpism will remain unaddressed. The result may not be Viktor Orban’s Hungary, but it will be far from a healthy body politic.

The United States can’t be categorized as a representative democracy in 2026, not because it’s heading toward dictatorship but because it’s in the middle of a political revolution whose outcome will remain genuinely indeterminate for years. Trump and his supporters will take ever greater risks. Resistance will mount too, but neither side will land a decisive blow. The longer this plays out, the greater the risks—more substantial than they have any right to be in the world’s oldest democracy. It’s America’s own late Gorbachev era: The country is careening toward something, but nobody knows what. And for millions of Americans, perhaps even a voting majority, the risks of uncertain revolution beat the certainty of continued decay under a system that wasn’t working for them

Whatever the endpoint, the damage over the next year will be significant. As loyalists replace experts across the federal government, state capacity will weaken, and the government’s ability to collect data, preempt crises, and respond to emergencies will erode. The administration has already fired the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner, canceled federal employee surveys, and reduced capacity in agencies like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that provide essential data, forcing the private sector to look elsewhere for statistical truth. Deep cuts at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, and the National Security Council will degrade the government’s ability to respond to disasters, track disease outbreaks, ensure food and drug safety, and coordinate national security. The next crisis will find a government less prepared to respond. Media consolidation will degrade the information environment, and the shared reality required for democratic deliberation will fray further. Corruption will become more overt, and political violence will continue to climb— threats against election officials, judges, and politicians have risen sharply, and the pardons issued to January 6 defendants signal that Trump-aligned rule breakers will enjoy executive protection.

As executive impunity expands and the rule of law erodes, the business environment will be put to the test. Companies will have to price their exposure to the US government into key decisions. Potential consequences for the disfavored include targeted investigations, loss of federal contracts and tax-exempt status, public rebuke by the president, demands for investment pledges, forced divestment of foreign partners, and partial government ownership or control. Targeted organizations will struggle to attract talent; employees won’t want the professional risk. Inducements for the aligned include favorable regulatory treatment, subsidies, tariff protection, and preferential contracts. Litigation will become a growing burden; obedience will beget more extraction.

Whether Trump’s revolution succeeds or fails, there is no going back to what came before. When political alignment rather than productivity determines economic outcomes, capital gets misallocated, investment grows riskier, and long-term growth suffers (please see Top Risk #6: State capitalism with American characteristics). If markets believe the Fed’s credibility is compromised, the consequences for inflation, interest rates, and the dollar could be severe. The United States remains the world’s deepest and most liquid market, and there’s still no better alternative (please see Red herring: Sell America). But “least ugly” is not the same as safe, and the politicization of economic decision-making will gradually raise risk premia on US assets.

The instability will radiate outward. Even as external conflicts recede, the United States itself will be the principal source of global risk in 2026. Tariff threats will continue to be used to extract trade and non-trade concessions, if less liberally than last year (please see Red herring: “Tariff Man” at large). Military power will be wielded more assertively, especially in the Western Hemisphere (please see Top Risk #3: The Donroe Doctrine). Alliance commitments will shift with the presidential mood. Soft power will erode; the United States will find it harder to build coalitions and attract global talent. Washington’s retreat from multilateral cooperation will deepen our more fragmented and conflict-prone G-Zero world; when the next global crisis hits, there will be no “committee to save the world.” And what happens in America won’t stay in America—democratic backsliding in the United States will embolden autocrats elsewhere.

The United States was already the most structurally dysfunctional political system among advanced industrial democracies before Trump returned to office. He is a symptom, a beneficiary, and an accelerant of that dysfunction, but he didn’t cause it—and he won’t fix it. Whether Trump’s revolution succeeds or fails, there is no going back to what came before.

Trump’s second term is not the first political revolution in American history. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s three-plus terms fundamentally transformed US governance. On the surface, the comparison writes itself: Both presidents invoked crisis to justify extraordinary action; both sought to dramatically expand the power of the presidency; both routinely broke established norms and governance practices; both clashed with the courts; and both were denounced as dictators by their critics. We have the benefit of hindsight with FDR; Trump’s revolution is still unfolding. But even accounting for that asymmetry, the FDR-Trump parallel is weaker than it appears.

Roosevelt confronted a Supreme Court hostile to his agenda, a Congress jealous of its institutional role, and a Democratic Party that refused to fall under his thumb. In certain respects, he went further than Trump has thus far: He tried to expand the Supreme Court’s membership from nine to 15 justices to dilute its conservative majority. But court-packing failed because his own party stopped him—though he ultimately reshaped the court through eight appointees over his tenure—as did FDR’s attempt to remove dissenting Democrats in a 1938 party “purge.” And a sweeping effort to reform the executive branch had to be watered down substantially to pass Congress. When the court struck down key New Deal programs—including the National Industrial Recovery Act and the Agricultural Adjustment Act—FDR accepted the setbacks and adjusted course. The court eventually acceded to much of the New Deal agenda under political pressure—the famous “switch in time that saved nine.”

Roosevelt’s legacy endures—the modern administrative state, a professionalized White House staff, the expectation that the president sets the national agenda— but it was built primarily through legislation and embedded in a political order where parties, Congress, and courts defined what was permissible. That legacy included the creation of independent agencies designed to insulate certain executive functions from politicization and presidential control. The result was a vastly larger federal government and a more powerful executive, but one with new constraints on presidential discretion.

Trump is also pursuing a revolution in presidential power, but of a different kind. FDR expanded what the state could do, and presidential power grew with it. Trump is seeking to weaken the checks on how that power is used—and redefine by, for, and against whom it is wielded. And where FDR worked largely through Congress to reshape the government, Trump is personally asserting direct presidential authority over the entire executive branch, while also weaponizing the “power ministries” against his opponents, using litigation and regulatory threats to chill criticism, and testing the limits of compliance with court orders.

Trump and his supporters see this as restoring democratic accountability to an administrative state that has been captured and weaponized against them by a corrupt “deep state.” Many of the constraints Trump is attempting to remove—independent agencies, statutory for-cause protections, bureaucratic insulation, inspectors general—are themselves legacies of the New Deal. A comparatively quiescent Congress, a Republican Party that Trump has remade in his image, and a Supreme Court majority broadly sympathetic to expansive presidential power (though still independent) leave fewer institutional obstacles than FDR faced.

Both presidents broke norms and precedents. Roosevelt ended the two-term tradition—a norm so significant it was later codified in the Constitution—and challenged the court’s institutional role, but he did not defy judicial rulings or contest electoral outcomes. His norm-breaking centered on the scope of federal policy and institutional design. Trump has already tried to overturn an election, routinely casts adverse court rulings, prosecutions, and media scrutiny as illegitimate, and describes domestic critics—including independent media, judges, and political opponents—as “enemies of the people.” The norms under pressure today concern whether the American president is effectively above the law, whether the power ministries can be used for personal and political retribution (and personal enrichment), and whether the playing field for future elections—the ultimate check— remains meaningfully competitive.

Eurasia Group’s Governance Tracker classifies presidential actions along several dimensions: the extent to which they violate norms, the extent to which they erode constraints on presidential power, and whether they succeeded or were effectively checked. On these measures, Roosevelt’s record shows significant norm-breaking and erosive ambitions. He was blocked in his most aggressive moves—courtpacking and the party purge—but ultimately prevailed in his confrontation with the courts and greatly expanded the federal government and executive power. Trump’s actions so far register as more revolutionary, targeting not just the scope of government but the checks on presidential power itself. Whether they will be effectively checked is the central question for 2026 and beyond.

OVERPOWERED

The defining technologies of the 21st-century economy run on electrons: electric vehicles (EVs), drones, robots, advanced manufacturing, smart grids, battery storage—and yes, AI. These systems share a common foundation: the “electric stack” (batteries, motors, power electronics, embedded compute). Master the stack, and you can build almost anything the modern economy demands. Cede it, and you’re buying the future from someone else.

China has mastered it. The United States is ceding it. In 2026, that divergence will become impossible to ignore. In 2010, China was arguably the most fossil fuel-dependent major economy on Earth. Today, it is by far the largest consumer and producer of clean energy—the first “electrostate.” While coal still provides a large share of China’s power, and in absolute terms the country remains the world’s biggest fossil-fuel user, most of its growth in power capacity and generation now comes from renewables. Critically, Beijing dominates roughly 75% of global lithium-ion battery production and 90% of the neodymium magnets used in motors, and Chinese firms lead in solar panels, wind turbines, grid equipment, and the EVs and drones built on these components. This is the result of decades of industrial policy, scale manufacturing, and cost reduction. The electric stack has gotten 99% cheaper since 1990. China rode that curve better than anyone, and its 15th Five-Year Plan in 2026 will double down on these sectors, ensuring no letup in output despite domestic concerns about “involution” and Western cries of “overcapacity” (please see Top Risk #7: China’s deflation trap).

The United States, meanwhile, has cemented its status as the world’s largest petrostate since surpassing Saudi Arabia in 2018 and now pumps 13.5 million oil barrels per day. President Donald Trump’s energy strategy centers on LNG exports, coal, nuclear, and rolling back support for renewables—technologies now caught up in America’s culture wars and associated with climate policy rather than industrial competitiveness. The “big, beautiful bill” phases out tax credits for utility-scale solar and wind while adding restrictions that make battery credits more difficult to claim.

The result: Washington is asking the world to buy 20th-century energy while Beijing offers 21st-century infrastructure. China’s value proposition is especially enticing for emerging markets: solar panels and wind turbines that don’t rely on volatile commodity imports, next-generation battery storage systems, grid equipment, electric (and intelligent) vehicles, advanced drones—all getting cheaper and more scalable by the day. The United States, by contrast, continues to index its exports to these regions around fossil fuels, airplanes, and agricultural goods. While governments from Southeast Asia to Latin America to Africa were forced to play defense with a much more powerful Trump administration last year— with many acquiescing to fossil fuel purchase agreements to avoid punitive tariffs—in 2026, they will shift from damage control to longer-term infrastructure planning. That calculus will increasingly favor Beijing’s offerings. Already China’s exports of renewable technologies have surpassed US fossil fuel exports.

There are tradeoffs to adopting the Chinese stack, including cybersecurity risks and fewer opportunities for other countries to build their own electrotech industries. But many will opt for the benefits of cheap Chinese imports anyway—just as they did with Huawei’s telecom equipment a decade ago. This choice is (geo)political but less binary than choosing a defense partner or telecom provider, making it easier to drift toward Beijing without a single dramatic break with Washington. The cumulative effect, however, is a geopolitical turning point: A growing share of the world’s energy, mobility, and industrial systems will be built on Chinese foundations, bringing Beijing commercial benefits and influence that soft power alone—hampered by low favorability ratings in many of these countries—could never deliver.

The United States isn’t just falling behind internationally. At home, America’s electricity grid is straining under surging demand from reshoring, electrification, and data center expansion. US power consumption is projected to rise nearly 6% annually through 2030 after decades of flat growth, and the system is struggling to keep up. Interconnection queues now average over eight years in key markets, aging transmission infrastructure needs urgent replacement, and community opposition has killed data center projects in multiple states. While the US produces enough gas to meet growing domestic needs and then some, combined-cycle turbines face multiyear backlogs for procurement. Nuclear takes a decade. Some large industrial users like hyperscalers are able to work around grid bottlenecks by deploying behind-themeter gas generation, signing direct power purchase agreements, or contracting to restart mothballed nuclear plants. But the fastest, cheapest path to new capacity at scale—solar plus batteries, deployable in 18 months—is precisely what the United States is now hobbling, ceding the cost curve to China in the process.

The AI race raises the stakes. While the United States still leads frontier model development, China’s dominance over the electro-industrial stack could prove decisive for powering and deploying AI at scale. AI requires massive amounts of electricity to train and run, and Beijing produces 2.5 times as much electricity as the US and is pulling further ahead. In 2024 alone, China added 429 gigawatts (GW) of new power capacity, more than a third of the entire US grid; America added 51 GW. Perhaps more importantly, AI models need physical systems— autonomous vehicles, drones, robots, motors, and smart infrastructure—to be useful, all of which run on the electric stack China controls.

The United States is betting that whoever builds the best and largest AI models—and whoever develops Artificial General Intelligence first—will win the race. China is making a different bet: that on its own, intelligence is a commodity, and it creates strategic value only when it can be powered and deployed at scale. Chinese AI models are open-source, leaner, and far cheaper than their American counterparts—requiring dramatically less energy to train, though not necessarily to run—good enough (and increasingly competitive with the frontier) for most practical applications and designed for widespread adoption and integration with the electrotech stack. If China’s approach, built around near-term industrial and military deployment rather than pure research supremacy, proves more relevant—and monetizable in overseas markets—the US may discover it’s been winning a narrow competition while losing the broader contest for the 21st century.

Washington is asking the world to buy 20th-century energy while Beijing offers 21st-century infrastructure. Taken together, the electrotech gap creates a triple bind for the United States. Domestically, it saddles American industry with higher energy costs and slower buildouts—a competitive disadvantage that will compound (just ask the Europeans). Internationally, it cedes influence in the fastest-growing economies to China, one procurement decision at a time. And strategically, it wagers that intelligence alone wins when the stack that powers and converts it into economic, military, and geopolitical capability may be equally or more important.

Washington’s fossil-first posture puts it out of step even with traditional energy players. India wants to replicate China’s success in leveraging electrotech for broader economic development. Europe is looking for ways to reduce fossil fuel dependence, including through an expanded continental grid and investment in the electric stack. Gulf economies are carving out roles for themselves in new energy supply chains and AI deployment. Even Saudi Arabia is looking to solar to power its data centers.

As Chinese EVs, batteries, and drones flood global markets while American LNG faces tepid demand, expect frustration to build in Washington. In the near term, this could manifest as tariff threats to force trading partners to buy more US hydrocarbons or perhaps restrictions on smaller countries that adopt Chinese energy infrastructure. Aggressive retaliation—such as sanctions on Chinese electrotech firms—is unlikely as long as the Trump administration continues to prioritize bilateral stability with Beijing (please see Box 5: US-China détente won’t collapse). But for governments trying to navigate longer-term US-China decoupling without alienating either side, this divergence introduces a new geopolitical pressure point that will sharpen over time.

The spread of cheap electrotech is good news for the world. It enables more resilient energy systems, creates new opportunities for AI deployment, and maintains momentum for the global energy transition. But on current trends, the United States is positioned to capture few of those benefits and bear substantial costs: commercial losses as Chinese exports displace American fossil fuels, geopolitical setbacks as emerging markets build on Beijing’s platforms, and growing doubts about whether America is running the right AI race at all. China bet on electrons. The US bet on molecules. In 2026, we’ll start to see who was right.

THE DONROE DOCTRINE

President Donald Trump’s administration is reviving and reinterpreting the logic of the Monroe Doctrine in its effort to assert power over the Western Hemisphere. Where the 19thcentury doctrine warned external powers against encroaching in the Americas, Trump’s version broadens the concept. It seeks not just to limit China, Russia, and Iran in the Western Hemisphere, but to actively assert American primacy through a mix of military pressure, economic coercion, selective alliance-building, and Trump’s personal score-settling. In 2026, this posture will heighten the risk of policy overreach and unintended consequences.

The pattern crystallized in 2025: strikes on alleged drug boats, threatened military action in Colombia and Mexico, sanctions on Colombia’s president and a Brazilian Supreme Court justice, pressure on Panama over canal management, new sanctions on Nicaragua and tightened restrictions on Cuba, upgraded relations with El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele in exchange for deportation cooperation, a $20 billion bailout for Argentina timed to boost President Javier Milei’s political fortunes, and a pardon for a former Honduran president convicted of drug trafficking by a US court.

The centerpiece is Venezuela, where a high-stakes gamble has already delivered Trump his headline win. After months of escalating pressure—expanded sanctions, a $50 million bounty, the largest naval deployment in the Caribbean in decades, the shutdown of Venezuelan airspace, boarding and seizing oil tankers, a full boycott of Venezuelan tanker traffic—US special forces conducted a successful raid that captured Nicolas Maduro and brought him to the United States to face criminal charges. Venezuela had no ability to respond, and no other country in the region or beyond took meaningful action. Trump will take credit for removing a dictator and bringing him to justice without violating his most consistent red line: no sustained boots on the ground.

But removing Maduro was the easy part—what comes next is more challenging. The regime structure remains largely intact. Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez, Vice President Delcy Rodriguez, and her brother Jorge, the National Assembly president—Chavismo’s entire power apparatus—appear to have survived the raid. Maduro’s successor will be a regime insider, not the democratic opposition, which holds all the legitimacy but none of the guns. The path to an opposition led government will be contested, requiring amnesty deals for the military figures currently running the country and complicit in the regime’s crimes, all of whom will prioritize survival and spoils over reform. The presence of Cuban advisers could reinforce these tendencies.

THE WORLD MOVES FAST

Here’s what our draft said on Friday, 2 January:

“Trump is hoping enough pressure will force a negotiated exit or prompt the military to hand Maduro over. If that’s not enough, Washington is weighing options ranging from a decapitation strike to an Osama bin Laden-style raid. The latter is favored if the opportunity arises, the goal being to bring Maduro to the United States to face justice. The only thing that’s off the table is a sustained deployment of boots on the ground, Trump’s most consistent red line from his first administration through this one. Americans won’t tolerate any new, long commitments. President Trump wants to go in hard, declare victory quickly, and get out. Maduro is unlikely to survive the year in power.”

The transition will largely be Venezuela’s to manage— or mismanage. The raid’s success suggests cooperation from some regime insiders, which may smooth the initial handover to new leadership. But while the successor government will seek US cooperation on sanctions relief and oil deals, and Trump will be receptive as long as he can claim a win, pro-American sentiment within the Venezuelan military remains uncertain. The raid itself could harden the remaining regime’s resistance and stir nationalist resentment even among Venezuelans who hated Maduro. Trump has signaled that the United States will play a role in managing what comes next, though Washington will struggle to shape the transition without a sustained presence on the ground. White House advisers have suggested they intend to maintain a strong military presence in the region to keep up the pressure. Indeed, they are discussing plans to “take the oil” if Venezuela’s new leaders prove recalcitrant, with seizure of offshore oil rigs—easy targets with limited risk—a next step. Still, the more President Trump claims ownership, the more he owns whatever goes wrong.

Civil war is unlikely—you need two armed factions for that—and Venezuela has advantages Iraq, Libya, and other US regime-change targets lacked: no sectarian fault lines and a living memory of competitive democratic rule. But armed groups—including National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrillas, armed colectivos, and criminal networks embedded in illicit mining and trafficking—will see opportunity in any resulting chaos.

Cuba may be next if Trump’s experiment in Venezuela doesn’t immediately backfire. Secretary of State Marco Rubio believes Maduro’s ouster will see Havana fall, and Trump may see a chance to finish what the Venezuela campaign started. Military action is unlikely in the near term—not least because it would take time to reposition US assets, which are still needed for Venezuela. But extending the oil blockade to squeeze Cuba economically is a possibility—one that would further strain regional relationships. Mexico has already stepped in to send oil to Havana after US disruption of Venezuelan flows. Cuba is economically fragile and lacks any meaningful ability to retaliate. But the regime is deeply entrenched, with a long history of surviving American pressure, and chaos 90 miles from Florida would pose new risks.

The Donroe Doctrine will also affect Colombia, America’s largest regional hub for security operations and the country most exposed to turmoil in Venezuela. Trump spent much of last year publicly ridiculing President Gustavo Petro, and the US Treasury sanctioned him personally for criticizing the Caribbean boat strikes. Petro’s chosen successor is on track to lose this year’s election with or without Washington’s help. A conservative government will be friendlier to Trump. But continued US pressure and the messy aftermath of regime change next door could nonetheless inflame nationalism, deepen anti-American sentiment, and degrade counternarcotics cooperation during a critical period for the region—especially before the new president takes office.

Trump’s policy also creates risks for Mexico, despite his unexpectedly strong relationship with President Claudia Sheinbaum and robust security cooperation between both countries. Mexican alignment has held so far, but it depends on Trump respecting Mexico’s sovereignty. Direct US strikes against cartels on Mexican territory remain possible; Trump considered this option at the beginning of his term last year. The Venezuela success may embolden him. Crossing Sheinbaum’s red line would rupture the relationship and threaten the uneasy US-Mexico trade equilibrium (please see Top Risk #9: Zombie USMCA).

Beyond these flashpoints, Trump’s deployment of tariffs, sanctions, migration leverage, trade access, and (in more limited cases) China policy conditionality will continue to shape political outcomes. So far, the administration has been pushing on an open door. Mexico and Central America have quickly fallen into line. South America is more favorable terrain than most of the world, as right-leaning leaders—many sharing Trump’s anticrime, anti-immigrant, and pro-business agenda—are gaining power and moving closer to Washington (Brazil and pre-election Colombia are the obvious exceptions).

However, the risk of US policy overshoot is high— especially now that Trump has a successful raid under his belt. Whether that means sanctioning a sitting president, meddling in an election, miscalculating how far aligned governments will bend, or going after the Cuban regime—weakened by the loss of

THE DONROE DOCTRINE IN ACTION

Venezuelan oil subsidies and already under tightened restrictions—he will be tempted to double down on what has worked so far and push further. No doubt Trump will look to boost aligned candidates in the upcoming elections in Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, and Peru. As has been true on almost every continent where America has overextended itself, he risks planting seeds of anti-Americanism and pushing conflict, traffickers, and cartels into new places.

History in Latin America shows that aggressive crackdowns tend to displace illicit networks rather than dismantle them. In the early 2000s, Colombia degraded the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and major trafficking corridors, but cocaine production shifted into Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela. Mexico’s post-2006 cartel offensive fragmented organizations, exporting violence to Central America and the Caribbean as splintered groups sought new routes and territories. In Venezuela’s case, disruption of entrenched trafficking, illicit mining, and smuggling systems would redirect criminal groups into Ecuador, Costa Rica, Panama, and Belize—states with limited capacity to absorb the shock.

The result would not be hemispheric destabilization, but rather the diffusion of insecurity, a resurgence of migration pressure, and renewed anti-American sentiment.

And then there’s the longer-term risk. China is already South America’s largest trading partner. The Donroe Doctrine aims to reassert US primacy and push Beijing out of the Americas. Trump’s heavy hand may give countries more reason to hedge toward China and erode Washington’s long-term influence at the margins. A doctrine designed to secure America’s backyard could ultimately end up loosening its grip.

A doctrine designed to secure America’s backyard could ultimately end up loosening its grip.

EUROPE UNDER SIEGE

The hollowing out of Europe’s political center has been a decade in the making. France, Germany, and the United Kingdom each enter the year with weak, unpopular governments under siege from the populist right, the populist left, and an American administration and state-aligned social media openly rooting for their collapse. None face scheduled general elections. Yet all three risk paralysis at best and destabilization at worst—and at least one leader could fall. The consequences won’t stay contained: Europe’s ability to address its economic malaise, fill the security vacuum left by America’s retreat, and keep Ukraine in the fight will suffer.

Britain’s May local elections will be the first test. Not for Labour, which is bracing for losses, but for Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. The insurgent party has led national polls for much of the past year. The key question: Can it translate polling strength into votes? A strong Reform showing would help cement the fragmentation of UK politics, giving Farage momentum for the next general election and pulling both Tories and Labour away from the center. Prime Minister Keir Starmer himself probably won’t survive the spring. He’s deeply unpopular, and a successful leadership challenge from his left flank is all but certain. His successor will be weaker and more leftist. Either way, Labour’s thin mandate—a “landslide” built on just 33% of the vote—offers no cushion. The Conservatives had already imploded before that: three prime ministers in 2022 alone. The two-party system that defined British politics for a century is fracturing. Starmer promised to hold things together. There’s little chance of that.

France is already ungovernable. By October 2025, the country had cycled through three prime ministers in twelve months, none able to pass a budget through a hung parliament—the second straight year without a proper budget deal, unprecedented in the Fifth Republic. President Macron may limp through 2026 without calling another snap election.

But if Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu’s government falls in 2026, the pressure on President Emmanuel Macron to dissolve parliament and call fresh elections will grow. Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN) would increase its seat count, worsening the parliamentary gridlock or potentially winning an outright majority. Should the RN and its allies secure around 250 seats, Jordan Bardella—Le Pen’s 30-year-old lieutenant—would become France’s first populist prime minister in modern history, forcing an unstable cohabitation with a lame-duck Macron and marking a rupture in French politics. Even if that scenario is avoided, France remains paralyzed— unable to pass budgets, enact reforms, or lead in Europe.

Germany holds five state elections by September, but two matter most: Saxony-Anhalt and MecklenburgWestern Pomerania. After coming in second in last February’s federal election, the hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) now leads national polls, and outright majorities in both eastern states—a rare feat in a country where coalitions are the norm—are no longer out of reach. A strong AfD showing and a weakening of the Social Democrats (SPD) would intensify pressure on the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) to abandon the firewall that has excluded the far right from any governing coalition since World War II, especially in the east. Such a move would be toxic at the national level and a dealbreaker for the CDU’s federal coalition partners. Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s alliance with the SPD is already riven by ideological disputes over pensions, welfare reform, and spending. A firewall breach, combined with further SPD losses, could tear it apart.

None of this happened overnight. The center has been crumbling for a decade—Brexit, Jeremy Corbyn’s takeover of Labour, the implosion of France’s traditional parties, the AfD’s steady rise in eastern Germany all signaled the trend. But the damage is now acute in all three countries at once. The UK’s 2024 election produced the lowest combined Labour-Tory vote share since 1910. In France, Macron’s 2017 victory masked rather than reversed the collapse of the Socialists and the center-right Republicans; now his own movement has imploded, leaving a hopelessly hung parliament dominated by the far left and far right. Germany’s February 2025 election saw CDU and SPD record their worst combined result since unification. The political forces driving this fragmentation are the same across all three: fury over immigration, stagnant living standards, deindustrialization, and a widening gulf between urban elites and everyone else. Younger voters are particularly disillusioned with the establishment and open to populist alternatives.

Pressure from a euroskeptic Washington will compound the fractures. President Donald Trump’s administration seeks a more fragmented, decentralized Europe and will openly back the populist right that would deliver it. Whether US challenges to European sovereignty—from Greenland annexation threats to sanctions on EU officials regulating US tech and outright election interference—will succeed or backfire is unclear. But the intent, especially as the US draws down offensive troop deployments in Eastern Europe and resists burden-sharing on Ukraine and NATO, amounts to an American bet against the European center and the European Union itself.

The result: three governments that can’t govern. To be sure, Starmer could limp through. Reform UK could underperform the polls in May. Macron could muddle through another year; he’s defied political gravity before. Merz’s coalition partners have nowhere else to go. But surviving isn’t governing. Even if all three leaders hang on, they’ll be too weak to do more than manage their own decline.

The implications start at home. Decisive action to boost competitiveness, investment, and productivity is impossible when governments are fighting for survival. These three won’t drive European growth—they’ll drag it down. The UK and France face spiraling debt with no prospect of the reforms needed to address it. A lurch left in Britain or fresh elections in France could spook bond markets. Every failure of the center to deliver reinforces the narrative that only outsiders can fix the system, entrenching populist momentum for years to come.

The E3 are Europe’s core; when their center weakens, so does the continent’s. Without alignment in Paris and Berlin, policy confusion spreads to Brussels— undermining Europe’s ability to build consensus, complicating trade policy, and making the next EU budget fight uglier. European efforts to coordinate on defense, trade, regulatory, or fiscal policy will face not just internal paralysis but active US hostility. Europe’s ability to fill the security vacuum left by American retrenchment depends on vigorous leadership from the E3. That’ll be in short supply this year. Ukraine will be exposed, too. Sustained support for Kyiv requires political will and public spending that weakened governments will struggle to deliver—and populist ones won’t. European aid is likely covered for 2026, but if politics in any of the E3 becomes destabilized, the outlook beyond that darkens considerably. Ukrainians can’t afford that.

The G-Zero leadership vacuum at the heart of international politics is widening, and Washington is now accelerating rather than resisting it. Trump has made it clear he views the current E3 leadership as more adversarial than Russia, emboldening Moscow. A weakened E3 that cannot rely on the United States to stand up to Russian aggression leaves Europe more exposed to hybrid attacks than at any point since the Cold War (please see Top Risk #5: Russia’s second front). And if Washington overtly interferes in European elections and territorial integrity, the transatlantic relationship enters uncharted territory. The postwar alliance framework, already strained, could fracture.

Europe’s center has been crumbling for a decade, but the damage is now acute in all three countries at once.

RUSSIA’S SECOND FRONT

The most dangerous front in Europe this year will shift from the trenches in Donetsk to the hybrid war between Russia and NATO. The fighting in Ukraine is likely to grind on in 2026, with episodic Donald Trump-brokered diplomacy and no immediate breakthrough for either side. Russia will attack to increase its territorial gains inside Ukraine and continue strikes across civilian centers; Ukraine will strike harder and deeper into Russia. But the baseline is less stable than it was in 2025. As the war enters its fifth year, Ukraine’s position is deteriorating and pressure from the United States is mounting. The tail risks are growing on both ends: a weakened Ukraine forced to capitulate, or a more desperate Ukraine taking bigger gambles that cause further Russian escalation against Kyiv and its backers.

But whatever happens on the battlefield, the greatest danger this year lies elsewhere. Russia will escalate gray-zone operations against NATO, from infrastructure sabotage to airspace probes to election interference. And NATO, after years of absorbing punishment, will for the first time push back. That combination raises the odds of more frequent and dangerous confrontations in the heart of Europe.

President Vladimir Putin’s logic is straightforward. Russia is gaining territory in Donetsk and elsewhere, but limited offensive potential means advances remain incremental and attritional. Meanwhile, the war-plus-sanctions dynamic is starting to have a more structural impact on Russia’s economy, producing high real interest rates, labor shortages, and a civilian economy crowded out by defense production. Putin sees robust European financing for Kyiv as extending Ukraine’s capacity to endure and fight through the year and beyond. Degrading that support, then, is Russia’s best path to improving its battlefield position and gaining leverage in any eventual talks.

Putin sees hybrid war as the best way to wear down Europe. He judges that calibrated gray-zone activity remains below NATO’s collective military response threshold— close enough to hurt, not close enough to trigger Article 5. His goal is to erode European support for Ukraine before economic strain impairs his ability to prosecute the hot war—a concern starting to surface among Russian elites. Putin doesn’t want war with NATO. But he is betting the alliance—especially with Trump in the White House— won’t fight back over hard-to-attribute provocations. This year, Russia will ramp up its hybrid operations against NATO. Russian drones have already appeared over Poland and Romania, fighter jets penetrated Estonian airspace for an extended period last September, and weather balloons violated Lithuanian airspace. In addition, Russian shadow fleet vessels have launched drones from the North Sea, and Russian agents and paid gig workers are believed to have been involved in drone flights over airports and critical infrastructure across Western Europe. Cheap commercial drones are ideal gray-zone weapons—effective enough to disrupt, hard to defend against, and deniable enough to avoid retaliation (please see Box 2: The drone age). These incursions will intensify. But drones are just part of the toolkit. In November, Polish authorities accused Russia of damaging a rail line used to supply Ukraine. Cyberattacks on critical infrastructure—like the April 2025 hack of a Norwegian dam’s control system that released nearly two million gallons of water—will become more frequent. Subsea cables and power lines are also attractive targets: sprawling, hard to protect, and with limited redundancy. Moscow will likely also ramp up GPS jamming of European airports.

Ukraine, meanwhile, will escalate its own deep strikes against Russian energy infrastructure and other targets. Its military faces dire and worsening manpower shortages— roughly one-third (!) of newly mobilized personnel go AWOL. Ukraine’s frontline positions are increasingly exposed in Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia oblasts. The country’s once-decisive advantage in tactical drone warfare has eroded. Ukraine’s most viable path to inflicting economic pain on Moscow is through long-range strikes on Black Sea and Baltic Sea export terminals, from which Russia ships roughly three million barrels of oil per day. As Kyiv grows more desperate, it could also ramp up assassination attempts against Russian elites and possibly bolder strikes. The Kremlin takes the threat seriously and will use it (and false claims of more, like a swarm of non-existent drones targeting Putin’s residence) to justify further escalation against Ukraine and its European backers.

The new variable in 2026 is NATO’s reaction. As Russia continues to escalate, the alliance is preparing a more assertive posture—not just absorbing Russian provocations but actively pushing back to establish deterrence. The shift reflects a growing consensus among European leaders that more must be done to counter Russian hybrid operations. The options under discussion include armed surveillance drones, relaxed rules of engagement for pilots intercepting Russian drones and jet fighters, military exercises in remote and unguarded sections of NATO’s borders with Russia, and more aggressive offensive cyber operations. Not all of these will be adopted, and implementation will vary by member state. The Trump administration’s skepticism toward NATO burden-sharing and its warmer posture toward Moscow will produce intra-alliance tensions as some European members push for actions the US doesn’t support. But the direction is clear: NATO’s years of restraint are adapting to the times.

Putin’s response will be driven by a mix of caution and persistence. In theory, NATO’s new posture could deter him—and in specific instances, it might. He’ll be careful to avoid a shooting war with NATO. But on balance, Putin is unlikely to back down. The war in Ukraine and the related hybrid campaign against NATO are existential for him—his concept of Russia’s future and the stability of his rule depend on success, and the stakes are increasing the longer and costlier the war becomes (to say nothing of the older and more vulnerable the Russian president grows). A more assertive NATO posture is unlikely to change Moscow’s policy toward the hybrid war. It does, however, increase the risk of an escalatory spiral.

The result: more direct, more frequent, and more dangerous Russia-NATO confrontations. Several scenarios could trigger a crisis. NATO could conduct a large exercise near a remote stretch of the Russia-Finland border, provoking a response from a Russian government that feels tied down in Ukraine and vulnerable elsewhere; Moscow might rush troops to the region and demand the alliance withdraw, sparking a standoff. Or increased GPS jamming at European airports causes a crash that kills hundreds. Moscow has already attempted to place explosive packages aboard cargo aircraft in NATO countries— another tactic that could produce mass casualties. So could a cyber intrusion or sabotage of other European critical infrastructure. Any operation that results in mass casualties would produce public outcry for retaliation, making escalation harder to contain.

A Russia-NATO direct military exchange is also more probable this year, if still unlikely. Russian fighter-jet probes into NATO airspace, combined with looser NATO rules of engagement, could lead to dogfights involving live fire and deaths. Or armed drones from both sides could engage, then one side escalates and purposely strikes a ground target, killing servicemembers.

Russian interference in elections across Europe will intensify in this environment, further stoking tensions with NATO. Moscow will feel encouraged to meddle by the Trump administration’s openly hostile stance toward Europe’s centrist and pro-EU political forces (please see Top Risk #4: Europe under siege). This will primarily take the form of disinformation campaigns on social media aimed at undermining confidence in mainstream parties and elevating Moscow-friendly populists on both ends of the spectrum. Main targets will include regional elections in Germany, where Putin hopes to bolster results for the farright Alternative for Germany; national votes in Bulgaria and Slovenia, where anti-Western parties have traditionally been influential; and general elections in Hungary, where the Moscow-friendly Viktor Orbán is at risk of losing power. Election interference will further poison European relations with Moscow. In cases of clear attribution, targeted EU sanctions on Russian individuals could follow.

AS RUSSIA, NATO, AND UKRAINE ALL BECOME MORE RISK-ACCEPTANT, THE MARGIN FOR ERROR WILL NARROW.

Markets and companies operating in Europe should expect greater tail risks and more volatility, especially in easternflank countries. Last September’s drone incursion over Poland triggered a brief but notable drop in Polish equities. More frequent and serious incidents—even non-kinetic ones—will cause sharper reactions. Most investors will bet that caution on both sides will limit escalation, keeping the impact moderate. But sentiment in frontline states could sour, and some supply chains may start shifting west.

One wildcard that could change these dynamics is a ceasefire in Ukraine. On balance, Putin remains reluctant to stop fighting while he has momentum. But the odds of a ceasefire are growing, nonetheless. Kyiv’s manpower shortfall won’t improve, and its battlefield position will worsen; it will probably lose the rest of Donetsk Oblast within the year. Trump administration pressure to agree to unfavorable terms will only intensify. If battlefield and political pressures become overwhelming, Zelensky may feel compelled to accept a deal including meaningful territorial concessions, limits on Ukraine’s military, and some form of neutrality. Putin, for his part, may see a ceasefire as a way to pocket his gains and consolidate his relationship with Trump.

A deal on unfavorable terms would risk political instability in Ukraine, including violent protests and a contested political transition, and wouldn’t end the hybrid war. Europe would continue to support Ukraine post-ceasefire, and Russia in turn would continue to probe and destabilize European countries—even if the intensity eases once the hot war is over. A bitter Ukrainian public could leave the country en masse given its darkening prospects, and a weakened, partitioned Ukraine would become yet another vector for Russian destabilization rather than a buffer against it. Europe would face an unrelenting gray-zone campaign and new migrant flows from its troubled eastern neighbor.

For three years, the West has treated Russia’s hybrid campaign as a nuisance: irritating but manageable, below the threshold that demands a serious response. That calculation is breaking down. As Russia, NATO, and Ukraine all become more risk-acceptant, the margin for error will narrow.
War is getting cheaper. Once the domain of sophisticated militaries, drones, autonomous systems, and cyber tools can now be bought, modified, or built by rebel militias, cartels, and middle powers for a few hundred dollars. The result is more violence, in more places, by more actors.

Drones are the signature weapon of this shift. Most countries in the world now have military drones such as the Turkish-made Bayraktars. But the game-changer is cheap commercial drones—mostly Chinese-made—that can be easily modified to carry bombs. These low-cost, remotely controlled, and increasingly autonomous air and sea drones are everywhere. It’s no wonder that drone incidents worldwide exploded between 2020 and 2024—from 6,000 to 51,000—with known fatalities rising from 11,300 to over 39,000.

The Russia-Ukraine war, where 70% of battlefield casualties now come from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), has become the laboratory: both sides have developed the capacity to produce millions of drones a year, with Ukrainian factories churning out over 4.5 million (!) in 2025. Operation Spiderweb demonstrated how remote autonomous drones launched from railcars could devastate targets hundreds of miles away. But the advantages don’t last long: Ukraine’s early lead has eroded as Russia adapted its tactics and narrowed the drone gap.

The lessons have spread worldwide. Rebels in Myanmar learned drone warfare from YouTube videos of Ukraine’s front lines, building aircraft inspired by Ukrainian designs. Manuals on weaponizing commercial drones circulate online. Colombian and Mexican fighters have enlisted in Ukraine specifically to learn first-person view drone skills—some, reportedly, to bring those capabilities back to drug cartels. In Sudan, Turkish and Chinese drones supplied to rival factions have killed tens of thousands and devastated cities. Colombia’s armed groups launched more than 80 drone attacks in 2025, up from fewer than 20 the year before. In Brazil, gangs used drones to launch grenades at police during a raid in Rio de Janeiro. China is developing drone swarms to use against Taiwan. The Houthis have built an indigenous drone program and deployed armed UAVs in over 1,000 events. For the conventionally outgunned—rebels, smugglers, cartels, insurgent groups—armed drones are becoming the weapon of choice.

Drones don’t need to carry weapons to cause damage. Outside of combat zones, adversaries are using unarmed drones to spread chaos, probe defensive gaps, and test how far they can push before triggering a response. Unexplained drone sightings have disrupted air traffic and forced airport closures from the United States to Scandinavia. Russia may be behind some of the swarms appearing over critical infrastructure across Western Europe. These incursions are hard to attribute, making them ideal gray-zone tactics. The goal isn’t destruction; it’s eroding deterrence one disruptive incident at a time.

Defending against these systems is difficult. Drones are cheap, small, and can fly low enough to evade radar. Shooting them down over populated areas is dangerous and expensive—defenders can spend more on a missile than the drone cost to build. And that’s before you add autonomy to the mix. Most drones today require skilled human operators, which limits how many can be deployed at once. Advances in AI are removing that constraint. Autonomous drones don’t need pilots or real-time communication links and can operate in swarms. Ukraine has already experimented with them. As AI advances and costs continue to drop, the human bottleneck will disappear, and the capacity for both destruction and disruption will scale further.

The trendline is clear: As with terrorism in the early 2000s, the baseline of drone incidents—inside and outside war zones—is rising steadily. For a growing number of businesses and regions, that means new risks and disruptions to operations, supply chains, and infrastructure.

In 2025, we warned that President Donald Trump would amplify crony capitalism in the world’s largest economy. What has emerged is the most economically interventionist administration since the New Deal. In 2026, this will expand and entrench further, reshaping the relationship between the US public and private sectors. As Trump told The Wall Street Journal: “I think we should take stakes in companies. Now, some people would say that doesn’t sound very American. Actually, I think it is very American.”

Trump is hardly the first president to embrace industrial policy. Former President Joe Biden’s administration did so through the Inflation Reduction Act and CHIPS Act, albeit with a limiting principle: supporting strategic sectors while leaving non-strategic sectors to markets. Small yard, high fence. There is an economic and geopolitical case for going further in an era of great power competition.

But Trump has shown no such limiting principle. Trump’s state capitalism is personal and transactional. Businesses that align with Trump’s agenda elicit better treatment from the federal government. Though most US firms continue business as usual, an increasing number of those that don’t align risk finding themselves at a disadvantage. Increasingly, success in M&A bids, regulatory approvals, tariff exemptions, or access to deals requires not just alignment with the agenda but proximity to the president’s inner circle. Some of corporate America has quickly adapted to the new rules. The breakand-repair approach to tariffs—exemptions dangled, then granted or withdrawn—has pulled firms across the economic spectrum into the lobbying game. Playing along is economically rational; resistance is costly. That’s what makes the system self-reinforcing.

The toolkit is expansive, leveraging tariffs, equity stakes, revenue-sharing deals, regulatory leverage, and access to US markets and technology. The government converted CHIPS Act grants into a 10% equity stake in Intel, making Treasury the company’s largest shareholder. Trump holds personal veto power over U.S. Steel through a golden share. The Pentagon acquired 15% of MP Materials and guaranteed prices at twice market rates for a decade— quasi price controls in American mining that have become a “template” other commodity groups are lobbying for. Export controls, designed to protect national security, have become a revenue tool as well. Nvidia and AMD agreed to pay 15%-25% of China semiconductor revenue to the Treasury. Pfizer agreed to lower drug prices, sell through a federal portal called TrumpRx, and invest in US manufacturing in exchange for tariff relief. Semiconductors, steel, critical minerals, pharma, and soon defense—the number of sectors subject to intervention is growing.

The transactional logic extends to foreign governments. Last year, the administration developed a deal template: investment in exchange for tariff relief and market access. Japan established a $550 billion fund to finance US projects personally selected by Trump—a pool of capital available to the White House outside the congressional appropriations process. Korea, the European Union, and Gulf countries have pledged trillions more. But the transactionalism goes beyond tariffs. Ukraine signed a critical minerals agreement under duress to maintain US support. Gulf states secured AI chip exports shortly after striking crypto partnerships and real estate deals involving Trump’s inner circle. Qatar’s “flying palace” gift preceded a NATO-like security guarantee. Venezuela’s post-Maduro government, desperate to revive its shattered oil sector, offers a new opportunity: preferential deals for US oil companies in exchange for sanctions relief and Washington’s political support … or else. Market access, security commitments, diplomatic favor—more opportunity appears to be on the table for foreign governments willing to pay the price.

In 2026, Trump will face mounting pressure to show his agenda is delivering for American voters. But consumer sentiment is at historic lows, the labor market is softening, and inflation remains sticky. AI-fueled growth and stock market gains aren’t translating to broadly-felt prosperity— the economy is increasingly K-shaped. The $7 trillion in sovereign and corporate investment pledges will face real tests, and many will be exposed as theater. The disconnect between Trump’s promised manufacturing renaissance and the reality of job losses in the sector will become harder to deny. Democrats are likely to flip the House in November—they hold the advantage on affordability, and midterms almost always punish the president’s party.

The prospect of political setbacks will push this administration to double down, not pull back (please see Top Risk #1: US political revolution). Tariffs, Trump’s tool of choice, will become harder to use this year: Deals already struck limit flexibility, the China détente caps US leverage, and the Supreme Court could rule many of the administration’s tariffs illegal (please see Red herring: “Tariff Man” at large). But constraints on the tariff front will mean intensification elsewhere. Equity stakes will spread to new industries, revenue-sharing arrangements will become more frequent, regulatory leverage will sharpen. Expect a frustrated president to reach for more aggressive measures and move beyond this administration’s already expansive view of national security to intervene in more companies and sectors.

Were the economy to tip into recession or inflation to spike, Trump would become more risk-acceptant and his response more interventionist. Pressure on the Fed would intensify beyond jawboning, potentially including further attempts to pack the board with loyalists. An AI bust (please see Box 3: Bubble trouble) could trigger selective bailouts—politically aligned firms get rescued, disfavored ones are left to fail. Price controls have historical precedent and political logic—blame corporations, cap prices, claim victory—especially if tariffs are contributing to the problem. The government may even take larger equity stakes in struggling strategic industries or force consolidation to create national champions. Markets assume there is a “Bessent put”: that advisers such as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent would convince the president to back off in the face of severe enough selloffs. Maybe … but if they are wrong, the reckoning could be severe. The political instinct will be more intervention, not less.

TRUMP IS PICKING WINNERS AND LOSERS AT A SCALE NOT SEEN IN MODERN US HISTORY

Over time, productivity will suffer as more capital flows to politically favored firms rather than the most innovative ones, as CEOs spend more time cultivating access and favor, and as the Oval Office increasingly intervenes in the marketplace. Government equity stakes will entrench inefficient incumbents at the expense of challengers and market dynamism. The administration has already forbidden U.S. Steel from closing an Illinois plant that the company considers economically unviable. Investors will ask not just where capital will earn the highest return, but what share Washington demands and how to stay in its good graces. Shareholders will lose as companies are pressured to redirect resources to politically aligned investments rather than higher return opportunities.

The rule of law will erode as many transactional deals rest on contested legal foundations: revenue-sharing agreements that function as constitutionally prohibited export taxes, sovereign investment funds that bypass congressional appropriations, and ad hoc arrangements that amount to de facto taxation by executive action rather than legislation. America’s traditional edge over autocracies—predictability, property rights, rulebased governance—will shrink. Corporate planning becomes harder when the rules of the game depend on presidential discretion. The precedent will stick. Once one administration uses these tools—equity stakes, golden shares, revenue sharing—in the name of national security or reshoring, the next administration will use them too. The mechanisms Trump is normalizing could just as easily be deployed by a Democratic administration for climate policy, labor-friendly industrial renewal, or social equity. It’s a bipartisan ratchet, and a self-sustaining one: The system will create vested interests and patronage networks that resist dismantling.

America’s strategic position will suffer wherever shortterm commercial and political goals override national security and long-term advantages. The administration’s willingness to let Nvidia sell AI chips to China for a 25% revenue share signals that commercial interests can trump strategic competition. Gulf chip sales follow the same pattern—strategic AI leverage traded for commercial gain. The TikTok resolution prioritized Trump-aligned investors and political gain over risk mitigation. The more national security tools are used for short-term gain, the less credible they become for genuine security purposes. Partners will accommodate Washington’s demands to avoid escalation, but they will quietly hedge—building alternatives and leverage for the future. America’s alliances, technological edge, and institutional credibility will be weakened for short-term wins that won’t compound.

Two decades ago, Western leaders imagined China would converge toward the American economic model. Instead, it’s the United States that is now borrowing from China’s playbook—though the differences remain vast. China’s authoritarian state capitalism is riddled with corruption and waste, but it operates through durable institutions oriented toward long-term objectives: industrial capacity, technological independence, national power. America’s political system, with its electoral whiplash and hyperpolarization, can’t match China’s strategic patience and coherence. That short-termism is a feature of its democracy, however flawed. Cronyism is not, though it has long been a feature of American capitalism. Trump is combining the two into something new: a system where the president—any president—picks winners and losers at a scale not seen in modern US history.

CHINA’S DEFLATION TRAP

China’s deflationary spiral will deepen in 2026, and Beijing won’t do anything to stop it. With the 21st Party Congress looming in 2027, Xi Jinping will prioritize political control and technological supremacy over the consumption stimulus and structural reforms that could break the cycle. Beijing has the means to prevent a crisis, but living standards will deteriorate, the fallout will spread abroad, and the world’s second-largest economy will remain stuck in a trap of its own making. Home prices in China have been falling for four and a half years—a household wealth destruction on par with America’s 2008 crash, except it’s still accelerating. Consumer confidence, investment, and domestic demand have cratered with it. Beijing bet big that high-tech manufacturing would fill the gap left by property. Instead, state-driven investment has created overcapacity, and weak domestic demand means there aren’t enough buyers to absorb it.

The result is “involution”: too many Chinese firms chasing too little demand, slashing prices to survive. Margins collapse, forcing even well-run firms to cut wages and jobs to stay afloat. Workers spend less. Demand weakens further, so firms cut prices again. Meanwhile, debts grow harder to service with each turn of the cycle. Banks and local governments keep zombie firms alive—rolling over loans, protecting local champions—which keeps overcapacity entrenched. The debt-deflation spiral feeds on itself. Donald Trump’s tariffs last year made the situation worse, closing off a critical export market and confronting Chinese firms with a grim choice: slash prices to find buyers outside the United States, or transship goods through third countries to reach America anyway. Either path squeezes margins further. Over a quarter of listed Chinese companies are now unprofitable, the highest share in 25 years.

EXPORTING THE SLUMP

The result: China enters 2026 with ten straight quarters of deepening deflation, the longest such slump any major economy has suffered in decades. Disposable income has stalled at $5,800 per person, while consumption accounts for just 39% of GDP—half the US share. China faces the prospect of a Japanese-style “lost decade” but without Japan’s social safety nets or per capita wealth. Escaping that kind of trap requires decisive action. Beijing won’t deliver it.

Xi’s vision for China’s economy—long-term discipline, technological self-reliance, state control, and a rejection of short-term stimulus he views as Western-style “welfarism”—makes a course correction hard to imagine. He’ll keep pouring state investment into manufacturing and high-tech sectors, not consumption. But more investment in saturated industries will only aggravate gluts and drive prices down further. The advanced sectors Xi is betting on lift headline GDP but create few jobs. Any stimulus will remain modest and targeted, tilted toward manufacturing rather than the broad demand boost needed to break the cycle.

The political calendar makes a pivot especially unlikely in 2026. This year marks the launch of the 15th Five-Year Plan and the final run-up to the 21st Party Congress, where Xi will secure his fourth term. Bureaucrats are anxious about hitting growth targets and terrified of taking political risks. Beijing’s widely touted “anti-involution” campaign— ostensibly intended to curb the destructive price wars— won’t change anything. Raising prices requires curbing industrial production, which means less investment and slower GDP growth. Xi won’t accept that tradeoff before the Party Congress.

The consequences will be felt across Chinese households and firms alike. With real incomes weakening, housing collateral losing value, margins getting crushed, and real interest rates rising, debt-service burdens will squeeze everyone. There’s limited room for interest rate cuts, so neither families nor private companies can restructure their way out. Mortgage defaults and hidden bank bad debts will surface as major problems in 2026.

Rising small and medium-sized enterprise failures and nonperforming loans will strain social stability. The private sector accounts for 80% of urban jobs, so trouble for small businesses translates quickly into trouble for workers. Deflation and corporate distress will mean fewer jobs, lower wages, and brutal hours for those lucky enough to remain employed.

The pain will fall hardest on the young. Youth unemployment is high and rising, and even graduates who land jobs face the “996” grind—9am to 9pm, six days a week—with little hope of advancement. While young Chinese won’t riot, a growing number are opting out altogether. The “lying flat” movement reflects a generation’s rejection of China’s culture of overwork and hyper-competition in service of “national greatness.” They did what they were told: studied hard, got degrees, chased good jobs. The rewards never came. Now, a cohort raised on promises of prosperity is tuning out the Chinese Communist Party’s calls for collective sacrifice. For a generation of young urban Chinese, the social contract is fraying and the “China Dream” appears an illusion.

Xi Jinping will prioritize political control and technological supremacy over the consumption stimulus and structural reforms that could break the deflationary cycle.

To be sure, Beijing has enough firepower and political control to prevent systemic economic damage and social unrest. But there’s a real risk of policy overreaction reminiscent of the zero-COVID pivot or Shanghai’s 2022 lockdown before the 20th Party Congress—abrupt, opaque interventions like forced restructurings, sudden nationalizations, regulatory crackdowns without warning. A harsher political climate would deter private investment, undermining China’s main engine of job creation. Even without that scenario, the economy will keep tilting in the wrong direction: more manufacturing, less consumption; more state, less private sector. The housing slump will drag on. The structural imbalances will deepen.

China’s economic dislocations will ripple outward as Beijing continues to export its way out of the property crisis. This will unleash an even bigger wave of cheap goods on overseas markets than last year, when China’s trade surplus surpassed $1 trillion. Xi’s industrial policy is fundamentally beggar-thy-neighbor, aiming to make other countries reliant on Chinese supply chains while making China self-sufficient. Chinese goods exports have risen by 40% since the start of the housing crash, while import volumes have flatlined. For most countries, trade with China now delivers deindustrialization and a drag on growth, not shared prosperity.

Some trading partners, such as the European Union, will respond to the flood of Chinese exports with tariffs, subsidies, and other protectionist policies. But with few alternative supply chains in place, China’s export-led model will stand largely unchallenged this year. Beijing will nonetheless move to leverage its supply chain dominance more assertively, extending its export control threats from rare earths to more critical minerals, lowergrade chips, and key chemicals—though not against Washington as long as the Korea truce holds—to raise the cost of decoupling and safeguard its export engine. The goal will be to deepen partner dependence and reinforce China’s global economic leverage, ensuring the world remains too reliant on Chinese imports to push back effectively even as trade frictions rise.

But Beijing can’t export its way out of trouble indefinitely. China’s trade surplus now exceeds Japan’s 1987 peak as a share of world GDP—the imbalance that helped trigger the Plaza Accord and forced Tokyo into a wrenching rebalancing. History suggests there are limits to how long trading partners will absorb another country’s overcapacity, even if they lack the leverage to push back in the short term. Higher tariffs from fed-up partners, a return to unmanaged decoupling with the United States, or a global downturn would choke off foreign demand, leaving China with no fallback. Xi would then have little choice but to shift substantial resources toward stimulating consumption. But with each year of deflation making debts heavier and escaping the trap harder, it may be too late by then.

AI EATS ITS USERS

Under pressure to generate revenue and unconstrained by guardrails, a number of leading AI companies will adopt business models in 2026 that threaten social and political stability— following social media’s destructive playbook, only faster and at greater scale.

We remain bullish on AI’s revolutionary potential. Today’s frontier models reason through complex problems, show their work, and are embedded in coding, research, and knowledge workflows. The hyperscalers are offloading large chunks of software development to AI, accelerating their own R&D cycles. In biotech and materials science, AI is opening new research pathways—though commercial breakthroughs remain mostly ahead of us. Hundreds of millions of people now use chatbots daily for everything from drafting emails to debugging code and learning new skills. This is real, and it’s just the beginning.

But AI can’t live up to investors’ expectations in the short term. Even after hundreds of billions of dollars of investment, the most advanced models still hallucinate. Their capabilities are jagged: dazzling at some tasks, unreliable at others (and often unpredictably so). That inconsistency makes them hard to deploy in high-stakes applications where errors are costly. Business adoption has been uneven, with only about 10% of US firms using AI to produce goods and services, according to the Census Bureau. Many companies report significant productivity gains, but surveys suggest most have yet to see meaningful bottom-line impact. Real productivity increases will arrive through wide diffusion of the technology across the economy, but that takes time. Yet markets have priced in revolution, not evolution.

Some of these companies are caught in a bind. Promises of Artificial General Intelligence and the massive capital expenditures needed to build ever-larger models have driven investor expectations to stratospheric levels. Cumulative AI-driven investment is likely to exceed $3 trillion by 2030. As some frontier model-makers prepare for IPOs in 2026

Growing pressure for many AI labs to demonstrate a path to profitability will accelerate the shift to extractive and socially dysfunctional business models.

or 2027, they will come under growing pressure to show they can deliver returns on this capital—especially given intensifying competition from cheaper Chinese opensource alternatives like DeepSeek, which offer “good enough” performance at a fraction of the cost.

To justify current investment levels and valuations, AI revenue will need to grow by an order of magnitude. Absent regulatory constraints or commonly agreed rules of the road—the scenario Eurasia Group warned about in our Top Risk 2025 #8: AI unbound—some companies will do whatever it takes to keep the party going. Aggressive monetization schemes based on user data, ads woven into interactions, erotica to keep users hooked, engagementmaximizing algorithms regardless of psychological and social harms—these business models may make financial sense, especially in the short term. They’re also corrosive for society and democracy.

We’ve seen this movie before. Cory Doctorow calls it “enshittification”: platforms attract users with attractive “free” products, lock them in, then systematically degrade the experience to extract maximum value—leaving just enough to keep people stuck. Social media transformed from tools for connecting with friends and family into engagement-optimized rage machines. Now nearly half of young people wish social media had never been invented, but network effects make it costly to leave, and accordingly almost nobody does.

BUSINESSES AREN'T BITING YET

% of US firms using AI to produce goods and services

AI is following the same trajectory—only faster, and with a technology far more strategically important to the global economy than social media ever was. And AI isn’t just another platform. Social media captures your attention. AI programs your behavior, shapes your thoughts, and mediates your reality. Unlike scrolling through a feed, where you know you’re consuming content, hyperpersonalized AI companions become trusted confidants— entities that “know” you better than anyone else in your life. When that entity’s primary purpose is not to serve you but to keep you engaged and extract value, you become the product. Ask such a chatbot a question, and it follows up with questions of its own—not because you want conversation but because that’s what the chatbot has been optimized to do. An AI companion that’s learned your insecurities can recommend products calibrated to exploit them, and you’ll never know the difference between advice and advertising. If the AI appears free or cheap, you’re paying with something more valuable: your autonomy, your privacy, your cognitive capacity, and your ability to think independently.

In 2026, growing pressure for many US AI labs to demonstrate a path to profitability will accelerate the shift to extractive and socially dysfunctional business models. Major platforms are already experimenting with ads embedded in conversations where—unlike traditional search—there’s no way to distinguish neutral information from paid influence. AI companions will nudge users toward purchases, beliefs, and behaviors that serve the interests of the highest bidder. Personalized AI will stifle normal social and emotional development, particularly in young people, creating an angry and alienated generation.

The downstream consequences extend to cognition. AI removes the need to concentrate on anything for extended periods. It makes already-addictive platforms more so, ensuring fewer people read books, engage with long-form content, or develop critical thinking skills. Achievement scores in literacy and numeracy are declining across the West for the first time in decades; the threat is not superhuman machines but the decline of thinking, feeling, social humans. Deliberative democracy requires informed, engaged citizens capable of independent thought. AI risks producing the opposite: a population optimized for engagement, extraction, and manipulation.

At current valuations, AI is priced to “eat” the economy, unlocking spectacular productivity gains by displacing jobs on a scale that would trigger significant social and political backlash. But mass labor substitution doesn’t appear imminent, even if it may come later. Should investors come to believe that disruption—good and bad—will come more slowly than they anticipated, a sharp market correction could follow (please see Box 3: Bubble trouble). In the meantime, AI will “eat” its users as companies subject hundreds of millions of people to realtime psychological experiments with no clinical trials, safety monitoring, or informed consent.

None of this is inevitable. China’s government is deliberately restricting the deployment of consumerfacing, engagement-maximizing AI, assessing that the psychological, societal, and political risks outweigh the potential strategic benefits. President Xi Jinping views personal chatbots much as he views TikTok: as “spiritual opium.” Washington, by contrast, allows short-term private profits to take precedence over citizen well-being. President Donald Trump’s administration—its senior ranks staffed by Silicon Valley allies and its political fortunes tied to the AI boom—is more likely to backstop the AI sector than to force it to internalize the negative social externalities of its business models.

AI will unleash incredible advances in domains from biotechnology to robotics, advanced materials, energy efficiency, and space exploration. Much of this will come from smaller, leaner, purpose-built models, not consumer behemoths designed for viral adoption and maximum engagement. The combination of inflated near-term expectations, pressure to monetize, and lack of regulatory and governance guardrails means that American AI is set to impose its costs on society before it delivers its promised gains.

Box 3. Bubble trouble

The US economy has become a one-legged stool. By some measures, the surge in AI-related investment accounted for most of GDP growth in the first half of 2025; without it, growth would have been far lower as other parts of the economy struggled under tariff uncertainty, weak consumer sentiment, and sluggish hiring. AI-linked stocks also drove nearly 75% of market gains last year. With valuations approaching dotcom-era peaks and so much riding on it, it’s worth asking: What happens if the AI boom goes bust?

We’re not predicting that—or when—investor sentiment will turn. And a market crash wouldn’t mean AI was a dud all along. The technology is real, useful, and (we think) revolutionary. But there are many reasons expectations could shift: AI could prove not economically transformative fast enough to justify current valuations; diminishing returns, energy constraints, or politics could slow the scale-out; adoption could lag and returns could take longer than balance sheets can sustain; or the technology could become commoditized, with most of the value captured by users or Chinese competitors offering good-enough models at a fraction of the cost. AI doesn’t have to fail for investors to sour on it—it just has to disappoint.

A correction would hit the real economy fast. American households now hold more of their wealth in stocks than at any point since the dotcom era. The wealthiest 10%, in particular, own 85% of equities and account for half of all consumer spending—the highest share on record. A crash comparable to that of 2000 could reduce household net worth by 8%, triggering a pullback in spending large enough to tip America into recession.

Such a downturn would trigger pockets of financial distress—not a 2008-style systemic crisis, but enough to tighten credit and amplify the recession. Early AI investment was funded largely through Big Tech’s vast cash reserves. More recently, financing has been shifting toward debt, including from lower-quality borrowers, and circular arrangements—AI companies investing in each other, buying chips with that money, announcing deals that boost stock prices they’ve already bet on. Banks and shadow lenders are now exposed to potential defaults. If AI investments are marked down sharply, borrowers could be forced to sell assets at a loss to meet their obligations, deepening the rout.

The spillovers of a crash would be global. Foreigners hold $18 trillion in US equities; they’d feel the wealth effect too. Weaker demand from the United States would compound pressure on a low-growth Europe and a deflationary China already struggling with US tariffs. Asian economies tied to the semiconductor supply chain would see orders evaporate as demand projections are revised downward.

How a bust would affect American politics is less clear.

Stock market crashes don’t always doom incumbents— Vice President Al Gore won the popular vote (if not the electoral college) in 2000 despite the dotcom collapse. But Trump has tied his fortunes to the (AI-fueled) economic boom more explicitly than any predecessor in recent memory. Americans are already souring on AI amid rising energy costs, job displacement fears, and data centers in their backyards. A market crash that decimates their savings accounts and 401(k)s—especially one before the midterms—could leave Trump politically exposed. The policy response would likely be aggressive: more pressure on the Fed to slash rates, stimulus checks, bailouts in exchange for equity stakes in distressed companies, and tariff reductions to ease pressure on consumers (please see Top Risk #6: State capitalism with American characteristics).

The good news is that a recession, if it comes, could be short and shallow, much like in 2001. Many individual AI companies would not survive the shakeout, but the technology itself would (as will patient investors … though if history is any guide, it may take them a while to break even). The late 1990s boom bequeathed the fiber optic network and internet giants that underpin today’s digital economy—and indeed, the AI revolution. The current buildout would likewise leave behind the infrastructure that supports the next wave of innovation and productivity gains—even if today’s investors aren’t the ones to benefit.

ZOMBIE USMCA

North American trade will be stuck in limbo in 2026. The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) won’t be extended, updated, or killed. It will stagger on as a zombie, keeping businesses and governments guessing while President Donald Trump continues negotiations with America’s two largest trading partners.

The agreement is up for its mandated review this year, when the parties can extend it for an additional 16 years. But Trump wants to avoid the constraints of a new trilateral deal so he can keep using bilateral leverage to squeeze economic and political concessions from both countries. Canada already scrapped its digital services tax. Mexico is imposing tariffs on China. Both are cracking down on fentanyl flows. Washington gave up nothing in return. Why lock into an agreement when the current approach keeps delivering for the US president? Neither Canada nor Mexico can afford to walk away. The United States is the destination for roughly 75% of Canadian exports and 80% of Mexican exports. Trump holds most of the cards and he knows it.

The result will be a “zombie USMCA” that is neither fully dead nor alive—and a North American trade zone buffeted by chronic uncertainty. Tariff exemptions for USMCA-compliant goods will hold. Covering roughly 80% of US goods imports from Canada and Mexico, these exemptions will limit the average effective US tariff rate and keep the agreement technically alive. But in the key industrial sectors the Trump administration wants to reshore—autos, steel, aluminum, which are subject to Section 232 national security tariffs—North American free trade will be dead. Everything in between will be up for grabs amid evolving US demands and increasingly bilateral negotiations.

This approach suits Trump’s domestic politics. He can exempt the bulk of US imports—including energy, with roughly 60% of US crude coming from Canada and 10% from Mexico—to limit the cost-of-living hit to American households while turning the screws on Canadian and Mexican manufacturers, whose production he wants to move to the United States.

American demands on both neighbors will be extensive. For Canada, they will center on tariff rate quotas on Canadian autos, steel, and aluminum; expanded access to Canada’s banking and dairy markets; an end to what Washington calls discriminatory taxes and regulations targeting US tech and entertainment firms; tighter border security; higher defense spending; and more purchases of US military hardware. For Mexico, the emphasis will be on crackdowns on Chinese investment and transshipment; updated energy regulations to favor US companies; ramped-up enforcement against cartels, illegal immigration, and border security; and increased water deliveries to US border states. And hanging over all of it: the threat of targeted US military intervention against cartels (please see Top Risk #3: The Donroe Doctrine).

Mexico and Canada will respond very differently. President Claudia Sheinbaum wants a quick deal, even a subpar one, and she’s working pragmatically to get there. By contrast, Canada is betting that time is on its side—that cost-of-living pressures in the United States and Republican midterm anxieties eventually force Trump to moderate (please see Red herring: “Tariff Man” at large). A tough stance toward Washington is also popular at home, giving Prime Minister Mark Carney political cover to hold the line. For Ottawa, no deal might be better than a bad deal this year.

That calculation sets up a rough ride for Canada and Carney in 2026. Trump apparently likes Carney personally but doesn’t like Canada’s tough, detail-oriented approach to negotiations—or Canadian retaliatory tariffs and consumer boycotts. Canada isn’t willing to make the concessions on market access or military purchases that would give Trump an obvious win, and Trump isn’t willing to back down. With talks stalled, tariffs will stay elevated and weigh on growth. Ontario’s auto and steel heartland will sputter, leaving Carney and Premier Doug Ford facing political headwinds in the vote-rich province. Promises of new infrastructure projects and “buy Canadian” procurement won’t ease the near-term tariff pain. Canadian firms in unrelated sectors risk becoming collateral damage.

Mexico faces a different calculus. Sheinbaum will focus on negotiating exemptions within the existing sectoral tariff regime ahead of broader talks. But trade uncertainty combined with domestic fiscal consolidation will keep FDI flows tepid and public investment at record lows. Growth will slow in an economy that’s already losing steam. Sheinbaum’s public popularity and Morena’s dominance will shield her politically—but they won’t protect Mexican businesses or workers.

To be sure, the United States will feel pain too. Automakers have spent three decades building continent-wide production lines; unwinding that won’t be cheap. And in the unlikely (but not inconceivable) event that that Trump formally withdraws from USMCA to pursue fully separate bilateral deals, the market and economic fallout would be severe. The threat alone will shadow investment decisions throughout the year.

Canada and Mexico will still face lower effective tariff rates than most of the world. But preferential treatment won’t make navigating North American trade any easier this year; the days of free and predictable North American trade are over. Sectoral tariffs designed to reshore production will develop constituencies that benefit from and lobby for them. For firms trying to plan beyond the next quarter, 2026 will be a year of renegotiating contracts, hedging bets, and delayed investments. That’s the cost of doing business when the rules keep changing.

Why lock into an agreement when the current approach keeps delivering for the US president and neither Canada nor Mexico can afford to walk away?

THE WATER WEAPON

Water is becoming the most contested shared resource on the planet. In 2026, demand pressures will intensify, the governance vacuum will deepen, and water will become a loaded weapon in several of the world’s most dangerous rivalries—and a tool for non-state actors exploiting state weakness. What was a humanitarian crisis is becoming a national security threat.

The ingredients have been building for years: roughly half of humanity lives under water stress for at least one month annually; 1.8 billion people face absolute scarcity. Population growth and rapid urbanization are straining basins already overdrawn—megacities from Chennai to Mexico City and Tehran have faced “Day Zero” crises or near-misses. Waterdriven displacement is accelerating. Surging energy demand is pushing countries to build hydropower dams even as the water they depend on grows scarcer. And climate change is tightening the vise: Himalayan glaciers are melting faster, monsoons are growing erratic, and droughts are deepening across South Asia and the Sahel.

There’s no architecture to govern how countries share the water that remains. Nearly two-thirds of global freshwater crosses national borders, yet three-fifths of the 310 international river basins lack any framework to manage disputes. Key powers like the US and China aren’t signatories to the 1997 UN Watercourses Convention. Unlike climate, biodiversity, or desertification, water has no equivalent global process—no annual COP, no binding targets, no enforcement mechanism. There have been only two UN water conferences to date, with a third scheduled for December in the United Arab Emirates. And populist politics poisons what little voluntary cooperation remains. Hotter temperatures and angrier publics make compromise harder when it matters most.

The dangers emerge where state and non-state actors are turning water stress and governance collapse into leverage, even if they don’t cause a major crisis this year.

HOTTER TEMPERATURES AND ANGRIER PUBLICS MAKE COMPROMISE HARDER WHEN IT MATTERS MOST

Risks are most acute in Africa, where many states are too weak to manage resources in the first place. In the Sahel, armed groups tied to Al Qaeda and the Islamic State have learned that controlling water means controlling populations. They seize wells, destroy infrastructure, settle disputes governments can’t, and recruit from communities that feel abandoned. Ungoverned water scarcity isn’t the primary driver of the region’s escalating jihadist threat (please see Box 4: The Sahel’s G-Zero), but it sharpens local grievances and gives armed groups a resource to exploit— especially in Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso. Hundreds of clashes between farmers and herders have erupted over dwindling water in the central Sahel in recent years. The rapid shrinking of Lake Chad is exacerbating cross-border disputes, straining relationships among Chad, Cameroon, Niger, and Nigeria, and contributing to economic collapse and militant recruitment. As drought deepens and states weaken, that violence will intensify—and extremists will exploit every gap.

Water is also becoming a weapon in interstate rivalries. The Egypt-Ethiopia standoff over the Nile is already fracturing regional security cooperation. In September 2025, Ethiopia inaugurated the Grand Renaissance Dam after more than a decade of negotiations failed to produce a binding Nile agreement. The dam gives Addis Ababa control over a river that supplies over 90% of Egypt’s freshwater. Cairo, having lost its leverage to stop construction of a project it calls an existential threat, has looked for other ways to pressure Addis Ababa. It has aligned with Mogadishu— which has its own dispute with Ethiopia over a port deal with breakaway Somaliland—and deployed troops to Somalia’s counterterrorism mission, hoping to extract concessions or at least constrain Ethiopian influence. Ethiopia views these moves as encirclement. Egypt can keep pressing and risk deeper regional conflict or accept the dam and hope Ethiopia won’t weaponize it during droughts or crises. Neither path leads to water security— and both leave the Horn of Africa more inflamed.

Further north, Morocco is building a series of dams to tackle water scarcity, including the Kheng Grou dam near the Algerian border. It is set to be completed by summer 2026 and would restrict water access to hundreds of thousands of Algerians in a key regional hub. Algeria, with Africa’s largest military budget, has expressed concerns. Relations between the two countries are already hostile; water could become another flashpoint.

HALF THE WORLD IS UNDER WATER STRESS

In South Asia, India and Pakistan show how quickly water can become a weapon once broader tensions ignite. The Indus Waters Treaty survived three India-Pakistan wars over 65 years—until April 2025, when India suspended it after the Pahalgam terrorist attack and stopped sharing hydrological data with Pakistan. The treaty remains suspended despite a US-brokered ceasefire last May; India wants to maintain it as a threat. Over 80% of Pakistani agriculture depends on water from the Indus basin, which India’s upstream position controls. Islamabad has warned that any diversion of water will be considered “an act of war.” Water has accordingly become a potent new weapon in the India-Pakistan conflict—one that raises the stakes of any future crisis between two nuclear-armed rivals.

China holds leverage over both countries. In 2025, Beijing began constructing a $137 billion mega-dam on the Brahmaputra at Tibet’s “Great Bend”—the world’s largest hydropower project—with no treaty governing downstream flows to India and Bangladesh. India has responded with its own $77 billion program to build over 200 counter-dams. Both sides are building the infrastructure for water weaponization; India’s crash dam-building program signals Delhi expects Beijing to use it. Meanwhile, China’s upstream position on the Indus main stem and tributaries gives it leverage over Pakistan too. Without water-sharing frameworks, any future border crisis between China and India—or a shift in China-Pakistan relations—could spill into water.

In a G-Zero world where no power or group of powers are willing and able to build global governance infrastructure— binding arbitration, real-time data sharing, enforceable treaties—scarcity becomes a weapon. Countries that should be working together on counterterrorism or climate instead remain locked in zero-sum struggles over rivers. When upstream powers control the tap, downstream countries have few options beyond escalation. And where states are too weak to control the tap at all, other actors will. No single flashpoint may erupt this year. But the weapons are loaded, the guardrails are off, and when the next shock comes—a drought, a border clash, a terrorist attack—water will make it worse.

Box 4. The Sahel’s G-Zero

The Sahel is the world’s most active jihadist battleground. Extremist violence across West Africa has escalated sharply over the past three years. In 2026, the crisis will deepen and spread south.

Weak regional leadership, poor governance, a wave of military coups, and the retreat of international counterterrorism support have created a vacuum in which violent extremism thrives. Last year, violence and economic disruptions reached new highs in Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Benin. Jama’at Nusrat alIslam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), a Salafi-jihadist coalition affiliated with Al Qaeda, has gained control over swaths of northern and central Mali. It is now targeting the country’s main trade routes to isolate Bamako—raising fears the capital could eventually fall. The group has expanded into Burkina Faso and Niger, exploiting weak state authority and local grievances, including competition over water and arable land. Rather than relying solely on large-scale attacks, JNIM embeds itself in rural communities and builds influence gradually. Where governments fail to provide security or settle disputes over land and water, extremists step in—and demand loyalty in return.

In 2026, JNIM will focus on consolidating its core territories in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger while establishing new strongholds in the borderlands of Togo, Benin, and Nigeria. The spread will continue to exploit porous borders, weak state presence, and criminal networks. Benin remains most vulnerable: attacks hit record highs in 2025, with fatalities up nearly 70% from 2024. JNIM conducted

its first attack in Nigeria in October 2025 and will seek footholds in the northwest. Togo faces a similar risk. Côte d’Ivoire has contained the threat since 2020; Ghana and Senegal have not experienced attacks. Risks will be higher for border regions and more moderate for coastal urban centers.

Coastal West African states will be forced to increase defense spending—diverting resources from education, health, and job creation, and adding fiscal pressure in countries like Senegal already running high deficits. Refugee movements within the region will exacerbate social tensions, particularly in Côte d’Ivoire, now host to many Malian and Burkinabè refugees. The real displacement pressure is regional, not transcontinental—Mali and Burkina Faso accounted for just 1.8% and 0.5% of EU asylum applications in 2024. These dynamics will further weaken the Economic Community of West African States and make the region less attractive to investors.

This is a developing crisis, not an imminent collapse. Even if jihadists took Bamako—still unlikely—they would need time to consolidate before expanding further. But the trajectory keeps getting worse—and drought, water scarcity, displacement, or another coup will accelerate the instability.

RED HERRINGS

“TARIFF MAN” AT LARGE

Donald Trump’s trade war will keep escalating, causing more economic havoc in 2026. That’s a common fear. We don’t buy it.

The president’s unilateralist instincts are intact. On security, where the United States is much more asymmetrically powerful than the rest of the world, Trump will become less restrained this year (please see Top Risk #3: The Donroe Doctrine). On domestic politics, he’s unlikely to moderate, even in the face of pushback (please see Top Risk #1: US political revolution). But on the global economic front, Trump’s leverage will be more constrained going forward and he knows it.

Start with China, which called Trump’s bluff and had the cards to back it up. Beijing matched Trump blow for blow in last year’s tariff war, then showed it could inflict real pain by restricting exports of critical minerals. China’s stranglehold on rare earth processing got Trump’s attention: The United States can’t build electric vehicles, semiconductors, or advanced weapons without inputs controlled by Beijing. That vulnerability pushed him toward a transactional deal rather than a fight he couldn’t win (please see Box 5: US-China détente won’t collapse). It also made him more aware of the need for coordination with partners to develop alternative supply chains—which means less appetite for tariffing allies who could help.

The United States also has less room for maneuver in an increasingly multipolar global economy. Middle powers have options—alternative markets, new trade partnerships, deeper ties with China—that give them leverage Washington didn’t face in the past. And if Washington is pulling its punches on transshipment enforcement to avoid retaliation on rare earths and preserve the détente, other countries will have even less reason to hold the line on China.

Domestic politics will reinforce these constraints as the midterms approach. Trump will focus on boosting his sagging numbers on the economy and affordability, leaving less room for tariffs that drive up prices—especially as retailers deplete their pre-“Liberation Day” stockpiles and shift more tariff costs onto consumers. He’s already backed off levies on certain food imports from several Latin American countries. Expect more pullbacks on low-cost consumer goods this year.

Trump’s tariff strategy will accordingly become more predictable. The United States has reached agreements with most major trading partners and is closing in on deals with stragglers like India, Indonesia, and Brazil. The Supreme Court may strike down some tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The administration has other tools—Section 122, Section 301—to reconstruct much of the tariff wall, though average effective rates will dip slightly in that case. But the chaos from last April won’t return. Trump will still brandish threats for leverage, but the shock-and-awe phase is over.

None of this means the global trading system escapes unscathed. Trump’s tariffs have already triggered lasting shifts in trade patterns, supply chains, and the willingness of countries to rely on the United States (please see Red herring: Deglobalization). And constraints on tariffs won’t stop Trump’s economic interventionism, just redirect it toward other tools (please see Top Risk #6: State capitalism with American characteristics). But his room for maneuver on trade has narrowed. The year of maximum tariff disruption is behind us.

Box 5: US-China détente will hold

The US-China relationship is headed for at least a year of relative stability, for three reinforcing reasons.

First, both sides learned from last year’s tariff war that they faced a lose-lose proposition: empty shelves in the United States, unemployment in China. Neither wants a repeat. Second, both need breathing room to address their strategic vulnerabilities—Beijing to build technological independence, Washington to secure alternative critical mineral supplies and processing capacity. The leverage cuts both ways: China can paralyze American military and civilian industries by restricting rare earths; the United States can kneecap China’s development by restricting chips and jet engines. Third, Trump is transactional, not ideological on China. Unlike most of the American foreign policy establishment, he prioritizes commercial gains over strategic competition and is as genuinely open to dealmaking with Xi Jinping as he is with American allies.

Continued implementation of last year’s Busan agreements will bring tangible benefits that backstop the truce. China will loosen restrictions on critical mineral flows; the US will pause key export controls. Progress on fentanyl cooperation should bring that tariff to zero. Beijing is already resuming purchases of American soybeans and agricultural products; both sides will suspend port fees on each other’s ships. Purchases of Boeing planes, US energy exports, and Chinese investment in approved US sectors may not be far behind.

None of this means smooth sailing. Flare-ups over tech restrictions and critical mineral flows are likely. But tensions will be resolved at the political direction of both leaders, neither of whom wants prolonged escalation. Trump’s April visit to China, Xi’s likely trip to the United States later in the year, and sideline meetings at the G20 and APEC summits will keep both sides invested in stability.

DEGLOBALIZATION

Trade as a share of global GDP has been stagnant for years. Average US tariff rates are now at levels not seen since the 1930s. The global trading system is scrambling to adjust. This is the economic corollary of a G-Zero world: The United States no longer wants to lead a multilateral, rules-based trading order or serve as the principal engine of globalization.

But that doesn’t mean 2026 will be a year of deglobalization.

For starters, while President Donald Trump’s tariffs dealt a major blow to the trading system, we have already seen peak trade disruption from the United States (please see Red herring: “Tariff Man” at large). Almost nothing could outdo last April’s “Liberation Day” shock, and the Trump administration will face growing domestic pressure to ease off as voters feel the affordability pinch. The United States has already struck agreements with most major trading partners.

The underlying strategic competition and the broader strategic decoupling continue, but 2026 won’t be the year the most important geopolitical relationship in the world falls apart.

Meanwhile, other countries have strong incentives to preserve what’s left of the system. Most will continue to play defense in negotiations with Washington—refraining from retaliation to protect market access, maintain security ties, and avoid antagonizing the president. But they are also hedging by pursuing alternative partnerships worldwide. India will likely seal a deal with Trump early this year while seeking free trade agreements with Australia, Canada, the EU, and the UAE. Other deals—ASEAN-Canada, EU-Mercosur—are on track for 2026. Countries worried about US reliability are stepping up cooperation with others on defense procurement, critical minerals, and technology. Hedging against American unpredictability will gradually rewire trade and investment into new channels, boosting emerging hubs and creating opportunities in an increasingly multipolar economy. What comes next will be messier and less efficient than the old order, but it won’t be deglobalization.

And for all the focus on goods slapped with tariffs, the growing importance of services and intangibles in the modern economy belies the impression of deglobalization. Trade in services has been accelerating for years, with digital services leading the way. Intangibles—R&D, intellectual property, branding, software—have grown significantly as a share of total trade. Cross-border integration is now more digital and intangible than ever, and US efforts to reshore manufacturing can do little to reverse that.

Protectionist measures will continue to outpace liberalizing ones in 2026. Some fragmentation is inevitable as geopolitics amplify the effects of tariffs and drive governments to derisk supply chains—not just from China, but increasingly from the United States too. But derisking is not deglobalization, and supply chains are sticky in any case. It’s not easy to shift complex production networks, relocate infrastructure, or rapidly liquidate fixed assets— and the US market is too large and lucrative for companies to abandon (please see Red herring: Sell America).

Spheres of influence

The Western Hemisphere elevated to the top of the US National Security Strategy. European allies cut out of Donald Trump’s negotiations with Vladimir Putin, Ukrainian territory conceded before talks even started. Containment of China dropped in favor of dealmaking with Xi Jinping. Add it all up, and it’s no wonder people are speculating that we’re headed back to a world where great powers mind their own backyards and stay out of everyone else’s—a kind of 19th-century great-power carveup for the 21st century.

We’re skeptical.

Yes, geopolitics are becoming more anarchic and competitive—that’s the G-Zero world we’ve been warning about for over a decade. But spheres of influence? The world is messier than that—and far harder to carve up.

To start, for all the rhetoric about no longer wanting to police the world, American interests remain stubbornly global. Defense spending keeps breaking records. Despite a détente with China on trade, the military posture in Asia hasn’t softened; Washington just sent Taipei its largestever arms sale package. Last year’s strikes on Iran and Trump’s continued (indeed, growing) engagement with Gulf countries and Israel shows the United States hasn’t lost its interest in the Middle East either. And Washington is actively meddling in European politics—hardly the behavior of a power retreating to its own hemisphere. The Trump administration may reject the idea of a US-led global order, but it hasn’t abandoned global reach. It’s just pursuing American interests more transactionally, more unilaterally, and far less reliably.

The Western Hemisphere focus is driven more by domestic politics—border security, migration, fentanyl— than grand strategy, in a region where wins can be found with limited pushback: significant military power asymmetries, politically aligned governments, economic dependence, and little capacity to hedge. Theodore Roosevelt’s corollary to the Monroe Doctrine asserted Washington’s right to intervene in the Americas even as he built the United States into a global power. Trump’s version (please see Top Risk #3: The Donroe Doctrine) isn’t so different: The hemisphere is the priority, not the limit of American ambition. rivals out of your zone. But China is now South America’s largest trading partner, surpassing the United States. Chinese firms are major investors in critical minerals, energy infrastructure, and electric vehicle manufacturing across the region. Beijing can redirect soybean purchases from American farmers to Argentine ones almost overnight. In a world this interconnected, the idea that great powers can partition the globe is a fantasy—even in America’s own backyard (please see Red herring: Deglobalization).

And there’s a more structural problem. There’s no longer a single global order to carve up. Power now operates on three overlapping but distinct planes: a security order still dominated by the United States, an economic order that’s increasingly multipolar, and a digital order where technology companies rival states as geopolitical actors. The geopolitical “great game” used to be about physical territory. Today it’s increasingly about who controls data flows, platform rules, AI systems, and the critical minerals and energy infrastructure that power them. That’s the competition driving US-China decoupling— and it doesn’t respect the borders that spheres of influence depend on. Neither do the defining challenges of our time, such as pandemic disease, climate change, and disruptive technologies.

None of this means territory and military power no longer matter. Of course they do. But the world is too interconnected to carve up, and power is too fragmented across too many domains and actors for any great power to hold a sphere together. The law of the jungle is back. Spheres of influence aren’t.

Sell America

After Liberation Day, markets panicked. The dollar fell as volatility spiked—the opposite of its usual safe-haven behavior. Reserve managers sharply shifted allocations away from dollars; the greenback’s share of global reserves hit its lowest in two decades. Pundits rushed to declare American exceptionalism dead: The US was on course to becoming uninvestable, losing its spot as the prettiest ugly man in global markets.

The concerns weren’t baseless. Some of the Trump administration’s policies have dented the foundations of US credibility, both in absolute terms and relative to other countries—the chaotic introduction of higher tariffs, fiscal profligacy, growing state intervention, threats to the Fed’s independence and future commitment to price stability, and erosion of the rule of law. Restrictions on skilled immigration and cuts to research funding threaten the innovation ecosystem that has long powered American dynamism.

USD REMAINS DOMINANT RESERVE CURRENCY

In 2025, foreign investors had bought more US assets than the year before. The United States remains the most investable major economy in the world, even if that edge is narrowing.

The core reason: TINA (there is no alternative). American financial markets are by far the deepest and most liquid; no others come close. And while growth may not dazzle this year, no rival can match American economic dynamism. Traditional safe havens like Japan and Germany face enduring structural challenges to growth; Europe’s economic outlook remains weak; and China is mired in deflation and increasingly closed to foreign capital (please see Top Risk #7: China’s deflation trap). Meanwhile, America still leads in many of the industries that will drive 21st-century growth, including frontier AI, quantum computing, advanced semiconductors, aerospace, and innovative drug development. Massive AIrelated capital expenditure continues to pour in, and the tailwinds from that investment will persist well beyond 2026. The investment-for-tariff-relief deals struck with Japan, Korea, the European Union, and Gulf states, even if they underperform, will channel additional FDI into the United States. American exceptionalism isn’t over; it’s just priced with a higher risk premium.

TINA extends to the dollar’s role as global reserve currency. The euro lacks a deep, unified sovereign bond market. The renminbi is hobbled by capital controls, slowing growth, and Beijing’s own governance deficits. Crypto remains too volatile for serious reserve managers. And the dollar’s dominance is self-reinforcing. The US accounts for less than a tenth of global trade, yet half of it is still invoiced in greenbacks; 90% of foreign exchange transactions remain dollar-denominated. The shift toward dollar-backed stablecoins will further entrench, rather than displace, the dollar’s global role; the US moved ahead of other developed markets by creating a regulatory framework through the GENIUS Act, bolstering its first-mover advantage.

Rule of law and the distortionary effects of intensifying state interventionism in the US economy are real concerns (please see Top Risk #1: US political revolution, and Top Risk #6: State capitalism with American characteristics). But markets have shown little reaction to rule-of-law erosion. Investors price cash flows and growth, not governance scores.

None of this means the damage to credibility is costless. The United States still depends on large capital inflows from abroad to finance its deficits—and now pays a higher risk premium to attract them. Investor concerns about US policy are reflected, in part, in the relatively weak performance of US assets in 2025. Foreign governments are already hedging, diversifying reserves, and experimenting with alternative payment systems. The long-term trajectory points toward a more economically multipolar, fragmented, and less dollar-centric world (please see Red herring: Deglobalization).

But 2026 won’t be the year the world abandons US assets. The United States is too big, too innovative, and too hard to replace.

There you have it. Sometimes when you set your mind to a challenging task, you’re different at the end of the process than when you started. This year’s report feels like that.

We suspect that’s because it’s personal. There’s a lot at stake in the issues we’re writing about. The way we’ve been making rules for our fellow humans isn’t sustainable and it’s about to change. How these changes are resolved will affect most of us, our families, our friends, and our colleagues. The outcomes we are about to bear witness to—and that we are in part responsible for—are consequential.

We’re not optimistic, but we are hopeful. Yes, many of the world’s most powerful actors are looking out only for themselves, producing disinformation and corruption, supporting (dare we quote Monty Python) the violence inherent in the system. But the efforts to break the ordering principles of our world come from a deeply human impulse—when the gap between the balance of power and the “rules” grows too out of whack, demand for change becomes inevitable.

The next global “order” will be faster-moving, more chaotic, and more difficult to navigate and understand. But it might, it just might, also better reflect the values and needs of the increasingly educated billions of fellow humans on the planet today. Bringing that about begins with better understanding. This report—and the work we’ll do over the coming year to give voice to it, as well as hold ourselves accountable for it—is our effort to contribute to that process. We deeply appreciate your willingness to support us.

Yours truly,

Ian and Cliff (and Moose)

ATTACHMENT TWENTY TWO – FROM POLITICO

15 SCENARIOS THAT COULD STUN THE WORLD IN 2026

Futurists, political analysts and other forecasters on the possible “Black Swan” events of the new year.

By POLITICO MAGAZINE 01/02/2026 12:00 PM EST

Expect the unexpected, the saying goes, and that was certainly true in 2025. President Donald Trump was a major source of global and domestic disruption, but the year’s instability was also driven by natural and manmade disasters, political violence and technological progress.

There’s no reason to believe 2026 will be any calmer, what with looming elections, ominous financial portents and increasing climatic instability. That’s why POLITICO Magazine reached out to an array of futurists, scientists, foreign policy analysts and others to ask: What is the unpredictable, unlikely but entirely plausible thing that could happen in 2026 that could completely upend American life?

Some of our experts saw AI as being a force for disruption in 2026, sometimes for good and sometimes for ill. But the economy, the climate and other technologies will also play a role, our contributors said. And if past is precedent, at least some of them will happen, in some form – after all, our previous listings of “Black Swan” scenarios have a track record of being eerily prophetic. So let’s take a look into our experts’ crystal balls for 2026:

Prophecy 1 ‘Flash crashes may become possible with generalist AI agents’

BY DEAN W. BALL

Dean W. Ball is a senior fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation and author of the AI-focused newsletter Hyperdimensional.

The Black Swan event I think about often is not about the AI industry crashing, but a crash of a different sort: a “flash crash.” Today, this term refers to sudden swings in financial markets caused by unforeseen behaviors or bugs in algorithmic trading systems. Often, the crashes can emerge from the interaction of two or more automated trading systems with one another. These older machine learning systems, impactful though they may be, are narrow tools; they lack the general-purpose utility of a frontier language model like ChatGPT. In the near future, events somewhat like flash crashes may become possible with generalist AI agents interacting with each other in unpredictable ways. Instead of being confined to the relatively narrow domain of financial asset trading, though, these emergent events could occur in a vast range of contexts.

In 2026, frontier artificial intelligence models will become more capable. They will be able to work on complex tasks for increasing lengths of time. Their intelligence — as measured by the ability to develop sophisticated plans, engineer software, perform advanced mathematics and science, and the like — will rise. Buoyed by this extra intellect, and by improved methods of training, the models will also have more sophisticated personalities.

Here is the basic threat model: As these systems are deployed in more and more real-world settings, including in commerce, customer service and cyber defense, it is very likely they will interact with one another — often adversarially. We do not know what will happen when hundreds of thousands, then millions, then billions of adversarial interactions between sophisticated AI agents occur daily. But the ingredients are there for something unexpected, unpredictable and strange. The impacts could very well be large.

Prophecy 2 ‘Debt-fueled financial disruptions’

BY MOHAMED A. EL-ERIAN

Mohamed A. El-Erian is the Rene M Kern Professor at Wharton School, chief economic adviser at Allianz and chair of Gramercy Fund Management. He was formerly president of Queens’ College, Cambridge University.

U.S. capital markets are on fire, providing ample funding to everything from massive AI projects to “zombie companies.” The resulting surge in asset prices is fueling a “wealth effect” that has contributed to economic growth.

And yet the ongoing turbo-charged credit environment has enabled a significant accumulation of leverage and debt, a loosening of lending standards and weaker due diligence — and could set the stage for debt-fueled financial disruptions. Growing aspects of how these markets operate are starting to feel worrisomely similar to the environment before past financial crises. Even worse, few are guarding against it, and policymakers and markets are not yet pricing it in. This risk, if triggered, would have consequences well beyond the world of finance.

If history repeats itself — and it is a big if — we risk a shock that would not just hurt finance but also undermine economic wellbeing and hit the most vulnerable hardest.

Prophecy 3 ‘Syria descends into a vicious renewal of civil war’

BY RYAN CROCKER

Ryan Crocker was a career Foreign Service Officer who served six times as an American ambassador: Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Kuwait and Lebanon.

March 2026. The end of an unusually cold winter in Syria. Hundreds of thousands of refugees and internally displaced Syrians from the devastated suburbs of Damascus have spent months in utter misery: Their homes were destroyed during the conflict. They are without shelter, employment, medical care and schools for their children. Drastic cuts in international assistance have left agencies such as UNHCR and UNICEF unable to meet even basic needs. Many have died. Many more are ill and malnourished. All are in despair. And some are very angry.

One night, that anger explodes into a wave of rioting in the city of Damascus. Largely untouched in the war, the city stood as a mocking symbol of privilege and prosperity to people without hope of either. The U.S., still without an embassy there, is caught off guard.

So is the Syrian government. Unskilled in riot control, security forces respond with lethal force. Within days, the violence has spread and metastasized into sectarian and ethnic conflict as Bedouin tribes renew attacks on Druze communities in the south and Sunnis seek vengeance against Alawis in the west. Kurds in the northeast break off talks with the Damascus government, and deploy forces to contested border areas.

Within weeks, the Israeli military intervenes in support of the Druze while Turkish forces move against the Kurds. Syria descends into a vicious renewal of civil war, this time amplified by a dangerous regional conflict. ISIS and Iran take advantage of the chaos by respectively moving to retake control of areas in the north and reestablish supply lines to Hezbollah.

Syria, which had been a symbol of hope for the Middle East, instead becomes the epicenter of the most destabilizing conflict the region has seen in decades.

Prophecy 4 ‘Society enters a state of psychosocial freefall’

BY ERICA ORANGE

Erica Orange is a partner at The Future Hunters, a leading futurist firm, and the author of AI + The New Human Frontier: Reimagining the Future of Time, Trust + Truth.

The shift in this scenario is from today’s highly polarized but still shared world — where groups interpret events differently — to a fractured reality in which the events themselves cannot be verified, origins cannot be traced, and no authoritative source can prove what is real. Instead of opposing political narratives and conspiracy theories, society enters a state of psychosocial freefall where AI creates a series of parallel realities. It will mark a transition not from disagreement to deeper disagreement, but from disagreement to the collapse of a shared reality altogether.

This leads to the upending of the midterm elections. Ultra-realistic deepfakes flood the infosphere. One week before the election, a deepfake shows one candidate accepting a bribe from a foreign government. Minutes later, another deepfake shows the opposing candidate calling for the abolition of elections. Both clips go viral before fact-checkers can respond. AI instantly generates thousands of supporting “eyewitness accounts,” each with hyper-realistic voices, backstories and social profiles. In the following days, AI-generated “leaked documents” allege voting manipulation, foreign hacks and corrupted ballots. The public no longer mistrusts the government. They mistrust reality.

Democratic institutions prove incapable of responding at digital speed. While verification protocols are debated, AI systems generate thousands of new, contradictory narratives every hour. Trust erodes. Civic responsibility withers. Fragmented truth enclaves harden into antagonistic tribes. Citizens become more apathetic. Institutional authority collapses. The vacuum is quickly filled by fast-moving authoritarian actors and ever-more powerful tech platforms that step in as the new arbiters of “truth.”

Prophecy 5 ‘An appetite to put Russia’s nuclear arsenal to work’

BY ALEC ROSS

Alec Ross is a distinguished professor at the University of Bologna, Italy.

By Jan. 1, Vladimir Putin will already have exceeded the average life expectancy for Russian men by five years. One thing that would shake all the pieces on the world’s 196-country chessboard would be his death, though it is unlikely to come from his being thrown out of a fifth-story window.

What would follow is chaos with a conclusion that nobody could credibly game out with confidence.

We could anticipate figures who have run for and won elections, like former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, asserting themselves and trying to build popular support. This effort would almost certainly run at cross-currents with the designs of the siloviki, the innermost circle around Putin that is poorly understood and mostly impermeable. Those who have leaked have ended up in Siberia or six feet underground, and this same faction controls Russia’s military and security apparatus.

The outcomes span an unusually wide spectrum. There could be an attempt to dial down Russia’s military activity and dial up its economy as a sort of post-Putin reset. Or things could get even worse, with someone like Nikolai Patrushev — a longtime Putin adviser and a member of the siloviki — taking control, who is also well past Russian male life expectancy and who has not just a willingness but an appetite to put Russia’s nuclear arsenal to work.

Prophecy 6 ‘Political violence leading up to the midterms’

BY ANDREW YANG

Andrew Yang is a former Democratic presidential candidate and CEO of Noble Mobile, a new wireless carrier.

The event that could derail 2026 is political violence leading up to the midterms. A candidate gets shot and wounded or killed while on the trail. Some officeholders call for peace or perspective, while others grimly warn that this is necessary to defend the country from tyrants. Threats against candidates on both sides skyrocket in the days immediately afterwards, and several local candidates drop out because they are tired of having their family on the run or under armed guard.

 Then an AI video showing a candidate getting murdered in grisly fashion is circulated. It can’t be confirmed or denied because the actual person is unavailable, and the video goes viral. The party in power says that certain races can’t be safely held or sites can’t be protected, prompting a postponement in those districts, which is immediately protested by the other side. Marches begin that are then countered by the National Guard. A haze settles over the midterm as results are tied up in court. During that time, various Republican members of Congress refuse to step down while members on both sides quietly retire.

Or, maybe everything will go smoothly, we’ll all agree on the results, and our faith in democracy, truth and a shared objective reality will be restored. Anything is possible.

Prophecy 7 ‘Artificial intelligence is a time machine that is accelerating the robotic future’

BY ARATI PRABHAKAR

Arati Prabhakar served as director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy under former President Joe Biden. She was previously director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and a partner at U.S. Venture Partners.

With fascination and with fear, humans have long formed emotional connections to the sentience they perceive in their creations. Egyptian priests manipulated statues to convince the populace of a divine intelligence 4500 years ago. Now a century of mechanization has brought us robotic arms in factories, vacuums in homes, and self-driving cars. No product, however, has captured the imagination like the machines that move delightfully and/or spookily like humans.

When I was the director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) a decade ago, we ran a competition at which humanoid robots performed astonishing tasks in our disaster scenario testbed. Yet the blooper reel showed the world’s best robots of 2015 face-planting and collapsing. A lot. Personal assistants and rescue bots seemed decades away.

With new advances, artificial intelligence is a time machine that is accelerating the robotic future. The good news is that the coming generation of robots — embodied AI — will be able to help with search and rescue operations and other dangerous work, and even with housework and elder care. The bad news will be the freakout that comes first. Introducing 3-D droids with human-seeming capabilities into a public still grappling with AI displacing jobs, parasocial relationships with chatbots, and AI slop on social media could trigger anything from anxious dread to significant social upheaval.

When a chatbot was able to text back eerily like a human, many imagined an incipient intelligence. Wait ‘til you see what happens when one droid texts you to say it caught your granddad before he fell on the stairs and another walks into your kitchen and says your daughter didn’t cry today at school dropoff. As you wrinkle your brow, your own personal two-legged robot can mix you a drink, drape a blanket around you, and ask what you think about all this.

Prophecy 8 ‘No water at home and the temperature soaring’

BY AMY ZALMAN

Amy Zalman is a futurist and strategist and a professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs in New York City.

On the first day of August 2026, eight-year-old Anna dies of dehydration in the American Southwest.

Anna’s family had always had low water pressure and surprise shutoffs in their small house in an unincorporated area on the edge of town, where chronic drought had led to routine shortages and rationing. After Anna’s father lost his job, they couldn’t pay their water bills, and the local utility shut off their water, as utilities in most states are permitted to do. They made do by pooling resources with other families to buy water in bulk when they could — although it was hardly enough when summer temperatures began to mount, some days as high as 115 degrees.

In July, local officials invoke emergency water conservation measures for residents. They also halt bulk water sales, choosing to preserve water for contract with the owners of a recently completed AI data campus that consumes enormous amounts of water to cool its 24-hour-a-day servers. With no water at home and the temperature soaring, Anna and her siblings start to wilt. The nearest store is two miles away by foot, and by the time Anna’s father arrives, nearby residents have already cleared out all of the water and cheap drinks in the heat wave.

When Anna complains that she is dizzy, her mother tries to ignore it. A few hours later, she says her head hurts and lies down on the kitchen floor, listless, her skin drawn. By that evening, her organs begin to fail and she dies.

Two days later, an elderly woman in the neighborhood also dies from dehydration and in the weeks following five more pass away, all from lack of water. Reporters around the world flock in and town officials, caught in the reputational crosshairs of a globally visible, preventable tragedy, seek to close the data center temporarily and return the diverted water to residential use. But on television, the president frames the center as critical to ‘winning the AI race with China,’ invoking emergency powers to block the center’s shutdown.

As the news unfolds, it becomes clear that Anna’s death is not an isolated accident, but a signal of systemic decline at the intersection of inequality, a heating earth and industrial priorities decided elsewhere.

Prophecy 9 ‘Trump will, rightly, take heat for every downside from AI’

BY GARY MARCUS

Gary Marcus, professor emeritus at New York University, is a founder of two AI companies and author of six books, including Taming Silicon Valley.

By the end of 2026, President Trump will have begun to distance himself from the aggressively pro-AI industry policies that characterized his AI strategy in 2025. The giant AI infrastructure plays (like Project Stargate) that he championed after his inauguration will look like an unprofitable and underused mistake. So will his utter failure to meaningfully regulate AI, against the will of voters and political leaders both left and right.

As a result, Trump will, rightly, take heat for every downside from AI (from deepfakes to chatbot-induced delusions and suicides to massive AI-induced cyberattacks). Public backlash against data centers, rising energy prices and rapacious AI companies will grow. AI stocks may tank. Generative AI, once Silicon Valley’s golden child, will start to look like a fad, a solution in search of a problem with economics that don’t add up. And as it all starts to fall apart, Trump will bolt for the door. “Coffee chatbot, we hardly knew ye,” Trump will be overheard to say.

Prophecy 10 ‘The political equivalent of the Fujiwhara Effect’

BY JEFF GREENFIELD

Jeff Greenfield is a five-time Emmy-winning network television analyst and author.

2026 might see the political equivalent of the Fujiwhara Effect, which is when two cyclones arrive close enough to each other that they merge into one powerful force. What if the event that upends the midterm is not one event, but a convergence of events that arrive close enough to each other to fundamentally alter the political landscape?

Think of the canaries that have been tweeting up a storm: the effect of tariffs on costs and profitability; the impact of the potential end of health care subsidies; the sharply increased costs of food and housing; the contraction of manufacturing; the stock market bubble; the rise of consumer debt and the decline of consumer confidence; the threat posed by AI to a range of jobs. Now imagine that two or more of the canaries’ scenarios hit at the same time.

When the recovery from the Great Recession of 2008 proved sluggish, voters responded with a massive repudiation of Democrats, from the House of Representatives to state governments across the country. Democrats are still dealing with the impact of that election. If Republicans face the 2026 midterms with not one, but a toxic mix of grim economic news, each individual piece feeding a broader narrative of failure, that combination would prove more daunting than any one “Black Swan” would pose — ultimately tanking their chances in the midterms.

Prophecy 11 ‘Patriotic Innovation Zones… designed for short-term virality and election optics’

BY AMY WEBB

Amy Webb is CEO of Future Today Strategy Group, NYC-based strategic foresight advisory firm.

Early in 2026, a tech mogul with a massive online following posts — half brag, half taunt —“Patriotic Innovation Zones are the FUTURE OF AMERICAN GREATNESS!” tagging President Trump and praising him for “finally unleashing the private sector.” Trump, sensing a viral win and a midterm-friendly slogan, amplifies it instantly on Truth Social and declares it a bold new economic policy. Republican-led states, desperate for jobs and headlines, trip over themselves to create these zones: semi-autonomous corporate territories where companies get tax breaks, regulatory exemptions and de facto control over local governance. It’s sold as a hyper-capitalist moonshot: part factory-town revival, part Silicon Valley fever dream, part culture-war trophy.

By spring, governors brag about “American industry returning home.” Trump returns to the rally stage with talk of “freedom economies” and “patriotic prosperity.” But beneath the spectacle, no one — not the states, not the companies, not Washington — has done any real long-term planning. Patriotic Innovation Zones (PIZ, as they’re now known) weren’t designed for resilience. They were designed for short-term virality and election optics. The companies coming in have done this dance before: sweeping into cities with grand promises, demanding incentives, building sprawling campuses and quietly architecting a future where automation in myriad forms — not human labor — is the real endgame. The zones become ideal sandboxes for robotics, ultra-efficient AI logistics and vertically integrated, worker-minimal operations disguised as job creation.

Within a few years, the promised jobs evaporate. The towns — now deeply dependent on a single corporate overlord — find themselves locked into one-sided agreements that give companies broad powers over zoning, policing, even worker housing. The tax base collapses. Local labor markets implode. And the companies, having extracted data, land and exemptions, move on. The zones turn out to be less like engines of opportunity and more like 21st-century company towns that automate themselves into irrelevance, leaving residents stranded while corporations walk away with the long-term gains. What was pitched as patriotic renewal ends up as a textbook case of political shortsightedness: an entire economic policy born from a meme, rushed into reality and carried out without a single serious question about what happens after the headlines fade.

Prophecy 12 ‘For the first time, climate risk dictates where Americans can afford to live’

BY DARYL FAIRWEATHER

Daryl Fairweather is chief economist at Redfin, a national real estate brokerage.

Acatastrophic wildfire season collides with an unusually destructive Atlantic storm, delivering back-to-back billion-dollar disasters. Within weeks, several of the nation’s largest property insurers announce they’re halting new homeowner policies. Smaller carriers follow suit or fail outright. Overnight, vast swaths of the country become effectively uninsurable, while Americans lose faith in the value and security of home insurance broadly.

With lenders unable to originate mortgages without proof of coverage, home sales freeze. Families who expected to move discover that their “dream home” can’t be financed at any price. Existing homeowners see their premiums spike into the thousands — or lose coverage entirely. Local housing markets seize up as climate risk suddenly becomes a hard underwriting limit rather than an abstract future threat. In the hardest-hit regions, home values fall sharply as buyers evaporate.

Congress scrambles to expand the National Flood Insurance Program and create an emergency federal backstop for fire insurance. States debate mandates and subsidies. Investors shift billions out of climate-exposed Sun Belt metros and into the Midwest.

For the first time, climate risk dictates where Americans can afford to live.

Prophecy 13 ‘This is going to be the best and worst year for AI’

BY MATT CALKINS

Matt Calkins is CEO and founder of Appian, an American cloud computing and enterprise software company.

2026 will be the best year for the technology’s practical, real-world capabilities and value while also being the worst year for its technological advancements.

This year, we have been led to believe by this administration that China is the one to beat, which has driven companies’ recent spending spree to develop the technology, despite seeing little return. However, the U.S. and China are playing two completely different roles in this contested global AI race. China has chosen to create open, light, cheap models that are practical and offer a clear financial return for users. Meanwhile the United States is still taking a theoretical one, where we trying to ring the proverbial bell. This should stop. This is the year that it becomes clear that AI should serve a purpose, that investment should follow that purpose, and that value should be measured by the efficiency of those investments. This isn’t a science project anymore. It’s about conveying value to consumers, and theoretical objectives should take a backseat.

This is going to be the best and worst year for AI. It will be the worst in terms of technological advancement. The best AI model in the world will gain less capability over the next 12 months than it has gained in any of the previous years. Yet at the same time, it will be the best year for AI because its practical value will grow more than it has in years. We will see the smallest delta in technological capability and the largest delta in practical value. This paradox is possible because organizations need time to digest and process new advances. What we are hearing now is the echo of the AI boom returning to us finally as real productivity improvements. Every scientific revolution needs time to germinate, and 2026 is when we begin to hear that echo in the form of meaningful economic output.

Prophecy 14 ‘The FDA completely legitimizing wellness industry pseudoscience’

BY ANDREA LOVE

Andrea Love is a biomedical scientist and science communicator.

I think the Black Swan for 2026 is already underway: the FDA completely legitimizing wellness industry pseudoscience. Already, we’ve been seeing the FDA encouraging people to conflate pseudoscience for evidence-based medicine as FDA Commissioner Marty Makary Prophecy malarky erases the boundary between evidence-based medicine and the wellness industry under the guise of access, innovation and “repairing trust.” He and others are positioning the FDA not as a scientific safety guardrail, but a facilitator of “health choice.” They frame evidence standards as elitist, favoring anecdotal claims to justify unscientific policy changes that will endanger the public.

There are early signals: enthusiasm to relax regulatory requirements for FDA approval; moving to fast-track direct-to-consumer health tests that lack clinical validation; and elevating supplements to quasi-therapeutics rather than unproven and potentially unsafe products immune from oversight thanks to the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act. If FDA leadership erases the remaining guardrails that exist, expect a rapid expansion of FDA-adjacent products that appear legitimate to the public. People will not be empowered — they will be less healthy.

What makes this a Black Swan is that people will believe they are still following science as these claims come from our federal health agencies. People will make health decisions based on falsehoods rather than validated evidence. Patients will delay or refuse effective care, opting instead for cleverly marketed products that carry a false sense of legitimacy. By the time these harms are apparent at a population level, these policy changes will be normalized — and potentially irreparable.

Not true if paid for by gumment (medicare, Medicaid)

Prophecy 15 ‘Behold the American Troubles’

BY JONATHAN STEVENSON

Jonathan Stevenson is a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies and Managing Editor of Survival. He is the author of “We Wrecked the Place:” Contemplating an End to the Northern Irish Troubles.

Brits tend to bring up the Northern Irish Troubles in discussions of conflict, and sometimes they overdo it. But Ireland’s Troubles do resonate ominously in contemporary America. With President Donald Trump deploying National Guard and active-duty U.S. troops to heavily Democratic cities, a violent backlash could send America in a similar direction.

In the late 1960s, Catholic civil rights protests in Northern Ireland, a province of the United Kingdom then run by a deeply chauvinistic Protestant majority, prompted London to mobilize British Army troops on the pretext of helping local police pre-empt wider unrest. On Jan. 30, 1972 — “Bloody Sunday” — soldiers trained in combat rather than crowd-control shot 26 unarmed civilians at a protest in Derry, resulting in the deaths of 14.

The episode helped launch a low-intensity conflict that would continue for over 20 years between Catholic insurgents who insisted on Irish reunification and a Protestant community, backed by the Crown, adamant that Northern Ireland remain British. It first verged on civil war, then settled into a kind of ritual murder. The middle class, largely unaffected by violence centered in working-class areas, accepted civil dysfunction as background noise and went about its bougie business. British civil servants were morbidly content with “an acceptable level of violence” as P.J. O’Rourke marveled at “heck’s half-acre.”

By sending troops to blue cities, the Trump administration has likewise militarized political conflict. It is now painfully easy to imagine an incident like Bloody Sunday in America. And there is precedent: At Kent State University in 1970, National Guardsmen dispatched to quell a campus anti-Vietnam War protest killed four students and wounded nine. The incident energized the Weather Underground, a relatively regimented left-wing fringe group, which subsequently threatened to usurp what remained of a dispersed, non-violent dissident movement. No such group exists now, but the left’s comprehensive opposition to Trump’s policies suggests that a kindred event could push the U.S. domestic constitutional order past a tipping point and trigger the formation of one. That would activate existing right-wing, pro-state militias against the group and its perceived supporters. Trump would enjoy a self-perpetuating pretext for unleashing the U.S. military against American citizens on U.S. territory. They would get used to it, as he hopes. Behold the American Troubles.

The original Troubles’ “manageability” is cold comfort. Over 3,500 people in a population of about 1.6 million still died. Extrapolating crudely, an American version would claim about 720,000 dead — more than the Civil War. These would occur in pockets of territory dispersed across the United States’ more than 3.5 million square miles, and over the course of perhaps two decades rather than four years. The diluting, sedative effect of time and space would attenuate the emotional and material impact of the carnage. This would only make it easier for the population — especially given its uniquely deep acclimation to endemic gun violence — to tolerate, and for governments in the Trump administration’s image to sustain.

The country might thus avoid full-blown civil war. There could be elections, but, under the cloud of ongoing political violence, democracy would be essentially performative and politics would ossify. Following Seamus Heaney’s benighting dictum of the Troubles, a generation of fearful Americans would “say nothing.”

ATTACHMENT TWENTY THREE – FROM DW

MAY DAY PROTESTS ACROSS EUROPE AND ASIA TURN INTO ANTI-AMERICAN, ANTI-ISRAEL POLITICAL BATTLEGROUNDS

Protesters in Paris, Madrid, Manila and Seoul tied rising living costs to US foreign policy and Middle East conflict

By Efrat Lachter Published May 1, 2026 12:47pm EDT

May Day demonstrations across Europe and Asia on Friday revealed how International Workers’ Day is increasingly transforming from a traditional labor rights event into a broader political battleground, where demands over wages, inflation and worker protections are now frequently intertwined with anti-war activism, anti-Israel rhetoric and wider ideological struggles over global power.

From Paris to Istanbul, Madrid, Manila and Seoul, protests often expanded far beyond workplace grievances, with demonstrators linking rising living costs and social inequality to war in the Middle East, U.S. foreign policy and broader anti-capitalist narratives.

Nile Gardiner, senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told Fox News Digital that the demonstrations reflected what he described as a ‘troubling moral inversion’.

"These May Day protesters should be demonstrating against the brutal tyranny in Tehran instead of protesting against U.S. military action, and this is an illustration of the complete moral vacuum that exists in Europe today," Gardiner said.

In Paris, May Day protests reportedly escalated into clashes as police used tear gas grenades and forceful arrests after projectiles were thrown during demonstrations, according to publicly circulated social media footage.

Earlier, French labor leaders had focused on inflation, wages and social protections, but parts of the protests also featured anti-war slogans, Palestinian symbolism and criticism of military spending.

In Madrid, thousands marched under banners reading "Capitalism should pay the cost of their war," while demonstrators protested stagnant wages, housing shortages and militarism. Placards targeting President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu highlighted how international conflict featured prominently alongside domestic labor concerns.

Germany also saw unrest in Munich, where publicly circulated reporter footage showed riot police using batons to disperse radical leftist protesters after pyrotechnics were repeatedly ignited during a revolutionary May Day demonstration. 

Emma Schubart, Research Fellow at the Henry Jackson Society, a London-based think tank, warned that May Day demonstrations increasingly serve as platforms for ideological movements extending beyond labor activism.

"The May Day demonstrations across Europe increasingly feature Islamist elements. Militant anti-war, anti-capitalist rhetoric is now routinely accompanied by Palestinian flags and explicit anti-Israel slogans," Schubart said, adding that far-left activism and Islamist-linked networks are increasingly converging under broader anti-Western narratives.

In Istanbul, police blocked leftist groups from marching to the banned Taksim Square, the historic center of Turkey’s labor movement, where demonstrations have long carried symbolic political weight. Protesters attempted to break through barricades and clashed with police as authorities detained some of the protesters.

Outside Europe, similar themes emerged across Asia.

In Manila, workers clashed with police near the U.S. Embassy while protesting higher fuel and commodity prices, demanding wage increases and calling for an end to war in the Middle East.

A left-wing labor group paraded a giant effigy depicting Trump, Netanyahu and Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. as a three-headed monster, symbolically tying domestic hardship to both local and international political leadership.

In South Korea, thousands gathered near Seoul’s Gwanghwamun Square for major labor rallies centered on collective bargaining and worker rights, but speeches also incorporated broader geopolitical messaging. 

Korea Confederation of Trade Unions Chairman Yang Kyung-soo called on demonstrators to "unite with the Iranian and Palestinian workers and people suffering from American imperialist aggression," explicitly connecting labor solidarity to anti-American and Middle East political narratives.

While local priorities varied, from wages in France to labor rights in Seoul, May Day 2026 demonstrated a growing global pattern: labor demonstrations are increasingly becoming arenas for broader ideological and geopolitical confrontation.

"The United States is fighting to defend the free world against tyranny, and yet across Europe and beyond we are seeing protesters direct their outrage at America and its allies instead of the brutal regimes driving so much of this global instability," Gardiner said. "That should deeply concern anyone who cares about the future of Western civilization."

Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

ATTACHMENT TWENTY FOUR – FROM FOX NEWS

MAY DAY PROTESTS TO TAKE PLACE FRIDAY AS AGITATORS ACROSS THE US PUSH 'WORKERS OVER BILLIONAIRES' MOTTO

Events are planned in New York City, Washington DC, Chicago, Los Angeles, Minneapolis and other cities on Friday

By Preston Mizell Published April 29, 2026 1:33pm EDT

'There's real, serious money behind this': Nate Friedman on Left-wing activism at 'No Kings' protests

Independent journalist Nate Friedman shares his experience at recent 'No Kings' protests, revealing the lack of diversity and claims of underlying financial support from billionaires on 'The Ingraham Angle.'

Agitators and protesters are expected to gather in cities across the country Friday for May Day, boycotting work, school and shopping in demonstrations driven by the "Workers Over Billionaires" motto.

Nearly 500 organizations are planning more than 750 events, including roughly 200 virtual events, that will take place in New York, Washington D.C., Minneapolis, Chicago, Los Angeles and other metropolitan cities.

"On May 1, 2026, workers, students, and families rally, march, and take action across the country to demand a nation that puts workers over billionaires, with many refusing business as usual through No School. No Work. No Shopping," May Day Strong, which is the main organizer of the demonstrations, describes the event. 

May Day’s roots trace back to the 19th Century, when Marxists, socialists and labor unions called for a day of strikes in Paris and later became a national holiday in the Soviet Union after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.

LA HOTEL LEADERS WARN MAYOR BASS' $30 WAGE MANDATE IS KILLING BUSINESS AHEAD OF WORLD CUP, OLYMPICS

The first May Day protest occurred in 1886, with Chicago at the center of the demonstrations. At the time, several hundred thousand unions, socialists, anarchists and reformers took to the streets to advocate for the eight-hour workday. 

Several days later, the protests turned deadly. 

On May 3, 1886, violent agitators at the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company clashed with police, who opened fire on the crowd, killing at least two, according to reports.

ANTI-TRUMP 'NO KINGS' PROTEST ORGANIZERS TARGET MINNEAPOLIS-ST PAUL FOR NEXT FLAGSHIP DEMONSTRATION

The following day at Haymarket Square in Chicago, an unknown agitator threw a bomb at police, killing one officer instantly and leading to a violent battle that killed several more law enforcement officers and protesters. 

The riot became known as the "Haymaker Affair," (sic) and the events led to the executions and hangings of the Haymarket Martyrs, a trial which is still debated over injustice and controversy today. 

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has already endorsed the events taking place this Friday, saying that "meaningful solidarity and community resistance" are cornerstones of the historic demonstration.

"Encouraging participation allows Chicagoans to honor our history while advocating for our future," Johnson said. "We look forward to a day of meaningful solidarity and community resistance to the forces trying to tear us apart."

"The history of May Day in America is rooted in Chicago," Johnson added. "It was in our city that workers organized around the simple demand of an eight-hour workday and raised the consciousness of a gilded nation through the Haymarket Strike." 

With the central theme surrounding the American worker against the billionaire class, economists are skeptical that a single-day boycott has any impact at all on large companies and the so-called elite.

"If you're talking about [non-perishable activities], like going to the movies, you'll go see the same movie on Saturday," University of Maryland Economics Professor Emeritus and former chief economist at the U.S. International Trade Commission Peter Morici told Fox News Digital. 

Morici noted that if consumers boycott purchases for a single day, they will purchase the same products and shop at the same venues regardless of a one-day strike.

"Somebody will go to store B instead of store A," Morici explained. "All this is a bad storm and a way for the left wing getting everybody riled up."

"It's not a hit on the billionaires," Morici added. "You're angry about your circumstances. So what do you do? You burn the place down and make your circumstances worse. The local shops that are going without a day. The very people they want us to patronize are the people that could get hurt."

Preston Mizell is a writer with Fox News Digital covering breaking news.

ATTACHMENT TWENTY FIVE – FROM FROM IN THESE TIMES

WHY MAYORS ACROSS THE COUNTRY ARE SIGNING ON TO A HAYMARKET DECLARATION THIS MAY DAY

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson explains why a coalition of mayors has come together to commemorate the legacy of May Day and defend workers from attacks by the Trump administration.

By Brandon Johnson April 30, 2026

On April 30, the day before May Day, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson joined a coalition of mayors from cities across the United States to sign the Haymarket Declaration—a joint recognition of May Day and the anniversary of the Haymarket Affair in Chicago, as well as a commitment to use the power of cities to defend democracy and workers’ rights. 

Joining Mayor Johnson in signing the declaration are Mayors Katie Wilson of Seattle, Keith Wilson of Portland, Karen Bass of Los Angeles, Ras Baraka of Newark, Jacob Frey of Minneapolis, James Solomon of Jersey City, Satya Rhodes-Conway of Madison and Dorcey Applyrs of Albany. 

The Haymarket Declaration “commits participating mayors to pursue local actions which protect the First Amendment and the right to peacefully protest and organize; advance workers’ rights and economic justice; lower costs and defend essential services; expand access to good-paying jobs; build safer communities through prevention and trust; defend immigrant communities; protect voting rights and local elections; and align public spending around shared values.” 

BELOW IS A TRANSCRIPT OF MAYOR JOHNSON’S REMARKS DURING THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE DECLARATION.

I am honored and grateful to stand with my fellow mayors in solidarity today. From Seattle and Los Angeles to Newark and Jersey City, leaders from every corner of the country are represented here. This nationwide collaboration and shared commitment to democracy is exactly what this moment calls for. We are gathered today on the eve of May Day, or International Workers’ Day. As the mayor of Chicago and as a former social studies teacher here in Chicago, I feel a sense of responsibility to shed a bit of light on what this day commemorates. 

In 1884, the workers in Chicago and across the country who were fed up with the long hours they worked sparked a nationwide movement to win an eight-hour workday. Interestingly, the eight-hour workday was already protected by law at that time. The problem was the federal government wouldn’t actually enforce their law and robber barons did everything they could to dodge accountability. Two years later, May 1, 1886, organizing efforts culminated in a strike by industrial workers across the United States. 

Marching under the banner of “eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, and eight hours for what we will,” working Chicagoans came together to demand respect in the workplace. But on May 3, 1886, after a mysterious bomb went off at a peaceful demonstration at the McCormick Reaper plant in Chicago, police officers clashed with picketers and killed striking workers. Eight union leaders were put on trial for the riot and seven were sentenced to death. 

Bottom of Form

Justice came only years later when Illinois Gov. John P. Altgeld pardoned the surviving prisoners and condemned the system that convicted them, and in 1889, when a delegate from the American Federation of Labor recommended that May 1 be set aside as International Labor Day in memory of the Haymarket martyrs. Now almost the entire world commemorates May Day. It is a living tradition where we honor our past and commit to our future. 

The Haymarket Affair tells the story of workers who fought for dignity, fairness, and protection under the law, who were met with violence and oppression for doing so. While the story lives in our history books, it is a story that continues to unfold in the present. 

Across the country, we are seeing fundamental rights be tested by the federal government. The right to organize, to vote, and to protect our protest are all at risk. At the same time, residents in our cities are confronting the challenges of rising costs, unemployment, a lack of affordable housing, and new challenges brought on by the federal government’s decision to gut programs like SNAP, Medicaid, and Medicare. It is becoming that much harder for families to make ends meet. But as I said before, history is certainly repeating itself. We’ve seen similar challenges from the federal government before, and that means we know the solutions.

Like the union laborers and workers who achieved our rights and dignity, we must remain unified in our effort.

The labor leaders and workers in 1886 didn’t give up after the Haymarket riot. They didn’t even give up after the subsequent arrests and executions. They kept on fighting in solidarity, moving towards the future that they knew was right, and today mayors across the country honor May Day, not just with words but with action, taking a page out of our forbearers book. 

I’m honored to sign onto the Haymarket Declaration, a symbol of solidarity and a shared commitment to pursue local actions across a broad set of priorities, from protecting our First Amendment rights to building safer and welcoming communities. As city leaders, we have a responsibility and the authority to respond to our people’s needs and to stand up for our democracy. And like the union laborers and workers who achieved our rights and dignity, we must remain unified in our effort. We must remain strong in this effort because we are stronger together. And while the federal government falls short of its responsibilities and authority, city government is stepping up to lead. 

I’m deeply grateful to all of the mayors and cities that are committing to the Haymarket Declaration. I know that with this bold step we will defend our residents’ rights and deliver the services that they deserve. I look forward to our continued partnership with mayors and leaders across the country, and I look forward to commemorating May Day with the people of Chicago tomorrow.

ATTACHMENT TWENTY SIX – FROM FOX NEWS

MAY DAY PROTESTS ACROSS EUROPE AND ASIA TURN INTO ANTI-AMERICAN, ANTI-ISRAEL POLITICAL BATTLEGROUNDS

Protesters in Paris, Madrid, Manila and Seoul tied rising living costs to US foreign policy and Middle East conflict

By Efrat Lachter  Published May 1, 2026 12:47pm EDT

May Day demonstrations across Europe and Asia on Friday revealed how International Workers’ Day is increasingly transforming from a traditional labor rights event into a broader political battleground, where demands over wages, inflation and worker protections are now frequently intertwined with anti-war activism, anti-Israel rhetoric and wider ideological struggles over global power.

From Paris to Istanbul, Madrid, Manila and Seoul, protests often expanded far beyond workplace grievances, with demonstrators linking rising living costs and social inequality to war in the Middle East, U.S. foreign policy and broader anti-capitalist narratives.

Nile Gardiner, senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told Fox News Digital that the demonstrations reflected what he described as a ‘troubling moral inversion’.

"These May Day protesters should be demonstrating against the brutal tyranny in Tehran instead of protesting against U.S. military action, and this is an illustration of the complete moral vacuum that exists in Europe today," Gardiner said.

In Paris, May Day protests reportedly escalated into clashes as police used tear gas grenades and forceful arrests after projectiles were thrown during demonstrations, according to publicly circulated social media footage.

Earlier, French labor leaders had focused on inflation, wages and social protections, but parts of the protests also featured anti-war slogans, Palestinian symbolism and criticism of military spending.

In Madrid, thousands marched under banners reading "Capitalism should pay the cost of their war," while demonstrators protested stagnant wages, housing shortages and militarism. Placards targeting President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu highlighted how international conflict featured prominently alongside domestic labor concerns.

Germany also saw unrest in Munich, where publicly circulated reporter footage showed riot police using batons to disperse radical leftist protesters after pyrotechnics were repeatedly ignited during a revolutionary May Day demonstration. 

Emma Schubart, Research Fellow at the Henry Jackson Society, a London-based think tank, warned that May Day demonstrations increasingly serve as platforms for ideological movements extending beyond labor activism.

"The May Day demonstrations across Europe increasingly feature Islamist elements. Militant anti-war, anti-capitalist rhetoric is now routinely accompanied by Palestinian flags and explicit anti-Israel slogans," Schubart said, adding that far-left activism and Islamist-linked networks are increasingly converging under broader anti-Western narratives.

In Istanbul, police blocked leftist groups from marching to the banned Taksim Square, the historic center of Turkey’s labor movement, where demonstrations have long carried symbolic political weight. Protesters attempted to break through barricades and clashed with police as authorities detained some of the protesters.

Outside Europe, similar themes emerged across Asia.

In Manila, workers clashed with police near the U.S. Embassy while protesting higher fuel and commodity prices, demanding wage increases and calling for an end to war in the Middle East.

A left-wing labor group paraded a giant effigy depicting Trump, Netanyahu and Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. as a three-headed monster, symbolically tying domestic hardship to both local and international political leadership.

In South Korea, thousands gathered near Seoul’s Gwanghwamun Square for major labor rallies centered on collective bargaining and worker rights, but speeches also incorporated broader geopolitical messaging. 

Korea Confederation of Trade Unions Chairman Yang Kyung-soo called on demonstrators to "unite with the Iranian and Palestinian workers and people suffering from American imperialist aggression," explicitly connecting labor solidarity to anti-American and Middle East political narratives.

While local priorities varied, from wages in France to labor rights in Seoul, May Day 2026 demonstrated a growing global pattern: labor demonstrations are increasingly becoming arenas for broader ideological and geopolitical confrontation.

"The United States is fighting to defend the free world against tyranny, and yet across Europe and beyond we are seeing protesters direct their outrage at America and its allies instead of the brutal regimes driving so much of this global instability," Gardiner said. "That should deeply concern anyone who cares about the future of Western civilization."

Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

ATTACHMENT TWENTY SEVEN – FROM DW.COM

MAY DAY MARKED BY PROTESTS, CELEBRATIONS, ARRESTS

Labor Day comes as rising energy costs and shrinking purchasing triggered by the Iran war has hurt workers around the world.

By Jenipher Camino Gonzalez  05/01/2026

Labor activists commemorated May 1 worldwide on Friday, with rallies and street protests. Demonstrators focused their calls on higher wages and better working conditions. 

May 1 marks International Workers' Day, or Labor Day, and it counts as a public holiday in many countries, including Germany.

On this day, workers' unions traditionally lead rallies to defend their support for higher wages, pensions, and to highlight inequality and other political issues.

Protesters gathered in several major cities in Asia, Latin America, along with many European capitals. Several protests also took place in cities across the US, which does not observe May Day but has its own Labor Day federal holiday, typically celebrated in the month of September.

This year's Labor Day comes as the Iran War has caused rising energy costs and shrinking purchasing to the world's most vulnerable populations and working classes.

TURKEY CRACKS DOWN ON PROTESTS

Turkish police clashed with demonstrators who attempted to march toward Istanbul's iconic Taksim Square, leading to over 500 arrests. 

May Day rallies on Taksim, a symbolic site for Turkey's labor movement and the scene of the 2013 Gezi Park protests, have effectively been banned since 2012.

Riot police reportedly used tear gas and water cannon to disperse demonstrators, blocking roads in the central Mecidiyekoy and Besiktas districts leading to Taksim, the Cumhuriyet daily wrote.

Local unions, including the Progressive Lawyers Association (CHD) said several demonstrators reported having sustained injuries while being taken into custody.

Authorities also closed some metro stations and major roads in some parts of the city ahead of planned Workers' Day rallies, allocating two sites for celebrations on Istanbul's Asian side.

GERMANY: PROTESTERS RALLY AGAINST BENEFITS CUTS

In Germany, workers took to the streets in Berlin and other cities across the country, with unions rallying against the governments' planned cuts to health care and social security benefits. 

Germany's trade unions organized several hundred May Day rallies across the country with the slogan "Our jobs first, your profits second."

Unions are urging for the preservation of the eight-hour workday and secure pensions, as well as the introduction of higher taxes on the rich.

"You must remain ready for a fight in the coming weeks and months," said Yasmin Fahimi, president of the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB), at the main May Day rally in Nuremberg.

"Anyone who attacks the level of pension provision is provoking a major social conflict," Fahimi said. "We are capable of mobilizing against this pension theft, and we will fight it off," she added.

ARGENTINES PROTEST MILEI'S LABOR-LAW OVERHAUL

In Argentina, workers gathered to conmemorate (sic) May Day earlier on Thursday, where activists let their feelings known over President Javier Milei's recent overhaul of labor protections.

The General Confederation of Labor (CGT), Argentina's largest union group, marched to the government headquarters downtown to "defend decent employment" against Milei’s changes to the labor code, which since 1974 had guaranteed generous protections and rights for Argentine workers but also raised business costs that scared off foreign investors.

“We want to say to this government, enough is enough," CGT leader Octavio Arguello, a leader of CGT told the crowds of workers beating drums, waving banners and chanting against Milei. "Our patience has run out, Mr. President."

Edited by: Dmytro Hubenko

ATTACHMENT TWENTY EIGHT – FROM THE WISCONSIN EXAMINER

MAY DAY COULD SIGNAL THE BEGINNING OF A BIGGER BACKLASH

By Ruth Conniff April 30, 2026 5:00 am

International Workers Day on May 1 commemorates the great labor struggles of the 19th and early 20th centuries, when workers fought and died for decent wages and working conditions.

The militant energy of the early labor movement, long dormant in the United States, has been making a comeback recently as Americans chafe at economic instability, the destruction of health care and other basic rights and protections, and recoil from a government dedicated to further enriching billionaires at the expense of working people. Add to that the campaign of terror the Trump administration has launched against immigrants who do much of the manual labor in this country and the violent repression of the neighbors who try to protect them, and it’s starting to feel like 1886.

On Friday, May 1, labor unions and immigrants rights groups are coming together to organize mass walkouts in more than 3,000 cities across the U.S. “No work. No school. No shopping” is the tag line for the national campaign, joined in Wisconsin by Madison Teachers Inc., the Southcentral Federation of Labor, and myriad civic groups. 

This week’s protests grow out of “A Day Without Immigrants,” the May Day general strikes that began 20 years ago to oppose Wisconsin U.S. Rep. James Sensenbrenner’s federal bill that proposed making unauthorized presence in the U.S. a crime punishable by mandatory prison sentences. For the first time, in those May Day protests, “you saw largely Latino immigrant, working-class families … with grandparents and baby strollers, coming out in this peaceful wave of mass marches,” recalls Christine Neumann-Ortiz, executive director of Voces de la Frontera, the Milwaukee-based immigrant workers’ rights group. “It really was like an earthquake, and it shelved that terrible bill and put the conversation of immigration reform back on the table.”

This year, national labor unions are showing up for the May Day actions in a big way. That’s inspiring, because it’s clear that massive resistance from a broad, working-class movement is what it’s going to take to stop the brutal repression and outright theft of public resources by the current regime.

“Workers’ rights and immigrants’ rights are the same,” Andy King, managing director of the Fair Immigration Reform Movement (FIRM) said on a May Day press call this week. His group’s May Day demands include no more funding for ICE and Border Patrol, permanent protections and a pathway to citizenship for immigrants, and stopping the construction of megawarehouses for the mass detention of human beings. 

The fear-mongering about immigrants coming from the Trump administration is not an accident, Neumann-Ortiz said during the same call. “It’s a strategy to divide us, to scapegoat and to distract from the real challenges working families face, and in particular, the growing control of our economy by billionaires.” She talked about the heartbreaking case of Elvira Benitez, a mother of three from Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin, who was arrested by ICE during a routine check-in after she was approved for a green card. Now she’s sitting in detention in Kentucky, and her youngest daughter is under medical supervision for suicidal thoughts related to the traumatic experience of being separated from her mom, Neumann-Ortiz said.

She also highlighted the case of Salah Sarsour, president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee, a legal permanent resident, who was detained by ICE in what appears to be a retaliatory arrest for his political speech defending Palestinian rights. 

A secretive police agency that whisks people away in order to silence dissent should worry all of us. “And these are not isolated cases, as we know,” Neumann Ortiz said. “It’s a system.”

Deaths in ICE custody have hit a new record since the beginning of Trump’s second administration. Yet the federal government plans to expand warehouse detention to house more than 92,000 people. Adriana Rivera of the Florida Immigrant Coalition told reporters on FIRM’s May Day press call, “our state has become ground zero for a system that warehouses human beings for top dollar, makes jokes and merch at their expense, where suffering is hidden and accountability is absent.”

“Shut down these disgusting warehouses and choose a path rooted in care,” she demanded.

What is happening to our country? What will it take to wake people up?

During the same week I listened to activists planning the May Day walkout, my phone rang and an automated voice informed me that Wisconsin U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson was holding an impromptu “telephone town hall” in the middle of a weekday afternoon. I stayed on and listened to Johnson tell his constituents that he favors eliminating the Senate filibuster in order to fully fund the Department of Homeland Security without the guardrails Democrats are seeking for ICE and Border Patrol. We’re living in too “dangerous” a time not to act immediately, Johnson said, and Congress is “too broken” to make these decisions in a deliberative fashion. That’s why, he explained, now that President Trump is in office and Republicans hold a majority, he has switched his position on ending the minority party’s power to filibuster legislation. Johnson wants to get Democrats out of the way to pass the SAVE America Act, which will severely curtail voting rights on the thoroughly disproven theory that undocumented immigrants are voting in large numbers and swaying U.S. elections. 

Johnson listened approvingly to voters on the call who recycled Trump’s Big Lie that Democrats are stealing elections. He expressed his enthusiasm for RFK Jr. and “progress” on his pet issue — getting rid of supposedly harmful vaccines. Some callers expressed anxiety about the Iran war, with Johnson reassuring them that it was going “perfectly.” One woman swore at him and was disconnected. But the most revealing part of the call came when a caller mentioned that a lot of people are worried about health care — a brewing crisis in Wisconsin where 63,000 people are losing Medicaid coverage because of Trump’s cuts and another 20,000 have dropped their Affordable Care Act coverage because of rising premium costs after Republicans refused to renew ACA enhanced tax credits.

The root cause of the problem with health care, Johnson said, is the government’s involvement. 

“Take a look at Amazon, what that private sector competitor has done to deliver products in hours, sometimes at a really low cost. So private sector consumerism works, but we’ve driven consumerism out of healthcare by having somebody else pay for it,”  he said. His solution? “Move to a rational system of catastrophic care plans, and then most of healthcare paid out of pocket with real consumerism.”

Never mind Johnson’s choice to hold up Amazon as a paragon of business, a company that was sued by the Federal Trade Commission for illegally blocking competition, inflating prices using its monopoly power, and stifling innovation. Never mind the multiple lawsuits brought by its drivers for high-pressure, inhumane working conditions and that unfortunate incident in which a warehouse worker died on the floor while his coworkers were allegedly told by management to ignore him and keep production rolling.

Setting all that aside, how many regular voters in Wisconsin agree that the best way to handle crushing healthcare costs is to make them pay out of pocket for every medication, office visit and procedure?

As Trump’s approval ratings reach a new low and gas prices spike, Johnson’s position that you should cover the full cost of your healthcare out of pocket is unlikely to give Republicans a bump.

The problem in our country is that we seem to have lost the class consciousness that animated the labor movement of the Progressive Era.

Instead, today, we have a right-wing populism that purports to defend the interests of blue collar workers but is, in fact, investing in the immiseration of the vast majority of Americans, the theft of their healthcare, their education, their wages and workplace protections, for the benefit of oligarchs like Johnson, who couldn’t care less if people suffer, sicken and die, so long as he remains rich. 

I don’t think people can put up with this for much longer. The inhumane treatment of regular, hardworking people, the pain and waste of the greed-driven regime we are living with should turn the stomach of every American. 

May Day is a sign of hope. 

ATTACHMENT “A” – BY PHIL OCHS, as Interpreted by Jim and Jean

LINER NOTES:

Jim & Jean didn't totally abandon outside material on People World. "Sweet Water" came from their Los Angeles friend Carole Miller; Ray isn't sure if any other of her songs have ever been recorded. There were also a couple more Phil Ochs covers, "Cross My Heart" and "Ringing of Revolution," the latter a bold interpretation that inserted excerpts of "Hang on Sloopy" and "Like a Rolling Stone" into the song. (It was also, oddly, mistitled "Rhythms of Revolution" on the back cover, though it was spelled correctly on the label.)

Rhythms (Ringing) of Revolution

Original Lyrics by Phil Ochs

[Verse 1: Jim Glover, Jim & Jean Glover]

In a building of gold, with riches untold

Lived the families where the country was founded

And the merchants of style, with their vain velvet smiles

Were there, for they also were hounded

And the soft middle class crowded into the last

For the building was fully surrounded

And the noise outside was the rhythms of revolution

[Verse 2: Jean Glover, Jim & Jean Glover]

Oh, sadly stared and sank in your chairs

And searched for a comforting notion

And the rich silver walls looked ready to fall

As they shook in doubtful dеvotion

And the ice cubes would clink as you frеshened your drinks

Wet your minds in bitter emotion

And they talked about the rhythms of revolution

[Verse 3: Jim Glover, Jim & Jean Glover]

We were hardly aware of the hardships they beared

For our time was taken with treasure

Oh, life was a game and work was a shame

And pain was prevented by pleasure

And the world cold and gray was so far, far away

In distance only money could measure

But their thoughts were broken by the rhythm of revolution

[Verse 4: Jim Glover, Jim & Jean Glover]

And the clouds filled the room in darkening doom

As the crooked smoke rings were rising

How long will it take, how can we escape

Someone asks, but no one's advising

And the quivering floor responds to a roar

In a shake no longer surprising

As closer and closer came the rhythms of revolution

[Verse 5: Jean Glover]

So softly you moan, please leave us alone

As back and forth you are pacing

You cover you ears and try not to hear

With pillows of silk you're embracing

The crackling crowd is laughing out loud

Peeking in at the target we're chasing

Now trembling inside the rhythms of revolution

[Strange Interlude by Jim & Jean Glover] – including inserts and excerpts of “Hang On, Sloopy”, “Like a Rolling Stone” and “Guantanamera”

[Verse 6: Jim Glover, Jean Glover, Both]

With compromise sway we gave in half way

When we saw that rebellion was growing

Now everything's lost as we kneel by the cross

Where the blood of Christ is still flowing

How does it feel?

Too late for you sorrow you've reached your tomorrow

And reaped the seed you were sowing

Now harvested by the rhythms of revolution

[Verse 7: Jean Glover & Jim Glover]

In tattered tuxedos You faced the new heroes

And crawled about in confusion

And you sheepishly grinned For your memories were dim

Of the decades of dark execution

Hollow hands raised, they stood there amazed

In the shattering of your illusions As the windows were smashed

By the rhythms of revolution

[Verse 8: Jim Glover & Jean Glover]

Down on our knees we're begging you please

We're sorry for the way you were driven

There's no need to taunt, just take what you want

We'll make amends, if we're living

But away from the crowds the flames told the town

That only the dead are forgiven

As they vanished inside the rhythm of revolution

[Outro: Jim Glover, Jean Glover, Both]