Unless, that is, their fundraising is so successful that they can do both. -R
The official Bluesky page of consumer advocate, author and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader. (Posts by Ralph signed with -R)
5,038 followers 8 following 494 posts
view profile on Bluesky
Unless, that is, their fundraising is so successful that they can do both. -R
The urgency of what’s yet to come should prompt fundamental introspection about what projects need to be deprioritized and what new initiatives need to be launched—especially on Congress and its constitutional powers to hold Trumpism accountable.
In other countries that have faced rising dictatorships, this lag time by the civil and professional communities has always been present.
Most progressive citizen groups can’t seem to get our of their pre-Trump routine to adequately rise to the occasion presented by the ever-deepening Trump fascist dictatorship. They need to break new ground and develop much more urgent strategies and tactics for the rampaging lawless Tyrant Trump.
Interestingly, he isn’t trying to ban burning copies of the Constitution. He’s been burning the Constitution since he became president in his first term. Recall in 2019 he said: "I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as President." -R
Yesterday Tyrant Trump issued another one of his illegal executive orders. This one allegedly bans the burning of the American flag, which the Supreme Court ruled an expression of free speech in 1989.
This response lays out the state of play for citizen group movements and charts a path forward to restore democracy to the American political economy. See:
Now Powell’s wildest dreams have come true via the enactment of many of Powell’s suggestions and adoption of proposals in the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025”. 54 years later, Ralph Nader is issuing a response to the Powell Memorandum.
In 1971, conservative corporate lawyer and later Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell issued the notorious “Powell Memorandum” urging the reactionary forces of right-wing corporatism to rally against the social movements that swept the nation in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
They should be replaced by progressive stalwarts who can rise to the occasion and save the Republic from serial law violator and convicted felon Trump and his fellow outlaws he has planted all over the federal government? -R
With public approval of the Democratic Party at a low 33% and with Democratic Party registrations seriously slowing, while Trump declares war on the American people—red and blue states—when are the leaders of the Democratic Party going to resign?
His cancellation of half a million people who tour the White House every year is because of preparations for Trump to build a glitzy $200 million ball room. Another intensification of the Trump monarchy. If you wish to protest, contact the White House -R
Trump again desecrates the White House. He has cancelled the historic traditional public tours by families who were told they can visit what has been called “The People’s House.”
These sums can be replaced by the giant Gates Foundation and millions of lives would be saved in Africa, Asia and South America. Word is they are considering section by section replacement of Trump’s savage cuts. Looking forward to their announcements.-R
Trump got the GOP and Congress to rescind $8 billion in critical lifesaving aid to poor people abroad, including AIDS medicines, food supplements and vaccines. RFK Jr. has cancelled $1.1 billion of research grants for vaccines.
An official with the US Army agency responsible for the security of top DOD officials told the Post: “I’ve never seen this many security teams for one guy. Nobody has.” -R
The protective unit in the U.S. Army has had to take away staff from critical tasks to cater to Hegseth's extravagant demands spanning several states.
The @washingtonpost.com broke a page 1 story today about the multi-million dollars required to protect the extended family of Sec. of Defense Pete Hegseth, including his former spouses.
He also is violating numerous criminal federal statutes regularly because he believes, "I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president." -R
As for crimes, Trump’s stripping away of lifesaving consumer, environmental and workplace safety protections and the resulting casualties tower above what is going on in the streets of Washington DC.
....weaponizing Netanyahu’s destruction of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians, militarily occupying southern Lebanon and parts of Syria which the Israelis bomb regularly. That is the major source of violence there and elsewhere in the Empire located in the District of Columbia.
Trump is unloading hundreds of national guardsmen and other federal military in the District of Columbia with lurid and false descriptions of criminal mobs and widespread violence. By far the main violence is coming out of the White House...
Because Netanyahu and his extremist machine want to depopulate Gaza in any way they can. Whether by massacres, starvation or expulsion. Otherwise called Mega Terrorist Netanyahu’s Palestinian Holocaust -R
Even some active and retired military officials see no military purpose in continuing the destruction of Gaza and its people. So why is Netanyahu killing between 70-120 innocent civilians reaching for food—and triple the number injured—every day?
Large demonstrations of Israelis are demanding Netanyahu to stop the war in Gaza. They want to end the war to get the hostages back in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. Many Israeli human rights groups also want to end the genocide.
Gigantic deficits do not seem to bother Trump. Reporters, keep renewing your demands! -R
White House reporters are still waiting for Trump to release his tax returns, due last April 15th, like all former presidents have done. He’s too busy gutting the IRS budget, firing 25% of its workers and therefore enabling massive tax evasion by the super-rich and big corporations.
OPEN LETTER to Journalists on the Vast Undercount of Deaths & Serious Injuries in Gaza
The coming recession could be named the TRUMP RECESSION. These are far more appropriate brands to get his attention. -R
Since he is gutting the readiness of CDC, NIH and assistance to states to prevent or mitigate coming pandemics, they can be called the TRUMP Pandemics. The coming inflation could be named the TRUMP INFLATION.
Since he doesn’t believe in climate disruption, maybe he’ll pay attention if we name gigantic TRUMP Hurricanes, TRUMP Wildfires, TRUMP Floods and TRUMP Droughts.
There are better alternatives. We should name the concentration camps and prisons for innocent immigrants and asylum seekers he is sending there TRUMP PRISONS and TRUMP CONCENTRATION CAMPS.
He has reportedly asked to see if there was room for another president on Mount Rushmore, meaning him. And word is that he would like to name the White House “Trump House” for the duration of his term. Pretty sickening.
Tyrant Trump’s toadies in Congress are trying to name all kinds of places after him—like renaming Dulles Airport "Trump Airport." Streets after Trump. Locations after Trump. All to massage his egomaniacal thirst for recognition.
New from @jfallows.bsky.social
Ralph welcomes labor organizer Chris Townsend to discuss the current state of the labor movement under the second Trump administration. Then, Ralph talks to journalist Mariah Blake about PFAS and her new book “They Poisoned the World: Life and Death in the Age of Forever Chemicals.”
A hundred billion dollars sounds like a lot but it’s about what Apple spent in one year unproductively buying back its own stock to expand the metrics for its executives' compensation. -R
Apple stock went up appreciably as a result. Not bad for smoke and mirrors. It’s likely other big companies will pull similar stunts at the White House to give Trump publicity and help their stock.
Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, appeared at the White House with Trump pledging a hundred billion more dollars in US investments by Apple. These pledges of course are not enforceable but both Trump and Cook got a lot of press for what is emerging as a PR stunt between large companies and Trump.
New column:
They are working daily to undermine his potential victory in November. Those are the interests that the New York Times should be addressing with their reporters and editorials. -R
...regime backers into the journalistic climate at the Times. The real dynamics regarding the electoral ascension of Mamdani relate to his three main opponents—Wall Street, the NYC Real Estate Industry and the Israeli-Government-Can-Do-No-Wrong Domestic Lobby.
...until recently, to take some heat off the Netanyahu regime. Never discount the constant pressures by their columnist Bret Stephens (Palestinian hater and voice of Netanyahu) who brings the daily threat of frivolously accusing Times people of antisemitism, and the influence of AIPAC and Netanyahu
What’s going on inside the New York Times is often excellent reporting by Times journalists reporting out of Jerusalem—although barred from going into Gaza by Netanyahu with the approval of Biden and Trump—and suppressed editorials, misleading headlines, and passive voice writing...
That includes PA Gov. Josh Shapiro and Rahm Emmanuel. They and other Mamdani accusers have never disavowed the vicious, violent, racist epithets hurled against Palestinian people as an ethnicity by high Israeli officials over the years.
... demand that these accusers disavow their support of Netanyahu’s genocide in Gaza and his starvation policies. This is mischievous, somersault journalism engaging in uncalled for wordplay while ignoring the accusers support, complicity or silence regarding the U.S.-backed Palestinian Holocaust.
What’s with the @nytimes.com harassing Zohran Mamdani repeatedly about disavowing the phrase “globalize the intifada”? It has written several articles featuring accusers of Mamdani for not affirmatively denouncing this slogan which means different things to Palestinians and Israelis—but doesn’t...
His family and friends may wish to establish a permanent Morton Mintz Journalism Award to extend his even more important legacy today. -R
Mintz had a quiet voice with formidable strength. He resisted quaking editors and ignored pressures from corporate lawyers representing the Post’s corporate advertisers. He extended his remarkable work ethic by co-authoring or authoring historic books on corporate power in America.
He was the drug industry’s consistent “hair shirt.” Many a high corporate executive looked with dread when a call came from Morton Mintz. What also made Mintz special is that he fortified ethical journalistic norms as he moved around the busy newsroom discussing topics with his colleagues.
Morton Mintz was a consummate ‘beat journalist.’ His pioneering sense of newsworthiness, including reporting what citizen groups were doing, opened up one area of consumer, environmental, and workplace abuses after another for other reporters to follow.
New Radio Hour: Dr. Karameh Hawash-Kuemmerle and Dr. Nidal Jboor of Doctors Against Genocide on their dedication to succeeding where global governments have failed in confronting genocide, particularly in Gaza. Plus, woodworker Marcus Sims who turns fallen trees into sustainable-harvested lumber.
...been Israeli policy to target civilians, attributed to Abba Eban. Moreover doesn’t he see the reality on the ground every day? His hatred of Palestinians is truly alarming given his position inside the Washington Post. -R
Post insiders have said Charles Lane is one of the culprits. A hard line pro-Netanyahu, pro-AIPAC writer on the editorial page. He is an enforcer. He has actually declared that Israel does not target civilians despite being sent statements to the contrary going back years that it has always...
New column.
Imagine ignoring the newspapers' editorial duty to denounce this PALESTINIAN HOLOCAUST backed, funded and weaponized by the Trump regime? Imagine if the shoe was on the other foot. Is this indifference? Is this ignorance? Is this fear? Or is this racism? -R
Day after day of grisly Netanyahu-produced military mass murder and starvation in Gaza, especially infants and children, has gone without editorial comment by the @nytimes.com and @washingtonpost.com.
Trump says “drill baby drill” to unleash even further global warming disasters and violent climate catastrophes. And he’s shrinking FEMA! These are omnicidal actions, backed by presidential tyranny, to impose his dictates on dedicated American workers in violation of the laws and Constitution. -R
This is in addition to coal mine collapses that have taken even more lives. Trump has the nerve to call it “clean beautiful coal” and subsidize it. He uncritically reduced the number of coal mine safety inspectors and allows more toxic emissions via the DOGE ravages of the federal civil service.
And then he turns around and describes wind power and solar power as ugly blights on the landscape. This is the what the psychologists describe as a deranged personality. Since 1890 more coal miners have died from coal dust lung disease than the number of U.S. solders who died in World War 2.
Year after year, Trump describes dirty polluting coal as “clean beautiful coal”. Clearly he’s never been down in a coal mine. Clearly he’s never seen dying coal miners from black lung disease. Clearly he thinks that mountaintop removals leaving whole areas barren is a beautiful sight.
VIDEO: The 2025 War Abolisher Awards went to Ralph Nader, Roger Waters, and Francesca Albanese
Our founding fathers would have been horrified beyond description. -R
...who revels in saying he does whatever he wants in spite of the laws and the Constitution. As justices of the Supreme Court they cannot commit a more fundamentally impeachable offense under our Constitution than to destroy their own independent branch of government, which is what they have done.
This is why we are supporting the impeachment efforts, however preliminary, of the six Supreme Court justices who have destroyed the judicial branch of government, overriding their own federal district and circuit justices, and hand delivered a blank check to Tyrant Trump...
This is the recipe for a fascist dictatorship that is now entrenched, operating and corrosively destroying the freedoms and liberties and opportunities and well-being of the American people.
The six Republican justices of the Supreme Court have basically destroyed their own branch of government and given the judicial powers, including unchecked pardon power, to Donald J. Trump in the White House.
What this means to the American people is that our founders' critical checks and balances have been destroyed willingly by a surrendering Congress and a surrendering Supreme Court to a dictatorial, monarchical president.
Page 1 of @washingtonpost.com on July 5th had a very ominous headline for all Americans: “Congress, high court cede power to president, critics worry changes are undermining system of checks and balances.”
OUT NOW: Rethink Trade’s Lori Wallach joined the Ralph Nader Radio Hour to break down what’s happening with Trump’s tariffs and what it all means: 📌 Listen here: www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/p/trumps-sup...
There has been no demand for Netanyahu to bring the wrongdoers to justice and to provide compensation to the next of kin and a full repair of this ancient church in Gaza which Pope Francis used to call every evening. -R
He also bombed Pope Francis’s historic Catholic church in Gaza killing 3 people and injuring others. He said it was a mistake. It was not a mistake. It was a calculated message to the Vatican which has been very critical of Israel’s genocide.
Instead Netanyahu returned to Israel to continue his mass murder of desperate starving Palestinian families seeking a sack of flour or some other food from a dispensary controlled by Israeli and U.S. firms, killing over 80 innocents a day in cold blooded murder.
Netanyahu came and went and Trump’s so called “being firm” dissipated into the ether. Another fake assurance and the press bought it and reported it on page 1 of the Washington Post. When it didn’t happen, the media never goes back to Trump and says how were you firm with Netanyahu?
Trump became a pussy cat at the dinner he held at the White House for Netanyahu, nodding sycophantically at whatever his master Netanyahu was declaring, including his plan to have starving Palestinian survivors emigrate to other countries under the label “freedom of choice”.
Netanyahu, his master, had other objectives in mind. Full fire, no ceasefire against starving Palestinians. There were a lot of Palestinians left for Netanyahu to slaughter and murder and he was not about a sincere ceasefire, which he broke in March, as has been the case for several months now
For example, on July 3rd he told the press that in his upcoming meeting at the White House with Benjamin Netanyahu he was going to be “very firm” with him about ending the conflict. “I think we’ll have a deal next week” he told reporters. Well, there was no deal next week. Didn’t even come close.
Now we know it’s another way of Fake Trump buying time and raising false expectations among his followers about being a miracle man. Now he’s at it again.
Here’s how Lying Donald buys time. Remember during the 2024 campaign Lying Donald said as president he will end the Russia/Ukraine war in 24 hours? He said that many times to great applause.
New Radio Hour: Trump's Supreme Court
“I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It”: Prof. Omer Bartov on the Growing Consensus on Gaza
New column:
Read this superb article by Norman Solomon in @thenation.com. -R
More and more Trump voters are saying: “We didn’t vote for this—we didn’t vote to weaken America, to throw ourselves off Medicaid, to lose our hard-earned benefits, and to be disrespected as veterans by a shrinking VA.” -R
..country and organize their own coalitions and trading alliances. Trump doesn’t know when to stop, violating any law or constitutional provision that stands in his way and spreading anxiety, dread, fear and instability throughout our land.
Political observers are totally astonished at how Trump goes out of his way to alienate our closest allies and trading partners, announcing sky high tariffs, using tariffs as a political weapon against countries like Brazil and Canada, and generally pushing these allies to back away from our...
As one Republican, Grant Grissom, put in a full page ad in the New York Times: “Please resign for the sake of God and Country.” -R
The list goes on until Trump is stopped in this area and that area from further wrecking and weakening America. All that’s left are the people to pull together as workers, parents, business owners, scientists, veterans, unions and the professions and tell him ever louder: “You’re Fired!”
It’s specialists on the front lines warning about approaching climate disasters like floods, droughts, wildfires and record heat waves. It’s health experts working on early detection bacteria and viral diseases.
It’s not just immigrants targeted by masked plainclothes ICE agents. It’s hundreds of thousands of small business contracts suspended or canceled. It’s scientific programs being shut down or undermined.
It keeps getting worse. Trump is disrupting millions of lives without reason, without cause. He is firing hundreds of thousands of innocent, dedicated civil servants working to protect and defend the health, safety and economic well-being of Americans throughout red and blue states.
What’s the difference you might ask? It’s called the domestic Israeli-Government-Can-Do-No-Wrong lobby led by AIPAC, a few blocks from the White House. A hammer that Putin doesn’t possess. Send your opinion to Trump. -R
Instead of threatening sanctions on Netanyahu, Trump is continuing the stream of billions of dollars from U.S. taxpayers to fund Netanyahu’s genocide, mass murder and terror in Gaza and now starting in the West Bank.
...Trump’s master, he doesn’t push for ceasefire after Netanyahu broke the ceasefire last March and started massive starvation of the Palestinians in Gaza.
Compare the way Trump is going after his old friend Putin for not ceasefiring the Ukraine War. He’s sending Patriot missiles and other weapons to Ukraine. He’s threatening severe sanctions on Russia and its trading partners if Putin doesn’t come around in 50 days. But when it comes to Netanyahu...
Put out a statement demanding justice and accountability immediately and send condolences to the family in Florida. Otherwise, you're just confirming the impression held by millions of Americans that Netanyahu is your master for whatever known and unknown reasons. Weak! -R
Donald Trump, you are so afraid of Netanyahu that you won’t even stand firm in denouncing the killings of American citizens in the West Bank. Most recently, a Palestinian American who grew up in and lives in Florida. Why aren’t you demanding that he protect American citizens in the West Bank?
...who thinks you can get away with anything as long as you flatter, fool and flummox enough people up against a weak, pack-compromised corporatized Democratic Party. -R
Enough people believed Trump's promises up against a weak Democratic Party chosen candidate to put him back in the White House. THEY ARE BEING BETRAYED DAILY BY DICTATOR TRUMP...
...: “I would say justice, truth, humility, service, compassion, love….They’re the guiding lights of a life.” Trump by his behavior and record asked the question why not the worst? While Jimmy Carter campaigned and performed by asking the question why not the best?