As families were putting on their Sunday best for Easter services and children across America were unearthing goodies in their Easter baskets and anticipating egg hunts, the American president - a figure those same children are taught to respect and revere - unleashed perhaps the most dangerous, unhinged social media rant of his entire five-plus year presidential odyssey.

Trump promised to destroy all of Iran’s bridges and power plants unless the regime reopened the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has closed to commercial traffic since Trump began his totally pointless and illegal war against Iran. “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH,” the president greeted Easter revelers, before signing off, on the day of Christ’s resurrection, with “Praise be to Allah.”

As soon as Trump published the post, he began speed dialing political reporters to reaffirm his basic promise: to start committing mass war crimes on Tuesday. And then Monday afternoon, Trump doubled down, saying during a press conference, “the entire country can be taken out in one night, and that night might be tomorrow night.” Of the many presidential firsts America has witnessed under Trump, this was perhaps the most jarring and diabolical.

Am I sure that what he is planning to do if Iran won’t open the Strait are war crimes, you ask? Yes. And it’s not really a close call. The Geneva Conventions clearly limit bombing to military targets and some dual-use targets (sites used for civilian and military use). But Trump’s promise isn’t to target power or bridge infrastructure used by the military; he is calling reporters and telling them he is going to destroy EVERY power plant and bridge. That campaign will kill tens of thousands of innocent Iranians who work in the plants and travel on the roads. That’s a war crime.

A Wall Street Journal report over the weekend added some flavor to Trump’s decision. It detailed how Trump’s advisors told him the entire point of the new bombing campaign would be to terrorize civilians. Why? Because targeting civilian infrastructure would create political turmoil and maybe regime change. If this regime won’t reopen the Strait, then maybe after killing thousands of innocent people, a civil war might break out that would lead to this regime’s downfall. If this plan seems macabre and insane, it’s because…well, IT IS.

The International Committee for the Red Cross, the organization charged with interpreting the Geneva Conventions, is also clear that attacks designed for this purpose - to create civilian unrest just for the purpose of civilian unrest - are also war crimes.

Now, if you’re a student of international war crime conventions, you will know that many of the restrictions on bombing are included in the 1979 amendment to the Geneva Conventions - an amendment that was never ratified by the United States. True, but the U.S. has nonetheless honored and abided by these additional protocols even without formal agreement. A war crime is still a war crime.

But of course, Trump isn’t pretending that he cares. His entire threat is to purposely terrorize innocent Iranians and hope the regime responds by meeting Trump’s demand.

It won’t. Iran believes it is winning this war. And their immediate reaction to Trump’s early morning threat was to step up attacks on its neighbors. In my briefings from Administration intelligence officials, there is no evidence the regime is at risk of falling, and the U.S. attacks instead seem to be hardening Iranian antagonism toward the U.S., just as our strikes in Afghanistan pushed citizens back toward the Taliban.

But even if Trump’s war crimes were successful in forcing Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, how on earth is that a victory? The Strait was open before Trump’s disastrous war of choice that has spiked gas prices to over four dollars a gallon in the U.S. Did we really spend tens of billions of taxpayer dollars, throw the entire Middle East into chaos, hemorrhage the global energy market, and lose over a dozen American lives, just so we could commit a bunch of heinous war crimes to simply open a waterway that was open before we broke hell loose?

I raise the question of Trump’s promised war crimes because I worry deeply about our tendency to repeatedly look the other way at his norm-breaking. We do it all the time, and it’s never excusable. But on Sunday, he seemed to gain energy the more he bragged about committing war crimes. There was something unusually sinister about how off the rails his threats were, and we have to understand what the consequences are if this week our president proudly starts bombing civilians in Iran, like Putin bombs civilians in Ukraine.

I’ll spare the “our international credibility will be greatly damaged” monologue. Few Americans, too often living paycheck to paycheck and quickly losing touch with purpose, meaning and connection in their lives, care much for lectures about America’s international reputation. I will simply ask you to query: do you want your nation to be one of a handful in the world that brazenly tries to hurt innocent people and use their pain as ransom to get foreign governments to bend to our will? Would you do that in your personal life - threaten to hurt a neighbor’s infant child to influence their behavior toward you? I think Americans take pride in our exceptionalism - our decision to hold ourselves to higher standards than other nations. We fought and prevailed in the Cold War to not become like Russia - why model their war crimes now?

I wasn’t kidding when I responded to Trump’s Easter morning tweet that his Cabinet should start researching the 25th Amendment. It is possible he has come unglued in the face of a war he cannot win - a war that could be the world’s economic undoing and his political unraveling. The people around him - those that enable him - should stop him from committing these war crimes. And we should speak up loudly to make sure they do.

These markets are, of course, wildly corrupt and dangerous for our political process. These are not markets on events with unknowable outcomes like a basketball game. These are events entirely within the control of one or a small handful of people, who know the answer to the question the wager poses. Imagine a high-ranking U.S. military leader, who has wagered $50,000 on a U.S. invasion, pushing for war at the Situation Room table not because it is necessary for our national security, but because he stands to get rich quick from his bet. Imagine the powerful people close to President Trump using classified and highly sensitive inside information about the war to place highly lucrative, successful wagers based on their proximity to power.

Of course, you don’t have to imagine these scenarios because they are already happening in real life. The day before the U.S. launched its first strikes against Iran, a rush of unusual, high-value bets were placed on Polymarket that the war would begin the next day. These were clearly people who worked for Trump, or were in the White House’s inner circle. Many of the bets paid out in excess of $100,000.

This corruption keeps me up at night. But it’s not what worries me the most. No, there is something much more insidious about America’s newfound interest in prediction markets that allow us to place bets on high-stakes public policy and the often fatal consequences of those decisions.

What does it do to our soul, as human beings and as American citizens, when questions of life and death, misery and famine, war and peace, stop being matters of morality and become ways to cash in and make money? The United States clearly rushed into war with Iran without thoroughly or properly vetting our targets. That’s likely what got over a hundred little girls killed when a U.S. Tomahawk missile hit an elementary school in Tehran. But several very powerful people were cheering that day because they made money off of that tragedy. Every day, prediction markets allow Americans similar opportunities to make money off of the death and destruction caused by war.

I think the transformation of moral questions into financial questions hardens us to suffering, or at the very least, excuses us from grappling with the complicated questions of right and wrong in public decision making.

And these prediction markets are just the latest example of American culture erasing virtue from our public dialogue. Our economy today is built around an insatiable cult of profit and capital efficiency. Every private sector decision is deemed virtuous as long as it results in a company making money or boosting shareholder value. The lives ruined by closing a factory or selling a poisonous product don’t matter as long as the company turns a profit. In the same way that prediction markets gamify government decisions, stripping them of their moral character, the choice to view economic decision making through only a profit lens absolves us from asking harder questions of whether those decisions are morally right and wrong.

I worry that something really important dies inside us when we stop thinking about the big questions of how to organize our collective economic and political life through a moral lens. I think we are built to be moral creatures; we naturally care deeply about the suffering of others. When we can make money off of that suffering, or simply view government decisions that cause suffering as a game that we wager on, it hollows us out in unseen ways.

And that leads me to my second worry. Maybe there is so much interest in these novel markets because it’s a way for increasingly powerless citizens to feel personally connected to the biggest public issues of the day. Maybe all this wagering on war is happening because people have lost faith that more traditional means of political involvement will have an impact.

Today, millions of Americans view our government as captured by billionaires and corporations. And they are largely right. So they’ve given up on using tools like protest or political mobilization as the means by which they involve themselves in the public square. But prediction markets provide an illusion of connection to these big debates, just like your March Madness pool makes you feel much more connected to the NCAA tournament than if you didn’t have a little money riding on it. The problem is that we don’t need to be actual participants in March Madness; we are supposed to be active participants in our own democracy, and when prediction markets give us an excuse to simply act as voyeurs, it degrades our already fragile system of self-governance.

I’ve introduced legislation to ban prediction markets that offer wagers on government action like military strikes and ground invasions. I think the corruption it incentivizes is an urgent issue that demands our attention. But the damage these markets will do to us spiritually, as our national moral conversation degrades further and betting becomes an empty substitute for true civic participation, should concern us too. Not everything needs to be a commodity. There is not reason yet to give up on influencing government through traditional political action. Humans are built to feel and act on empathy, and to engage with our fellow citizens in common action. That is what makes us feel fulfilled and happy. Prediction markets threaten to rob us of that opportunity to think morally and act collectively. Before we choose to normalize their integration with public decision making, we should think hard about the spiritual cost on our already weary nation.

I had been asked to enter the courtroom by their lawyer, who was virtually certain of what would happen the minute the family left the judge’s courtroom. The family would be apprehended by the half dozen, plainclothes ICE agents standing immediately outside the door, and effectively disappeared into a shadowy nearby prison to which lawyers and elected officials could barely gain access.

It didn’t matter that this couple had played by the rules. They came to America to follow the process and apply for asylum. They had a good case. They showed up for all their court appearances. And on this day, the judge didn’t order their detainment or removal: he saw merit in their case and scheduled their next hearing.

But the ICE officers didn’t care. They were under orders from President Donald Trump to put in jail EVERY immigrant they could, including children. And no matter the legal status of the family or individual.

As they got up to leave, I huddled with the family and their young, nervous attorney. We decided we would all leave together, proceed quickly to the elevator, and move directly, all as one big blob of humans, to their ride in the parking lot. Our hope was that those ICE officers might not try to cause a scene, and rip the parents and their child away if they were attached at the hip to a U.S. Senator. Our hunch was right. The ICE officers made a half step toward us but then froze, and the family safely left the building.

It wasn’t the job I thought I was coming to Texas to do. I was there to inspect two massive detention centers that house families (including hundreds of small children) who have been ripped out of their communities by Trump’s ICE. When I was illegally denied entry, I decided to spend the following morning at the San Antonio immigration court, to see for myself the dystopian world that Trump’s immigration police have created.

Families who are complying with the law come to this court. These are not “illegal immigrants.” These are people who are doing it the right way: showing up for court dates and making the legal case for asylum protection. Trump’s ICE is making a mockery of the process, because no matter how meritorious the immigrant’s claim is, most get rounded up and put in detention as soon as they walk out of the courtroom.

The list of horrors I saw is long:

• Trump kicked the local legal aid group out of the San Antonio courthouse and gave the “pro bono attorney” room (it’s still got that sign hanging outside) to ICE to use as their interrogation room.

• An immigration judge was fired the night before I arrived, because she insisted on implementing the law and not ruling against every single immigrant applicant - a clear threat to any judge who is foolish enough to follow the law.

• The ICE officers at the courthouse (who I give credit to for speaking to me) admitted they don’t target criminals; they are looking to lock up EVERYONE, even legal immigrants.

• A giant ICE bus sits outside the courthouse each day, waiting to be loaded with immigrants.

• The prison many get sent to - Pearsall Detention Center - has 1800 detainees and 4 rooms for legal consultations, basically guaranteeing most migrants never see a lawyer before the expedited fake legal process inside the jail results in their deportation. It’s not detention - it’s effectively a campaign of DISAPPEARANCES.

What I saw in Texas was utter lawlessness: an agency out of control, making up its own law - with no respect for the actual law or the Constitution. DHS is terrorizing children and families because it can. They act like they are unaccountable.

This is the same story in Minneapolis (and soon in other cities). Trump is constructing a personal political police force, as fast as he can. He is looking to create confrontations and chaos - especially in swing states - as a possible pretext for something more sinister: the takeover of state elections. ICE is, potentially, his gateway to rig the 2026 election.

Trump’s DHS acts with impunity in places like San Antonio and Minneapolis because it believes Congress will keep giving it blank checks. We should not.

Next week, the Senate will vote on the annual funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security. The current version of the bill - which narrowly passed the House this week, with almost no Democratic votes - does not contain any new constraints on DHS’ lawless behavior. And it provides more - not less - money for ICE than the last full DHS budget negotiated by the two parties.

I know our negotiators had a very hard job. I know Republicans dug their heels in because they care more about appeasing their leader than standing up for the Constitution. But Democrats have no obligation to vote for a budget that funds a runaway, immoral agency just because Republicans are so beholden to Trump, they refuse to agree to any reforms. We shouldn’t pretend we are powerless; we aren’t.

We should demand that SOME reforms be built into the DHS budget before we vote for it. I’m not naive - I know this budget will not cure every problem or fully end the parade of horrors and lawlessness. But there are meaningful reforms we could implement. Congress could require warrants for arrests. It could return CBP to its actual mission - protecting our border. It could require a return to prior hiring practices and increase identification requirements or mandate consequences for violent conduct. It could suspend funding for DHS if they keep denying Members of Congress access to facilities. These reforms aren’t cure-alls, but they would save lives.

On the first night of my visit to Texas, I sat with two boys who had, just hours before, been released from an ICE prison. They were in the facility in Dilley, Texas that I had just been denied access to. It’s called “baby jail” by locals, since it holds most of the young children who have been swept up in raids. It’s a barbaric place, which is why I wanted to see it.

The eyes of these two elementary school age boys were hollow. Only once did the younger boy’s eyes fill up with tears, when his father described in detail the conditions of their incarceration. The older boy stared straight ahead for the entire hour we were together. He looked alive on the outside, dead on the inside.

They had spent Christmas in jail. They called their mother every few days in the lead up to Christmas, begging her to get them out. They worried every day that their friends at school had forgotten about them.

They were not “illegal immigrants”. Their father brought them here legally. They crossed the border and immediately presented themselves to authorities to apply for asylum. The boys and their father were whisked away to jail when they checked in during a required court visit (like thousands of other immigrants who have been disappeared, they were playing by the rules). ICE could have just taken the father (which would have still been illegal). But they took the little boys too - just for the purpose of traumatizing them.

Their mother dropped them off that morning for the check in, their school backpacks in the backseat. She waited for them to return. She waited. She waited. And they didn’t come back for six weeks. Six weeks that have likely poisoned those poor boys’ brains forever.

That night, across from the boys sat their friend from school. He looked to be about 10 years old. He knew they were coming to meet a Senator, to tell their story, and he wanted to be there with them.

The boys worried their friends had forgotten them. But actually, the opposite was true. After the brothers were taken, that friend noticed the boys were absent from school day after day. He remembered they were in immigration proceedings. And so he told his teacher and his mom. And those adults reached out to a local legal aid clinic who tracked down the family in Dilley and eventually helped get the boys out of prison.

No, their friend hadn’t forgotten about them. Their friend knew they were in trouble. He decided he wasn’t powerless. Even at 10 years of age. And so he decided to rescue them.

A lesson the Senate could and should choose to learn. Before it’s too late.

It’s heartbreaking mostly because we have continuous evidence that believing we can change minds or political realities in this complicated region by brute military force is folly. Our invasion of Iraq was an era-defining, catastrophic mistake. Twenty years later, we are still fighting the terrorist groups our invasion created. Bombing Libya without a plan for what to do next was a disaster that has plunged that nation into civil war for more than a decade. Our support for the Saudis’ military efforts in Yemen created the world’s worst humanitarian disaster and made the Houthis stronger than ever. In Gaza, turning a blind eye to violations of international law has led to unconscionable levels of death and starvation, but also the recruitment of more extremist fighters than have been eliminated.

But it’s also heartbreaking because the American public has never asked for nor wanted these mistakes to continue. They know better. That’s why when President Obama asked for congressional approval to bomb Syria in 2013, he didn’t get it. The American public rose up and demanded their representatives vote it down. But, we keep going to war, despite the evidence telling us “hell no,” because of a powerful but wrongheaded group of warmongers and cheerleaders in Washington: hawkish politicians; profit-obsessed weapons sellers; and capable but naively optimistic military planners.

As the nation comes to terms with this latest blunder – the bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities – I thought it would be helpful to spell out eight ideas that should guide Americans’ thinking as they digest the hourly news updates during the early days of what may become yet another American war of choice in the Middle East.

1. There is an industry in Washington that profits from war, and so it’s no surprise that the merits of conflict are dangerously overhyped and the risks are regularly underestimated. I represent several major defense companies in Connecticut, and I’m proud of their commitment to our nation and the products they make. But there is just no doubt that when there is a $300 billion industry that makes its money off of war, there is a ready chorus of support when a conflict looms. Many of the talking heads you see on television are paid by this industry. And as capable as our military can be, political leaders too often let their can-do ethic get in the way of the true risks of overseas engagement. Their myopia on narrow terms of tactical military success blurs out the broader political and social context in the region and ignores the costs of wars in far off places. The war industry needs conflict to justify its existence – and the annual bloated defense budget. So it is often willfully ignorant of the risks.

2. Almost every war plan our military has devised for the Middle East and North Africa in the last two decades has been a failure. Our major offensive invasions (Iraq and Afghanistan) were disasters. Yes, ISIS has largely been defeated, but they emerged out of the ruins of the Iraq War, serving as a reminder of the unintended consequences of our military actions. There is solace in knowing Osama bin Laden is dead and his organization is still on the run, but no one can claim that Afghanistan was a success now that the Taliban – the very group that harbored Al Qaeda – is back in power. Even more limited engagements were deadly flops. Our halfway support for the Syrian rebels just prolonged that war – in the end, a group that received no support from the U.S. was the one that managed to overthrow Assad and take power. In Libya and Yemen, our air campaign just led to one civil war and extended another. Why would we believe that this plan (and let’s admit we don’t yet know whether the Iran “plan” is limited to the Saturday night strikes or if there’s a plan at all) will be any different?

3. The strikes are illegal, and a major setback for the international rule of law that has undergirded American security for 75 years. Trump’s mounting disdain for the Constitution is a present and clear danger to American democracy. We aren’t just on the verge of a constitutional crisis – we are in one. No president can take preemptive military action against another country without authorization of Congress, and what Trump has done in Iran is illegal. But just as importantly, it’s an assault on international norms, which also guard against nations attacking other nations absent a true threat of attack. It becomes impossible for the United States to lecture other powers – like China or Russia – about their aggression if we don’t even attempt to build international consensus for our actions (remember when we used to at least try to get UN approval for our foreign military campaigns?).

4. You cannot bomb knowledge out of existence. Iran knows how to make a nuclear bomb. They do. And bombing their facilities just destroys their equipment; it does not eliminate their knowledge. Richard Nephew, an expert on Iran’s nuclear program, rightly points out that a result of Trump’s strike may be to convince Iran’s leadership that it must rush to build a nuclear weapon once the dust settles from this attack. The next time, Iran could build their research labs so far underground no bomb could reach them, and with the help of partners (perhaps Russia or North Korea), they could probably speed to a weapon. Trump claimed after the attack that we set Iran back “years”, but really, we have no idea. If Iran makes the decision to build a weapon, and they have a country like Russia helping them, they could easily get a weapon in a dangerously short amount of time. That risk is why many of us believed that a negotiated agreement that put in place verifiable limits on Iran’s nuclear program was a safer bet than military action.

5. We didn’t need to start a war with Iran because we know – for sure – that diplomacy can work. If America hadn’t already successfully negotiated and implemented an agreement with Iran to stop them from obtaining a nuclear weapon, maybe the military option would look more reasonable. Yes, we don’t want Iran to have a nuclear weapon, but from 2014-2107, Iran’s advanced nuclear research program was dismantled, and we had inspectors crawling all over the country ensuring their compliance. Trump’s national security advisors urged him to stay in the deal – it was working! – but he disastrously withdrew. But early in his second term, Trump seemed to recognize the value in a diplomatic approach and reengaged in diplomacy and just days before the Israeli strikes began,, There was a real possibility that a new deal could be reached.

6. Even opponents of this strike need to admit Iran is weak, and we cannot know for sure what the future holds. Iran’s limited response to the Soleimani assassination and the recent Israeli attacks exposed Iran’s military and intelligence limitations. Their proxies in the region are less lethal today than a few years ago. Is it out of the question that the tired, elderly Supreme Leader decides that he doesn’t want a drawn out fight with the United States and responds in a way that doesn’t escalate the situation? Sure. But we can’t count on it and have to weigh those risks seriously.

7. There are many very, very bad potential consequences of Trump’s attack. The worst consequence, of course, is a full-blown war in the region that draws in the United States. Remember, after we assassinated the Iranian military leader, Qasem Soleimani, an Iranian missile strike in Iraq narrowly missed killing 100 American troops. Our forces are spread out all over the Middle East and it’s impossible to fully protect them from air attacks in many places. If Iran kills American troops, the conflict could spiral and America would be back at war in the Middle East – something almost no Americans want. Another potentially dangerous consequence would be the fall of the regime in Tehran. The Supreme Leader is a murderous tyrant who wants Israel wiped off the map and has killed hundreds of U.S. troops in Iraq. Even if he were pushed out internally, he could be replaced by someone even more hardline and bent on revenge, willing to order terrorist attacks all over the globe. A third scenario, a civil war in which Iran descends into chaos, could be even worse for the United States and the region (remember it was Syria’s civil war that allowed ISIS and Al Qaeda to grow their power).

8. Israel is our ally and Iran IS a threat to their people, but we should never allow Israeli domestic politics to draw us into a war. Netanyahu’s strikes against Iran began the day his government was up for a no confidence vote in the Knesset. His hardline stances on Iran and Gaza appear to be dictated more by what keeps him in power as Prime Minister than the long-term security interests of his country. And he certainly is not making decisions based upon what is right for American national security. He spit in Trump’s face by launching strikes right in the middle of Trump’s negotiations with Iran (he was so wildly brazen as to assassinate the official overseeing Iran’s nuclear negotiations with Trump), effectively backing the U.S. into a corner. With negotiations scuttled, Trump (wrongly) believed his only option was to join in Israel’s strikes.

This is a moment where Congress needs to step in. This week, we are likely to take a vote that makes it crystal clear President Trump does not have the authorization for these strikes or a broader war with Iran. This is also a moment for the American people to stand up and say we do not want another war in the Middle East. In the last twenty years, we have seen the untold damage done - the lives lost, the billions of dollars wasted, and our reputation squandered - and we won’t allow Trump to take us down that path again.

Yes, AI is a transformational technology. It will likely turn out to be the most socially and economically disruptive technology ever - bigger than the printing press or advanced medicine or the internet. And there is no doubt it will come with huge practical upside for our nation: medical advances will come more quickly, production will be cheaper, complex societal problems will be solved more easily.

AI industry leaders assert that losing the race to control the global AI market to China would be an existential threat to our safety, an argument that feels correct on its face. Of course America should want the jobs and the political power that would come by dominating the AI market. And of course we want American, not Chinese, standards to be applied to AI as it becomes mainstreamed with consumers and businesses.

But if the American AI industry gets its way, it’s likely that neither of those things will happen. First, once AI can reason more effectively than a human (called Artificial General Intelligence or “AGI”), AI will undoubtedly be a net job killer, not a job creator. Once a machine can problem solve better than a human - in addition to writing, creating, coding, and driving better than humans - the job displacement will be massive and devastating. That’s just common sense. And there will never be enough new jobs to keep up. The CEO of Anthropic, one of the biggest companies in the industry, recently estimated that AGI would wipe out half of all white collar entry level jobs, spiking unemployment by 10-20% within the next decade. American society would likely implode if unemployment reached sustained levels above 20%.

Sure, AGI will also create jobs. If America is where the industry flourishes, there will be jobs involved in the development and maintenance of these new supercomputers. And the vexing problems that AGI solves may require humans to carry out the solutions. But we’ve seen this playbook before. The AI industry leaders who claim that there will be net job gains in the U.S. are pulling the same trick that the outsourcing corporations pulled on us in the 1980s when they promised better jobs would replace all the manufacturing jobs that were leaving for Mexico and China.

Not enough jobs will be created to replace the jobs we lose, and even the new jobs likely won’t stay in the United States due to the industry’s insatiable desire to maximize profits. A year ago, OpenAI’s Sam Altman sat in my office pitching a new (at the time) idea: outsource the power supply and data housing necessary for AGI to the repressive but wealthy regimes in the Middle East. Trump is now implementing that plan - evidence that the industry doesn’t really care about creating U.S.-based infrastructure or jobs. They are hunting profits, and to boost return on investment, without any guardrails imposed on them by government, they will use the same labor arbitrage techniques that other industries utilize and ship as many AI jobs as they can to countries with lower labor costs.

As for the argument that we need minimal or no regulation of U.S. AI because it’s better for consumers if AI breakthroughs happen here, rather than in China, there’s no evidence that this is true. But when I was in Silicon Valley this winter, I could divine very few “American values” (juxtaposed against “Chinese values”) that are guiding the development and deployment of AGI in the United States. The only value that guides the AI industry right now is the pursuit of profit. In all my meetings, it was crystal clear that companies like Google and Apple and OpenAI and Anthropic are in a race to deploy consumer-facing, job-killing AGI as quickly as possible, in order to beat each other to the market. Any talk about ethical or moral AI is just whitewash.

They are in such a hurry that they can’t even explain how the large language models they are marketing come to conclusions or synthesize data. Every single executive I met with admitted that they had built a machine that they could not understand or control. One conversational AI program, affiliated with Google, recently began recommending to kids that were frustrated with their parents that they murder their mother and father. The industry argues that there is no need for regulation and guardrails because they will regulate themselves. This is simply not true. They are in a race to deploy and commercialize and profit, and they are paying mere lip service to the ways that AGI could destroy the already fraying fabric of our nation.

And let’s not sugarcoat this - the risks to America posed by an AI dominance with no protections or limits are downright dystopian. The job loss alone - in part because it will happen so fast and without opportunity for the public sector to mitigate - could collapse our society. But because the technology has advanced so rapidly, we have not even had time to fully consider all the other ways AI could destroy us. And the list is frighteningly long.

Fake video and audio, without accountability or legal liability, could obliterate any notion of objective truth. The social isolation crisis that already exists, especially for American teens, could be set on fire by AI chatbots and friendship programs (watch Mark Zuckerberg’s recent interview to witness how excited the industry is to replace human friends with robot friends). The substitution of essential human functions - like composition and creativity and conversation - by machines will likely lead to incalculable spiritual atrophy. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Of course, AI will change our lives in positive ways; I’m no Luddite. Lives will be longer, food will become less scarce, many breakthrough inventions will come faster. But part of America’s genius, especially in the last one hundred years, is our ability to see new emerging transformational technologies, and decide early to regulate and control them in a way that allows for and efficiently delivers the positive benefits, and protects Americans, as much as possible, from the rougher edges. We did this with the railroads, with advanced medicine, and with nuclear technology. We can do it with AI.

Finally, let’s confront the AI industry’s argument that while regulation is necessary, we shouldn’t do too much of it because it will constrain us in the race with the Chinese. This argument assumes, wrongly, that the Chinese will put no constraints on the development and dissemination of their own AI models. We know this isn’t true because as we speak, China is being relatively careful with how it develops and rolls out AI. From 2021 to 2023, China began to build out a governance framework with some of the world’s earliest AI regulations and technical standards, bringing service providers into compliance on issues from ethics, data protection, safety, and security. China’s attempts at regulation have been lighter and more targeted than the EU’s, but its governance framework puts constraints on AI developers - including reporting on how algorithms are trained and required security self-assessments. That China has been actively building towards a national AI law, while producing a cutting-edge model like DeepSeek’s, makes clear that AI regulation and innovation can, and do, co-exist.

A few years ago, the AI industry made a big public spectacle of coming to Washington to show their support for regulation. But when it came down to it, they refused to engage in specifics. They endorsed or formulated no concrete proposal. I thought at the time that was suspicious and telling. And once Trump came into office, we all discovered my suspicion was warranted. Gifted with a pliant White House, the industry made their real request: no AI regulation. They pushed for and secured a provision in the giant Republican budget bill that bans all AI regulation at the state level, knowing that federal regulation is normally inspired by state models that provide both a practical and political impetus for the federal government to step into the fray. Stopping state regulation makes it a whole lot easier for the industry to slow or stop federal regulation entirely.

I want to beat China in the race for advanced AI. I do. But not at any cost. If we do not use government policy and intervention to control for the job loss and to protect consumers, it won’t matter that we get to AGI before China. Unbounded, AGI could eliminate so many jobs and undermine so many of our values, that China will cheer our decision to rush to AGI in our blind, feverish desire to be first. Ultimately, China could end up winning the race, because we destroy ourselves along the race route.

I count myself in the latter category, and that’s why this week I decided to do something that no other federal elected official is doing: turn over my fundraising operation to fight Trump’s corruption, as opposed to supporting candidates in the 2026 election. There will be time closer to the election to do electoral work and raise money to win elections, but right now, I believe all our efforts need to be focused on the tools of political opposition: mobilization, message, and legal action.

Let me explain why I think this moment is so unique (and then I’ll tell you about the new effort I’m launching this week).

Since January 20th, Donald Trump has been on a mission to convert our democracy to a quasi-autocracy. He began endorsing political violence on his behalf (a key element of would-be autocrats) by pardoning all of the January 6 rioters. He then began to use the justice system to harass his political opponents and give get out of jail cards to his loyalists. He began to target law firms that protected citizens against his corruption. He is trying to shut down protest and free speech on college campuses, where anti-Trump sentiment is often the hottest. He is bullying journalists and media companies ceaselessly, trying to suppress unfavorable coverage of him and his thievery. The level of risk to our democracy has never been as high as it is today.

And at the same time, Trump has begun to use the White House as a blunt instrument to enrich himself and his MAGA allies, often illegally. $5 million for 1-on-1 meetings with the president. A meme coin for tech billionaires, Russian oligarchs, and Chinese CEOs to purchase in exchange for favors from the White House. A bill to rip health care away from 15 million Americans in order to fund a tax cut for billionaires. It’s hard to keep up with the sheer volume of graft and corruption - that’s by design.

The Trump administration thinks if they flood the zone and threaten the opposition, they’ll exhaust us. They want to intimidate us into submission. But it's not working. People are waking up to the threat to our democracy and the non-stop corruption. Over the past few months, I’ve talked to thousands of people all over the country. From Connecticut to North Carolina, from Florida to Michigan and Missouri, they all say the same thing: what can we do? People are ready to fight and looking for ways to take action.

So, here’s what I’m announcing this week: I’m launching a new fund: American Mobilization. The priority for this new fund is to provide a meaningful boost to the efforts to build an immediate, nationwide mobilization against Trump's authoritarian tactics, thievery, and rampant corruption.

American Mobilization is going to partner with citizen-led, local grassroots protest efforts. We’re going to give them funding, but also logistical support. We’re starting out by investing $400,000 in three organizations: the Committee to Protect Health Care, Georgia Youth Justice Coalition for Action and Project 26 Pennsylvania. The Committee to Protect Health is organizing doctors and nurses to protect Medicaid in Michigan, Louisiana, and Utah, and Georgia Youth Justice and Project 26 are organizing young people, including college students, to join the fight.

Since January, hundreds of thousands of people have generously decided to send $5 or $10 to support me in this fight. But I know they’re not sending me that money to save for future elections - they’re sending their hard-earned dollars to make a difference right now. So, that’s what we’re doing: supporting state and local groups mobilizing against Trump’s corruption with the financial resources they need to supercharge their efforts.

Trump and his billionaire friends want us to feel powerless, but they should remember it’s the people who hold the power. Saving our democracy will require the mass mobilization of millions of Americans across the country. We’ve got no time to waste.

For more information on how to join us, visit https://chrismurphy.com/american-mobilization-pac/

But there is a clear winner when it comes to the contest for the worst of the corruption: the Trump crypto coin, and the alliance between Trump and crypto industry. It’s all just a shameless scheme for Trump to legalize large scale bribery, and shockingly, very few people seem to have taken notice.

For most people, the crypto industry is an enigma. Ordinary Americans don’t understand and don’t try to understand it. That’s exactly why Trump knew it would be the perfect way to launder money into his pocket.

First, let’s rewind the timeline a little. The crypto industry was furious that the Biden administration didn’t let them run wild. Instead, the SEC and DOJ were cracking down on fraud, scams, and theft, which made it a lot harder for these billionaires to continue their get-rich-quick schemes.

Everyone knows Donald Trump can be bought, and the 2024 election was the perfect opportunity for the crypto industry to get someone in the White House who would let them continue to abuse the public. The industry poured $130 million into Trump’s campaign, and when he did, they started cashing in.

Almost immediately, investigations into major cryptocurrency firms have been halted. Lawsuits over crypto fraud dropped. And then, this weekend, Trump announced a new national crypto reserve, declaring “I will make sure the U.S. is the Crypto Capital of the World.” The reserve is basically a vehicle to use the government to prop up the industry - using public resources to put money into the hands of crypto billionaires.

But that’s not the worst of it. No, the real grift is the Trump “meme coin”, which enables a kind of legalized presidential money laundering of a scale and scope never before seen in America.

Right before the inauguration, Trump launched his own ‘meme coin’ called $TRUMP. It’s a digital asset with a value tied to, well, nothing, other than the popularity of Trump himself. It has no independent value. Its price is just a function of demand. If a lot of people want it, its price goes up. If nobody wants it, its price plummets.

Trump knew his MAGA supporters, wild with enthusiasm during the inauguration, would buy up a ton of the worthless coin. It worked. When prices jumped from 18 cents to $75 apiece, his net worth, on paper, swelled to more than $56 billion. And when it fell back down to $17, where it sits today, many of his supporters who bought at the top lost actual real money. He duped his followers into buying the coin (with its real value of $0) at its highest price, knowing it was going to crash.

Trump doesn’t need to care about the fluctuation of the cost because he gets a transaction fee every time coin trades are made. The Trump family made $100 million just in trading fees, while many of his supporters have lost thousands of dollars.

But the real scam is not the transaction fees. No, it’s the way that the coin can be inflated in value, at key moments, to allow Trump to swell his fortune. Trump held back 80% of the coin, and he will put more up for sale when the price once again spikes. And how does the price spike, allowing Trump to cash in with an additional release of the coin? Well, all it takes is a few Russian oligarchs or billionaire CEOs to buy a large quantity of coin (therefore increasing net demand) for the price to rise.

You might think, surely, that’s illegal for a foreign government or a CEO to manipulate the Trump coin market to enrich Trump. Amazingly, it is not! There is nothing stopping a Russian oligarch, a Saudi prince, or an oil company’s CEO from buying $TRUMP to put money directly into Trump’s pocket. And guess what, we aren’t even yet to the worst part.

The biggest scam is that we will never know who is buying the Trump coin to inflate the price and put cash into Trump’s pocket, because the buyers of the coin are secret! So it’s essentially a private conduit for bribery. Billionaires with business before the U.S. government can buy coin in order to make Trump rich, and then whisper to Trump that they need a favor. And the American people would never know.

As an example, in the first minute of trading, one buyer purchased around 6 million tokens of Trump coin, sending the price through the roof. Two days later, the buyer sold off the entire supply for a profit of more than $100 million. Trump likely made money off those transactions, but we have no idea who the mystery buyer was. Reporting suggests the buyer was likely operating out of…wait for it…China.

It doesn’t stop there. When Trump cashes out, he’s not doing it through a mainstream exchange. He’s doing it through unregulated Chinese exchanges. Why? Because he’s got something to hide - either the sources of the money or the people connected to him that are getting the payments - and faces much less scrutiny by conducting his business on Chinese exchanges.

So, while Trump’s meme coin may seem like some silly, hard-to-understand online fad, it could end up being the most insidious tools of corruption in the history of the presidency. The whole scheme is akin to Trump posting his Venmo or CashApp handle and inviting corporate interests and foreign governments to send him funds. Just in secret.

Trump’s crypto scams are just further proof that this administration doesn’t give a crap about you or helping our communities. The only thing they care about is making money for Trump and his billionaire friends.

The dismantling of USAID has been breathtaking in its speed and ferocity. All USAID workers around the world will be placed on administrative leave at the end of this week. The website has been scraped from the internet, removing droves of public data about USAID’s programs all over the world. Finance systems to pay millions of aid workers have been shut down. American staff are stranded in dangerous places like Ukraine, Somalia, and Haiti, cut off from their security portals. The doors of the headquarters are locked, even to members of Congress. The entire enterprise is illegal and unconstitutional. A President — never mind his unelected billionaire backer — cannot shutter a statutorily authorized agency by executive action.

The work of USAID is not charity — it is strategic. Over the past 64 years, the agency has made the United States safer and stronger. As adversaries like Russia and China and non-state terrorist groups use their financial and informational might to curry favor and win allies in the Middle East, Indo Pacific, Africa, and Latin America, USAID is our counterweight. For the past week, Russia has been publicly cheering Musk’s murder of USAID. Why? They know if USAID isn’t helping Ukraine win the war, or stops tracking and answering Kremlin propaganda on Russia’s periphery, Russian influence will grow and American influence will retreat. In the Middle East, USAID’s work to counter Hezbollah is being shut down by Musk, allowing Hezbollah and other terrorist groups to grow their operating space and recruitment.

But the adversary with the most to gain is undoubtedly China. Few countries understand the value of soft power and investing in diplomacy, economic development, and humanitarian assistance better than China does. Between 2013 and 2022, Beijing invested $679 billion in infrastructure projects across 150 countries through its Belt and Road Initiative. It has financed 226 power plants in 64 countries and spent $26 billion on developing telecommunications networks. China is the world’s largest debt collector, holding close to $1.5 trillion in debt over the heads of low- and middle-income countries. The influence gained by these investments means China gets the inside track on contracts for critical minerals and ports and transportations hubs. China wants to completely control the piping of the global economy within the next quarter century, and the erasure of USAID could help make that nightmare a reality. Make no mistake, China is absolutely elated that their primary soft power competitor is choosing to sit this one out. They cannot wait to run laps around us in the Global South and buy up allies in ways the Soviet Union could only dream of.

Why is this happening? It is certainly not because there are major savings to be gained in destroying USAID. It represents less than one percent of the federal budget. The 2017 tax cuts spent more money on handouts for just four companies — AT&T, Facebook, Verizon and Walmart — than the entire USAID budget. No, USAID is being shuttered to benefit Elon Musk personally. Tesla makes half its cars in China, and right now Musk is in a fierce competition with Chinese-government subsidized industries in batteries, solar, and space launches that he is losing. Musk needs favorable treatment from China in order to remain the world’s richest man. It would stand to reason that Musk, who once pledged that his companies would “follow core socialist values” in order to win business in China, is offering up the dismantling of USAID — a constant thorn in Beijing’s side — as a peace offering to get the deals and treatment he needs.

Musk also wants to focus all national security cuts on USAID because he makes most of his money from Department of Defense contracts. In the last 16 years, Musk has made $20 billion from defense contracts. He denigrates any investments in non-military tools so that he can protect his subsidies in the military budget, which shockingly is never the target of Musk’s name calling.

If USAID disappears, terrorist groups will get stronger, Russia will grow in influence, pandemic disease will spread faster, and China will gobble up key parts of the global economic infrastructure. That’s an unmitigated disaster for the United States. The only interest that will benefit from this catastrophe is Elon Musk’s bank account. The closure of the agency presents not just a constitutional crisis, but a fundamental corruption.

The problem is that it wasn’t true. Colombia didn’t “back down”. Trump created a fake crisis that would not have existed but for his bungling. Colombia and the U.S. didn’t reach any new agreement. At the end of the day, the status of the U.S.-Colombia agreement was basically the same as it was at the beginning of the day and during the entirety of the Biden Administration - only more expensive.

But Trump played the media like a fiddle, getting glowing headlines trumpeting his victory over Colombian President Petro, insinuating that America had won a new right to send deported Colombian nationals back to their home country. The media believed that it was a real crisis, and played it like Trump had won a concession. But it wasn’t a crisis. And Trump didn’t win a concession. All he did was damage a key bilateral relationship and give a giant gift-wrapped present to China. The incident should serve as proof of how terrible Trump is as a diplomat, and how dangerous it is to have a media that is so overwhelmed by the ferocious pace of news from the White House that it often ends up parroting Trump’s talking points and White House press releases instead of asking hard questions and getting to the truth.

First, let’s give the mainstream media/White House press office version of the story. According to this version, Colombia was being very mean to the United States and denying us the ability to send back to Colombia their residents who were scheduled for deportation. Trump, the savvy statesman, threatened President Petro with massive tariffs on Colombian coffee if Petro didn’t comply. For a few hours, Petro fought back and floated his own retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods, but eventually backed down and agreed to Trump’s demands.

But what really happened? Well, first there was no crisis to be solved. President Biden made an agreement with Colombia back in 2022 for the country to accept three flights a week of deportees. Biden was already regularly sending deportation flights to Colombia, as well as Mexico and other countries in Latin America. Most of the flights were managed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) using chartered aircraft made for civilians. However, just to be as fiscally irresponsible as possible, when Trump came into office he decided to send a group of deportees on a much more expensive military plane to Colombia without clearing the change with the Colombian government. Early on Friday, the White House posted a photo of people in shackles being led onto a military aircraft with the caption “deportation flights have begun.” It was a move that was designed to be provocative. President Petro objected, and instead of working it out diplomatically, Trump put on a show of threatening sanctions and tariffs on all Colombian exports, and Colombia threatened reciprocal tariffs on U.S. goods. By the end of the day, the U.S. and Colombia were back to the same deal that existed during the Biden administration - except dumber, because Trump reserved the right to use military planes for the flights even though they are vastly more expensive. Had Trump done nothing at all, the US would be better off.

But Trump did do something on Sunday - he created a pretend crisis and then pretended to solve the pretend crisis. And it’s pretty amazing - and very, very worrying - that most of the press fell for it, resulting in headlines like the BBC’s “Colombia Yields on Deportation Flights to Avoid a Trade War” and the Associated Press’ “White House Says Colombia Agrees to Take Deported Migrants After Trump Tariff Showdown.”

But the other thing Trump did Sunday was open a major rift between the U.S. and a very important ally. Colombia is a key partner in the work to prevent the flow of illegal drugs into the United States. That work will undoubtedly be impacted by Trump’s tantrum and Americans’ lives will be in jeopardy. We rely on Colombia to take in millions of Venezuelan migrants to stem the flow of those people to the United States. This fake crisis, along with Trump’s separate boneheaded decision to shutter aid programs for Venezuelan migrants in Colombia, will result in more Venezuelans showing up at the U.S. border.

And of course, our adversaries gloat when Trump pushes nations in their direction. On Sunday, in the middle of the Trump manufactured drama, China posted on social media that Chinese-Colombian relations are currently at a 45-year high. China’s claim that they, not the U.S., are the low drama, stable partner for South American nations - many rich in the critical minerals the U.S. economy needs to succeed - just got more potent this weekend.

The more Trump gets away with this fake drama, the more Trump will create. President Petro is a savvy leader who didn’t let Trump’s stupid, self-aggrandizing theatrics spill into conflict. But somewhere else down the line, Trump won’t be quite as lucky. It’s time for all of us - including the media - to understand what is a real crisis and what isn’t. If we don’t learn this early lesson, then someday one of Trump’s fake crises will turn into a deadly real one.

Of course, Musk had many reasons to get into bed with the Trump regime. He’s a billionaire because of government policy - the government contracts for his engines, the government subsidies for his cars, the government’s trade policy that allows him to make half his cars in China without penalty. And he knows that Trump’s administration will give him more billions if he’s nice.

Zuckerberg’s Meta has only slightly fewer reasons to care about being in Trump’s favor. A FTC case is pending in federal court to punish Facebook for many of its anti-competitive practices. Trump could make that suit vanish. And its future ability to lead on artificial intelligence is dependent on whether government regulation favors one player over another.

So Zuckerberg paraded down to Mar-a-Lago over Thanksgiving to work out a deal with Trump. He arrived back at Meta headquarters with an urgent do-out: his team was to take down Facebook fact-checking processes as soon as possible. Normally changing a major Facebook policy involves a careful internal vetting process, but as a New York Times expose explained, “Mr. Zuckerberg turned this latest effort into a closely held six-week sprint, blindsiding even employees on his policy and integrity teams.” Why? Because Trump had given his orders and Zuckerberg, trying to keep up with Musk’s dizzying sycophancy, had to act fast. Trump even admitted that Zuckerberg’s actions were “probably” an attempt to curry favor after previous threats Trump had made against Zuckerberg’s perceived anti-Trump bias.

This isn’t how our government is supposed to work. Until now. What you are watching is the construction of an oligarchy, where a handful of crazy rich, self-interested billionaires work with an elected leader to grab power so that the government works to enrich the small cabal of wealthy insiders and no one else. And what makes this particular oligarchy so worrying is that the companies that are folding into the Trump Administration are the tech and media companies - the very institutions that control the flow of information. They decide what news gets spread and who sees it. If they’re in Trump’s pocket, they’ll make sure nothing that contradicts his narrative sees the light of day.

This is made possible by a confluence of factors. First, the entire American economy, and in particular the American information economy, has become dangerously consolidated. Twitter, Meta, Google, and TikTok own a controlling share of the U.S. news and information ecosystem. Changes they make in what news is covered and what news is boosted can move the minds of tens of millions of citizens. Trump knows that if he can influence the decisions of these four companies - and get them to either parrot his message or suppress criticism of his administration - he can bury his political opposition.

But these companies would not, under normal circumstances, be so willing to change their practices to please an American president. Normally, the rule of law and some semblance of merit determine how a particular company is treated. But not in Trump world. Trump unapologetically trades favors with the private sector, responds to praise not merit, and uses his control over his massive following to crush companies that refuse to bend the knee. Every policy is a transaction.

With the online media market so consolidated, and companies motivated by money and profit instead of truth or the common good, no player can afford to fall behind. Thus, Musk’s fawning obedience to Trump demanded that Zuckerberg and other would-be oligarchs, like Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Google’s Sundar Pichai, Apple’s Tim Cook, and others line up to get their piece of the pie. Especially when Bezos’ BlueOrigin is competing with SpaceX for government contracts, Google is awaiting a decision in the DOJ’s case over their monopoly on search, and Apple is hoping to avoid new tariffs on the iPhone. If an oligarchy is forming, and profit is the only thing that matters, no tech billionaire wants to miss out on the chance to get even richer.

I know this all sounds like alarmist hyperbole, but let’s be honest - every democracy and every civilization has an expiration date. And that expiration date, though unknown, always comes sooner when citizens deny that they are living in the final days. Curiously, and concerningly, many in the political mainstream refuse to acknowledge that the MAGA right has adopted a powerful and widespread intellectual argument that American democracy is too weak and irrelevant to last very much further into the twenty-first century. The shaman of this proud, anti-democratic strain inside the new right, Curtis Yarvin, just did a long, glossy coming out interview with the New York Times, titled “Curtis Yarvin Says Democracy is Done”, as if to signal that the underground planning for the death of democracy is now, upon Trump’s second inauguration, going mainstream. J.D. Vance is a fan of Yavin’s work, as are Musk and the billionaire greedy tech-bros who will have massive influence in the second Trump White House.

And the fastest way to destroy a democracy is to turn the media into a mouthpiece for the regime. Sometimes with small but determinative changes in editorial and filtering policy. Sometimes with big, bold moves (witness Trump’s plan, unveiled yesterday, to use taxpayer money to give Trump a 50% controlling stake in TikTok).

I get it: it’s easier to get through every day - even for elected officials - if you just assume the best instead of the worst. If you choose to believe that all this is smoke and not fire. If you just chalk it all up to the usual Trump bluster instead of the actual, planned conversion of American democracy to American oligarchy. But I am of the opinion that the end of the story certainly isn’t written yet. We have the power to put a stop to the burgeoning oligarchy. But only if democracy’s defenders start describing the events we are witnessing accurately and start ringing the alarm bells loudly and urgently.

First, let’s examine why Trump and his henchmen are pushing for a shutdown. In his statement released on Wednesday afternoon, Trump says he won’t support a government funding bill unless it raises the amount of money the government can borrow. Why is this really important to Trump and his rich friends? Because they are planning to pass another massive tax cut for billionaires and corporations and they have no intention of cutting spending to pay for it. So instead, they just want to borrow money - saddling regular Americans with even more debt - in order to increase Ramaswamy’s wealth from $1 billion to $2 billion. Because apparently $1 billion isn’t enough.

In the 6 years after Trump passed his first tax cut for rich guys, the net worth of America’s billionaires went up by…wait for it…$2.2 trillion. TWO POINT TWO TRILLION. It’s hard to even fathom how much money that is. During that same time, average wages for workers barely moved.

But now Trump wants to give more tax cuts to the uber rich, and the only way he can do it is if Congress increases the amount of money he can borrow to finance the tax giveaway.

Second, let’s talk about how a government run by billionaires has no clue about the impact of government policy. If the government shuts down over the holidays, Trump, Musk, Ramaswamy, and the 13 billionaires Trump nominated to his cabinet all get paid. Their kids and grandkids get loads of presents. Maybe a new car or a new vacation house shows up under the tree this year.

You know who goes without pay when the government shuts down? Our soldiers - 1.3 million men and women in uniform who will go without pay even as they continue to protect this country. The people who check your bags at the airport (are you traveling for the holidays?). 19,000 border patrol agents protecting more than 6,000 miles of our border. The people who run the passport office. The janitors who clean federal buildings. And many of those folks live pay period to pay period, so when they miss a single paycheck, the household budget falls to pieces. It’s their kids who won’t get presents under the tree this year.

But Trump’s billionaire advisors don’t know what it’s like to live paycheck to paycheck. Trump never has - he’s had a silver spoon in his mouth since birth. And so they just don’t care if our brave soldiers can’t afford to fill their kids’ Christmas stockings this year. That’s just the price that needs to be paid in order to force Congress to raise the debt ceiling so that the billionaires can get another giant tax break.

Trump’s not even sworn in, and yet we are already seeing what a “billionaire first” agenda looks like. A skimpy, stressful Christmas for regular workers while the ruling class jets off to tropical vacations and laughs at how easy it is to rig the rules for themselves.

Merry Christmas!

Here’s a rundown of my fourth and final day on my eighth Walk Across Connecticut:

Stopped in to say hi to the team at the Ledyard Board of Education. One of the biggest topics that people raise with me on my Walk Across Connecticut is making sure our schools have the resources they need.

Later on, I talked to Pete. We spent a while in his front yard talking about the value of compromise and understanding. He’s worried that people don’t believe in the good — only the perfect. As someone who spends a lot of time trying to drive compromise in Washington and believes in making progress, it was a pretty amazing conversation. 

“I tell my grandkids,” he said, “find a way to get along with people. Don’t write them off because they’re different from you.”

I was shadowing Chris’s UPS truck on my walk for about a mile and I finally caught up with him to say hello. He loves working for UPS, in large part because the workers have a union. Good pay, benefits. Even the part time workers - like his son - get health care.

During my walk through Mystic, I learned that two local chefs are finalists for the prestigious James Beard award, celebrating the best chefs in America. I met with Reneé Touponce of The Port of Call. Also nominated is David Standridge of The Shipwright's Daughter.

There are so many great small businesses in downtown Mystic. I stopped into a few of them — Lighthouse Bakery, Bank Square Books, and Engine Room. 

After four days of walking, I finally reached the shoreline at the Mystic Seaport Museum. It’s always great to see so many friends at our end-of-walk celebration. Thanks to everyone who came out!

That’s a wrap on this year’s Walk Across Connecticut! It was an amazing four days walking from Suffield down to the shoreline, and I’m so grateful to everyone who took time out of their day to share their story with me. Until next year!

This is a quick recap from my third day of walking:

I started my day walking through mostly rural parts with very narrow shoulders on the highway. When I’m done with this walk, I’m calling Senator Blumenthal and telling him he needs to work on getting more federal funding for sidewalks.

Stopped for breakfast at this hidden gem on Windham Road - Egg and Cheese. Highly recommend checking them out!

Mark saw me walking by and stopped to say hello. He is one of many who left New York City in the past few years to come live in Connecticut. He’s a big booster of his new home, Stonington. 

I stopped into the Franklin Town Line Diner. These guys were talking about building new waste to energy capacity for farms in eastern Connecticut. They were eager for more federal help for small farms.

Later on, I ran into Norm. He wanted to talk to me about guns. Such a nice guy who was so interested to talk to me. He supports background checks on all gun sales but doesn’t want an assault weapons ban. We politely disagreed. See - it’s possible!

Climate change really disrupts the northeastern winter economy. On my walk today I met Chris who runs a snow plow repair business. But with no snow, there are few repairs. But he’s a third generation entrepreneur in Franklin, so he adapts - he customizes and rehabs vintage jeeps.

At the Slater Memorial Museum at Norwich Free Academy, I learned the amazing story of Ellis Ruley, a Black American mid-century painter. He was a construction worker who painted gorgeous folk art and sold them around town for $15. He died suspiciously in 1959, found frozen with a gash on his head. It’s one of the great unsolved mysteries in Connecticut history. Some say he fell, some say he was murdered. Today his paintings sell for $50,000. Later on during the day I passed a park named in his memory. 

Libraries are so vital right now as we struggle to keep alive places where people can find community. A little further down the road in Norwich, I stopped into the Otis Library to take an impromptu tour and say thanks to the staff.

3 days down. One to go. See you out there tomorrow. 

Here’s how it went:

My old trusty sneakers were soaked from yesterday’s rain, so I started off the morning in Coventry with my backup pair.

I was passing by a CVS when I ran into Denise. She had just learned that her Medicare Advantage plan wouldn’t cover the drug her husband, who is in the hospital, needs to stay alive. One prescription costs $2,000. She’s a retired health care worker so she guesses that she can find a creative way to get the insurer to cover part of it. But she wonders about all the other people who would just accept the denial. They would either drain their savings or be faced with the impossible decision of letting their loved one die.

“The best thing you guys did was cap insulin prices,” she told me. She wants Congress to do that for all drugs. 

I agreed. “Every other country caps drug prices. We should too.”

Denise’s story is a reminder that even if you have insurance, that doesn’t mean you have affordable health care. If we don’t do something about prices and cost, expanding coverage won’t solve much.

Some cynics think my Walk Across Connecticut is scripted. It isn’t. At all. I spoke with Patty today as she was retrieving her trash bins from the curb. She’s a Republican, a DeSantis fan, and wants Connecticut to start locking up more kids who commit crimes like Florida.

I stopped into the amazing clothing bank run by Second Congregational Church in Coventry. Volunteers were hard at work sorting the kids clothes they give away to families in need. So inspiring!

Later on, I walked by Mansfield Drive-In - an institution that’s been around for 70 years! They’re playing Furiosa, Planet of Apes, Garfield, Ghostbusters, and Mean Girls this week. Go catch a showing if you’re in the area!

I also ran into Izzy along my walk and he was nice enough to walk with me for a while this afternoon. You want to know how the economy is rigged against working people? Here’s Izzy’s story. 

He’s 65 years old and worked full time for 17 years at Walmart but never made enough money to save. He lived paycheck to paycheck. But he found honor in the work. He liked helping people. When he got to retirement age, after working full time his whole life, he had virtually nothing saved.

He gets $900 a month from a Social Security check and a little help from food stamps. He pays $700 a month to rent one room in a three-bedroom apartment that he shares with two other guys he barely knows. That leaves him with $200 for the rest of the month for everything else. For a guy who worked hard his whole life, it borders on dehumanizing.

He doesn’t complain, but he gets choked up talking about how this wasn’t how his life was supposed to go. His wife died young, he moved to Eastern Connecticut to start over, and now he’s stuck, after doing what he thought was expected of him.

His story is an example of how this economy is totally rigged against working people. He did everything right. He worked a full-time job at an iconic American company, and they didn’t pay him enough so that he could live with dignity in old age. 

That’s our economy today. All the rules are stacked against guys like Izzy. Wages are too low. Pensions have disappeared. Housing scarcity is a policy choice. Meanwhile trust fund kids live lives of luxury, and many billionaires pay a lower tax rate than Izzy does.

On my walk through downtown Willimantic, I stopped into a pawn shop. Turns out the owner lived in the same haunted house that I did when I first moved when I graduated college. The house inspired the movie, “The Haunting in Connecticut,” but I’ve got nothing but good things to say about my time there! 

Finally I stopped into Willimantic Brewing Company to grab a bite and catch up with some friends. This old post office is now a local institution. Love all the creative things communities do with these amazing historic buildings dotted throughout our state.  

Always grateful for this week, and especially grateful for the sunny weather today. I’ll be back on the road tomorrow for day three!

Here’s a quick recap of day one: 

Normally, I walk across the state in a t-shirt and shorts (and the same sneakers since 2016), but I started today in a slightly more formal outfit - a button down and khakis. It’s Memorial Day, so I arranged my route so I could pay my respects and walk in East Windsor’s parade. 

Before I got to the parade route, I stopped by Vinnie’s Little Acre. Vinnie started selling strawberries from his family’s farm in Windsor when he was 10 years old. 71 years, he just had his best sales year in a decade. He wants more housing in the town’s business district.

This walk is a lot of me walking up and introducing myself to somebody who’s walking their dog or out mowing their lawn - like Maureen in Windsor Locks. We talked about her family and the cost of living. Her kids are raising their own families now, and like so many others, they’re struggling. We’ve made progress to lower costs, but there’s a lot more we can do to shift economic power to people, and away from corporations.

Over the past two years, it’s been amazing to see how the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is making massive investments in Connecticut. Today, I walked by the site for a new train station in Windsor Locks with State Rep. Jane Garibay, funded by $17.5 million from that legislation we passed in addition to $59.11 million in state bonding and $10.54 million through Amtrak. Talked to lots of people who are excited about better train service in this area!

From Windsor Locks, I crossed the bridge over the Connecticut River into downtown East Windsor for the parade. Thanks to First Selectman Jason Bowsza for hosting me. This is an important day to say thank you to the brave men and women who fought and died to protect the greatest country in the world, and pay respects to the loved ones they left behind. 

After a quick change into my normal Walk attire, I was back on the road. Luckily, the rain held off for the parade, but it soon started raining pretty hard. I had my raincoat with me, and there were still lots of people out and about to meet. We talked about gun violence, housing, property taxes, rail service, and a lot more.

This route goes through some of the more rural parts of the state, so that means there are lots of great farm stands along the way. I walked through Flower Power Farm and found this unexpected guest - a dinosaur!

I escaped the rain for a quick lunch at Nonna’s Pizza in East Windsor. A great local spot. The special today was Hot Dog Pizza. I love hot dogs probably more than most, but I opted for the ham and cheese sub. 

My walk took me right past the massive solar farm in East Windsor. It’s one of the biggest ones in the state, and it’s the future of how we generate industrial-scale solar energy. It takes up a lot of land and can be controversial, but it’s part of the way we transition away from mostly foreign-produced oil and toward domestically-produced renewable energy. It’s made possible in part by the Inflation Reduction Act.

In Ellington, I caught up with State Representative Jamie Foster (and her son, Ben!). We’ve been working together for a long time on basic responsibilities of government like making sure everyone has access to clean drinking water. But that’s not the reality for everyone. There are a lot of people in rural communities in our state who can’t drink their well water. Jamie played a pivotal role in breaking ground on Connecticut water expansion, and it’s a great example of a state-federal partnership. I was proud to help ensure this project got the federal funding it needs to get across the finish line. 

You never know who you’re going to run into on the Walk. Stumbled upon a little turtle in the middle of the road and brought him to safety. 

Part of what makes this week so special is I meet some really inspirational, special people - people I would never meet if I just sat in my office and waited for them to contact me. There are some people who have concrete ideas for me to take back to Washington and others who just want to share their story. 

Grabbed some afternoon ice cream with Vernon Town Councilman Bill Dauphin. Last year, he won a special election that ended Republicans' 18-year majority on the town council. We talked about his priorities and how I can help.

I spent about twenty minutes walking with Bruce in Rockville. He’s 41 years old and has had a really tough past ten years after an awful motorcycle accident. He broke his entire body, had multiple surgeries, and sunk into a deep depression. There were years when he wouldn’t leave the house. But he knew that couldn’t be his future. He always had this dream to go backpacking through Southeast Asia, and he decided he was going to pursue that dream. He finished his surgeries, got back in shape, and mustered the courage to book those tickets. That trip was his turning point, and he left with a sense of purpose and belief in himself. He just got back a couple months ago and started his first job in years. He feels like his life has turned a corner, and man, what a blessing to be able to meet people like that who can give you inspiration.

It was a rainy end to the day, but I logged almost 18 miles. Rain or shine, I’ll be out walking tomorrow, but here’s hoping for some more sun.

Yes, the majority of Americans are living content, fulfilling lives. We don’t mean to overstate the problem. But we do all feel there is something not right with what’s going on in America today – we are witnessing spiraling levels of addiction, self-harm, political extremism, and violence. More Americans report being unhappy with their lives than any time in recent memory, even with record low unemployment and a growing economy.

Governor Cox and I started talking about a year ago about our belief that this crisis of disaffection and discontent is affecting people on both the political left and right, as well as people with no political affiliation. We wondered whether too much of our national political conversation is centered on well-worn rigid fights, like health care, abortion, immigration and guns. We guessed that there could be a hidden alignment between right and left on policies to  help the millions of Americans who are feeling out of control of their economic lives, isolated and alone, or disconnected from their community.

So we each asked a handful of thought leaders on both the right and left – people who have spent their careers thinking about what makes a good, fulfilling life and what role the government should play in that endeavor – to join us for a series of national conversations. We kicked off the initiative at Governor Cox’s home in Salt Lake City with a group of local community leaders. 

The meeting wildly exceeded my expectations. We focused on three main areas of potential bipartisan work, and I want to explain each of them to you.

First, we talked about the trouble people are having today finding friendship, companionship and community. Too many people report leading isolated, disconnected lives – the problem, as we all know, is especially acute amongst children. The discussion centered around the appropriate role of government to help attack this trend toward more social isolation. The ideas ranged from more support for public spaces, like community pools and parks, to help for institutions, like churches and social clubs, that bring people together.

Second, we talked about how to reinvigorate the value people place on the common good. Studies show that happiness is more tied to helping others than to receiving help, but today we live in such a me-first culture that many people don’t think about the ways they can help their neighbors. The primary idea we discussed was expanding public service programs – like AmeriCorps or the Peace Corps at the national level – and how they can help connect people with a sense of purpose and more broadly infuse a value of serving others back into our public life. One caution that several participants raised was the need for local communities to take the lead on designing service programs and the danger of relying on a national, one-size-fits-all model.

Third, we all agreed that many new technologies, most significantly social media, is degrading our connection to each other and our sense of community. “Online existence is comfortable,” said one participant, “but rarely fulfilling.” Too many kids are learning the behaviors of withdrawal, as their smartphones and addictive social media apps draw them away from in person contact with peers. We agreed that we need to keep up the bipartisan momentum to regulate social media.

Friday’s conversation covered just the tip of the iceberg. As we broke up after two energizing hours of discussion, Governor Cox and I agreed that the next session should focus more on the elements of happiness that are connected to economic well-being. A room full of conservatives and progressives is certainly going to have plenty of disagreement on economic issues, but both Cox and I agree that the market fundamentalism of the last quarter century has not benefited all Americans. There is room for markets to care more about the common good, and (this is just me talking) government to help make sure markets operate for the well-being of all Americans, rather than just a select few. .

Our next two sessions will be in Washington D.C. and Nashville, Tennessee, and everyone left our first session eager to keep the dialogue going. In the end, we hope to present our findings on the sources of American anxiety and unhappiness, and to produce some policy ideas for where elements of the right and left can join together to help Americans have easier access to what is commonly referred to as “the good life.”

The big, high profile fights between right and left are important. I won’t ever back down from fighting for reproductive freedom or tighter gun laws or a compassionate immigration system. But those battles potentially mask a set of lower profile but still vital issues where Republicans and Democrats can find agreement and have an enormous impact in people’s ability to find meaning and purpose in their lives. And I think that’s worth exploring. 

It was the strangest, longest road a piece of legislation has taken in Congress for quite some time, and at various points I found myself acting as a central character in its formation.

From October 2023 to February 2024, I was the lead Democratic negotiator on the immigration and border reform provisions that Republicans insisted were necessary to win their votes on the broader national security bill. Democrats took them at their word, and for five months I negotiated with Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma, Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, and representatives from the White House, eventually unveiling a sweeping bill that, if passed, would have given President Biden the tools to help get the border under control.

Those negotiations seemed, at times, like they would never end. They took every possible form. In the most formal setting, we would gather in a big ornate room just off the Senate floor. Lankford, Sinema and I would normally sit next to each other on one side of the table, and staff from Senator Schumer’s office and Senator McConnell’s office, along with our staff, would fill in the ends of the big, long conference table. On the other side would sit Homeland Security Secretary Ali Mayorkas and top White House staffers.

Other times, it would just be Lankford, Sinema, me, and our key staff. Those were the times we would have the most honest conversations about what Republicans and Democrats could live with. And then, at the most sensitive moments, it was just Lankford, Sinema and me. I remember when we were at the end of the negotiations – this session was in Sinema’s conference room – the three of us went into her personal office alone and went through the handwritten list of open items that Sinema kept. We realized there were no open items, and we looked each other in the eye and pledged to do everything possible to get the votes necessary to pass the bill.

I also remember the night when we finally released the text of the bill publicly. I was in my office at the Capitol late that Sunday night, and I started to scroll through social media to find Trump’s immigration team tearing the bill to shreds online and threatening to destroy any Republicans who would support the bill. I remember texting Sinema, “they are going to burn this bill down tonight, before the sun even comes up.” And that’s exactly what Trump and his henchmen did – they told Republicans that it would be bad for Trump if more law and order was brought to the border, they wanted to kill the bill to keep the border a mess.

After our immigration compromise was torpedoed by Trump, Republicans came to their senses in the Senate and voted for the Ukraine bill without the immigration proposal they had earlier demanded. The House dithered over our bill for months, insisting that they still wanted an immigration reform proposal. I kept pointing out that there was, in fact, a bipartisan immigration and border reform bill ready to go. House Republicans ended up doing the exact same thing as Senate Republicans – backing down from voting on our proposal because they feared that Republicans’ election prospects would be hurt if they could no longer use the border to cut campaign ads.

But the truth is that we had to go through the exercise of showing Republicans that they weren’t actually willing to vote for a bill to fix the border. We had to call their bluff. That was the only way to get them to actually vote for the Ukraine bill. I wish all my efforts hadn’t been for naught, but I’m glad to have played a central role in getting the bill across the finish line.

It is not too late for Ukraine. But it almost was. By April, Russian forces were firing five times as much artillery on a daily basis as Ukrainian forces. Consequently, the Ukrainians have recently lost ground in the war, and even though U.S. weapons are now flowing again, it will take time and many lives to make up the time lost.

But recall that most serious military analysts thought Russia would overrun Ukraine in the first few days of the war in 2022. That did not happen. Why? Because the Ukrainian people rose up and fought with every ounce of their being to defend their homes and their country. And they will continue to do so. Until they win.

It matters to the U.S. because if we return to a world in which big nations are allowed to invade and annex smaller nations, then the entire post-WWII world order falls apart. The U.S. could very well find itself at war with Russia or China or another big power. And in the nuclear age, that would be a cataclysm.

I was proud to play a small but significant role in getting the Ukraine bill across the finish line. As I walked out of the Senate on Tuesday night, I passed Senator Lankford. I grabbed his shoulder.

“The universe works in mysterious ways, James,” I told him.

Right now, I’m just back from a weeklong trip to Munich, Germany; Budapest, Hungary; Chișinău, Moldova; and both Ankara and Istanbul in Turkey. Five cities in six days. What follows is a candid account of the reasons for and results of the trip.

Friday and Saturday: The Munich Security Conference

The Munich Security Conference is the most important and well-attended transatlantic national security dialogue in the world. For three days every February, hundreds of foreign leaders gather to set the global security agenda for the coming year. Diplomatic breakthroughs are often achieved in Munich. Alliances are nurtured. Messages to adversaries are sent. Each year Congress sends a delegation and most years I am part of the group that attends. This year, I flew overnight on Thursday from Boston and arrived in Munich on Friday morning.

The conference has two stages (with two simultaneous programs) and dozens of meeting rooms for meetings called “bilats” – bilateral meetings between leaders of two countries. During the weekend, I spent most of my time in bilats with various foreign leaders and very little time in the main halls listening to the official program. Sometimes the meetings are very small; for instance, on Friday afternoon, Senator Chris Van Hollen and I did back-to-back bilats with Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati and Greek Prime Minster Kyriakos Mitsotakis. I met alone with the UN Special Representative for Yemen Hans Grundberg and Montenegrin President Jakov Milatovic. Our entire Senate delegation of about a dozen members met with Jordan’s King Abdullah II.

This year, all eyes were on the American congressional delegation and the question of whether the United States is going to stand by or abandon Ukraine. Of course, it was a hard question to answer. The Senate had just passed the national security supplemental bill, which includes funding to support Ukraine, and so our Senate delegation could confidently state that we had done our job (interestingly, some of the Senators who voted against Ukraine aid, like Lindsey Graham, bailed on the trip to Munich at the last minute presumably so they wouldn’t have to explain their no votes). But House passage is far less certain, and while I told foreign leaders I thought House approval was better than a 50/50 chance, I honestly do not know if that will happen with a Speaker who seems unable to pass even the simplest measures through the body.

On Saturday night, I attended a small dinner hosted by my friend, Alex Soros, President of the Open Society Foundation. The dinner table consisted of Alex, me, Senator Jeanne Shaheen, and four Balkan leaders: the Presidents of Serbia, Montenegro, and North Macedonia, and the Prime Minister of Albania. All of us know each other well, and so the conversation was boisterous, candid, and funny. Prime Minister Edi Rama, an old friend, was in rare form. He told long, funny stories about his adventures in the region, and he traded jokes and barbs with the regional leaders and Americans at the table. Sometimes it was hard to get a word in edgewise.

But at one point, Albanian PM Rama made a pointed and serious remark: “Chris, if you let Ukraine go to Russia, it will be very hard in our region. It will be very hard for people to trust you. The most important thing for you in the Balkans is Ukraine.”

Sunday: Budapest, Hungary

On Sunday morning, I boarded a small military plane with Senator Shaheen, a Democrat from New Hampshire, and Thom Tillis, a Republican from North Carolina (and my co-author of the 2022 bipartisan gun safety bill), bound for Budapest, Hungary. We went to Budapest for two reasons: to push the pro-Russian government of President Viktor Orbán to pass legislation allowing Sweden to join NATO, and to show support for pro-democracy activists who are fighting Orban’s anti-democratic consolidation of power.

We were greeted at the airport by our impressive Ambassador, David Pressman, with interesting news: Orbán’s government had decided to boycott our visit. Our bipartisan delegation represented the highest-level congressional delegation in years, but Orbán wanted to make a point that he would not be pressured by the United States. Not only would Orbán not meet with us, but he prohibited every single member of his party, down to the most junior member of Parliament, from seeing us.

We stopped at Pressman’s house to get a briefing from embassy officials, and he gave us some startling advice. “I think you should tell the press what you think of Orbán’s refusal to meet. And I wouldn’t hold back on what you think of his decision to be the last country to approve Sweden’s membership, even though he swore Hungary would not be the holdout,” he told us. 

I have found over my years of foreign diplomacy that many of our embassies are allergic to conflict – they don’t want to upset their host country, even when the host country is involved in behavior directly contrary to American interests. This reluctance to speak publicly against bad policy is understandable but over the years I have viewed it as a weakness of our diplomacy.

It was sound, refreshing advice. Orbán is a classic bully who thinks that by engaging in confrontational behavior, he will never be confronted in return. And history shows that when you stand up to Orbán (as Europe did last month because of his refusal to vote for an economic aid package for Ukraine), he often does the right thing.

After our meetings with civil society leaders and members of the opposition parties, we headed to the embassy for a dramatic press conference. The room was packed – maybe a dozen cameras and fifty reporters. Shaheen, Tillis and I have traveled together before (In fact, it was on our trip to the Balkans in April of 2022 where Tillis and I became friends, leading to our partnership on the gun bill), so we have confidence that we can effectively deliver a coordinated, tough message when we need to.

Shaheen and Tillis didn’t hold back on their push for Hungary to join NATO and their disappointment that Orbán wouldn’t meet. I went a little further. “I’m going to be honest with you – President Orbán’s refusal to meet is really strange and concerning. We aren’t coming with a political agenda. We are a bipartisan delegation seeking to strengthen our two country’s partnership.”

We knew our comments would make the story of our visit Orbán’s refusal to meet. But we weren’t afraid of it – we thought that maybe by outing his petulant tactic we could press him to move forward on Sweden’s NATO bid.

Monday: Chișinău, Moldova

Tillis broke away from our trip to attend a Helsinki Commission meeting, leaving Shaheen and I to continue on to Moldova, a small country that sits on the southwest border of Ukraine. If Ukraine falls, Putin will possibly set his sights on Moldova, another former Soviet state. Shaheen and I wanted to go to Moldova to highlight the consequences of allowing Putin to win in Ukraine and to show support for the strong pro-American and anti-corruption government of President Maia Sandu.

I was thrilled to meet Sandu, a former World Bank economist who is diminutive in stature but larger than life in the presence she commands. She watches Putin carefully, and she confirmed our fears that if handed Ukraine, Moldova will be the next target. She explained that Putin was not waiting for an invasion, but rather has already begun running a massive propaganda, bribery, and vote buying campaign to try to undermine her government. She wanted help to fight back.

So we left her office to go meet with a team of anti-corruption and counter propaganda groups that are working with the support of U.S. funds and a relatively new counter-propaganda agency at the State Department, the Center for Global Engagement (GEC). I helped found the GEC with former Ohio Republican Senator Rob Portman through legislation we passed in 2016. Shaheen and I received a chilling briefing about the extent of Russia’s covert efforts to undermine the press and buy the upcoming elections, and we left determined to beef up the GEC’s resources for Moldova.

As we wrapped up our meetings in Chisinau, we received interesting news. That afternoon, Orbán’s government announced that as soon as the spring parliamentary session begins on February 26, they will vote to approve Sweden’s application to join NATO. It is unlikely the timing of the announcement was purely coincidental to our decision to publicly confront Orbán the day before. Pressman’s advice had been prescient.

Tuesday and Wednesday: Ankara and Istanbul, Turkey

The final stop of our trip was a visit to Turkey, a NATO partner and key player in Middle East politics. In the capital of Ankara our dance card was full: President Erdoğan’s government was enthusiastic to meet with us. There is new momentum in our two countries’ often strained partnership. Last month, Turkey ended its long delay in supporting Sweden’s NATO application, and Congress approved a major sale of F-16 fighter jets to Turkey.

In our meetings, we thanked the Turkish government for this new cooperative spirit and we searched for additional common ground. The issue I raised repeatedly was the concerning trend of private companies using Turkey to evade U.S. anti-Russia sanctions and send goods that can be stripped and converted for defense use into Russia. This is happening at an alarming rate, and we were briefed that the Turks would claim that they want to crack down on companies who are sending defense articles to Russia, but they are just waiting on information from the U.S. on those companies.

“I have to be honest with you,” I told Mehmet Simsek, the impressive Finance Minister, “from what I understand, in many cases your government has all the information you need. The problem isn’t that we haven’t given you the information. The problem is you haven’t acted on it.” I think my directness was surprising to Simsek, and he suggested setting up a formal Turkey-U.S. working group to go after sanctions evaders. It was a very positive suggestion and another sign of our two nations’ improving alliance.

At the end of day, we went to the majestic presidential palace of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey’s imposing and powerful leader. He doesn’t take many meetings with visiting U.S. members of Congress , and so we were glad to be able to meet him in person.

There were no surprises in our meeting. We discussed a wide range of topics, from Gaza and Ukraine to the Balkans and Iran. Our meeting ran long, and as it ended he told us, through his translator, that he was next seeing our recent dinner partner, Edi Rama.

We left the presidential palace to head to the airport and took our small plane to Istanbul. We had to make one more stop, in the city where many of the pro-democracy activists are based. Like Hungary, Erdoğan’s government has a concerning history of stifling free speech (Turkey was in the top 10 jailers of journalists worldwide last year, and has consistently vied with China for #1 in recent years), and before leaving we wanted to meet with leading writers and journalists to show our support for free speech in Turkey.

“Just meeting with us today sends a strong message to the government that the U.S. has our back,” said one of the attendees.

In the early afternoon, we headed to the airport to board flights back to the United States, confident that we had made a difference in supporting our countries efforts to strengthen NATO and support Ukraine at this vital time. 

When I travel, I am always realistic about the impact I can have. I am not a direct representative of President Biden, but I am a close ally, and I know the Administration can not be everywhere at once. Our trip was a perfect example about how smart, strategic congressional diplomacy can help advance key U.S. interests.

I spoke about how the only way we can tackle America's crisis of anxiety, withdrawal, and addiction is to build strong institutions that prioritize the common good. Churches and unions, which may seem like very different creatures, have historically been the kind of places that bring us together and help us find fulfillment. Supporting institutions that build community and grow social connections must be at the forefront of our work as policymakers.

I hope you’ll give it a watch (or read).

I'm going to talk to you this morning about how I believe we need a reorientation of how public policy meets what Marlon correctly described as 'the spiritual basis' for the problems that we face. You know this, but there are things happening in America today that just aren't normal. Things that we shouldn't accept as standard. It isn't normal for a young woman to be shot because she pulls into the wrong driveway. It isn’t normal that every day hundreds of Americans drop dead from taking a drug that is designed to dull the senses and facilitate a withdrawal from life. It's not normal for citizens to storm government buildings in desperate hopes of keeping their chosen leader in power.

These are things that exist outside the traditional norms and we can feel them multiply all around us. We know a disturbing trend when we see it.

America, in places, feels like it's unraveling a little bit at the edges. It's a kind of social disintegration with Americans checking out too often, turning against each other too often. And too often, sometimes just giving up on it all. You can feel this everywhere. From hollowed-out post-industrial cities to our fractured, who-can-scream-the-loudest politics to our willing retreat away from society and into our electronic devices.

Yes, this is still a great country and yes, there are still plenty, plenty of happy, fulfilled people all across our land. But in the aggregate, Americans are feeling less hopeful today and less happy than we used to be. And many are fumbling about the dark. They're searching for a politics that aligns with their plight.

I and many others refer to this as a spiritual crisis, not necessarily in the strict, religious sense. A spiritual crisis in the way that millions of Americans feel like they've lost their sense of purpose, their identity, their conception of meaning. A lot of people used to find it in church, but less people are going to church today. Many people used to find it in work, but work is just less fulfilling, more cold-blooded than it used to be. Many found it in connection to strong, unique places, but those places are weak and dying, all becoming part of one global, ubiquitous place. Wherever you found your purpose, it's likely a weaker source than it was 40 years ago.

And so I've spent a lot of time thinking about this unspooling of America that's happening. But I don't think enough of my colleagues are doing the same thing. I think a lot of the policy discussions that we have in Washington right now are kind of on autopilot without doing and being based in this hard work of discovering the actual sources of American angst.

For instance, ask yourself: are the measures of success that we have today for public policy truly meaningful? Are they actually rooted in the things that lead to a fulfilling, rewarding life? Mostly policymakers and pundits pay attention to things like GDP growth or unemployment rates. And by those measures, people should be feeling pretty happy today. GDP grew by an astonishing 5% in the third quarter of last year. The unemployment rate is down below 4%. About as good as it can get. Inflation spiked, but it's coming back down. By these measures, policymakers, check, have done their job. People should be content, but they aren't.

Despite all this, millions of people still feel pessimistic about the future of the country. They aren't happy with their political leaders. Now, some people in my business, particularly on the left I would argue, blame Americans for the way that they feel, suggesting that people are distracted by illegitimate animus towards others or they are just ignorant about the true economic reality, the gift the public policy has given them.

I don't think that that's the right way of looking at this. What I think is that Washington is not paying attention to the things that really make a person happy or fulfilled or connected to a meaningful life. And this is the work that you are doing as a part of this really important two-day summit.

We don't recognize that economic success is just part, and likely not the most important part, of the route to happiness. Now, I get it. I'm asking this enormous question, right, the most important question of all, what makes a good life, and that's a topic for another much longer speech, but I think there's a pretty easy consensus on two starting points.

First, people feel better when they're connected to a common higher purpose than just the one that's connected to their own survival and well-being. It's why being part of a sports team feels so good. It's why people gravitate towards groups of friends. Our biology just knows that we're better off being members of a collective with a collective purpose and our hormones, they just perk up when we do work for the common good.

Second, we thrive off of personal connection. We are a deeply social species. We are happiest when we have deep, impactful relationships with other humans. Harvard has this really important wonderful 85-year longitudinal study of what makes people flourish over the long course of their life, and what it shows is that money and career and success and luck, they just don't matter as much as quality relationships, time with family and friends.

And so if those are two of the things that matter more than most everything else when it comes to constructing a good life, I don't need to tell you that we value those two things less than we used to. It's harder to maintain solid relationships today. The common good feels further away from us than at any time in our lifetime. And you know, the data here—let me give you a couple for-instances:

Record numbers of children today report caring more about individual achievement over the health of their community. 80% of students report, for instance, in our elementary schools, that their parents and teachers care more about their grades than about how they treat others.

Friendship is becoming just as inaccessible. Thirty years ago, only 3 percent of Americans reported having no friends. Today, that number is 12 percent. And on a daily and weekly and monthly basis, Americans just report spending much less time, much less time today with family and friends than they did just decades ago. Friendship is dropping. Social isolation is growing.

And that's the bad news. But it's not terribly surprising news, right? Because there are all of these social and cultural and economic factors, drivers that cause us to disappear into ourselves, withdrawing from one another and our sense of obligation to each other. We've got a culture that glorifies celebrity over everything else. It infects us with this bent toward self-aggrandizement and narcissism. Our smartphones, they trick us into thinking that our value comes from likes and follows not contributions to the common good. They also just pull us away from in-person connection. This cold-blooded economy that we have, obsessed with short-term profit, it sends us these clear signals that sacrificing money for public benefit is for suckers. And then flat wages just mean people have a lot less free time. They got to work longer and so they don't have as much time to build friendships or spend time with companions.

This to me is a big part of the explanation as to why Americans are feeling so bad, despite the economic news being so good. And so here's another question – maybe the most important question – that I want to give you today: why does public policy care so much about economic success and so little about spiritual success? Why can't we reorder our public policy priorities to repair the damage done by the triumph of individualism over the common good or to give more people access to social connection and less incentive to withdraw? And if we made that change, what would it look like?

I think it would start with admitting that left our own devices, isolated on all of our own individual islands, we are a weak match for these big, growing anti-connection, anti-community forces. If we're serious about giving people a better shot at friendships or restoring the value that America places on the common good, an atomized society is of little use.

What we need is strong institutions that have at their core these values of connection and community. Institutions that are powerful enough to move cultural norms and reach millions of people. And there are two institutions in America that provide the most space for people to connect with others, that most prioritize the value of the common good over individual achievement. Two institutions that have more in common with each other than they have in conflict: churches, which I am going to use as shorthand for all religious institutions, and labor unions.

Now, I'm convinced that if we want to restore the spiritual health of this nation then we have got to have a more purposeful and more powerful policy of supporting strong, healthy religious institutions and a loud, vibrant labor movement.

I grew up a member of First Congregational Church in Wethersfield, Connecticut. I was an active member of the youth program. I showed up every Sunday night for the fellowship meetings. First Church didn't necessarily give me a real defining theological theory of the case, but there's no doubt that I'm a different person today because of my church experience. Everywhere I turned at First Church there were clothing and food drives, fundraisers for local and global campaigns. Every Sunday morning, our minister listed off the church members who had ailing spouses or children so we all knew to offer a kind word to at the service. As a member of First Church, there was just no way not to internalize our congregation’s commitment to treating people kindly and putting the health of the community over personal gain.

I also just met a lot of amazing people at church. I had friends from school and friends from sports, but I also had church friends. How couldn't you? The whole exercise of greeting everybody in the morning at the pews in services to the post service coffee hour, it was designed to facilitate social connection. Now, we're in the midst of a rapid retreat from church.  Just 20 years ago, there were 20 percentage points more of American citizens that were belonging to a religious institution. That means that millions of people who very recently derived their meaning and their identity from religious affiliation, who found community and connection from church are now searching, grasping other places for that grounding, that companionship. There's no way for this not to have a really significant impact on our culture.

And unions may feel like a pretty different creature than churches, but they really aren't. Organized labor, it's a mechanism for workers to fight for better wages and working conditions. But unions are also a place where people find inspiration in joining together to fight for a common purpose, just like what happens in church environments.

Unions breed selflessness. A strike is the most selfless act that you can engage in. You take action that would have zero impact individually, but by locking arms and trusting your fellow union members, a collective strike like the one that we saw at the UAW this summer and fall, you can change the world. Through collective bargaining you learn to live for others.

Now, unions also build connections. Union halls may not be the social centers that they used to be decades ago, but the act of engaging in collective action, it builds personal bonds. And happier work lives are more likely to result in work friends, and studies consistently show that if you're in a labor union, you are more satisfied, you are happier at work. Finally, unions tend to deliver more reasonable working hours, which means union members have free time, which is really important. Free time, in the weekends and evenings, to engage in pursuits, sports, hobbies, social clubs, or church where friendships and connections are forged.

Now none of this is news to you. I get it. You're here because you agree with this case. You believe in the benefit of religious life. Many of you are champions of strong labor unions. What I believe is that supporting institutions that help build the common good and help grow social connection, it just has to be at the center, not the periphery, of our public work.

First, for progressives, that's about the way that we talk. Yes, there's a lot that we can object to when it comes to how certain forms of organized religion are practiced, and there's far too much division and intolerance that springs forth from political religiosity. But that should not mean that progressives can't and shouldn't speak the language of religion. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't actively lift up the benefits of religious belief and church life and the meaning of connection and the attachment to community that comes from being part of a church or a religious institution. After decades away from church, I've gone back. First, because I want to find that same connection and selfless spirit that I recall for First Church, but also because I just want to reconnect with the language of church so that I can help lead a conversation within the progressive movement about spirituality, belief, and the value of religious membership. That should not, that cannot be the exclusive province of the right.

And when it comes to the way we talk about unions, we just set our sights way too low. There are few things more critical – I believe this – to the spiritual rebound of America than unions. They kind of do it all. They deliver economic empowerment. They give us control back over our economic lives. They build community to help protect the common good. And so we shouldn't be arguing for a level playing field between management and labor. We should be arguing for a tilted playing field toward unions. Workers make more money, they're safer, they're happier in a union. Neutrality isn't good enough. We should be supporting policies and incentivize people to join labor unions as a mechanism to deliver spiritual health to this country. So churches and labor unions, part of the same mission, restoring America’s soul. And progressives just need to be bolder in the way that we talk about both and how we link the two institutions today.

Shawn Fain, now everybody knows him, the President of the UAW, speaks openly about his Christian faith, and how that faith guides him as a labor leader. He says that his favorite passage in the Bible is Ecclesiastes, chapter 4, verses 9-12: “Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up the other; but woe to one who is alone and falls and does not have another to help. Again, if two lie together, they keep warm; but how can one keep warm alone?”

Churches and unions. These are places where people often find the sources of contentment and happiness. The good stuff, the stuff that matters more. These are the kinds of institutions that provide the building blocks of spiritual fulfillment.

In a speech last weekend, President Obama recalled remarks made long ago by Robert Kennedy who reminded us that GDP is not a measure of true value. Kennedy cautioned that GDP counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. We want economic growth, we want low unemployment, but those are not the true measures of happiness, and as government officials don't we have to be first and foremost in the true business of delivering happiness? I think we need to be. I think that is actually our business.

And if that's the case, then we need to be thinking about community and common good and connection –  not just employment, cost, and growth. And that requires a massive reframe of American political debate that starts with empowering institutions that give us the best chance to access that good life.

From our hollowed-out post-industrial cities, to our fractured who-can-scream-the-loudest politics, to our retreat away from society and into electronic devices, we are experiencing a kind of spiritual disintegration, with Americans checking out and turning against each other. More people are reporting feelings of intense loneliness than ever before in our lifetime, and it’s irresponsible for policymakers to continue to ignore them. When government is at its best, we can make it easier for everyone to live happier, healthier, and fuller lives. But first, we need to have a national conversation about the spiritual crisis our country faces.

Over the past few months, I’ve spent some time with Eric Lutz, a writer at Vanity Fair, to explain why I care so deeply about this issue. The piece came out this week, and I hope you’ll take some time to read it. It’s a long one, so here are a few highlights.

Vanity Fair: Chris Murphy Wants to Make America a Little Less Lonely

By Eric Lutz

November 7, 2023

[…] “There are just real practical impacts to people feeling lonely and disconnected,” Murphy told the crowd of community leaders. “Political instability and polarization is driven by people feeling upset and angry when they can’t find positive connection and they go find it in darker, more dangerous places. But I think as I get older, and I get deeper into this job, I just have come to the conclusion that it’s not good enough for me just to kind of adjust the dials of public policy, and as a policymaker I have to step back and ask questions about how people are feeling.”

If you know Murphy, it’s probably as Capitol Hill’s conscience amid this country’s never-ending plague of gun violence. The guy giving impassioned Senate floor speeches calling on his colleagues to offer more than “thoughts and prayers” to the victims of the latest mass shooting. The guy who, after the Uvalde, Texas, massacre last year, pulled off what might count as a political miracle in this era of profound polarization: the passage of a bipartisan gun safety bill, the most significant such legislation in three decades.

But Murphy, who was turning 50 that day in Boone, has lately become as passionate about the nation’s need for what he calls a “spiritual renaissance” as he is about his signature issue. He hasn’t abandoned that long-standing fight for a new one; he’s significantly expanded the scope of it. “You can’t spend 10 years thinking about violence in America,” he had told me a month earlier, in his hideaway office, where he had hashed out much of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, “without trying to grapple with the underlying emotional state of a country in which people shoot first and think later.”

The country appeared to him to be sickened somehow—in the throes of an amorphous ailment manifesting all across our culture and politics. And while the right was offering snake-oil cures, pushed by the most dangerous political huckster in recent American history, it seemed to Murphy that the left was treating the symptoms and ignoring the disease entirely. Worse yet, the malady was threatening to metastasize: Donald Trump was running to reclaim the White House on an explicitly authoritarian platform with help from the Republican allies whose politics of division had contributed to this national disorder. It had become Murphy’s mission, as he put it, to “diagnose and treat the metaphysical state of America.”

It’s a big task, one not typically in the job description of a senator. It is also, by his own admission, politically fraught, and his efforts have already been met in some corners with resistance: In July, when he introduced the National Strategy for Social Connection Act—a bill that would, among other things, establish an “Office of Social Connection Policy” in the White House—the right cast Murphy as a big-government liberal working to mandate friendship through bureaucracy. There was also some suspicion from progressives, who bristled at the outreach to conservatives he considered necessary to his project.

He is convinced there is a growing “realignment” across the right and left around questions of “first principles, the good life,” hints of which can be seen in the skepticism of Big Tech and neoliberalism that has been brewing on different sides of the political spectrum. He was taking something of a political trust fall—and had come to Boone not only in search of solutions, but to begin building a grassroots consensus around loneliness and disillusionment. “Some of what I’m doing is unfamiliar,” he admitted. “What I’m trying to do is a little bit outside of the traditional sandbox that we tend to play in.”

[…] There have been decisions by governments that have caused our social fabric to disintegrate,” Murphy told me later, describing more systemic issues weighing on the nation’s psyche. “And I think people on the right and the left are really unhappy with that.”

He had come to this conclusion about a year earlier, not long after the biggest legislative victory of his career. The movement he had arguably been the congressional face of since the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting—which occurred in the Connecticut district he then represented in Congress—had broken a three-decade logjam. The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, and several other Democratic accomplishments in the first stretch of Joe Biden’s presidency, should have been a major cause for celebration. “And yet, people weren’t feeling any better,” Murphy recalled. “The national mood seemed very stuck.”

The symptoms of that malaise seemed especially acute to him in the lives of kids, who he had seen “disappearing into their phones…being co-opted by this all-consuming consumer culture.” They seem to “feel the weight of the world on their shoulders and have less sort of optimism and hope than my generation did,” Murphy told me. “It’s not a coincidence that I’m thinking a lot more about the emotional health of the country as my kids get closer to adulthood,” he added. “I’m worried about the world that they are walking into.”

[…] “He was really a backbencher in Congress,” said Gary Rose, a professor of political science at Sacred Heart University who wrote a book on the 2012 Senate race, in which Murphy defeated former WWE CEO Linda McMahon. “He was not considered a major force.”

Sandy Hook changed that. “My life took a hard about-face,” Murphy wrote in his 2020 book, The Violence Inside Us. “I now had my calling…my mission in life.” He would spend the next decade in the Senate fighting the formidable gun lobby and helping build a movement that is starting to prove equally formidable.

“He was an extraordinary quarterback,” Senator Cory Booker, one of his closest friends in the Senate, told me. “He was just a Joe Montana–type tactician working the ball down the field and did something a lot of people can’t speak to as a senator, which is putting points on the board.” Or maybe he was more like a hockey player, with a “real ability to see around corners and see ahead for where the puck is going, not where it is right now,” as Senator Richard Blumenthal, his fellow Nutmegger, described him. Or perhaps more of a point guard? “He’s been amazing to watch,” says Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr, an admirer of Murphy’s who told me his own gun safety activism—which included an impassioned pregame speech after Uvalde—has been inspired by the Connecticut senator. “I think the hope is that we are going to tip the scales as a country, where we can actually get a group of like-minded government officials to make some real change.”

Of course, Murphy remains committed to that change. He’s still in regular contact with grassroots leaders, as well as the Sandy Hook families he met in the immediate aftermath of that tragedy—some of whom he counts among his closest friends. “He is just as dedicated, just as smart, just as compassionate, just as genuine as the Chris Murphy you see in the United States Senate,” said Mark Barden, whose seven-year-old son, Daniel, was killed at Sandy Hook. “He just seems like one of the most genuine politicians I’ve ever met,” said Sari Kaufman, a Parkland survivor who was an intern in Murphy’s office at the time of the Uvalde shooting and describes the senator as a personal hero. “It’s like knowing that you have a teammate in the most important place you can have one.”

But his political identity is evolving. The success of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act lent him a new degree of political capital, earned him credibility with some Republicans, and has made the senator a key surrogate for Biden’s reelection campaign. The president worked closely with Murphy on the legislation, appearing with him at a June summit the senator hosted in Hartford commemorating the one-year anniversary of its enactment. Murphy is a “national leader,” Minnesota attorney general Keith Ellison, who served in Congress with Murphy, told me on the sidelines of the Safer Communities Summit in June. “This guy has it all.”

[…] For the most part, his bill to address social isolation—which, as Jillian Racoosin, executive director of the Coalition to End Social Isolation and Loneliness, said was unprecedented in the United States in its scope—was well-received save for some mockery from the online right. “Senator Murphy’s proposal is an important and needed policy step forward,” Laurie Santos, a professor of psychology at Yale University and host of the popular Happiness Lab podcast, told me. “We need more leaders in government like Senator Murphy, who recognize just how common and consequential loneliness is and recognize that there is a role for government in helping support communities and building stronger connections,” echoed Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, whose May advisory on loneliness helped form the framework for Murphy’s legislation.