The U.S. government’s talks with Russia are more about China than Ukraine. Donald Trump admitted he wants to “un-unite” Russia and China, in a reverse of the divide-and-conquer strategy used by Nixon and Kissinger in the 1970s.

The Donald Trump administration is holding talks between the United States and Russia, and he says he wants to end the war in Ukraine.

Trump’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio has even proposed that the U.S. could “partner with the Russians, geopolitically.”

What is happening here? The simple answer is that this is all about China.

Trump is trying to divide Russia from China, in an attempt to isolate Beijing.

The United States sees China as the number one threat to its global dominance. This has been stated clearly by top officials in both the Trump administration and the previous Joe Biden administration.

Rubio dubbed China “the single greatest challenge this nation has ever faced.” Trump’s CIA Director John Ratcliffe asserted that “China was far and away our top national security threat”.

Trump’s plan to split Russia and China

Trump made this strategy clear in an interview with Tucker Carlson, the right-wing talk show host, on October 31, 2024.

Trump said it was a “shame” and it was “stupid” that the U.S. had pushed China and Russia together.

“I’m going to have to un-unite them, and I think I can do that, too. I have to un-unite them,” Trump stated.

The following is a partial transcript of his remarks (emphasis added):

We are a nation in decline. We are a nation in very serious decline. And look at what these stupid people have done. They’ve allowed Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and others to get together in a group. This is impossible to think.

When I was a young guy, I loved, I always loved the whole thing, the concept of the history, and all of the things that can happen. The one thing — and I had a professor at the Wharton School of Finance, but we had history classes also.

He said the one thing you never want to happen is you never want Russia and China uniting. We united them, because of the oil. We united them. Biden united them. It’s a shame, the stupidity of what they have done.

I’m going to have to un-unite them, and I think I can do that, too. I have to un-unite them.

But early on I’ve read, and you’ve learned, you never want Russia and China — and they’re natural enemies, because Russia has massive land, and China needs it.

…

They’re a natural enemy. And we’ve allowed them become, to get together. It’s such a dangerous thing.

Another thing that we’re doing is we’re losing the dollar as the standard, because of these people that are so — if we lose the dollar as the standard, that’s like losing a war. And it’ll never happen with me. There’s no way that will happen with me.

Trump threatens BRICS

What is noteworthy is how Trump immediately linked the close partnership between China and Russia to the issue of de-dollarization, the international drive to create alternatives to the U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency.

China is Russia’s largest trading partner, and the two countries have almost entirely removed the U.S. dollar from their bilateral trade. Instead, they now use their domestic currencies, the renminbi and ruble, in more than 90% of settlements.

Fears of de-dollarization have led Trump to threaten 100% tariffs on BRICS countries and other nations that drop the dollar in international trade and foreign exchange reserves.

“I hate when countries go off the dollar. I would not allow countries to go off the dollar”, Trump declared during his presidential campaign in 2024.

Since returning as U.S. president, Trump has given himself credit for supposedly killing BRICS. “BRICS is dead”, he claimed in a press conference at the White House on February 13.

In reality, BRICS has continued expanding, admitting in early 2025 new countries with large populations, like Indonesia and Nigeria. The Global South-led organization now represents roughly 55% of the world population and 42% of global GDP (PPP).

Nevertheless, Trump has continued to threaten them. “If they want to play games with the dollar, they’re going to be hit with a 100% tariff”, he warned.

Trump’s reverse Nixon/Kissinger strategy

Trump’s attempt to divide Russia and China, to try to save U.S. imperial dominance, is far from secret. It has been debated openly in the Western media, with Foreign Affairs magazine cautioning that “Beijing and Moscow’s partnership will be hard to break”.

The Wall Street Journal stated clearly that “Washington’s embrace of Putin aims to drive wedge between Moscow and Beijing.”

The Western press has dubbed this strategy a “reverse Nixon,” referring to former U.S. President Richard Nixon.

Nixon and Trump have many similarities. Both were hard-line right-wing Republicans who used “populist” rhetoric. Both also sought to exploit divisions between Russia and China — albeit in opposite directions.

Although he was a virulent anti-communist, Nixon took a historic trip to Beijing in 1972 in order to normalize relations with the People’s Republic of China.

Washington saw the Sino-Soviet split, which happened in the 1960s, as an opportunity to advance its imperial power by exacerbating the tensions between China and the USSR.

This ended up being an important factor in the decline of the Soviet Union in the 1980s, and its eventual overthrow in 1991.

Trump’s strategy has also been referred to as a “reverse Kissinger,” because Nixon’s National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger was the architect of the tactic, known as “triangular diplomacy”.

Kissinger took a secret trip to Beijing in 1971, in an attempt to further divide China and the USSR.

Decades later, Kissinger thought the United States should return to this “triangulation” strategy to weaken China.

In fact, Kissinger had advised Trump during his first administration that he should try to improve relations with Russia to isolate China, the Daily Beast reported in 2018.

Ironically, it was the Russiagate conspiracy theory pushed by the Democratic Party that prevented Trump from pursuing this Kissingerian strategy during his term term. Democrats’ baseless, nonsensical claims that Trump was a “puppet of Putin” distracted from his more insidious new cold war strategy, aimed at kneecapping China.

In his second term, however, Trump has fully embraced this strategy.

Marco Rubio wants USA “to partner with the Russians, geopolitically”

In both his first and second term, Trump has surrounded himself with neoconservatives and war hawks.

In his first administration, Trump’s foreign policy was overseen by neocons John Bolton, as national security adviser; and Mike Pompeo, first as CIA director and later as secretary of state.

In his second administration, Trump’s foreign policy is overseen by neocons Marco Rubio, as secretary of state; Mike Waltz, as national security advisor; and Pete Hegseth, a self-declared “crusader” serving as defense secretary.

All of these these figures are extreme China hawks who have pushed for aggressive policies against Beijing.

They also agree with Trump’s strategy to try to woo Moscow.

This is why, when Trump sent Rubio to Saudi Arabia in February to participate in talks with his Russian counterparts, he proposed that the United States could “partner with the Russians, geopolitically.”

The U.S. secretary of state said:

[We are] beginning to engage in identifying the extraordinary opportunities that exist, should this conflict come to an acceptable end, the incredible opportunities that exist to partner with the Russians, geopolitically, on issues of common interest, and frankly economically, on issues that hopefully will be good for the world, and will also improve our relations in the long term between these two important countries.

In fact, in a Senate hearing in 2024, Rubio argued that the U.S. should help bring an end to the war in Ukraine, not because hundreds of thousands of people have lost their lives, but rather because it was helping China, he complained.

“The Chinese see great benefit in Ukraine,” Rubio said, “because they view it as, the more time and money we spend there, the less time, and money, and focus we have on them.”

Rubio’s argument was essentially that the U.S. empire should end the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine so it could instead focus on preparing for war against China.

Western far right wants to ally with Russia against China

Although Rubio’s proposal to “partner” with Russia surprised some observers, this strategy has been proposed for years by members of the far-right “MAGA” movement in the Republican Party.

Many MAGA Republicans are influenced by racist white nationalist ideas and see China not only as a threat to U.S. imperial dominance, but also as an Asiatic, atheist, communist threat to capitalism and white, “Judeo-Christian Western civilization.”

On the other hand, many conservatives in the U.S. and Europe see Russia as a potential ally, given that it is capitalist, white, and predominately Christian.

Far-right politicians in Europe have argued the same. France’s far-right leader Marine Le Pen called the China-Russia partnership “the largest danger of the 21st century for us.”

She insisted that the West shares “common civilizational and strategic interests” with Russia and should break to break its close relations with socialist China.

Le Pen stated:

Imagine … if we let the first producer of raw materials in the world — which is Russia — [create an alliance] with the first factory of the world — which is China — to let them perhaps constitute the first military power of the world. I believe that it’s potentially a great danger.

…

It will be necessary diplomatically, when the war [in Ukraine] is over, when a peace treaty has been signed, to try to avoid this tie-up which risks being the largest danger of the 21st century for us.

Fox News and other conservative U.S. media outlets have pushed this same message for a decade.

This is one of the favorite refrains of Tucker Carlson, the far-right talk show host and close Trump ally who previously hosted a program on Fox News, which was the most popular politics TV show in the United States.

Carlson repeatedly argued that “the biggest threat to this country is not Vladimir Putin. That’s ludicrous. The biggest threat, obviously, is China.”

In multiple programs, Carlson asserted, “Russia is not America’s main enemy. Obviously, no sane person thinks it is. Our main enemy, of course, is China, and the United States ought to be in a relationship with Russia, aligned against China, to the extent that we can.”

Carlson complained that a China-Russia partnership would end “American global hegemony.”

Although he portrays himself as a “populist,” Carlson previously applied to join the CIA. His goal is to preserve U.S. imperial dominance.

On his Fox News program, Carlson stated:

If Russia ever joined forces with China, American global hegemony, its power, would end instantly. You’d have the world’s largest land mass and largest natural gas reserves, allied with the world’s largest population and world’s largest economy.

So a Russia-China axis would be not just more powerful than the United States, but much more powerful. It would have the scale to control a lot of the world’s economy, and trade routes, and raw materials. It could project military force that, posturing aside, we actually don’t have the power to stop.

If Russia and China ever got together, it would be a brand new world, and the United States would be greatly diminished. Most Americans agree that would be bad.

In fact, when he still hosted his show on Fox, Carlson regularly invited on Rubio to fearmonger about China.

The following is a partial transcript of a segment featuring the then Florida senator, who now serves as secretary of state:

MARCO RUBIO: They are also undermining our technological base through something called Made in China 2025, where they intend not just to supplant America, but all countries on Earth, and the West, in automobiles, and passenger aircraft, and quantum computing, and artificial intelligence.

They’ve laid out the entire industries, and they’re slowly but surely carrying out this plan.

TUCKER CARLSON: So this is a threat, obviously, not simply to our economy, but to our predominance around the world, to our power, and to our values.

Rubio calls China the “single greatest challenge” ever faced by the U.S. empire

Rubio has for years pushed for an extremely aggressive U.S. policy against China.

In a Senate hearing in 2024, Rubio complained that China is trying to change the “rules of the world” that “were written by America and our allies”:

The Chinese, they believe we’re in inevitable decline, and that their rise is inevitable as well. Like I said, they don’t like the rules of the world as they believe were written by America and our allies, and so they increasingly are taking it upon themselves at every opportunity to challenge them.

In a separate Senate hearing in 2022, Rubio warned that China could replace the United States as the most powerful country on Earth:

We often talk about China’s plans and intentions behind closed doors. But the fact of the matter is that their ultimate goal, and what they’re trying to do, is really not that big a secret.

They seek to displace the United States and to become the world’s most dominant economic, industrial, technical, and military, and geopolitical power. That’s their goal.

In the 2022 hearing, Rubio referred to China as “the single greatest challenge this nation has ever faced”, and he claimed that the People’s Republic is much more of a threat than the Soviet Union ever was:

The intelligence community, I think at this point, leaders on both sides of the aisle, have been pretty clear that this is the single greatest challenge this nation has ever faced.

We have never faced a near-peer adversary that poses such a comprehensive challenge, that way that China does today.

The Soviet Union was a military and a geopolitical rival; they were never an industrial, and technical, or commercial rival. China is all of that and more.

CIA says China is “the most important geopolitical threat we face in the 21st century”

Nevertheless, it is not just neoconservative Republicans like Marco Rubio who see China as the main threat to U.S. global dominance.

This view has become bipartisan in Washington.

In 2021, the CIA launched a “China Mission Center,” which is the only mission center at the notorious coup-plotting U.S. spy agency that is specifically focused on one country.

That year, the CIA announced on its official website that it considered China to be the top “threat” to the United States.

CIA Director William Burns “explained that the new mission center will bring a whole-of-Agency response and unify the exceptional work CIA is already doing against this key rival”, wrote the infamous U.S. spy agency, which has meddled in the internal affairs of countless countries and assassinated foreign heads of state.

Burns fearmongered about “the most important geopolitical threat we face in the 21st century, an increasingly adversarial Chinese government”.

Trump’s pick for CIA director, John Ratcliffe, praised Burns’ work at the agency and made similar comments in his Senate confirmation hearing in January 2025.

Ratcliffe stated (emphasis added):

Much more has to be done. Because our adversaries, and one in particular that I will discuss now, understand that the nation who wins the race of emerging technologies of today will dominate the world of tomorrow.

Which brings me to the need for the CIA to continue, and increase in intensity, the focus on the threats posed by China and its ruling Chinese Communist Party.

As DNI [director of national intelligence], I dramatically increased the intelligence community’s resources devoted to China.

I openly warned the American people that, from my unique vantage point as an official who saw more intelligence than anyone else, I assess that China was far and away our top national security threat.

President Trump has been an incredible leader on this issue, and it is encouraging that a bipartisan consensus has emerged in recent years.

The recent creation of the CIA’s China Mission Center is an example of the good work that must continue.

U.S. State Department warns China is top “threat” to U.S. global imperial dominance

In both the Biden and Trump administration, the State Department made similar warnings, fearing that China could challenge U.S. imperial dominance.

In a speech in May 2022, Biden’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned:

Even as President Putin’s war continues, we will remain focused on the most serious long-term challenge to the international order – and that’s posed by the People’s Republic of China.

China is the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do it.

The message was essentially identical during Trump’s first term.

Trump’s CIA director turned secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, delivered a similar speech at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in California in July 2020.

Using very aggressive, cold war-style rhetoric, Pompeo essentially called for overthrowing the Chinese government and the Communist Party of China. He stated:

We, the freedom-loving nations of the world, must induce China to change, just as President Nixon wanted. We must induce China to change in more creative and assertive ways, because Beijing’s actions threaten our people and our prosperity.

We must start by changing how our people and our partners perceive the Chinese Communist Party. We have to tell the truth. We can’t treat this incarnation of China as a normal country, just like any other.

…

And if we don’t act now, ultimately the CCP will erode our freedoms and subvert the rules-based order that our societies have worked so hard to build. If we bend the knee now, our children’s children may be at the mercy of the Chinese Communist Party, whose actions are the primary challenge today in the free world.

General Secretary Xi is not destined to tyrannize inside and outside of China forever, unless we allow it.

Many of these hawkish views are shared by NATO.

NATO’s secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg praised the first Trump administration for its extreme anti-China policies.

“You shifted your policy on China in 2017 under President Trump, and since then, NATO has gone a long way in helping European allies fully appreciate the challenges posed by China and respond to it,” Stoltenberg said at the right-wing U.S. think tank the Heritage Foundation in Washington in 2024.

Trump admin invokes China to try to justify U.S. colonialist policies

All of this explains why Donald Trump has turned China into his favorite bogeyman, constantly invoking the country to try to justify his colonialist policies.

During his inauguration speech in January 2025, Trump declared that the United States is going to take over the Panama Canal, in a blatant act of colonialism.

“China is operating the Panama Canal. And we didn’t give it to China; we gave it to Panama. And we’re taking it back”, Trump claimed.

It is not true that China is operating the Panama Canal. This is utterly false.

Nonetheless, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has used the same rhetoric.

In January, Rubio spoke with the conservative talk show host Megyn Kelly, in his first official interview as U.S. secretary of state.

In this hour-long discussion, Rubio mentioned the words “China” or “Chinese” 65 times.

“China wants to be the most powerful country in the world and they want to do so at our expense, and that’s not in our national interest, and we’re going to address it”, he lamented.

When asked why the Trump administration wants to control the Panama Canal, Rubio echoed Trump, falsely arguing that China is controlling it.

The way that Trump and Marco Rubio see the world is that the U.S. empire has a sphere of influence, and they want to reassert U.S. imperial control over the Western Hemisphere, and especially Latin America.

That is why they are threatening Greenland, Panama, Canada, Mexico, Colombia, and more. This is also why Trump allies are constantly invoking the colonialist Monroe Doctrine.

U.S. Vice President JD Vance targets China

When it comes to Europe, the Trump administration’s view is basically that Ukraine is not in the U.S. imperial sphere of influence, and that Europe has to deal with Russia on its own terms.

This was the message that U.S. Vice President JD Vance conveyed in his speech at the Munich Security Conference in February 2025.

Vance pressured Europe to reduce its relations with China. He portrayed Beijing as a so-called “authoritarian master that seeks to infiltrate, dig in and seize your information infrastructure”.

Instead of using resources in Europe, the Trump administration wants to focus the attention of the U.S. empire on China.

Like Trump, Vance exploits “populist” rhetoric, but both seek to expand U.S. imperial power, and are willing to promote aggressive interventionist policies.

To understand Vance’s worldview, CNN interviewed Alexander Gray, who served as chief of staff of the National Security Council in Trump’s first term.

Gray is a neoconservative Republican who continues to defend Trump. He supports Trump’s attempts to colonize Greenland and the Panama Canal.

CNN reported (emphasis added):

Gray said that Vance’s foreign policy worldview stems from his military service in Iraq and what he sees as the failures of American entanglements abroad. But he also noted that Vance supports an aggressive approach toward China and does not just want the U.S. to retreat from the world stage altogether.

“That worldview is about making hard choices with limited resources and devoting our resources to what is an existential threat with China,” Gray said. “He’s not for abdicating U.S. global leadership; he’s not for stepping back from the U.S. being a muscular power on the world stage.”

Brzezinski warned of an “anti-hegemonic coalition” of China, Russia, and Iran

Washington’s fears of an alliance between China and Russia go back decades.

The influential U.S. imperial strategist Zbigniew Brzezinski, a fervent anti-communist cold warrior who served as national security advisor to President Jimmy Carter, published a book in 1997 called The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives.

In this work, Brzezinski discussed tactics that the U.S. empire could use to try to maintain its global unipolar dominance. He also warned of potential challenges to U.S. hegemony.

“The most dangerous scenario” for the U.S. empire, Brzezinski wrote, “would be a grand coalition of China, Russia, and perhaps Iran, an ‘antihegemonic’ coalition united not by ideology but by complementary grievances”.

The relevant passage from Brzezinski’s book follows (emphasis added):

Finally, some possible contingencies involving future political alignments should also be briefly noted, subject to fuller discussion in pertinent chapters. In the past, international affairs were largely dominated by contests among individual states for regional domination. Henceforth, the United States may have to determine how to cope with regional coalitions that seek to push America out of Eurasia, thereby threatening America’s status as a global power. However, whether any such coalitions do or do not arise to challenge American primacy will in fact depend to a very large degree on how effectively the United States responds to the major dilemmas identified here.

Potentially, the most dangerous scenario would be a grand coalition of China, Russia, and perhaps Iran, an “antihegemonic” coalition united not by ideology but by complementary grievances. It would be reminiscent in scale and scope of the challenge once posed by the Sino-Soviet bloc, though this time China would likely be the leader and Russia the follower. Averting this contingency, however remote it may be, will require a display of U.S. geostrategic skill on the western, eastern, and southern perimeters of Eurasia simultaneously.

This is exactly what has happened in the past few decades. The aggressive policies of the U.S. empire, including wars, sanctions, and regime-change operations, have pushed Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran together.

China, Russia, and Iran are members of BRICS, the Global South-led organization that continues to grow every year.

BRICS now represents roughly 55% of the world population and 42% of global GDP, measured at purchasing power parity.

This is why Trump has repeatedly threatened to destroy BRICS, and vowed to impose 100% tariffs on members of the group.

It is not just BRICS, however. China, Russia, and Iran are also members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which seeks to maintain security and stability in Eurasia.

China: 10 times Russia’s population, 5.5 times its economy, 17 times its manufacturing output

China has not fought in a war since 1979 and has a strict non-interventionist foreign policy. Nonetheless, U.S. imperial strategists fear Beijing, because it is significantly more powerful than Russia, and even than the former Soviet Union was at its peak.

To start, China has 1.4 billion people, which is roughly 10 times the size of Russia’s population, of around 140 million.

China also has the world’s largest economy. When you measure China’s GDP at purchasing power parity, it overtook the United States in 2016, according to IMF data.

As of the end of 2024, China represents a bit over 19% of the world economy, compared to just under 15% for the United States.

Russia is a major economy, but it is only about 3.5% of world GDP. That means that China’s economy is roughly 5.5 times larger than Russia’s.

Russia’s economy is similar in size to the economies of Indonesia or Brazil, which are very important countries with large populations. But China is at a whole different level.

Russia has enormous reserves of natural resources, and is one of the world’s top producers of oil, natural gas, critical minerals, grains, and fertilizer. It is also a major military power, with advanced weapons technologies.

When it comes to manufacturing output, however, there is no comparison. China is by far the world’s leading manufacturing power.

China represented 31% of global manufacturing value added in 2022, according to UN data.

The U.S. made up 16%, compared to just 1.8% for Russia.

Russia’s manufacturing output was a bit lower than Mexico’s, and slightly larger than that of Italy and France.

When it comes to technology, China is the world leader.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), a hawkish anti-China think tank that is backed by Australia’s military and funded by the Australian government, U.S. State Department, UK Foreign Office, and European Parliament, has frequently fearmongered about China’s rapid technological progress.

In a 2024 report, ASPI lamented that “China has strengthened its global research lead”, and is ahead of the rest of the world in 57 of 64 critical technologies, representing 89% of the total.

China made an enormous leap forward from 20 years before, when it led in only three technologies.

The ASPI report complained that scholars in China now publish more articles in research journals than those of any other country, and engineers and scientists in China apply for more patents than any other nation by far.

China is the only country with large technological firms that can challenge U.S. Big Tech monopolies in Silicon Valley.

This is why the U.S. government has sought to sabotage and ban Chinese technology companies, such as Huawei, TikTok (owned by Chinese firm ByteDance), and DeepSeek, the transformative AI company.

Most fundamentally of all, U.S. officials see China as a threat because it poses a systemic challenge to US-led capitalism.

China has a socialist system, led by a communist party, and it has made enormous progress in recent decades, lifting approximately 800 million people out of poverty. This represented nearly three-quarters of global extreme poverty reduction, according to the World Bank.

China’s GDP (PPP) increased by 75 times from 1984 to 2024, based on IMF data. In the same time period, U.S. GDP rose by seven times.

Meanwhile, it is clear to the world that China continues to grow at a steady rate, whereas the United States faces serious decline, with extreme inequality, severe homelessness, soaring poverty, widespread addiction, mounting debts, and increasing economic and political instability.

This is why Trump complained, “We are a nation in very serious decline.”

Trump hopes that by trying to divide Russia and China, he can weaken Beijing, reverse U.S. decline, and save the U.S. empire.

Source: geopoliticaleconomy.com

La repercución aquí en Puerto Rico de la política del presidente estadounidense Trump y su mano derecha, Elon Musk de reducir los gastos del gobierno, eliminando agencias y programas federales representa una verdadera crisis económica como nunca antes se haya visto. 

Desde que el Congreso estadounidense inició las asignaciones de Fondos Federales a esta colonia a principio de los años 30, la dependencia de los gobiernos locales en esas supuestas ayudas ha incrementado paulatinamente hasta convertirse en la base económica del país donde el 60% de las familias boricuas depende de alguna ayuda. Educación, salud, vivienda pública, etcétera. 

Se abandonó el desarrollo económico, la agricultura, y cualquier forma de autosustentibilidad a la vez que aumentó la corrupción y el robo de estos mismos fondos por parte del mismo gobierno y sus contratistas privados. 

Luego se intensificó la embestida neolibertal con los procesos de privatización de todo, desde los servicios esenciales de salud, hasta la administración de vivienda pública donde se desviaban fondos millonarios que nunca llegaban al pueblo. 

Tal pareciera que el imperio invasor era un agente magnánimo y benefactor. Pero lo que no se dice es que a la misma vez nos inundó de megacomercios gringos que sofocaron nuestros comercios locales para quedarse con el mercado pagando una miseria en impuestos, un mero 4%. Así llegó Puerto Rico a estar entre los diez mercados de exportación más importantes para Estados Unidos.

Sin embargo, el ser colonia, sin ningún poder soberano, nos sitúa en la posición más frágil posible. Sólo logrando la independencia y nuestra verdadera soberanía podremos vencer y desarrollar nuestra patria. Ese es ahora nuestro trabajo más urgente, con todas las organizaciones y movimientos progresistas. 

¡Que viva Puerto Rico Libre y Soberano!

Desde Puerto Rico, para Radio Clarín de Colombia, les habló Berta Joubert-Ceci

Get PDF here

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On Feb. 13, nearly 100 members of the LGBTQ community and allies held a protest rally outside the U.S. Federal Courthouse in Baltimore, Maryland, in response to Trump’s executive order stopping federal funding for trans youth health care. Following the rally they packed Courtroom 1A to capacity to hear the lawsuit filed to oppose this executive order.

U.S. District Court Judge Brendan Hurson presided over the lawsuit filed by PFLAG and parents of trans children in addition to a doctors’ organization. The executive order would immediately cut off all federal funding to hospitals and medical institutions, including for research purposes. The cut-off would even apply to funding procedures not related to trans care. The order prohibits Medicaid and Tricare for military families from paying for trans care.

Hospitals in Massachusetts, Maryland, Colorado, Virginia, and Washington have already begun canceling appointments and stopping treatments with hormones and puberty blockers according to ACLU.org. The order stops treatment for any patient under age 19.

During the hearings, the attorneys for the plaintiff opined that “these policies are holding a gun to the head of the hospitals that perform trans health care. It is the threat of stopping funding to the hospitals that makes them stop providing care.” 

The attorneys then argued that the order was unconstitutional due to the separation of powers with the president making funding decisions that should be made by Congress. They then explained that the order would ensure medical institutions receiving any grants would also be stopped if any trans health care is provided. This order, they continued, is in conflict with Equal Protection statutes. The government’s attorney replied to this by saying that the plaintiff’s attorneys’ arguments were too abstract.

During the course of the hearings, Judge Hurson often challenged both sides. Hurson remarked during discussions that these orders, as written, were intended to stop federal funding of trans care immediately. He stated to the court that stopping care in the middle of treatment does not show any concern for the patients. It seems to put the children at extreme risk for suicide, drug and alcohol addictions, depression, and other forms of mental illness.

After both sides completed their arguments the judge rendered his decision. He issued a 14-day temporary restraining order thereby allowing the funding to continue. After that time the order is able to be extended.

The next day, a second hearing was held 3,000 miles away in Washington state, which again challenged Trump’s executive order. The Democratic attorneys general of Washington State, Oregon, and Minnesota filed a lawsuit last week. Three doctors also joined the suit. 

This lawsuit addresses more specifically that the executive order violates equal rights protections, the separation of powers, and states’ powers to regulate what is not specifically delegated to the federal government. Following this hearing, U.S. District Court Judge Lauren King issued a second temporary restraining order.

The LGBTQ community members along with their allies have held multiple protests in response to Trump’s executive order. A movement is building around the country to counter these ongoing attacks as well as to fight back against the many outrageous policies of his administration that are detrimental to the working class. Ultimately, a movement that builds socialism will bring about the end of Trump, Musk, and all of the fascist policies that are part of this capitalist system. 

Prison guards and cops are not workers

Thousands of prison guards have staged a so-called strike since Feb. 17 in over 30 New York State prisons. All these hellholes are concentration camps for the poor. 

The trigger for these goons was the imminent charging of prison guards who beat Robert Brooks to death. The Black inmate at the Marcy Correctional Facility near Utica, New York, was viciously assaulted by a gang of guards on Dec. 9, 2024, while he was handcuffed. Brooks died the next day.

The murder of Brooks, the father of a son, was recorded on video and has been seen by millions. Yet it took over two months before six of the thugs who killed him were charged on Feb. 20. 

Another “grievance” of these prison guards was the Human Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement (HALT) Act. Passed in 2021, it puts some limits on solitary confinement. Nils Melzer, a United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture, described prolonged solitary confinement as psychological torture. 

Kalief Browder hanged himself in 2015, two years after being released from New York City’s Rikers Island jail. The Black youth — arrested when he was 16 years old — was kept in solitary for two years. Kalief Browder was never even brought to trial, and his family couldn’t afford to bail him out.

Layleen Polanco Xtravaganza died alone in solitary confinement at Rikers in 2019 while experiencing a seizure. The transgender Afro-Latina woman was thrown into the hole despite prison officials knowing that she had epilepsy.

While the HALT act is limited, it could have saved Xtravaganza’s life. The law prohibits people with disabilities, anyone under 21 or over 5, or those who are pregnant from being kept in solitary.

It says volumes about the uniformed thugs “on strike” that they want to get rid of a law that stops the most vulnerable from being kept in a tiny cage 22 or more hours a day.

Thugs and torturers are not workers

The walkout by prison guards has meant even more misery for 32,000 incarcerated poor people. They are barely being fed while not being allowed to visit with families and other loved ones.

State Corrections Commissioner Daniel Martuscello suspended the HALT Act on Feb. 20, giving officials the right to throw any inmate into solitary confinement. This violation of human rights is an incentive to brutalize and a gift to the guards who have demanded abolishing the act.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has called up 4,500 members of the National Guard to patrol the prisons. Among those facilities is Attica prison, where state police under orders of billionaire Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, killed 30 inmates in 1971.  

Compare Hochul’s kid glove treatment of the guards with how New York City transit workers were treated when they went on strike in 2005. Transit Workers Local 100 President Roger Toussaint was sent to jail.

Super=rich Mayor Michael Bloomberg — whose fortune is currently estimated at $104.7 billion — called the strikers “thugs.” 

Later, during the pandemic, at least 177 TWU members — who were originally ordered not to wear masks — died of COVID while keeping the Big Apple moving. 

Prison guards are not workers. Neither are any cops, FBI agents, or members of the ICE deportation gestapo. All of them are mercenaries for the wealthy and powerful and are enemies of the working class.

The so-called representatives of these goons need to be thrown out of local labor councils. Cops who help break strikes have no place in the union movement.

It was disgraceful that the Attica prison guards were members of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees and more shameful that AFSCME President Jerry Wurf defended them.

Unions should reach out to prisoners, the poorest members of the working class. The labor movement needs to demand “Jobs, Not Jails!”

Gov. Hochul wants prisoners to be exploited by private corporations. They should be paid union wages instead. 

Solidarity Forever includes solidarity with the incarcerated. It’s Musk and Trump who need to be locked up.

More than 60 organizations in Los Angeles have come together to establish the Community Self-Defense Coalition to fight ICE. The Coalition held a march on Feb. 17 and, in the days following, conducted community patrols in South Central LA.

On Feb. 19, Unión del Barrio – an organization in the coalition – posted to Facebook: 

“We continue to patrol our streets in search of ICE so that we can alert our people so they don’t get kinapped and ripped apart from their families … We need other communities to also organize to do this work in defense of our people.”

On the same day, the Harriet Tubman Center for Social Justice – another coalition organization – posted to Facebook: 

“Felt great to be part of the Community Self-Defense Coalition’s patrol this morning! We rode around looking for ICE agents’ vehicles so we could warn people in the neighborhood ahead of time.” 

“And we will know him then for what he was and is ― a  prince ― our own Black shining prince! ― who didn’t hesitate to die, because he loved us so.” That was how the legendary actor Ossie Davis ended his eulogy at Malcolm X’s funeral.

Over a half-century later, two of the convicted assassins of Malcolm X, Muhammad Aziz and Khalil Islam, were exonerated on Nov. 18, 2021. They were framed in a 1966 show trial.

Justice delayed is justice denied. Muhammad Aziz, now 83 years old, spent 20 years in prison, while Khalil Islam served 22 years.

Both Black men survived years in solitary confinement. Khalil Islam, who died in 2009, never got to see his name cleared.

Muhammad Aziz, then known as Norman 3X Butler, and Khalil Islam, then known as Thomas 15X Johnson, were convicted with Mujahid Abdul Halim. Then known as Talmadge Hayer or Thomas Hagan, Halim confessed during the trial to killing Malcolm X but said his two co-defendants were innocent.

That didn’t matter to the police and the courts. All three defendants were convicted and given life sentences by Judge Charles Marks. 

The police were so disinterested in finding out who killed Malcolm X that they even didn’t close off the crime scene. A dance was allowed to be held the evening of the assassination at the Audubon Ballroom with Malcolm’s blood still on the stage.

All of the physical evidence, including a sawed-off shotgun that was one of the weapons used to murder Malcolm X, has disappeared. 

Judge Marks turned down a defense motion to reveal the police interviews with a hundred eyewitnesses. Why?

When Halim gave the names of four people who were his fellow assassins in two affidavits in 1977 and 1978, Judge Harold Rothwax refused to reopen the case. New York police and the FBI didn’t investigate.

Both Muhammad Aziz and Khalil Islam had strong alibis. Aziz was at home suffering from thrombophlebitis in his right leg. Islam was also at his home when Malcolm X was killed, as confirmed by a neighbor who visited him.

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. apologized for the convictions of the two men. So why doesn’t Vance announce an investigation into who assisted Mujahid Abdul Halim in murdering Malcolm X?

Vance refused to prosecute Dominique Strauss-Kahn, then head of the International Monetary Fund, for raping the Black hotel worker Nafissatou Diallo. The DA is the son of former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, who was a top Pentagon official during the dirty war against Vietnam and Laos.

FBI war against Black people

Black leaders have been targeted by the U.S. Government for over a century. The army considered Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to be a threat. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover wanted him dead.

Dr. King denounced the war against Vietnam. He declared at New York’s Riverside Church that “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today (is) my own government.”

Exactly one year later, Dr. King was assassinated in Memphis on April 4, 1968. The same day, eight Green Berets were in Memphis.

During World War I, the Military Intelligence Division investigated one of Dr. King’s grandfathers for “subversive activity” because he gave a sermon against lynching.

The FBI had the Nation of Islam under surveillance since the early 1940s. During World War II, NOI leader Elijah Muhammad was sent to prison for four years on charges of urging his followers not to register for the draft.

The U.S. armed forces were then completely segregated. So was its blood supply, a Nazi-like practice. 

In response, the Pittsburgh Courier started a “Double V” campaign, calling for victory over the Hitlers at home and abroad. Other Black newspapers joined the campaign and exposed racism inside and outside the military. With the support of President Franklin Roosevelt, J. Edgar Hoover wanted the Black newspaper publishers tried for treason.

During the anti-communist witch hunt after the war, the FBI tried to destroy every progressive organization in the country. Hoover launched COINTELPRO, short for counterintelligence program. It sought to provoke dissension within groups and between organizations.

Along with the Communist Party and Socialist Workers Party, COINTELPRO targeted Black activist groups. These included the Southern Christian Leadership Conference led by Dr. King, the Nation of Islam and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, known as SNCC.

COINTELPRO later waged a war of extermination against the Black Panther Party. As shown in the film “Judas and the Black Messiah,” the FBI planted its informant William O’Neal within the Illinois Black Panther Party. O’Neal was crucial to Chicago police murdering Illinois chapter chairman Fred Hampton and fellow Panther member Mark Clark on Dec. 4, 1969.

400. Edgar Hoover sent a telegram to the New York City FBI office on June 6, 1964, demanding that they “do something about Malcolm X.” Eight-and-a-half months later the Black shining prince was murdered in front of his family and an audience of 400.

Letting Malcolm X be murdered

Malcolm X was assassinated in the Audubon Ballroom on Feb. 21, 1965. Now called the Malcolm X & Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center, it’s located in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan.

A week before, on Feb. 14, the home of Malcolm X and his family ― at 23-11 97th St. in the East Elmhurst section of Queens ― was firebombed. The police refused to investigate. They planted a bottle filled with gasoline in the house, implying Malcolm set the fire himself.

There were always at least a half-dozen cops in front of any place where Malcolm X spoke in order to try to intimidate people. Yet a week after Malcolm and his family were nearly killed, there was just one cop stationed at the Audubon Ballroom’s entrance. Other police were kept hidden nearby.

The well-known journalist Jimmy Breslin got a tip from the police that he should go to the meeting at the Audubon Ballroom. Did the NYPD know what was going to happen?

Cyrus Vance said, “that on orders from director J. Edgar Hoover himself, the FBI ordered multiple witnesses not to tell police or prosecutors that they were in fact FBI informants.” In addition there were undercover cops in the audience belonging to the Bureau of Special Services (BOSS), the NYPD’s Red Squad.

Several people shot at Malcolm. None of the dozen or so FBI agents and police inside the ballroom did anything to try to prevent the assassination. Nor were they responsible for arresting Talmadge Hayer (Mujahid Abdul Halim), the sole killer who was apprehended.

Hayer was wounded by Reuben Francis, an aide to Malcolm X, and then seized by members of the audience. The cop at the door and two officers who were driving by in a squad car arrested Hayer.

The first edition of the old New York Herald Tribune carried Jimmy Breslin’s article that stated two suspects were arrested. The “two suspects” were changed to one suspect in later editions of the Tribune and other New York City newspapers. 

Who was this second suspect and why did the media and police have him disappear? (“The Assassination of Malcolm X” by George Breitman, Herman Porter and Baxter Smith)

Among the BOSS operatives present was Detective Gene Roberts, who wormed his way into Malcolm’s security detail. Roberts can be seen in pictures next to the mortally wounded Malcolm X, whose head was cradled by Asian American activist Yuri Kochiyama.

“Brother Gene” later infiltrated the Black Panther Party. He gave lying testimony in the attempted frame-up of the Panther 21. One of the defendants was Afeni Shakur, the mother of Tupac Shakur.

It took the jury two hours to acquit the Panthers of attempting to bomb department stores and the Bronx Zoo. As fantastic as these charges were, they’re not much different from the allegations used to jail Arabs and Muslims after 9/11. 

Prosecutor Chris Christie used his frame-up of the Fort Dix 5 to become New Jersey governor.

‘Too much power’

The capitalist media has always insisted the murder of Malcolm X was the result of differences between himself and Elijah Muhammad. Malcolm X left the NOI in March 1964.

What the media never mentions is that the FBI and local police departments were trying to destroy the Nation of Islam. Tens of thousands of Black people belonged to the NOI.

Los Angeles police attacked Mosque No. 27 on April 27, 1962. Mosque secretary Ronald X Stokes was shot in the heart and killed. Six other NOI members were wounded, including William X Rogers, who was left paralysed. Like Kyle Rittenhouse, the police claimed “self-defense.”

Malcolm X came to Los Angeles and gave a eulogy for his friend Ronald X Stokes. Two thousand people attended the funeral. The atrocity was one of the sparks that led to the 1965 Watts rebellion. 

New York police never forgave Malcolm X for 2,600 NOI members surrounding the 28th precinct in Harlem on an April night in 1957. They were demanding justice for Hinton Johnson, who was clubbed viciously by police.

The police were forced to send Johnson to Harlem Hospital. Upon Malcolm’s signal, the thousands of Muslims and their supporters dispersed.

A police officer told Amsterdam News editor James Hicks that “this was too much power for one man to have,” referring to Malcolm X.  “He meant one Black man,” said Hicks. (“The Death and Life of Malcolm X” by Peter Goldman.) 

That cop’s real employer ― the super rich ― felt the same way. Wall Street didn’t appreciate Malcolm X supporting Local 1199’s union organizing drive among New York City hospital workers.

And they sure didn’t like him saying “show me a capitalist and I’ll show you a bloodsucker.” The Black revolutionary declared, “We are today seeing a global rebellion of the oppressed against the oppressor, the exploited against the exploiter.”

Did CIA try to poison Malcolm X?

Things happened to Malcolm X during the last year of his short life that were beyond the reach of any NOI member. In July 1964, Malcolm nearly died of food poisoning in Cairo and had to have his stomach pumped. 

No one else eating with Malcolm fell ill. The CIA’s fingerprints are all over this attempted rubout. The world’s biggest terrorist network had its own poison department.

Its head was Sidney Gottlieb, who tried to kill Fidel Castro with toxins. Gottlieb flew to Congo in 1960 and delivered a poison kit to CIA station boss Larry Devlin. The intended victim was Patrice Lumumba, the first leader of the Democratic Republic of Congo. President Eisenhower authorized Lumumba’s assassination. 

Although the CIA wasn’t able to poison Lumumba, the beloved African leader was murdered on Jan. 17, 1961. 

Malcolm X spent months in Africa pointing out the oppression of Black people in the United States. He was a one-person truth squad that U.S. embassies couldn’t answer. With the support of African governments, Malcolm sought to present these violations of human rights to the United Nations.

Like Che Guevara, the Black leader visited Gaza and expressed his solidarity with the Palestinian people. Malcolm met with Che when he spoke at the United Nations in 1964.

Malcolm X was the only prominent Black leader in the United States to denounce the mass lynching of the followers of the slain Patrice Lumumba. Belgian paratroopers and white mercenaries attacked Kisangani, then called Stanleyville, in November 1964, killing and raping thousands of Africans. President Lyndon Johnson supplied C-430 Hercules planes to transport these terrorists.

On Feb. 9, 1965, 12 days before he was assassinated, Malcolm X was stopped at the Orly airport in Paris and deported from France. Malcolm had spoken in France before without incident. Many people thought that President Charles de Gaulle feared Malcolm X would be assassinated on French soil and didn’t want to be blamed for it. 

The Pentagon had special reasons to silence Malcolm X. In 1965 and 1966, one fifth of all U.S. combat deaths in Vietnam were Black soldiers and marines.

Racist officers forced Black GIs to carry out the most dangerous tasks. Malcolm’s friend, Muhammad Ali, risked going to prison because he refused to kill Vietnamese people.

The military brass must have feared Malcolm X leading a draft resistance campaign that would eventually find support not only from the Black community but also from Asian, Indigenous, Latinx and poor white people as well.

Malcolm’s assassination was a tragedy for all working and oppressed people. Like Che Guevara, who was also murdered, Malcolm X became an inspiration for everyone struggling against capitalism and racism.

The exoneration of Muhammad Aziz and Khalil Islam demands an investigation into who were Mujahid Abdul Halim’s fellow assassins and who allowed the murder to happen. The leading suspect is the U.S. government.

If the capitalist government refuses to investigate itself, the people must find the truth by any means necessary.

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Feb., 18, Sumterville, FL – This morning, Leonard Peltier was released from over 49 years of wrongful incarceration.  Mr. Peltier is an enrolled citizen of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians and will reside on his tribal homelands in North Dakota.

Upon Peltier’s request, NDN Collective is bringing him home to the Turtle Mountain community. NDN Collective and partners built upon five decades of organizing and led the advocacy that secured Peltier’s release. Tomorrow, the organization is hosting a celebratory event and community feed to welcome Peltier back to his homelands.

“Today I am finally free! They may have imprisoned me but they never took my spirit!” said Leonard Peltier. “Thank you to all my supporters throughout the world who fought for my freedom. I am finally going home. I look forward to seeing my friends, my family, and my community. It’s a good day today.”

“Leonard Peltier is free! He never gave up fighting for his freedom so we never gave up fighting for him. Today our elder Leonard Peltier walks into the open arms of his people,” said Nick Tilsen, NDN Collective Founder and CEO. “Peltier’s liberation is invaluable in and of itself – yet just as his wrongful incarceration represented the oppression of Indigenous Peoples everywhere, his release today is a symbol of our collective power and inherent freedom.”

“This moment would not be happening without Secretary Deb Haaland and President Biden responding to the calls for Peltier’s release that have echoed through generations of grassroots organizing,” said Holly Cook Macarro, Government Affairs for NDN Collective. “Today is a testament to the many voices who fought tirelessly for Peltier’s freedom and justice.”

NDN Collective is an Indigenous-led organization dedicated to building Indigenous power. Through organizing, activism, philanthropy, grantmaking, capacity-building, and narrative change, we are creating sustainable solutions on Indigenous terms.

Trump’s proposal to kick out 2 million Palestinians from Gaza was met with stiff resistance in two recent New York City demonstrations. Both actions were called by the Shut It Down 4 Palestine Coalition.

On Feb.12, Palestinian supporters gathered in front of the great reference library on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue. Speeches and chants attacked the genocidal tag team of Trump and Netanyahu, as well as Biden.

People marched through Times Square and then went to the New York Times headquarters. Speakers denounced the capitalist media for covering up the war crimes committed against the Palestinian people.

On Feb. 15, a rally was held in Manhattan’s Dag Hammarskjold Park near the United Nations. Next to the park is the UN mission of the “Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.” Its dictatorial King Abdullah II bin Al-Hussein — like his predecessors — is a long-time lap dog for U.S. and British imperialism.

Speakers demanded that the Jordanian and Egyptian regimes end collaboration with the U.S. and Zionist regime and reject Trump’s ethnic cleansing plan.

Hundreds of people then marched through midtown Manhattan to Pershing Square. A short rally was held there, in front of Grand Central Terminal on 42nd Street. 

The world is with Palestine!