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  • South Jersey guy becomes the face of ICE resistance | Will Bunch Newsletter

    I was cranking out the newsletter in Tuesday’s predawn darkness when we learned that the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr., who’d been our greatest living bridge to the civil rights heroics of the 1960s and ‘70s, had died at age 84. Covering his groundbreaking 1984 campaign as a cub reporter at the Birmingham News is still a career highlight four-decades-plus later — a memory that was reinforced recently listening to Abby Phillip’s excellent new book on Jackson. He leaves us right when his victories for African Americans in arenas such as corporate hiring and college admissions are under attack, and it challenges us to fight to preserve them. RIP to an American original.

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    How ICE protest by ‘an average Joe’ from Haddon Heights went viral

    “I never want to see a child run away from our own government again,” said this self-described first-time protester, Joseph Zobel from Haddon Heights, at a rally in Lindenwold, N.J., the day after children ran from a school bus stop after ICE appeared to conduct an operation in the area.

    Last Friday, “an average Joe who grew up in Haddon Heights” named Joseph Zobel was at work when he saw a viral video from the nearby South Jersey town of Lindenwold that shocked the nation, and shocked him.

    The clip from a Ring doorbell camera showed a gaggle of fourth and fifth graders running in a panic, screaming, “ICE! ICE!” as masked federal immigration agents had approached their morning bus stop the day before.

    “I just thought, ‘How can that be happening here in the United States?’” Zobel told me Monday in his first media interview, conducted by email. When he got home from work, he saw online that the group Cooper River Indivisible was holding an “ICE Out” protest at the Lindenwold municipal building at 4 p.m.

    He looked at the clock. It was 3:58.

    “Something inside of me said, ‘Go up there and stand with these people,’” said Zobel, a 36-year-old school coach who said he’s never been to a protest before in his life. “I wanted to stand for what is right.” As he dashed out, Zobel also grabbed one thing — the American flag he flies in front of his house most of the time (except during football season, when an Eagles flag replaces it).

    As many as 300 people were at the protest, as Indivisible organizer Amber Clemments asked the flag-bearing Zobel if he’d be willing to film a video. Zobel’s raw emotion, choking back tears as he said, “I watched fourth- and fifth-grade kids run away from our own government,” soon ignited across social media over the long Presidents Day weekend.

    By Tuesday morning, the 47-second clip of Zobel had been watched an astronomical 2.9 million times on TikTok — and liked by some 709,000 viewers — even as it also went viral on Bluesky, X, Threads, and other social media platforms.

    It’s not hard to understand why. Zobel, who described himself as a patriotic regular voter but never very political, instantly became the bearded, baseball hat-wearing, anguished face of a new American majority — an Everyman shocked into action by the horror of immigration raids, wondering how best to protect his neighbors.

    The two South Jersey viral videos — the one depicting the raid itself and Zobel’s raw reaction — revealed how both the terrorizing tactics of masked immigration cops and the powerful reaction from often nonpolitical Americans, dubbed “neighborism,” are spreading far beyond the Minnesota tundra where this battle was initially met.

    Indeed, local activists say Lindenwold — last stop on the heavily traveled PATCO line, just over 15 miles southeast of Philadelphia — has been under a relentless siege from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agents since last spring, not long after Donald Trump became president. The transit hub has become a magnet for immigrants in recent years, with a local school population that is just under 60% Latino.

    Craig Strimel, a leader of Cooper River Indivisible, a local chapter of the group that organized the large “No Kings” protests, said activists first learned of the ICE activity when a Lindenwold immigrant couple escaped agents last year by taking refuge in the local high school, where the principal blocked the feds at the doorway. Since then, Strimel said, ICE watchers have seen frequent activity in and around a cluster of five apartment complexes with large immigrant populations, but few known arrests.

    “It was becoming apparent early on that this was all about creating terror,” said Strimel of the frequent ICE sightings. Some local residents stopped leaving their apartments, he said, and a once-popular restaurant in Lindenwold just closed its doors amid rumors that the couple that owned it has returned to Mexico.

    All of this set the stage for last Thursday, when masked federal agents wearing tactical gear arrived early in the morning at Lindenwold’s Woodland Village Apartments just as 44 elementary school kids were waiting for their school bus. The sighting triggered a panic that saw some kids running away and others frantically hustling onto the bus as the driver arrived. No one was apprehended or reported hurt.

    On Monday, U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials said the agents went to the complex hoping to arrest a Honduran immigrant who’d once been convicted of aggravated assault. The man was not taken on Thursday and remains free.

    Although some outlets reported the large protest was in response to the high-profile raid — which has been covered by the CBS Evening News, MS Now’s Morning Joe, and elsewhere — that took place just a day and a half earlier, the rally actually had been in the works for several weeks.

    It had been organized by a young woman from Lindenwold named Tatiana — a 20-year-old business major at Camden County Community College who spoke with me Monday on the condition that I not use her full name — who’d been seeing the ICE activity in her hometown and felt it was time local people spoke out.

    Tatiana told me that the idea behind the Lindenwold protest was “to give the community a voice — to be able to say, ‘No, we don’t stand for this.’ That’s the most important thing for me. It’s just bringing community together and deciding we’re not OK with this at all.” But she agreed the bus stop raid had given the event a boost from residents believing “that children should not be scared of federal law enforcement.”

    Zobel was one of those neighbors. In the email interview, he described himself as “just your average Joe who grew up in Haddon Heights.” He did volunteer that he’s voted in every election since he turned 18, and that his first ballot was cast for Barack Obama, “and I felt proud walking out of the booth that day.”

    Fittingly, Zobel sounded somewhat Obama-esque when he described his dismay over America’s bitter partisan divide. “We as a nation are so angry with one another, and that makes me so sad,” he said. Not surprisingly, he’s as stunned as anyone at the millions of views for Friday’s video, and somewhat concerned about the impact, saying, “I just hope this video does not divide people.”

    But Zobel’s words and teary-eyed emotion went viral because it was such a shot of hope — that in a moment when hate is on public display in the streets of the United States, “your average Joe” who’d once stood on the sidelines is now grabbing the American flag and taking the field to fight for their neighbors. An authoritarian movement dependent on rage simply never counted on the brotherly love that sent this nonpolitical Eagles fan to his first protest.

    It might not be his last. “I am always happy,” he said, “to help support humanity.”

    Yo, do this!

    • With several inches of snow still on the ground, it might shock you to hear this, but American soccer is back! The Philadelphia Union — despite winning the 2025 Supporters Shield and boasting Major League Soccer’s best winning percentage in the 2020s — radically shook things up during the offseason. With new strikers Ezekiel Alladoh and Agustín Anello looking to amp up their attack, the Union’s quest for the CONCACAF Champions Cup begins Wednesday in Trinidad against Defence Force FC at 6 p.m. on FS2. Saturday night at 7:30 p.m., it’s back to the chillier climes of Washington for the MLS opener against DC United on Apple TV (with no need in 2026 for an additional Season Pass subscription, as in past years).
    • In the quest for what’s new in American popular culture, sometimes we take for granted the established jewels in our midst. I’ve long felt that MS Now’s 9 p.m. (now just on Monday nights) host Rachel Maddow is our best TV commentator because of the way she weaves the historical past into the headlines of America’s tortured present. But since last summer, she has upped her game. Maddow’s coverage of two stories underreported in most of the mainstream media — grassroots resistance to the Trump regime, and now the push for a nationwide network of warehouse concentration camps — has created appointment television every Monday.

    Ask me anything

    Question: What is your take on the latest CBS censoring of [Stephen] Colbert? — @bcooper82.bsky.social via Bluesky

    Answer: Another Tuesday morning breaking story on deadline: The CBS overseers of Late Night with Stephen Colbert — the top-rated talk show that’s nevertheless ending this year in what critics see as genuflecting to the Trump regime that the program frequently mocks — would not air a recorded interview with Texas state lawmaker and Democratic Senate primary candidate James Talarico. The backstory here is that the Federal Communications Commission has long exempted late-night talk shows from its equal time rule about political candidates on licensed broadcast outlets, but last month, FCC chair Brendan Carr — a pro-Trump MAGA pit bull — said this is changing. That apparently was enough for CBS’s new Trump-friendly management, which would not broadcast the interview (available on YouTube, now certain to get more views than if it hadn’t been censored). This new flap just highlights what a perilous moment this is for the First Amendment and American democracy writ large. Government limits on what viewpoints you can see or hear are a sign of dictatorship, full stop.

    What you’re saying about …

    Last week’s question about a winning Democratic strategy for the 2026 midterms drew a robust response, and almost all of the replies were thoughtful and nuanced. If there was a consensus, it was that Democrats should tailor their candidates to the divergent views of the congressional districts they hope to win. As Naomi Miller stated, “I think progressive candidates should run in progressive districts, and mainstream democrats in mainstream, purple, and red districts.” Still, a number of you think America’s bad experience with MAGA extremism means a sharp left turn is warranted in response. “I’d like for the Democrats to become more progressive and combative toward Trump than they already are,” wrote Benjamin Spohn, voicing an opinion many share these days.

    📮 This week’s question: Tuesday’s passing of the Rev. Jesse Jackson is one more reminder that many icons of America’s tumultuous 20th century are disappearing. So who do you think is the current greatest living American, and why? Please email me your answer and put the exact phrase “greatest living American” in the subject line.

    Backstory on the main reason the media is not trusted

    Exterior images of CNN headquarters in Atlanta and the New York Times Building in Manhattan.
    Exterior images of CNN headquarters in Atlanta and the New York Times Building in Manhattan.

    It’s rare these days to write something that everyone can agree on, but here goes: Public trust in the media has never been lower than it is today. How low? A Gallup poll last fall found that public trust in the ability of newspapers, TV, and radio to fairly and accurately report the news had plunged to 28%, the lowest ever recorded. Why? It’s complicated. The people’s faith in every major institution has declined in the 21st century, after all. And it’s clear that in a deeply divided America, rage against the media machine looks different from the left than it does from the right.

    This weekend, in a New York Times piece largely about the broken promises of one media-mogul billionaire — Washington Post owner and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos — columnist Lydia Polgreen put forth an explanation for sinking media trust that jibes with a lot of what I’ve witnessed since graduating into full-time journalism back in 1981. I believe it’s not the only reason — but the biggest, and maybe the most misunderstood.

    Polgreen noted that the common theory for the public turning against Big Media — that journalists grew more partisan and biased after the tumult of the 1960s and ‘70s — doesn’t comport with the bigger reality. The era that peaked with the publication of the Pentagon Papers and the Watergate scandal launched a decades-long golden era of profitable news organizations spending big on investigative and accountability journalism — exactly what viewers and readers claimed they wanted.

    Yet, trust declined as that happened. Polgreen cited a study in the late 1990s that compared then-contemporary media to 1960s newspapers and found the earlier times were “naïvely trusting of government, shamelessly boosterish, unembarrassedly hokey and obliging.” Polgreen wrote that moving “away from deferential stenography and toward fearless investigation … led to declining trust in the news media. Aggressive, probing and accountability-oriented journalism held up a mirror to American society — and many Americans didn’t like what they saw.”

    I think this explanation is spot on, but before readers jump all over me, let me quickly add a couple of caveats. Starting way back in Ronald Reagan’s 1980s, there was also a response to the growing backlash — especially in elite, Beltway journalism — that resulted in too much groveling to authority, and thus stenography around government lies like the 2003 Iraq War. This has only gotten worse with the current wave of billionaire owners like the Post’s Bezos. This means many liberals now also distrust the media, but not for the same reasons as conservatives, who’ve long loathed journalism for probing America’s inequities around race or gender.

    The explanation offered by Polgreen jumped out at me because it fit with what I explored in my 2022 book, After the Ivory Tower Falls, which looked at Americans losing trust in another large institution: colleges and universities. The liberal ideas that were nurtured on campuses in the postwar college enrollment boom — including the civil rights movement — triggered the same grievance-filled, largely white working-class backlash as did journalism about social injustice. Today, the only road back for the media is to hold the powerful to account — and understand that not everyone is going to like it.

    What I wrote on this date in 2022

    People can’t say they didn’t see America’s current crisis coming. On this date four years ago, I expressed my shock and amazement that little more than one year beyond Donald Trump’s attempted coup to stay in power, the right-wing’s creation of a political fantasy world was spiraling out of control, with lies about Hillary Clinton spying on Trump’s 2016 campaign and Joe Biden giving out free crack pipes (?!!). I wrote, “[Historian Ruth] Ben-Ghiat told me that the failure of the Jan. 6 insurrection only forced the GOP to double-down on embracing alternate realities, because ‘they have to reckon with the fact that [Trump] lost, that he’s no longer the leader.’”

    Read the prescient rest: “After Trump’s Big Lie, half of U.S. lives in a fantasy world. This won’t end well.”

    Recommended Inquirer reading

    • There’s been no rest on the mass deportation beat. In my Sunday column, I looked at the out-of-control lying from the Trump regime, with unbelievable fictions about everything from shootings and rampant brutality by masked immigration officers to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s whoppers about his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein. I argued that government lying is fundamentally unconstitutional and that the perpetrators need to be punished, including prison time. Over the weekend, I wrote about how, while Minneapolis was a victory for the forces resisting American authoritarianism, that won’t stop Homeland Security from putting thousands of new officers on the street and expanding its concentration camps. The fight for the soul of the nation has only just begun.
    • What was I saying higher up in this newsletter about accountability journalism? Ever since Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society push in the mid-1960s, community nonprofits have been a valuable source of urban renewal, yet are sometimes dragged down by waste, fraud, and abuse. It’s a problem that sadly persists, as shown last week by a major Inquirer investigation into Philadelphia’s NOMO Foundation, one of the best-funded nonprofits attacking youth violence and crime. Ace reporters Ryan W. Briggs and Samantha Melamed found that the foundation has received more than $6 million in public funds in recent years, but faced an IRS lien and eviction lawsuits while it was forced to close its housing program. This is why we have a First Amendment, so that a free press can report on the problems a corrupt or inept government refuses to deal with. Subscribing to The Inquirer gives you access to this type of essential journalism, and you’ll also feel good about supporting this vital work.

    By submitting your written, visual, and/or audio contributions, you agree to The Inquirer’s Terms of Use, including the grant of rights in Section 10.

  • The lying is out of control. People need to go to prison.

    The lying is out of control. People need to go to prison.

    Even by the pitifully low standards of the fact-free government of the United States, this one was a whopper.

    Last month, agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) showed up at a Minneapolis hospital emergency room with a 31-year-old Mexican immigrant named Alberto Castañeda Mondragón who’d suffered severe head injuries.

    The ICE agents told the ER nurses, according to the Associated Press, that Mondragón “purposefully ran headfirst into a brick wall.” But doctors could immediately see that the official version made zero sense, since their patient had multiple head injuries on the front, back, and side — not consistent with a fall or a collision.

    Under oath, the feds suddenly switched to passive voice, as an ICE deportation officer said only in a sworn statement that Mondragón “had a head injury that required emergency medical treatment.” A judge ruled the arrest was unlawful — Mondragón had come to the U.S. legally and overstayed his visa — and ordered the man freed. Mondragón, who survived his eight skull fractures and brain bleeds and is suing the government, weeks later told an AP reporter his story of what really happened.

    “They started beating me right away when they arrested me,” he recounted, describing how immigration agents pulled him from a friend’s car at a St. Paul, Minn., shopping center on Jan. 8, then slammed him to the ground, handcuffed him, punched him, and whacked him with a steel baton. Mondragón said he was beaten again at a federal detention center, where his pleas for mercy were met by laughter and more blows.

    “There was never a wall,” he said.

    Alberto Castañeda Mondragón, who says in a lawsuit that he sustained eight skull fractures when he was beaten by ICE agents, poses for a portrait earlier this month in St. Paul, Minn.

    Mondragón’s narrative would be outrageous if it were an isolated incident, but this is simply one of the most egregious examples of falsehoods by an American secret police regime that has been caught in high-profile lies again and again. The best-known cases are the Minneapolis killings of Renee Good — where officials up to the president falsely claimed an agent was struck by a car and rushed to a hospital — and Alex Pretti, who was accused of brandishing a gun at federal agents, a lie that was instantly demolished when videos emerged.

    And these are just three of the many instances where a U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agent or top official has offered a version of events — often backed up by sworn testimony — that soon fell apart.

    On Wednesday, another woman DHS had described as “a domestic terrorist” — Mirimar Martinez, the Chicago Montessori schoolteacher who was shot five times after a vehicle collision with ICE agents — presented powerful evidence of government lies as she pursues legal action against DHS and the agent who shot her, Charles Exum.

    Marimar Martinez (center) is greeted by her family after being released from the Metropolitan Correctional Center in October, after being shot by immigration agents and charged with assaulting federal officers in an incident in Chicago’s Brighton Park.

    Martinez, whose federal charges stemming from the encounter were later dropped, and her lawyer said that a federal diagram of the crash scene presented in court showed three other vehicles that do not exist, that the shots did not come through the front windshield as claimed by Exum, and that another claim — that Martinez had “rammed” Exum’s vehicle — was also false. Said her lawyer, Christopher Parente, “This is a time where you just cannot trust the words of our federal officials.”

    Ya think?

    Minneapolis ICE murder is Trump’s Waterloo in America’s war for the truth | Will Bunch

    Let’s not pretend to be so naive as to act as if official deceit began on the June 2015 day that Donald Trump descended on that Trump Tower escalator. It was the late 1960s — the era of Lyndon B. Johnson’s Vietnam “credibility gap” — when the investigative journalist I.F. Stone famously wrote, “All governments lie.” I became an opinion journalist because of my disgust over George W. Bush’s lies that drove the Iraq War.

    That said, the outrageous, Soviet-caliber falsehoods of the Trump regime feel much worse. These are not “plausible denial” fairy tales to push an unpopular policy or cover up some dirty deeds, like Watergate, but a vast empire of Big Lies — easily disprovable, about everything from election results to economic statistics — with a much more ambitious goal of undermining the very notion of objective reality.

    This fish stinks from the head. That Trump was elected a second time after the Washington Post (remember them?) chronicled some 30,573 false or misleading claims during his first four years was essentially America’s drive-through order of a Double Whopper.

    The nation seems to have all but given up on challenging Trump’s absurd claims that he won Minnesota three times (although he actually lost three times), or his fact-free insistence that his tariff policies have sparked $18 trillion in new investments, just to name two instances. But America’s liar-in-chief has also offered fresh inspiration to his underlings.

    One would be hard-pressed to find a more blatant case of highest-level lying than the matter of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, the deceased financier and sex trafficker. When the Trump regime’s cover-up of its massive Epstein files became a big story last summer, Lutnick, a former Wall Street CEO who lived next door to Epstein in Manhattan, told a podcast that he’d briefly visited Epstein’s home in 2005, and was revulsed at the sight of a massage table. He insisted that he then decided, “I will never be in the room with that disgusting person ever again.”

    This was an epic lie.

    We now know — thanks to the congressionally mandated (but still incomplete) release of the Epstein files — that Lutnick and his family and entourage stopped for lunch at Epstein’s Caribbean island in 2012, and that this was one of many contacts — about meeting for drinks, or philanthropic contributions — the two men had almost up until Epstein’s arrest and jail cell death in 2019.

    There’s no evidence Lutnick committed any crime — beyond telling a massive and now discredited lie to the American people he purportedly serves. In Europe, heads are rolling for far less, but Lutnick has “the full confidence” of the president. That fact, bobbing above a vast MAGA sea of lies, should make us ask some hard questions as a nation.

    Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick listens during an event with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office in February.

    The current consensus — honored mainly in the breach — that lying is wrong, or bad, does not go nearly far enough. Perhaps it muddies the water that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled it is First Amendment-protected free speech when private citizens utter things that aren’t true. But official deceit is a different category.

    “The government’s lies can be devastating,” a leading scholar — University of Colorado law professor Helen Norton — wrote in a powerful 2015 article, arguing that official government dishonesty is fundamentally unconstitutional. Norton noted that false testimony and evidence in criminal cases — what we’ve seen frequently in the immigration terror campaign — is a violation of the Constitution’s due process clause, while invented allegations that aim to silence critics are offenses against constitutionally protected free speech.

    It’s a felony to lie in federal court cases, or when testifying under oath before Congress, or in other types of governmental proceedings. And the federal statute of limitations for perjury is five years — plenty of time for a liberated U.S. Department of Justice to pursue these many cases if democratic forces can win back the White House in 2028.

    But we should also recognize that top officials who tell deliberate lies are abusing their power in ways that, as Norton rightly argues, are grossly unconstitutional. When Noem lies to the American people about Good and how she was killed by ICE, she should resign or be impeached. When Lutnick looks into a camera and offers complete fiction about his friendship with the world’s most notorious sex trafficker, he, too, should quit immediately, or face impeachment.

    Norton, in her prescient article from 11 years ago, notes that beyond the specific wrongs against individuals — such as Mondragón, Martinez, Good, and Pretti — that occur when the government lies, there is a much broader problem: the loss of public trust.

    Indeed, the steep decline of public faith not only in government but in other civic institutions began with those official lies about Vietnam and Watergate, and the flawed probes into the John F. Kennedy assassination. It was those and other countless moments of scatheless lying by those in power that created the rubble Trump marched over in 2016.

    We won’t get anything resembling democracy until we clear that widespread debris, and that means sending a bunch of these liars to prison, because they are the real criminals. America desperately needs truth and consequences.

  • Traveling to Southern Europe? Here’s what to know about a deadly parasite active there.

    Traveling to Southern Europe? Here’s what to know about a deadly parasite active there.

    Are you planning a vacation to Spain, Italy, France, Greece, or another country along the Mediterranean?

    If so, you should know about a parasite that puts travelers at risk of a rare disease, called “visceral leishmaniasis,” that can be deadly when untreated. The parasite — leishmania — is transmitted by a bite from an infected sandfly. It can lie dormant in the body for years, then later cause severe illness, including persistent high fever.

    A 34-year-old South Jersey resident, Louis-Hunter Kean, died from it in late 2023 after doctors at two South Jersey medical systems and later at Penn Medicine missed the diagnosis. His symptoms developed about a year after he vacationed in Tuscany, where parasitic disease experts now believe he was infected.

    A South Jersey man died from leishmania in 2023

    “Leishmania in the U.S. is underappreciated,” said Joshua A. Lieberman, assistant director of the molecular microbiology clinical laboratory at University of Washington in Seattle. “We want to get the word out that there’s a lot more of it than we think.”

    Parasitic disease experts say most American doctors don’t know enough about leishmania. Here’s what you should know about leishmania:

    Where is the parasite active and who’s at risk?

    Worldwide, there are more than a dozen species of leishmania that cause three different diseases in humans.

    Visceral leishmaniasis is caused by the most deadly species. At risk are travelers to Southern Europe, Brazil, East Africa, India, and military personnel who were deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq. Its primary symptom is fever, along with an enlarged liver and spleen, weight loss, and a low blood cell count. Each year, an estimated 50,000 to 90,000 new cases are reported globally, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

    The majority of healthy people who get infected never experience symptoms or sickness. However, the parasite can cause severe illness in small children, senior citizens, and people who are malnourished or immunocompromised. It can activate decades after exposure.

    Cutaneous leishmaniasis is the most common and less dangerous form of the disease. This species is present in the countries that also have visceral leishmaniasis, as well as in Israel, Mexico, Central and South America — and in a few U.S. states, including Texas, Oklahoma, and Arizona. More than 80 cases have been reported in the U.S. since 2017, though experts believe that’s an undercount, according to a recent study published in the digital journal JMIR Dermatology.

    People with active cases first see small, red bumps on the skin that can develop into skin ulcers, which may ooze or scab. These symptoms typically appear within weeks or months after exposure, but ulcers can surface years later. Worldwide, an estimated 600,000 to 1 million cases occur each year, according to the WHO.

    “If you’re traipsing through the rain forest in Central America, you’re at huge risk,” said leishmania expert David L. Sacks, an immunologist and senior investigator with the National Institutes of Health (NIH). “We see patients all the time at the NIH hospital who have the cutaneous form from traveling.”

    Mucosal leishmaniasis is most commonly found in parts of the Amazon basin, specifically Bolivia, Peru, and Brazil. Symptoms usually start as a skin sore, which can advance to the nose, mouth, or throat and cause severe facial disfigurement. It can be life-threatening.

    Can leishmaniasis be treated?

    All three types are treatable with antiparasitic and antifungal medications.

    Some forms of cutaneous leishmaniasis will heal on their own.

    More than 90% of patients with visceral leishmaniasis will die without treatment. An estimated 20,000 to 50,000 people die from it each year, according to research published in the academic journal Tropical Diseases, Travel Medicine and Vaccines.

    How prevalent is leishmaniasis in the U.S.?

    An exact number of cases is unknown. The federal government does not require doctors to report the disease to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Texas is the only state that requires medical providers to report cases to the state health department.

    The CDC identified 1,222 cutaneous leishmania cases in the U.S. from 2005 to 2019.

    How can you protect yourself against leishmaniasis?

    There are no vaccines or drugs for prevention, but people can take steps to protect themselves when visiting areas where the parasite is circulating.

    Sandflies are most active from dusk until dawn, so consider staying indoors during that time. Wear long-sleeved shirts and long pants, and socks that cover ankles. Apply insect repellent, preferably with DEET, to clothing and exposed skin. Sandflies can slip through window and door screens, so it’s best to stay in accommodations with air-conditioning or sleep under insecticide-treated bed nets.

    People who are immunocompromised may want to avoid travel to regions with leishmania.

    Also, if you experience symptoms, especially a high fever that won’t go away, provide your doctor with a thorough travel history, going back decades.

  • A South Jersey man died after Penn doctors failed to diagnose him in time. A blood test could have saved his life.

    A South Jersey man died after Penn doctors failed to diagnose him in time. A blood test could have saved his life.

    Each night, Louis-Hunter Kean spiked a fever as high as 104.5. He would sweat through bedsheets and shiver uncontrollably. By morning, his fever would ease but his body still ached; even his jaw hurt.

    He had been sick like this for months. Doctors near his South Jersey home couldn’t figure out why a previously healthy 34-year-old was suffering high fevers plus a swollen liver and spleen. In early 2023, they referred Kean to Penn Medicine.

    Louis-Hunter Kean visiting a winery in the Tuscany region of Italy in September 2021. He first spiked a mysterious and persistent fever about a year later in August 2022.

    “These doctors are very sharp, and there are a lot of teams working on it,” Kean texted a friend after being admitted to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP) in West Philadelphia.

    Was it an infection? An autoimmune disease? A blood cancer? Over the next six months, at least 34 HUP doctors — rheumatologists, hematologist-oncologists, gastroenterologists, infectious disease and internal medicine specialists — searched for an answer.

    Kean was hospitalized at HUP five times during a six-month period in 2023. His electronic medical chart grew to thousands of pages.

    Along the way, doctors missed critical clues, such as failing to obtain Kean’s complete travel history. They recommended a pair of key tests, but didn’t follow up to make sure they got done, medical records provided to The Inquirer by his family show.

    Doctors involved in Kean’s care, including at Penn, prescribed treatments that made him sicker, said four infectious disease experts not involved in his care during interviews with a reporter, who shared details about his treatment. Penn doctors continued to do so even as his condition worsened.

    Louis-Hunter Kean receives a kiss from bride Ashley Greyson at the October 2021 wedding of his close friend, Joshua Green. Green and Kean graduated from Haddonfield High School in 2007.

    “No one was paying attention to what the doctor before them did or said,” Kean’s mother, Lois Kean, said.

    “They did not put all the pieces together,” she said. “It was helter-skelter.”

    Kean’s family is now suing Penn’s health system for medical malpractice in Common Pleas Court in Philadelphia. The complaint identifies nearly three dozen Penn doctors, accusing them of misdiagnoses and harmful treatments. These physicians are not individually named as defendants.

    In court filings, Penn says its doctors did not act recklessly or with disregard for Kean’s well-being, and his case is not indicative of any systemic failures within its flagship hospital. A Penn spokesperson declined further comment on behalf of both the hospital and the individual doctors involved in Kean’s care, citing the pending lawsuit.

    The puzzle of Kean’s diagnosis finally came together in November 2023 after a Penn doctor, early in his career, sought help from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

    An NIH doctor recommended a test that identified the cause: a parasite prevalent in countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea. Kean likely got infected while vacationing in Italy, four parasitic disease experts told The Inquirer.

    The infection, which is treatable when caught early, is so rare in the U.S. that most doctors here have never seen a case, the experts said.

    By the time Penn doctors figured it out, Kean’s organs were failing.

    Louis-Hunter Kean and his then-girlfriend Zara Gaudioso at a friend’s wedding in Tuscany in September 2021. Kean and Gaudioso got engaged in early 2023. Gaudioso was smitten by Kean’s good looks and sense of humor.
    While vacationing in Italy in September 2021, Louis-Hunter Kean and his friends hiked in the foothills of the Apennine Mountains and visited Gran Sasso and Monti della Laga National Park.

    A missed clue

    When a patient has an ongoing and unexplained fever, an infectious disease doctor will routinely start by taking a thorough travel history to screen for possible illnesses picked up abroad.

    A medical student took Kean’s travel history during his initial workup at HUP in June 2023. An infectious disease specialist reviewed the student’s notes and added a Cooper University Hospital doctor’s earlier notes into Kean’s electronic medical chart at Penn.

    Those records show Kean had traveled to Turks and Caicos with his fiancée in May 2022. The next month, he took a work trip out West, including to California, where he visited farms, but didn’t interact with livestock.

    This was not unusual for Kean, who worked with fruits and vegetables imported from around the world at his family’s produce distribution center on Essington Avenue in Southwest Philadelphia.

    What is leishmania and how can you avoid it?

    Kean’s fiancée, Zara Gaudioso, said she repeatedly told doctors about another trip: In September 2021, about a year before his fevers began, they traveled to Italy for a friend’s wedding in Tuscany.

    The couple hiked remote foothills, danced all night in a courtyard, dined by candlelight surrounded by a sunflower farm, and slept in rustic villas with the windows flung open.

    “We told everybody,” Gaudioso said. “A lot of Americans go to Italy — it’s not like a third-world country, so I could see how it could just go in one ear and out the other.”

    But notes in Kean’s medical record from the Penn infectious disease specialist don’t mention Italy. Neither do the ones the specialist copied over from Kean’s infectious disease doctor at Cooper.

    Kean “does not have known risk factors” for exposure to pathogens, the Penn specialist concluded, except possibly from farm animals or bird and bat droppings.

    Still, the specialist listed various diseases that cause unexplained fever: Tick-borne diseases. Fungal infections. Tuberculosis. Bacteria from drinking unpasteurized milk.

    The possible culprits included a parasitic disease, called visceral leishmaniasis, transmitted by a bite from an infected sandfly. It can lie dormant for a lifetime — or, in rare cases, activate long after exposure, so it’s important for doctors to take extensive past travel histories, parasitic experts say.

    The parasite is widely circulating in Southern European countries, including Spain, Greece, Portugal, and Italy.

    “Mostly, people living there are the ones who get it. But it’s just a lottery sandwich, and there’s no reason that travelers can’t get it,” said Michael Libman, a top parasitic disease expert and former director of a tropical medicine center at McGill University in Canada.

    But few cases become severe. Hospitals in Italy reported only 2,509 cases of active infection between 2011 and 2016, affecting fewer than one in 100,000 people. Infections requiring hospital care in Italy began to decline after 2012, according a 2023 European study by the Public Library of Science (PLOS) journal Neglected Tropical Diseases.

    Caught early, visceral leishmaniasis is treatable. Without treatment, more than 90% of patients will die.

    In addition to fever, other telltale symptoms are swelling of the liver and spleen and low blood cell counts. Kean had all of those.

    A missed test

    The infectious disease specialist requested a test to examine tissue biopsied from Kean’s liver, which was damaged and enlarged. Lab results showed that immune cells there had formed unusual clusters — another sign that his body might be fighting off an infection.

    In her notes, the specialist identified “visceral leish” as a possible diagnosis, which repeated — via copy and paste — seven times in his medical record. Her request to “please send biopsy for broad-range PCR” repeated five times.

    That is a diagnostic (polymerase chain reaction) test that looks for the genetic fingerprint of a range of pathogens.

    The test comes in different versions: One looks broadly for bacteria. The other is for fungi. The broad fungal test can detect leishmania, even though it’s not a fungus. However, it’s not always sensitive enough to identify the parasite and can produce a false negative, experts said.

    The specialist’s chart note doesn’t specify which type she wanted done.

    It’s not clear if anyone asked. The test wasn’t done.

    Louis-Hunter Kean (right, with wine glass and tambourine) leads a wedding procession through the small stone village of Santo Stefano di Sessanio in Italy’s Abruzzo region in September 2021.

    She did not order a low-cost rapid blood test that screens specifically for leishmaniasis by detecting antibodies made by the immune system after fighting it. She also didn’t order a leishmania-PCR, which is highly targeted to detect the exact species of the parasite.

    Nor did the medical record show that the specialist followed up on the results of the broader test she requested, even though she saw Kean on nine of the 13 days of his first hospitalization at HUP in June 2023.

    Penn has a policy that a lead doctor on the patient’s case is responsible for making sure that recommended tests get done. The specialist was called in as a consultant on Kean’s case. During that June hospitalization alone, his medical chart grew to 997 pages.

    Patient safety experts have warned for years that electronic medical record systems — designed for billing and not for care — can become so unwieldy that doctors miss important details, especially with multiple specialists involved, or repeat initial errors.

    A seemingly innocuous step in charting — copying and pasting previous entries and layering on new ones — can add to the danger, patient safety experts say.

    That’s how the specialist’s mention of “visceral leish” and her test recommendation got repeated in Kean’s chart.

    Marcus Schabacker, president of ECRI, a nonprofit patient-safety organization based in Plymouth Meeting, said “copy and paste” in electronic medical records puts patients at risk of harm.

    “The reality is if you are reading something over and over again, which seems to be the same, you’re just not reading it anymore. You say, ‘Oh, yeah, I read that, let’s go on,’” said Schabacker, speaking generally about electronic medical record systems and not specifically about Kean’s case.

    Louis-Hunter Kean plays guitar in his younger years. He loved music and shared eclectic playlists with his friends.

    When treatments harm

    Penn doctors believed Kean had a rare, life-threatening disorder, known as hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (HLH), in which the immune system attacks the body. Instead of fighting infections, defective immune cells start to destroy healthy blood cells.

    In most adults, the constellation of symptoms diagnosed as HLH gets triggered when an underlying disease sends the body’s immune system into overdrive. Triggers include a blood cancer like lymphoma, an autoimmune disease like lupus, or an infection.

    Penn doctors across three specialties — hematology-oncology, rheumatology, and infectious disease — were searching for the cause within their specialties.

    “His picture is extremely puzzling,” one doctor wrote in Kean’s chart. “We are awaiting liver biopsy results. I remain concerned about a possible infectious cause.”

    As HUP doctors awaited test results, they treated Kean’s HLH symptoms with high doses of steroids and immunosuppressants to calm his immune system and reduce inflammation.

    The treatments, however, made Kean highly vulnerable to further infection. And defenseless against another possible trigger of HLH: visceral leishmaniasis.

    At the time, a Penn rheumatologist involved in Kean’s care before his first hospitalization warned about steroids “causing harm” to Kean if it turned out he had an infection. He wrote, “please ensure all studies requested by” infectious disease are done, medical records show.

    Steroid treatments would allow the parasites to proliferate unchecked, experts said.

    “It’s unfortunately exactly the wrong treatment for parasitic disease,” said Libman, the leishmania disease expert at McGill University.

    As Kean grew sicker, he was readmitted to HUP for a third time in September 2023. He texted a friend: “I’m on more medications than I’ve ever been on and my condition is worse than it’s ever been.”

    A sampling of Louis-Hunter Kean’s electronic medical records, which ballooned to thousands of pages over five HUP hospitalizations within six months in 2023.

    Handoffs between doctors

    No single doctor seemed to be in charge of Kean’s care, his family said. And the number of specialists involved worried them.

    “Everyone just kept being like, ‘We don’t know. Go see this specialist. Go see that specialist,’” Kean’s sister, Priscilla Zinsky, said.

    By fall 2023, rheumatologists hadn’t found a trigger of Kean’s symptoms within their specialty. They turned to doctors specializing in blood cancer.

    During the handoff, three doctors noted that they didn’t see the results of the test requested by the infectious disease specialist back in June. They still thought it was possible that Kean had an infection, records show.

    One blood disorder specialist now suggested an additional test that screens for more than 1,000 pathogens, including leishmania.

    “An additional consideration to rule out infectious cause would be blood-based Karius testing (though this would be fraught with false positives),” wrote that doctor, who was still training as a hematologist-oncologist.

    A supervising physician reviewed the Sept. 8, 2023, note and signed off on it. The medical records don’t show any follow-up with infectious disease doctors, and the test wasn’t done at the time.

    In the coming days, blood cancer specialists struggled to find a link between Kean’s symptoms and an underlying disease.

    They thought he might have a rare form of leukemia, but tests weren’t definitive, Kean texted friends.

    Untreated HLH symptoms can lead to rapid organ failure, so doctors often start patients on treatment while trying to figure out the underlying cause, said Gaurav Goyal, a leading national expert on HLH, noting that it can take days to get test results.

    “You have to walk and chew the gum. You have to calm the inflammation so the patient doesn’t die immediately, and at the same time, try to figure out what’s causing it by sending tests and biopsies,” said Goyal, a hematologist-oncologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

    Medical records show that Penn doctors feared Kean was at “significant risk” of “irreversible organ failure.”

    They suggested a more aggressive treatment: a type of chemotherapy used to treat HLH that would destroy Kean’s malfunctioning immune cells.

    In his medical record, a doctor noted that beginning treatment without a clear diagnosis was “not ideal,” but doctors thought it was his best option.

    Four parasitic disease experts told The Inquirer that chemotherapy, along with steroids and immunosuppressants, can be fatal to patients with visceral leishmaniasis.

    “If that goes on long enough, then they kill the patient because the parasite goes out of control,” Libman said, explaining that ramping up the HLH treatments weakens the immune system. “The parasite has a holiday.”

    A sample of text messages from Louis-Hunter Kean to friends during separate HUP hospitalizations over a six-month period in 2023.

    Chemo as last resort

    Kean banked his sperm, because chemo infusions can cause infertility. He told friends he trusted his Penn team and hoped to make a full recovery.

    “Started chemo last night. It really feels like finally there is a light at the end of the tunnel,” he texted a friend on Oct. 7, 2023.

    “I’m gonna get to marry my best friend, and I think I’m going to be able to have children,” Kean wrote in another text to a different friend.

    Kean spent nearly all of October at HUP getting chemo infusions. He rated his pain as a nine out of 10. His joints throbbed. He couldn’t get out of bed. He started blacking out.

    Doctors added a full dose of steroids on top of the IV chemo infusion. By the end of the month, Kean told a friend he feared he was dying.

    A year had passed since Kean first spiked a fever. He no longer could see himself returning to his former life — one filled with daily exercise, helping run his family’s produce store, nights out with friends at concerts and bars, and vacations overseas.

    Lethargic and weak, he could barely feed himself. His sister tried to spoon-feed him yogurt in his hospital bed.

    He started texting reflections on his life to friends and family, saying his illness had given him a “polished lens” through which he could see clearly. He wrote that their love felt “like a physical thing, like it’s a weighted blanket.”

    “I’ve lived an extremely privileged life. I don’t think it’s possible for me to feel bad for myself,” he said in a text. “And I don’t want anyone else to either.”

    Louis-Hunter Kean enjoying dinner out with his sister, Jessica Kean, in Manhattan in 2014. Friends and family described him as a “foodie” and health food advocate prior to the onset of his illness in August 2022.

    Puzzle solved

    One doctor involved in Kean’s care had seen him at Penn’s rheumatology clinic in early June 2023, just before his first HUP hospitalization. The doctor, a rheumatology fellow, urged him to go to HUP’s emergency department, so he could be admitted for a medical workup.

    The fellow remained closely involved in Kean’s care, medical records show. Also in his 30s, this doctor shared Kean’s interests in music, fashion, and the city’s restaurant scene, according to Kean’s family.

    “They had a rapport,” Kean’s father, Ted Kean, said. “Louis thought a lot of him, and he seemed to think a lot of my son.”

    By early November 2023, the rheumatology fellow was extremely concerned, medical records show.

    The chemo infusions weren’t helping. Kean still was running a fever of 103. The fellow wrote in his chart that he was worried Kean needed a bone-marrow transplant to replace his failing immune system.

    And doctors still didn’t know the root of his symptoms.

    The fellow contacted the NIH, medical notes show.

    An NIH doctor recommended a test to check for rare pathogens, including parasites that cause visceral leishmaniasis, according to family members present when the testing was discussed.

    The NIH-recommended Karius test was the same one suggested two months earlier by the Penn hematologist-oncologist in training, but with no follow-up.

    File of sign on front of Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP) taken on Tuesday, March 19, 2024.

    On Nov. 16, the fellow got the results. He went to Kean’s bedside.

    After five HUP hospitalizations over six months, a single test had revealed the cause of his illness: visceral leishmaniasis.

    Kean cried with relief and hugged the fellow, joined by his mother and sister.

    “‘You saved my life,’” Kean’s sister, Jessica Kean, recalled her brother telling the doctor. “‘Finally, we know what this is, and we can treat it.’”

    To confirm the results, Penn sent a fresh blood sample from Kean to a lab at the University of Washington Medical Center for a targeted and highly sensitive leishmania-PCR test created by pathologists there.

    Kean’s medical chart was updated to note that he traveled to “Italy in the past,” also noting he had visited Nicaragua and Mexico. A HUP infectious disease doctor consulted with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on antiparasitic medications.

    Meanwhile, Kean’s nose wouldn’t stop bleeding. He felt light-headed and dizzy, with high fever. Even on morphine for his pain, his joints ached.

    “I’ve been struggling, buddy,” he texted a friend on Nov. 20. “This might be the worst I’ve ever been.”

    By Nov. 22, he stopped responding to text messages. He began hallucinating and babbling incoherently, family members recalled. “Things went downhill very, very quickly, like shockingly quickly,” his sister, Priscilla Zinsky, said.

    When she returned on Thanksgiving morning, he was convulsing, thrashing his head and arms. “It was horrifying to see,” Zinsky said.

    Her brother had suffered brain bleeds that caused a stroke. His organs were failing. He had a fungal infection with black mold growing throughout his right lung, medical records show.

    Kean was put on life support, with a doctor noting the still-preliminary diagnosis: “Very medically ill with leishmaniasis.”

    “Prognosis is poor,” read the note in his Nov. 29, 2023, medical records.

    A few hours later, Kean’s family took him off life support. He died that day.

    “All of his organs were destroyed,” said Kean’s mother, Lois Kean. “Even if he had lived, he had zero quality of life.”

    Portraits of Lois and Ted Kean’s four children decorate a wall at their home in Haddonfield. Their son, Louis-Hunter, died after contracting visceral leishmaniasis, a parasitic infection he likely picked up in Italy. When caught early, it’s treatable with medication. It’s deadly without treatment.

    Post mortem

    The day after his death, HUP received confirmation from the Washington state lab that Kean had the most deadly species of leishmania, medical records show.

    It’s not clear why the parasites began to attack Kean a year after his return from Italy. Healthy people rarely develop severe disease from exposure to the deadly form of the parasite circulating outside the U.S., experts said.

    Most people infected by a sandfly “are probably harboring small amounts of the parasite” in their organs, according to Naomi E. Aronson, a leishmania expert and director of infectious diseases at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md.

    “Most of the time, you don’t have any problem from it,” Aronson said.

    Children under age 5, seniors, and people who are malnourished or immunodeficient are most susceptible to visceral leishmaniasis. Aronson said she worries about people who might harbor the parasite without problems for years, and then become immunocompromised.

    Libman, the parasitic expert from McGill, said he’s seen six to 10 patients die from visceral leishmaniasis because doctors unfamiliar with the disease mistakenly increased immunosuppressants to treat HLH during his 40 years specializing in parasite disease.

    “That’s a classic error,” he said.

    Kean’s case “should be a real clarion call” for infectious disease specialists and other doctors in the U.S., said Joshua A. Lieberman, an infectious disease pathologist and clinical microbiologist who pioneered the leishmania-PCR test at the Washington state lab.

    “If you’re worried about an unexplained [fever], you have to take a travel history that goes back pretty far and think about Southern Europe, Iraq, Afghanistan, India, and maybe even Brazil,” Lieberman said.

    In the wake of Kean’s death, his family was told that Penn doctors held a meeting to analyze his case so they could learn from it.

    An infectious disease doctor called Zinsky, Kean’s sister, to let her know about the postmortem review and shared that doctors discussed that Kean had likely picked up the parasite in Tuscany.

    “Why didn’t you guys have this meeting,” she asked, ”while he was alive?”

    Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify that ECRI President Marcus Schabacker was not speaking specifically on Kean’s case.

  • The view from Greenland: Trump’s yen to take over makes no economic or security sense

    The view from Greenland: Trump’s yen to take over makes no economic or security sense

    Here’s the glaring sign of how drunk President Donald Trump has become on his own power: his ongoing threat to seize Greenland for security reasons, “whether they like it or not.” Anything else is “unacceptable,” Trump ranted last week.

    Never mind that this icebound island is an autonomous territory of Denmark, one of our longest-standing and closest NATO allies. POTUS is trying to bludgeon Copenhagen, along with seven other European allies who back the Danes, by imposing new 10 per cent tariffs on them all unless they bow to his outrageous demands.

    Never mind that seizing Greenland via economic coercion or force would destroy the NATO alliance, handing Russia and China a major victory at zero cost. Never mind that polls show that only one in four Americans want Trump to take control of Greenland, and only 6% of Greenlanders want to become part of the United States.

    The most absurd part of Trump’s crusade is that there is no need to seize or buy Greenland for U.S. security or rare earths as we already have full access to both.

    Yet, Trump is not only treating Denmark like an enemy but openly rebuffing the rights of Greenland’s government and people, who, according to Danish law have the final say about their future.

    To learn more about what Greenlanders want and why Trump’s approach draws outrage, I turned to Galya Morrell, a Greenlander of Komi ethnic origins, who was raised in the Soviet Arctic. She has led an amazing life in journalism, the arts, and Arctic adventures, alongside her late husband, the renowned Greenlandic explorer Ole Jørgen Hammeken.

    Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

    Galya Morrell stands by her husband’s box sled, which was used to transport killed game, atop the frozen sea ice of Uummannaq Fjord in Northern Greenland.
    ⁠What was the first reaction of most Greenlanders to Trump’s proposal to take control of Greenland?

    When we heard about Trump’s proposal during his first term, everyone took it as a joke. Back then, we still lived in a world where logic mattered. How can you buy a country? What about people living there? Many people saw The Apprentice, that’s how they knew Trump, so they thought that maybe he was going to make a new season about Greenland after he retires from his presidency, and some young aspiring actors were asking if they can join the show.

    ⁠Do they take Trump seriously now, especially after Venezuela?

    Now it’s different. I don’t think that Venezuela played a big role in their perception, because already, people knew that Trump became obsessed with Greenland. At first, people thought that maybe it was even good for Greenland, because finally — finally — Denmark started taking Greenland seriously. Before, many Danes saw Greenlanders as a bunch of drunks and useless folks, which they aren’t, and a burden for Denmark. After Trump said he wanted it, many Danes changed their mind.

    Trump also accidentally woke up Greenlandic nationalism because the Greenlandic independence movement was sleepy and divided. Now there was a foreign bully. Nothing unites people faster than someone who treats them like furniture in the new condo purchase. Suddenly even Denmark looked like a shield [against Trump] instead of a cage.

    A 1951 pact with Denmark offers the U.S. almost unlimited military access on land, air, and sea. As for mining hard-to-access critical minerals, Greenland’s government would eagerly welcome U.S. investment. So what is your take on what Trump really wants?

    About 20,000 U.S. soldiers and technicians were based in Greenland [after World War II] and then suddenly they were all gone. Today only Pituffik Space Base [the former Thule Air Base] is still around with some 150 personnel. So why did the US not bring them back when it was clear that Russia rebuilt and upgraded all the former Soviet bases in the Arctic and became a threat in the region?

    The United States already had Greenland, quietly, through contracts, bases, and the gravitational pull of English. But none of that had Trump’s name on it. And if your name is not on something, do you even own it?

    It appears that [Trump’s need for ownership] is not logical but psychological. I think that his understanding of success or power is only when “there is a deal,” and when someone loses face — very important! And when he gets credit — even more important. Soft power, which America had in Greenland until recently, looks like nothing to him. Because none of what existed had Trump’s name on it.

    Donald Trump Jr. (center) smiles after arriving in Nuuk, Greenland, in 2025.
    Are there Trump influencers (or suspected intelligence agents) roaming around, trying to find or buy supporters?

    As a family, we have not seen or met the “agents,” but we certainly saw some people in Nuuk, following Donald Trump Jr.’s visit a year ago, giving money and red MAGA hats to the youngsters, schoolkids, and making them say things on camera. Parents were outraged when they saw their own kids on TV, but it was too late.

    ⁠What really happened when Trump Jr. visited? Why was he so eager to talk about Greenland?

    My late husband, an Inuit elder and explorer, was asked to meet Trump Jr. back in 2015. He wanted to hunt musk ox in Greenland, but not where average tourists hunt. So my husband said that there are a lot of musk oxen around Hammeken Point [a mountain named after him], and he could take him there and be his guide.

    They were planning the expedition for a while, until one day Junior said that he can’t go because his dad decided to run for the presidency. Later, my husband thought that maybe it was all his fault for telling Junior exciting stories about Greenland and about what was hidden there under “all this ice,” and maybe that somehow affected Trump’s father’s interest.

    ⁠Some Trumpers think Greenlanders can be bought. Are some interested?

    We hear rumors that he is thinking of paying $100,000 to each Greenlander. Well, it’s not a lot of money, a boat costs around that, and who will sell the country for the price of a boat? But seriously speaking, today, everyone whom I know says firmly no. There is no price tag, no matter how much. The country is not for sale.

    But we live in a strange world, so I don’t know what will happen for sure. [Opposition leader] Pele Broberg is saying out loud what many politicians think quietly: that Greenland is already being pulled into the American orbit, and that it might as well try to get paid for it.

    Denmark’s Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen (right) and Greenland’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Vivian Motzfeldt (left) prepare at the Danish Embassy for a meeting with Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Washington on Wednesday.
    Do some Greenlanders feel that way?

    Yes. Especially younger people, miners, business owners, and those who feel Denmark never gave Greenland a real economy, only a welfare system. For them, a deal with America sounds like a shortcut to dignity, jobs, and finally being taken seriously.

    But there is no such thing as “a deal” between a superpower and a small Arctic society. There is only dependence, dressed up as partnership.

    The United States already has what it needs in Greenland: military access, strategic geography, and preferential access to resources [such as rare earths]. What it doesn’t have is legal ownership or political control. A so-called “deal” would simply move Greenland’s dependency from Copenhagen to Washington. The question is whether Greenland would still be free after it is made.

    Can you imagine a U.S. military takeover attempt? What would be the consequences? Denmark and many other NATO allies are already moving small numbers of troops to Greenland as a tripwire.

    My husband and I had hoped to live the rest of our years in a small village, Siorapaluk. It is such a beautiful and peaceful place. Ironically, it is 92 miles from Pituffik Space Base. We honestly thought it was the most peaceful place on Earth.

    At this moment, we all — I can only talk about our family and friends — hope for a peaceful solution. Any negotiations are better than the war in the Arctic. Real war in the Arctic will be the end to everything.

    If the U.S. really wanted to secure its interests in Greenland what could Trump do legitimately?

    Trump still can return to U.S. bases, build new ones, invest in the population, in their education and knowledge. I see how scientists, glaciologists, marine biologists — 15 different specialties — from Japan’s Hokkaido University work together side by side with the local Inuit hunters, elders, and children in Qaanaaq, very close to Pituffik Space Base. It is an ideal collaboration; they love each other and benefit from each other. But they have a very smart leader, Shin Sugiyama. I think that President Trump could learn from him.

    People take part in a march ending in front of the U.S. consulate, under the slogan, Greenland belongs to the Greenlandic people, in Nuuk, Greenland, in March.
    Trump claims that if the U.S. doesn’t take Greenland, China or Russia will. What is he talking about?

    Russia is expanding its military presence in the greater Arctic region. This is their priority. I was once arrested by Chechen commandoes [on a floating Russian ice base, not part of Greenland but above the disputed underwater location of the North Pole]. So, yes, activity in Arctic waters is very real, and it is increasing. China has a major interest in Greenland. [But Greenlanders and Arctic experts see no signs of the Chinese and Russian ships Trump says are lurking around Greenland.]

    Greenlanders have said no to Russia and China because we don’t want them. A year ago, the Chinese bought some mining rights, but said they would bring their own workers, like what they have done in Yakutia [a northern region of Russia]. Chinese men married Russian women in Yakutia. There is a growing Chinese presence in Siberia. Soon, a majority will be Chinese, but no one sees it. [Fearing a similar outcome, the Greenland government ultimately rejected the Chinese investment.]

    [Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has also increased Greenlanders’ hostility to Moscow. They are painfully aware of “how poorly Russians treat their Arctic minorities” and how “Putin took the poorest people from Arctic villages” to fight and die in Ukraine].

    Should NATO troops be stationed in Greenland alongside more U.S. troops?

    Today the Arctic is becoming a place where three things overlap: military early warning systems, resource competition, and new shipping routes [due to melting ice]. That combination creates the possibility of accidents and miscalculations long before it creates a planned Russian or Chinese invasion.

    The biggest risk is not that someone like Russia or China suddenly wakes up and “takes Greenland.” The risk is escalation. I think that Greenland’s best protection is not a sudden flood of troops. It is a predictable security architecture that everyone understands.

    Greenland needs protection. But we are old enough to remember how conflicts were avoided during the Cold War: There were rules and restraint. There was clarity. Not theater.

    What do you hope for (or dread) after the failure of last week’s meeting at the White House between Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland?

    What I hope for is very simple: that adults will run the room. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is not a performer. So I really hope meetings will not be about headlines or symbolic victories. They should be a security conversation and not a dominance ritual.

    As I said before, the U.S. already has what it needs in Greenland in terms of security. My husband said not long before he departed: “Greenland does not need to be rescued. It needs to be respected.”

  • Sen. Chris Coons and U.S. Rep. Madeleine Dean are headed to Denmark as Trump pushes to acquire Greenland

    Sen. Chris Coons and U.S. Rep. Madeleine Dean are headed to Denmark as Trump pushes to acquire Greenland

    As President Donald Trump threatens to acquire Greenland, Sen. Chris Coons is boarding a plane to Denmark to push back.

    Coons (D., Del.), who opposes the president’s takeover proposal, is bringing a bipartisan group of House and Senate members on a mission to highlight the longstanding relationship between the U.S. and Denmark, which has control over defense and foreign policy in the semi-autonomous territory, located northeast of Canada.

    Coons said in an interview Wednesday that the delegation will meet with Danish and Greenlandic government and business leaders to discuss issues including Arctic security and strengthening trade relations.

    “Denmark has been a strong close and trusted ally for decades and this is a chance for a bipartisan and bicameral delegation from Congress to go and communicate our respect and appreciation for their close partnership,” he said.

    He said he hopes the visit clarifies “there are folks in Congress who do not support an aggressive engagement.”

    Coons noted Danish soldiers fought alongside Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan and suffered some of the highest casualties per capita. The delegation will lay a wreath to commemorate that sacrifice on their trip.

    Joining Coons will be Democratic U.S. Reps. Sarah McBride of Delaware, Madeleine Dean of Pennsylvania, Gregory Meeks of New York, and Republican Sen. Thom Tillis from North Carolina. The delegation will be in Copenhagen Friday and Saturday. Some members of the delegation will continue on to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

    Trump has threatened to annex Greenland, a self-governing territory of Denmark, into the United States, contending it’s an issue of national security to prevent Russia or China from taking it over.

    Coons called that rationale “puzzling,” given leaders of Greenland and Denmark have assured him on previous visits that they are happy to collaborate with the U.S. to amp up American military presence in the country and work together on arctic security issues or to explore investments in mineral resources.

    “I asked are you aware of any foreign threats, cyber, or other incursions?” Coons said of a previous conversation with Denmark Minister of Foreign Affairs Lars Løkke Rasmussen. “Nope, none.”

    Leaders in Greenland this week said they wanted the territory to remain part of the kingdom of Denmark.

    “Greenland does not want to be owned by the USA,” Greenland’s Premier Jens-Frederik Nielsen said at a news conference Tuesday in Copenhagen. “Greenland does not want to be governed by the USA. Greenland will not be part of the USA. We choose the Greenland we know today, which is part of the Kingdom of Denmark.”

    Denmark officials have warned an attack on Greenland, which is part of Denmark and thus under the protection of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, would destroy the alliance, which has been a pillar of U.S.-European relations since 1949.

    Trump has been seemingly undeterred by foreign protestations. He said on social media Wednesday that “anything less” than U.S. control of Greenland is “unacceptable,” arguing the United States needs the territory for national security purposes, which could in turn strengthen NATO.

    “NATO becomes far more formidable and effective with Greenland in the hands of the UNITED STATES,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. “Anything less than that is unacceptable.”

    Dean, who also went on a trip to Denmark in April, said in an interview she hopes to convey “the president’s notion is wrongheaded, dangerous, inane and not something we support.”

    Dean said if the president wants to boost security in Denmark he might consider increasing the number of U.S. military bases there, which has precipitously declined, rather than trying to take control of the country.

    Dean also encouraged her Republican colleagues to speak out against the president’s comments.

    “If somehow this president unleashes military action against Greenland, against the kingdom of Denmark — it will destroy 80 years of a NATO partnership that has kept the world in a more peaceful place,” she said. “It’s just a sick irony that this is the same president who so wishes he could win the Nobel Peace Prize.”

    Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio hosted the foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland Wednesday, a meeting that ended with plans for a working group but also highlighted the “fundamental disagreements” between the nations.

    Coons and Dean’s trip comes as tensions have risen internationally.

    The government of Greenland and Denmark’s Ministry of Defense said there would be an increased military presence in the territory starting Wednesday due to “security tensions,” CNN reported.

    Elsewhere, European leaders continue to reject Trump’s calls to control the semi-autonomous territory. French President Emmanuel Macron warned Wednesday that the consequences of the US trying to seize Greenland from Denmark would be “unprecedented.”

  • Greenland, Denmark, NATO: Breaking the world we built

    Greenland, Denmark, NATO: Breaking the world we built

    Out of the ashes of the Second World War, the United States led the creation of several global institutions to ensure we would never again have to fight such a war. We created the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and, most importantly, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

    Decades ago, NATO’s first secretary general, Hastings Ismay, remarked that the purpose of the alliance was “to keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” Then, aside from the threat of Soviet aggression, the other major threat was that the U.S. would turn its back on European allies and return to the isolationist posture it disastrously pursued in the early 20th century.

    Today, NATO faces its greatest threat from an entirely new source: a belligerent United States that may attack a fellow NATO nation.

    The White House has said President Donald Trump is weighing “a range of options,” explicitly including the use of the U.S. military, in his efforts to control Greenland. If that threat ever becomes reality, NATO as we know it will not survive.

    I write this as the lead Democrat for the U.S. congressional delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, which brings together lawmakers from every NATO member country to provide democratic oversight of the alliance and coordinate on shared security threats.

    I also write as someone who believes deeply that NATO is the bedrock of the post-World War II world. It is why Americans and Europeans have avoided a great-power war for nearly 80 years.

    NATO endures because of trust: The shared belief that allies do not threaten one another, and that borders are not rewritten by force.

    Greenland is a part of the Kingdom of Denmark, a founding member of NATO. A U.S. attack on Greenland would mean the United States using military force against a member of its own alliance.

    Danish military forces participate in an exercise with hundreds of troops from several European NATO members in the Arctic Ocean in Nuuk, Greenland, in September.

    There is no playbook for that scenario because it was always unthinkable. The moral authority of Article 5 — the pledge that an attack on one is an attack on all — would collapse overnight.

    No country on NATO’s eastern flank would ever again fully trust American guarantees. Estonia, Latvia, Poland, and others would be forced to reconsider their security in a world where Washington seizes territory from a smaller ally.

    The Trump administration’s rhetoric also plays directly into the hands of our fiercest adversaries.

    Beijing and Moscow have spent years trying to fracture the transatlantic partnership through disinformation, coercion, and intimidation. Every hint that America might use force against an ally becomes propaganda for authoritarian regimes that insist the rules-based order is a fiction, and that power — not law — is what matters.

    The administration argues that Greenland is strategically vital because of rising Russian and Chinese activity in the Arctic. But that reality is precisely why the United States must deepen cooperation with Denmark and Greenland — not threaten them.

    America already maintains a robust security presence in Greenland. A critical U.S. base supports missile warning, missile defense, and space surveillance under a long-standing defense agreement with Denmark that grants extensive U.S. access.

    Danish leaders have made clear they are open to strengthening cooperation with the U.S., writes Brendan F. Boyle. Pictured here is Mette Frederiksen, Denmark’s prime minister, at the European Political Community summit in Copenhagen, in October.

    Danish leaders have made clear they are open to strengthening that cooperation, and Greenland’s elected government has welcomed dialogue conducted with respect for international law and democratic self-determination.

    That is the path forward. The United States must expand joint Arctic operations, invest alongside Denmark in new capabilities, and work directly with Greenland’s leaders to protect shared security interests. Partnership strengthens deterrence while preserving the alliance that makes deterrence possible in the first place.

    This moment is a choice between partnership and coercion. America must choose partnership.

    The consequences of coercion would be devastating: European allies would begin preparing for a world in which U.S. commitments no longer carry weight. Some nations would pursue independent nuclear deterrents. Others would seek alternative security arrangements. Critical partnerships — including Trump’s own agreement with Finland to build polar icebreakers vital to deterring Russian aggression in the Arctic — would collapse.

    The alliance that has underpinned global stability since 1945 would fracture, not because of Moscow or Beijing, but because of decisions made in Washington.

    After the disastrous Iraq War, Americans are already uneasy about another prolonged foreign war. Now they are being told military force against a NATO ally is under consideration, an act that would inevitably risk escalation and could drag the United States into a costly, dangerous occupation.

    At home, families are trying to afford healthcare, keep their jobs, and provide for their children. They do not want to bankroll another unnecessary conflict that risks American lives and diverts attention from urgent needs here.

    Congress must draw a clear line. No funding for military action against a NATO ally. No ambiguity about America’s commitments. The United States must reaffirm — in law and in action — that its power is exercised through its alliances, not against them.

    An invasion of Greenland would not make America safer. It would end the alliance that has kept Americans safe for generations and plunge us into a new, dark world.

    Brendan F. Boyle represents Pennsylvania’s 2nd Congressional District and is the lead Democrat for the U.S. congressional delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. He is also a visiting lecturer at Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs.

  • Why touring ‘Suffs’ in Philadelphia under Trump is a ‘radical act’

    Why touring ‘Suffs’ in Philadelphia under Trump is a ‘radical act’

    Broadway playwright, composer, and actor Shaina Taub knows the power of theater to make a political statement. As an enthusiastic teen in Vermont, Taub staged a teach-in to protest the Iraq War at her high school — a bold move inspired by the anti-war musical Hair.

    About a decade later, when she was approached to write a musical about the suffrage movement, Taub recognized another meaningful opportunity to blend activism with theater.

    The one challenge: She was pretty unfamiliar with the American women who fought for the right to vote.

    “I really didn’t know anything,” Taub said.

    She was stunned, but her feelings turned into frustration as she concluded that her American public school education had been seriously lacking. “I was blown back by the scope of this history,” she said.

    That fueled her to create Suffs, the hit musical about the suffrage movement centered on South Jersey Quaker activist Alice Paul, a radical and charismatic organizer played fittingly by Taub herself in the Off-Broadway and Broadway runs.

    Alice Paul, seated second from left, sews the 36th star on a banner, celebrating the ratification of the women’s suffrage amendment in August 1920. The 36th star represented Tennessee, whose ratification completed the number of states needed to put the amendment in the Constitution. (AP Photo, File)

    After premiering in 2022 at New York’s Public Theater for a sold-out run — following the trajectory of another history musical box-office success, Hamilton — Suffs opened on Broadway in 2024. It went on to earn six Tony Award nominations.

    Taub took home two, for best book and best score, making history as the first woman to win in both categories independently on a night where Hillary Clinton, a Suffs coproducer, introduced Taub and the cast.

    Now on its first North American tour, Suffs has landed at Philadelphia’s Academy of Music this week (running through Jan. 18) to help kick off a year of events commemorating the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding. The musical graces the same stage where suffragist Susan B. Anthony once spoke some 150 years ago advocating for the right to vote.

    Though mostly set in the District of Columbia, Suffs has some local shout-outs, too: The show mentions Swarthmore College, where Paul studied before pursuing her master’s at the University of Pennsylvania, and Bryn Mawr College, where President Woodrow Wilson (Suffs’ main antagonist) once taught history and politics.

    “Suffs” on Broadway.

    On opening night at the Academy of Music, director Leigh Silverman nodded to Philadelphia’s history in the suffrage movement, mentioning the protests Paul organized at Independence Hall, only a mile away, and across the city.

    “The suffs you met tonight, and the many, many others … were here in Philadelphia, and they remind us of our collective strength and what is possible when we stand up and fight, despite how far it might seem like we have to go, or for how long we have to keep marching,” she said.

    Taub echoed that sentiment in an interview.

    She believes the tour has been especially significant to stage under President Donald Trump following his policies canceling millions in federal grants for arts organizations nationwide and targeting historical institutions (particularly in Philadelphia) to alter the information they present to the public about slavery.

    “This is the first year of Suffs being performed under this president, and [it feels like] a radical act to get together in the theater and tell these stories,” Taub said.

    She added that it’s acutely meaningful to see the show in Philadelphia as the city reflects on the nation’s history for America250 this year.

    Though the actor/playwright grew up in Vermont, she saw shows in Philadelphia as a kid when she visited family in South Jersey; her mother, Susan Taub, was raised in Cherry Hill, just a few miles down the road from Paul’s childhood home in Mount Laurel.

    Today, it serves as the location of the Alice Paul Center for Gender Justice.

    Despite her connections to the region, Taub admitted that she has not yet visited Paul’s home. She plans to march over there soon.

    “Suffs.” Through Jan. 18, Academy of Music, 240 S. Broad St. ensembleartsphilly.org

  • A Scranton neighborhood group put up a ‘hometown hero’ banner for Joe Biden outside his childhood home. Controversy ensued.

    A Scranton neighborhood group put up a ‘hometown hero’ banner for Joe Biden outside his childhood home. Controversy ensued.

    When a Scranton neighborhood group decided to honor Joe Biden with a “hometown hero” banner outside the 46th president’s childhood home recently, they expected a little bit of blowback.

    But members of the Green Ridge Neighborhood Association say they’re dumbfounded by the number of complaints and even threats, both locally and abroad.

    “Someone in Guam has been very vocal,” Roberta Jadick, the association’s secretary, said beneath the banner on North Washington Avenue on a recent snowy weekday.

    “Hometown Heroes” banners first appeared in Harrisburg in 2006, according to the program’s website, and they’ve become ubiquitous in small-town and suburban Pennsylvania. Most appear as black-and-white photos of men and women in uniform, thousands of veterans honored in nearly every corner of the Commonwealth.

    While most of the banners honor veterans, no rule prohibits municipalities, civic groups, or veterans’ groups from honoring others, said Laura Agostini, president of the Green Ridge group. Some towns have put up banners of high school athletes or law enforcement officials.

    “I mean, teachers are heroes, aren’t they?” Jadick said.

    The banner on North Washington Avenue near Biden Street depicts the former president in a suit, with the title “Commander in Chief, U.S. Armed Forces, 2021-2025″ written beneath it. Agostini said the group was aware that “Commander in Chief” was a civilian title.

    A banner featuring former president Joe Biden as a “hometown hero” has sparked controversy in Scranton. The neighborhood group that put it up plans to vote on its future Monday after getting criticism from veterans.

    Agostini said the initial blowback was political but that the issue “morphed” into a veterans’ issue.

    “We never intended to portray him as a veteran,” Agostini said. “There’s only been 46 presidents in the United States, and each one had a hometown, and we thought this is a unique honor.”

    A Dec. 21 Facebook post about the banner by the Green Ridge Neighborhood Association received nearly 250 comments, ranging from supportive to critical to crude.

    “He’s an embarrassment!” one commenter wrote.

    A similar controversy erupted in 2021, when a four-lane highway in Scranton was renamed President Joe Biden Expressway.

    Biden was born in Scranton in 1942 and lived there on and off, and he repeatedly mentioned Scranton as a formative place. A plaque outside the home where Biden lived with his maternal grandfather, Ambrose Finnegan, said he moved out when he was 10 years old.

    A Hometown Heroes banner honoring the Finnegans is just one light pole down from Biden’s. No one from the Hometown Heroes Banner Program returned requests for comment on Wednesday.

    One local veteran, Andy Chomko, said he doesn’t have a problem with Biden being honored in Scranton, but his banner should not look like veterans’ banners.

    “It’s a great thing that he lived here and had roots here,” Chomko said. “But the banner makes it look like he’s a veteran, and every one of those people on those other banners put their lives at risk for their country.”

    Navy veteran Harold Nudelman told WNEP-16 that Biden “didn’t put his life on the line.”

    “Don’t portray him as a veteran. He didn’t serve. He didn’t take that oath to serve as we did,” he told the news station.

    Chomko, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan with the Army, believes the Green Ridge group should remove the banner and “rethink it.”

    That could happen after Monday, the group will vote on the future of the banner at a public meeting.

    “I would say the vast majority of people support it or really don’t care,” Agostini said. “I don’t take any of this lightly, though, and while we were hoping it would be dying down, we’ll have an open discussion about it.”

    Jadick said the banner was never meant to divide the public even more than it is.

    “If Trump was from here, he’d have a banner up after he was out of office,” she said. “This is where Joe Biden is from. Those are his uncles on the other banner.”

    A banner featuring former president Joe Biden as a “hometown hero” has sparked controversy in Scranton. The neighborhood group that put it up plans to vote on its future Monday after getting criticism from veterans.
  • America launches its 250th birthday year by becoming a rogue state

    America launches its 250th birthday year by becoming a rogue state

    Technically, the United States won’t turn 250 until July 4. But Donald Trump dictated this weekend that before the dawn’s early light of only the third day of America’s Semiquincentennial was soon enough for the bombs to begin bursting in air.

    At 1 a.m. Saturday, guided by a luminous full moon, a U.S. air armada of more than 150 planes roared over the Venezuelan capital of Caracas and far-flung military bases across the South American nation, waking up a metropolis of three million people with massive explosions.

    An 80-year-old woman, Rosa González, was killed when a U.S. bomb slammed into her three-story apartment complex in a coastal neighborhood near the Caracas airport, according to the New York Times. The dead-of-night strike wounded several of her neighbors, tore a massive hole in the side of the apartment building, and even riddled with shrapnel a family’s portrait of Simón Bolívar, the leader who liberated Venezuela from colonialism — for a time, anyway — in 1820.

    González was one of about 80 people, both security forces and civilians, killed Saturday in the first U.S. land strike in what by Trump’s own admission is “a war” — America’s latest and maybe its strangest yet. With more than 100 civilian sailors blown up in a running series of U.S. drone attacks on boats off South America, which the Trump regime claims, without offering proof, are smuggling drugs, American imperialism is growing more deadly by the day.

    It’s hard here not to echo a notorious quote from Philadelphia sports history: For who? For what?

    Demonstrators march along North Broad Street reacting to U.S. strikes on Venezuela on Saturday.

    Trump’s splendid little war in Venezuela comes drenched in so many lies, buried under layers of justifications that change almost hourly, and so far outside the boundaries of both U.S. and international law that it makes George W. Bush’s dishonest and disastrous misadventure in Iraq feel like Gettysburg by comparison.

    That Venezuela’s former ruthless strongman leader, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife are currently sitting in Brooklyn’s federal lockup, captured by Delta Force soldiers amid the bombing and facing a U.S. indictment that asserts they were also drug lords, is pretty much the only certainty in a military crusade with a future rife with unknown unknowns.

    In a stunning news conference at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago mansion in Florida — where just 59 hours earlier, guests dined from a caviar bar as the president auctioned off a painting for $2.75 million — Trump told the world that the United States now “runs” Venezuela, despite no American personnel being posted inside the country, twice the size of California. And he made it clear that the blood of González and the others was spilled for oil, as POTUS 47 talked at length about U.S. hegemony over 17% of the world’s known oil reserves, but made no mention of restoring democracy in Venezuela.

    None of this stopped a parade of retired generals from flooding cable TV news networks — even the alleged liberal one, MS Now — to talk about the tactical success in seizing Maduro and pummeling Venezuela’s defenses with no U.S. deaths, even as the bigger strategy remains a black hole. That level of commentary, backdropped by images of cheering Maduro-hating refugees in Miami and elsewhere, belied the fact that invading Venezuela was wildly unpopular with the American people.

    Just last month, a Quinnipiac University poll found that 63% of U.S. voters opposed “U.S. military action inside Venezuela,” while just 25% supported such a move. Polling questions explicitly about removing Maduro have seen similar results. This matters a lot, but then other U.S. wars that history remembers as pretty terrible polled well at first. The much bigger problem with invading Venezuela is that it’s illegal. Incredibly illegal.

    To be sure, the imperial U.S. presidency has been simmering since 1945, but Trump has utterly abandoned one of the most cherished principles of America’s founders — that the power to declare war rests with Congress. Not only did the Trump regime not seek approval on Capitol Hill — where its beyond-flimsy casus belli could have been debated in front of the American people — but the president didn’t even deem it necessary to inform key congressional leaders.

    The attack was also a blatant international law violation of the charter of the United Nations — the organization that the U.S. spearheaded in 1945 to prevent future wars and unwind colonialism — which aimed to end unprovoked aggression. Geoffrey Robertson, who once led a U.N. war-crimes tribunal in Sierra Leone, told the Guardian that the Trump regime “has committed the crime of aggression, which the court at Nuremberg described as the supreme crime — it’s the worst crime of all.”

    To repeat: For who? For what? Is Trump eager for a bombastic military op to distract voters’ attention from the ongoing cover-up of the Jeffrey Epstein files, the explosive testimony of prosecutor Jack Smith about the president’s complicity in an attempted coup on Jan. 6, 2021, and skyrocketing prices for healthcare and at the grocery store? Is this the big payback to Big Oil CEOs who responded to Trump’s demand for $1 billion in campaign cash? Is he satisfying the vain psychoses of Silicon Valley billionaires who want a warm tropical paradise for high-tech “networked cities” outside any laws? Is this all just a narcissistic power trip?

    Yes.

    A neighbor walks through an apartment building that residents say was damaged during U.S. military operations to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, in Catia La Mar, Venezuela, Sunday, Jan. 4, 2026.

    Yes, this lethal disaster is a perfect storm of all of those things. But we can’t allow the blather of talking-head ex-generals or the cowardly passivity of the supposed opposition Democrats to blind us to the harsh reality of what just happened here. I didn’t think it could get worse than the utterly unwarranted 2003 Iraq War that inspired me to become an opinion journalist, but this is arguably worse, more akin to Vladimir Putin’s Russia invading Ukraine. On the 250th anniversary of America’s founding as a grand experiment in democracy, we are now a rogue state, a global pariah.

    “We Are The Bad Guys,” the brilliant independent journalist Hamilton Nolan headlined his essay on Saturday, writing with painful accuracy that “the United States government under Donald Trump is the most dangerous force on earth, and a serious potential threat to every other nation, and the leading cause of geopolitical instability.”

    The night America’s doomed ruling class gorged on lamb, blood, and oil | Will Bunch

    I noted above that this Venezuelan operation is largely shrouded in uncertainty and ambiguity, yet we need to acknowledge two bitter truths that can no longer be denied in the rocket’s red glare over Caracas.

    First, Donald Trump is a dictator now. To be sure, this has seemed an aspiration from the moment he stepped onto the Trump Tower escalator over a decade ago, with very mixed results, but now it’s a reality. The strike on Venezuela was a dictate, nothing more. There was zero effort to rally the American people behind him, zero effort to seek congressional input, and zero concern over the illegality of this operation, let alone its rank immorality. And if there is no meaningful opposition to his murders in Latin America, he will only consolidate his tyrannical power.

    Government supporters rip an American flag in half during a protest in Caracas, Venezuela, on Saturday, after U.S. President Donald Trump announced that U.S. forces had captured President Nicolás Maduro and first lady Cilia Flores.

    Second, the world is a much more dangerous place right now than we want to admit. As a boomer born in the aftermath of World War II, I’ve always worried that I’d live to see World War III — and I still do. But now I’m equally worried that there won’t be a global conflagration, but just a silent abandonment of the dream of a planet governed by the rule of law, with peace as its No. 1 priority.

    The real significance of what just happened in Latin America is that the world — and the disappearing liberty of its denizens — is getting carved up by amoral strongmen into “spheres of influence,” just as in Trump’s beloved Gilded Age of the 19th century. After Saturday, what is to stop China from seizing control of Taiwan, or Russia from looking beyond Ukraine to wider territorial ambition in Europe, or the Trump regime from seizing Greenland and the Panama Canal?

    Absolutely nothing. Except us.

    A dictatorial United States isn’t preordained, nor is a world where smaller nations are swallowed up by a real axis of evil. After all, 2025 ended on a surprisingly hopeful note of resistance, led by everyday folks from Minneapolis to New Orleans with their whistles and their gumption to get in the face of masked, armed goon squads.

    Let’s turn those flares of hope into a raging fire of opposition. If you’re mad today, show it in the streets, then call your member of Congress and let them know that a sternly worded letter won’t cut it. Trump’s illegal war demands nothing less than his impeachment, if not now, then after November, after the righteous flood.

    Let’s send a 250th birthday card to the diminished but still-beating heart of the true America and sign it with two words: No kings.