These are the three social evils Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. warned would destroy America from within: Militarism, materialism, and racism. Decades later, they help explain the divisions in our country that led to the January 6 attack by protesters on the U.S. Capitol. Of the three, however, the role our recent wars have played in exacerbating these conditions is often the most overlooked.
Video produced by Khody Akhavi.
In less than 3 weeks, President Trump secured a ceasefire in Gaza, spoke directly to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky, and kickstarted diplomacy to end the Ukraine war. At the same time, he has also put forward some idiotic ideas, such as pushing Palestinians out of Gaza and making Canada the 51st state.
But it raises important questions: Why didn't the Biden administration choose to push for an end to the wars in Gaza and Ukraine? Why didn't the majority of the Democrats demand it? Instead, they went down the path of putting Liz Cheney on a pedestal and having Kamala Harris brag about having the most lethal military in the world while Trump positioned himself as a peace candidate — justifiably or not.
Undoubtedly, Trump's plans in Gaza may make matters worse and his diplomacy with Putin may fail. But that isn't the point.
The point is: Why did Trump choose to pursue diplomacy and seek an end to the wars, and why did the Democrats under Biden choose to transform the party into one that embraced war and glorified warmongers like Cheney, while protecting and enabling a genocide?
What happened that caused the party to vilify its own voices for peace — such as Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) — while embracing some of the architects of the Iraq war?
And all of this, of course, in complete defiance of where the party base was (throughout the Gaza war, the base supported a ceasefire with 70% majority, for instance).
A profound reckoning is needed within the Democratic Party to save it from slipping into becoming neocon by default.
And with the pace at which Trump is moving, that reckoning needs to come fast. It will, for instance, be a severe mistake if the party positions itself to the right of Trump and reflexively opposes him on every foreign policy issue instead of basing the party's positions on solid principles, such as centering diplomacy, military restraint, and peace. Trump currently speaks more about peace than the Democrats do.
A senior Democratic lawmaker asked me rhetorically last week if I knew anyone who was happy with the foreign policy of Biden and voted for Harris on that basis.
I was happy to hear that the question was being asked. That's a good first step.
Enjoy our new column by the Democratizing Foreign Policy team exposing stealth corruption infecting our system — in plain sight.
On Monday, the Trump administration dropped charges of bribery, campaign finance, and conspiracy offenses against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Adams had allegedly received some $123,000 in travel benefits from Turkish airlines and knowingly accepted tens of thousands of dollars in illegal campaign contributions from Turkish nationals.
A triumphant Adams addressed New Yorkers today; “I thank the Justice Department for its honesty. Now we can put this cruel episode behind us and focus on the future of our city.”
The Justice Department memo cited two reasons for this dismissal. First, the Justice Department invoked a fear of weaponization, suggesting that “it cannot be ignored that Mayor Adams criticized the prior administration immigration policies before the charges were filed.” (All of the targets of the most high-profile foreign influence cases of the Biden administration era were Democrats).
Second, Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove said the decision was not based on the strength of evidence in the case, but rather it was distracting from law-and-order priorities.
If the mayor of the largest city in America being in the pocket of a foreign government is not a law and order priority, what is?
The memo echoed a series of orders dispatched by Attorney General Pam Bondi last week. Bondi noted that the Justice Department will only bring criminal charges of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) in “instances of alleged conduct similar to more traditional espionage by foreign government actors.” Her Justice Department also disbanded the Foreign Influence Task Force, made up of some 50 FBI agents tasked with uncovering covert plots to meddle in U.S. politics, citing “risks of further weaponization and abuses of prosecutorial discretion.”
Adams is the first to reap the benefits of this policy shift, having spent months auditioning for the Trump administration’s favor. Adams met with Trump in Mar-a-Lago, attended his inauguration, and the two even chatted ringside at a UFC fight at Madison Square Garden. Both maintain they were victims of a weaponized Justice Department; "We were persecuted, Eric. I was persecuted, and so are you, Eric,” said Trump at a dinner in October.
Following an 11-year sentence for bribery and acting as a foreign agent, Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) is trying to follow the same playbook. “President Trump is right. This process is political, and it's corrupted to the core. I hope President Trump cleans up the cesspool and restores integrity to the system,” he said outside of a New York courthouse after his conviction in late January.
Menendez had used his role as Chair of the Foreign Relations Committee to benefit the government of Egypt, approving arms sales in exchange for gold bars and luxury cars.
There are several other ongoing cases. Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) was indicted for bribery and acting as a foreign agent, receiving some $600,000 in kickbacks from a bank in Mexico City and an oil company controlled by Azerbaijan. Sue Mi Terry allegedly fed non-public U.S. government information to South Korean intelligence while working at various think tanks. An indictment against New York State official Linda Sun alleged that she was given millions of dollars while secretly working for China.
None of these cases have gone to trial, creating an awkward question of how they will proceed amidst the Justice Department’s shift away from FARA enforcement. Caplin & Drysdale’s Matt Sanderson told Politico that “it will be difficult to sustain an ongoing case that does not involve espionage-type behavior.”
One thing is for sure, though. If Trump’s first moves are any indication, it is open season for foreign influence in America. Perhaps most revealing, Adams was not even charged with a FARA violation. There are other laws on the books — bribery, after all, is still illegal — but what good are they if they are being dismissed too? For politicians looking to cash in from foreign governments eager to buy influence in Washington, the floodgates are open.
A group of Democratic lawmakers led by Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) on Tuesday slammed a Republican proposal to pour $150 billion into the military beyond the increases already planned for 2025.
“Republicans are putting the Pentagon before the people,” Markey said during a press conference on Capitol Hill highlighting wasteful Pentagon spending.
The senator stood next to a large list of alternative projects that could be funded by a $150 billion allocation including new hospitals, student loan forgiveness, affordable housing units, and free school lunches.
In 2024 the DoD budget was $825 billion; the current 2025 budget proposal is $850 billion, but senators just introduced a resolution to add another $150 billion over the next several years.
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) took aim at Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, highlighting the hypocrisy of a military budget increase amid massive cuts to much smaller federal agencies like the U.S. Agency for International Development, the National Institute of Health, and the Department of Education.
“Let’s not be fooled by the hollow claims that Elon is going to go after waste in Pentagon spending,” she said.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) said the $150 billion spending increase proposal was driven by her colleagues’ investments in the military industrial complex, echoing an opinion piece she published in the Detroit Free Press late last month.
Rounding out the slate of speakers were Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, Gabe Murphy, and Thomas Countryman. Murphy, a policy analyst at the nonpartisan organization Taxpayers for Common Sense, lamented the bloating influence of private companies, noting that “half of our budget goes to defense contractors.”
Meanwhile, Countryman, a former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International Affairs and current Board Chairman at the Arms Control Association, criticized the proposal’s emphasis on nuclear weapons spending as a defense strategy. “What concerns me about this particular agenda request by Republicans is that it will contribute to a nuclear arms race,” he said.
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