At the 2025 Progress Summit hosted by the Broadbent Institute, a panel titled “A Stronger Canada: Building Our Economy in Uncertain Times” featured a discussion on the future of Canada’s energy infrastructure. There I argued that replacing fossil fuels will require Canada to double its electricity supply by 2050 — and that public ownership of the electricity sector is the most cost-effective way to achieve this. I made the case for prioritizing highly unionized, dispatchable hydro and nuclear power rather than relying on low-union, intermittent wind and solar. But beneath the technical questions lies a deeper political challenge: the federal New Democratic Party (NDP) must rethink its electrification policy in the wake of its disastrous results in Canada’s recent election.

The NDP’s collapse was not just the product of international headwinds or shifting personalities. Postelection analysis confirms a long-running trend: the party has lost the support of rural and suburban blue-collar workers. Its base now lies mostly among urban, white-collar professionals. This shift is electorally disastrous. These two groups — blue-collar and white-collar workers — have different outlooks and class interests. The NDP has increasingly tailored its policies to the latter, further alienating its traditional working-class base. As blue-collar workers abandon the party, their perspectives disappear from NDP priorities, creating a vicious cycle of decline.

Public ownership of electricity was once a signature achievement of Canadian progressivism. Visionaries like Adam Beck in Ontario, Tommy Douglas in Saskatchewan, and René Lévesque in Quebec ensured Canadians had access to cheap, abundant, publicly provided power. This model, unlike the US system dominated by private utilities, or the UK’s post-Thatcher privatizations, delivered high union density and stable, well-paying jobs for generations of Canadian workers.

Yet this legacy is under attack from all sides. The Right has long served a privatization agenda. Since the 1990s, it has succeeded in privatizing Nova Scotia Power, selling off Ontario’s Hydro One, and deregulating Alberta’s electricity sector.

On the Left, the threat is more ambiguous. Influenced by a “small is beautiful” ethos from the 1970s, many progressives have grown suspicious of large Crown corporations — Canada’s version of state-owned utilities. Instead of defending public utilities, they’ve promoted “community” solutions, models that appeal only to a narrow band of urban professionals with the time and resources to participate in co-ops. These projects do little to meet the needs of most households or support the scale of electricity generation required for industrial and public infrastructure, from factories and mines to hospitals and, increasingly, transportation.

This ideological shift has reshaped the NDP itself. Once an industrially ambitious, technology-neutral party that embraced growth through Crown corporations and large-scale public works, the NDP now increasingly advocates for a low-energy, pastoralist vision — one of scattered rooftop solar panels and wind turbines. That aesthetic may resonate with urban professionals, but it offers little to the working class. The industrial model delivered construction and maintenance jobs on a growing grid, under public ownership and strong union representation. The newer vision lacks a material base — and, in many cases, lacks any appeal to the industrial working class at all.

Environmental movements have played a part in this transformation. NDP policy increasingly pushes for wind and solar while opposing nuclear and, at times, hydro. But wind and solar have the lowest rates of public ownership and unionization, while hydro and nuclear remain union strongholds. And thanks to hydro and nuclear providing more than 70 percent of its electricity, Canada has one of the least emission-intensive large grids on the globe, alongside France (nuclear), Sweden (hydro and nuclear), and Norway (hydro). In spite of this, the traditional environmentalist focus on conservation — “the best energy is the energy you don’t use” — has recently morphed, in some circles, into a “degrowth” ideology that calls for planned reductions in production and consumption. This vision is fundamentally at odds with the needs of working-class Canadians.

The retreat from modern industrial capacity has had political consequences. In ceding industrial ambition and energy development to the Right, the NDP has allowed the Conservative Party to claim the mantle of growth, jobs, and working-class representation — however distorted these claims may be in practice. A party once grounded in labor now risks permanent estrangement from the very people it was created to represent.

The path to NDP renewal is clear: Embrace a growth-oriented industrial strategy — one that delivers real material benefits to workers. Rebuild public power. Champion large-scale, unionized electrification. Reclaiming this tradition means more than policy correction; it’s a question of political survival. If the party continues to chase a narrow, urban professional base, it faces self-imposed electoral “degrowth” and irrelevance.

The NDP’s future depends on reclaiming its roots and fighting for the workers who built this country. The alternative is a slow fade into political obscurity.

Here’s the elevator pitch: It’s “Left, Right, and Center” meets “Siskel and Ebert.” Three friends from different ideological perspectives discuss the movies and controversies (or nontroversies!) about them.

Featuring bonus Friday episodes exclusively for Bulwark+ members.

Featuring bonus Friday episodes exclusively for Bulwark+ members.

THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION REVELS in both-sidesism. Trump is weaponizing DOJ? So what? We are just responding to what Biden did. It’s a common trope.

But it is a trope that should be rejected whenever it lacks a factual foundation. More often than not, President Trump’s both-sidesism is based on a false equivalency.

The current debate about “universal injunctions”—when federal district judges issue injunctions applicable nationwide—is just such a case. Trump wants you to think that he is the victim of district court judges gone crazy enjoining his actions. To make that case he also wants you to think that what is happening to him is the same thing that happened to Biden’s policies—district court judges interfering with executive prerogative.

But that’s just not the case. And diving into the facts makes it clear that this argument really isn’t about universal injunctions—cases where a district court judge grants interim equitable relief that applies across the entire country. The argument is really about forum-shopping and judicial gerrymandering. MAGA has done these things. Trump’s opponents don’t.

The facts on the ground are that the universal injunctions against Trump are truly universal. As of today, more than twenty different federal district court judges have issued injunctive relief in at least 180 different cases (and the number goes up with every passing day). There is no good evidence that Trump’s opponents are forum-shopping—bringing cases before courts where there is the greatest expectation of having judges who will rule in their favor.

The political valence of those judges is across the board. One of the most stunning of the rebukes to Trump came from a Trump-appointed conservative judge in South Texas who was the first judge in the nation to reach the merits of Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelans and declared it unlawful. Another was when conservative icon J. Harvie Wilkinson from Virginia condemned Trump’s assault on the judiciary.

Likewise, Trump has lost all across the country. He has lost in Massachusetts, where his assaults on Harvard have been rejected. He has lost in San Francisco, where his wholesale reorganization of the federal government has been paused. In the immigration field he has lost not only in Texas but in Maryland, Vermont, and New Jersey.

By contrast, the overwhelming majority of the universal injunction cases against Biden polices were forum-shopped to specific judges. In Texas, there are a couple of locations where a single federal district court judge presides over a division of the district (a division being a subunit). By filing a case in a particular division, a litigant could almost guarantee drawing a particular judge.

It is no accident, then, that dozens of injunctions were sought by MAGA Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in two separate one-judge divisions. By March 2023, Paxton’s office had filed 28 lawsuits against the Biden administration in federal district courts in Texas; of those, 18 were filed in single-judge divisions, including Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s division and a single-judge division held by another Trump appointee, Judge Drew Tipton. Judge Kacsmaryk is a Trump-appointed judge who opposes abortion. He tried to universally ban the use of mifepristone—a ban that was unanimously reversed by the Supreme Court. Judge Tipton, meanwhile, ruled against Biden’s immigration policy—a decision that was overturned by the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, Reed O’Connor—another one-judge division holder—has become the MAGA go-to judge for rulings on guns (his ban on regulating receiver banks was overturned by the Supreme Court) and opposition to the Affordable Care Act (described as a “lawless . . . mockery of the rule of law” that was, again, overturned by the Supreme Court).

To be sure, some of the injunctions against Trump have, been overturned by the Supreme Court—most recently and notably in affirming Trump’s authority to fire the members of independent boards (like the NLRB) under his executive authority. Not all injunctions issued against Trump deserve to be sustained.

But what is striking is that it is only now, when universal injunctions bite against conservative initiatives, that the Supreme Court has begun to think about reining in their use. It’s almost as if, dare one say it, sauce for the liberal goose tastes more bitter when used to season the conservative gander.

TO BE FAIR, SOME ASPECTS OF THE ARGUMENT really are principled discussions of judicial power and the scope of equitable relief. Some conservative jurists, like Justice Neil Gorsuch, have been complaining about the actions of district judges since before the Biden administration. And there are good-faith arguments to be made that the power to enjoin the entire nation is somewhat ahistorical (though there is equally good evidence to the contrary).

More to the point, as a practical matter there are good reasons for legal analysts—liberal and conservative alike—to oppose the arrogation of judicial power that allows a single judge to block federal policy. In a world in which we could have confidence in the good faith of an administration and a presumption as to its regularity of operation, universal injunctions would be a little-used safety-valve check on executive authority.

But today, we live in a different world. One where MAGA gamesmanship and judicial forum-shopping were instrumental in frustrating various Biden initiatives. Now that the shoe is on the other foot, it seems quite possible that the Court will depower judicial opposition in the service of conservative policy.

Share

WHEN WHITE SMOKE DRIFTED over the Sistine Chapel and the name Leo XIV was announced earlier this month, billions of Catholics and non-Catholics alike around the world raced to learn more about the new pontiff. Born Robert Francis Prevost and raised in Chicago, he is the first American to ascend to the papacy. He is a product of an American Catholic family and an alumnus of American Catholic institutions, having graduated from Villanova and the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago before joining the Order of St. Augustine and spending years in missionary service in Peru. As news of his election spread, so did Chicago-themed memes and other displays of hometown pride.

A small number of Americans, though, believe we’ve already had an American pope. Unrecognized by the Vatican and distant from mainstream Roman Catholicism, a handful of would-be pontiffs have made claims to the throne of St. Peter, enjoying support from internet users, eliciting the curiosity of many who came across them, and attracting followings—dedicated if not large. Few of these figures ever set foot in a seminary, let alone rose through the clerical ranks; you won’t find them in cathedrals or basilicas. Their holy haunts are garages, rental halls, and the occasional roadside chapel. And while they can be found at the very edge of the religious fringe, these figures personify the continuing challenges to papal authority presented by and within our postmodern age.

The main thing that unites this diverse bunch of papal claimants is their shared rejection of Vatican II. Convened between 1962 and 1965, the Second Vatican Council was a landmark effort by the Roman Catholic Church to engage more directly with the modern world. Initiated by Pope John XXIII, the council introduced sweeping reforms: It permitted the Mass to be celebrated in vernacular languages rather than Latin, emphasized ecumenical dialogue with Orthodox and Protestant communities, redefined the Church’s relationship with non-Christian religions (especially Judaism), and shifted the Church’s tone from one of hierarchical authority to one of pastoral outreach.

For many, these changes felt like an enlivening wind, in keeping with Pope John’s (possibly apocryphal) call to “open the windows of the Church” and let some fresh air into it. Chief among the council’s champions was Pope John Paul II, who had attended Vatican II as a young bishop and later embodied its spirit through global outreach, interfaith dialogue, and a renewed emphasis on human dignity. He also helped modernize the papacy itself, embracing television, global travel, and media interviews to bring the Church’s message to a wider, contemporary audience.

But while some Catholics found Vatican II exhilarating, for others, it was deeply disorienting. Many Catholics felt alienated by the rapid changes, whether because they preferred the Latin Mass or were uncomfortable with various other reforms.

This sense of upheaval gave rise to movements like the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), founded by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in 1970, which flatly rejected key aspects of Vatican II and has maintained an uneasy relationship with Rome ever since while undergoing continuous institutional and communal growth. Even among conservative Catholics who don’t go as far as SSPX, Vatican II remains a point of deep concern and contention, and it remains an abiding preoccupation among hyperonline Catholic commentators. The resurgence of young Catholic women wearing veils, the renewed popularity of the Latin Mass, and the proliferation of apologists defending every conceivable Church teaching all point to a growing skepticism toward, or at least a re-evaluation of, Vatican II’s more open ethos.

There are also those so radical as to not only reject the council but also to deny the legitimacy of the popes who have upheld it. These are the sedevacantists—those who believe “the seat”—sedes, referring to the papal throne—is “vacant,” which is to say, the one who currently occupies it is illegitimate. Sedevacantists hold that this has been the case since the 1958 death of Pope Pius XII on the grounds that all officially recognized popes since Vatican II have embraced its alleged heresies. In the words of Philippe Roy-Lysencourt, a scholar of Catholic traditionalism, “For these movements, the council is like a foreign body in the life of the Church, like a cancer to be fought.” While its community of adherents is small and fragmented, sedevacantism represents the furthest extreme of traditionalist dissent—after all, who else would answer “no” to the question, “Is the Pope Catholic?”

And way out at the furthest reaches of the sedevacantist world, we find a handful of those who, unwilling to wait for a legitimate pope to emerge, have taken matters into their own hands. These are the people who have conducted their own conclaves in living rooms and hotel conference rooms, and who claim to have found St. Peter’s true successor living in their own hometowns.

Share

THE STORY OF OUR COUNTRY’S original homegrown papal claimant must be regarded as a prelude, because his actions took place decades before the Second Vatican Council that would unite the later generation of faux popes in opposition to it. Adam Anthony Oraczewski, a Polish-born immigrant, declared himself “Pope Adam II” in 1927 following several years of religious mischief, fraud, and forgery, much of his behavior likely resulting from undiagnosed mental illness. At one point, he circulated a photo to newspapers that depicted him in an approximation of papal garb; a reporter at one of the papers pointed out that the young would-be pontiff had left his tennis shoes on for the picture.

It would be half a century before the first of the Vatican II–rejecting American-born papal claimants would emerge. Chester Olszewski was originally an Episcopal priest in Pennsylvania. After encountering Anne Poore, a visionary claiming miraculous experiences and stigmata, Olszewski embraced a radical traditionalist Catholicism. He would eventually claim to receive his own mystical visions, and in 1977, he proclaimed himself Pope “Chriszekiel Elias,” later adopting the name “Peter II.” He led a small sect calling itself the True Catholic Church, rooted in apocalyptic Marian devotion; it has since faded into obscurity.

A little over two decades later, in 1998, Lucian Pulvermacher, a former Capuchin friar from Wisconsin, was elected pope by a roughly fifty-member conclave of sedevacantist lay people associated with the True Catholic Church network. Taking the name “Pius XIII,” he operated his ministry and issued papal decrees from a trailer in Kalispell, Montana, and later from Springdale, Washington. He died on November 30, 2009, at the age of 91. His followers’ plans to convene a new conclave to choose a successor have so far come to naught.

Another: Citing inspiration via mystical revelation, Reinaldus M. Benjamins of Malone, New York, claimed to be “Pope Gregory XIX.” But as “alternative popes” researcher Magnus Lundberg writes, little is known of Benjamins today.

But the best-known American claimant to the papacy is the late David Bawden, known to many by his chosen papal name of “Pope Michael I.”

Born in Oklahoma in 1959 and raised in a fiercely traditionalist Catholic household, David Bawden came of age believing that the Second Vatican Council was not a reform but a rupture, one that cut the institutional Church off from its own timeless teachings and liturgical beauty. His family refused to attend the post-conciliar Mass, clung to pre-1958 catechisms, and eventually aligned with the dissenting SSPX. Bawden enrolled in an SSPX seminary but was dismissed after a brief tenure, prompting him to pursue his theological education on his own—through books, correspondence with traditionalist and sedevacantist Catholics, and fervent prayer. By the mid-1980s, he had moved on from the SSPX to embrace outright sedevacantism.

Convinced that the Catholic Church was in a state of emergency, Bawden took a radical step. In 1990, at the age of 30, he gathered five others (including his parents) into a makeshift conclave in a Kansas thrift store chapel. They elected him pope by unanimous vote. He took the name “Michael I” and claimed divine sanction to restore what Rome had lost. From a farmhouse-turned-chapel in Delia, Kansas, he spent the next three decades issuing papal decrees, publishing newsletters, and maintaining a website called “Vatican in Exile.” Toward the end of his life, he had a channel on YouTube, a platform on which his sermons, theological discussions, interviews, and explanations of his papal claim have been watched by thousands.

While many dismissed him as a crank, a curiosity, a theological prank, or a person disturbed in the manner of his predecessor Oraczewski, Bawden’s sincerity was difficult to deny. As documented in the 2010 film Pope Michael, he lived with monastic simplicity, took no salary, and led a quiet life of devotion alongside his elderly mother, Tickie. He prayed daily for the Church, answered emails from curious seekers, and carried out his self-imposed papal duties with unwavering conviction.

In 2011, after more than two decades without the ability to celebrate the sacraments (despite claiming to be pope), Bawden was ordained a priest and consecrated a bishop by Robert Biarnesen, an independent bishop from a schismatic Old Catholic lineage (he himself had only just been consecrated a month prior by Bishop Alexander Swift Eagle Justice). Because Bawden had never been ordained by a bishop, valid or otherwise, prior to this, he had taken himself to be unable to perform even the most basic sacramental duties of the priesthood, let alone exercise the full authority of his alternative papacy. Beginning in 2011, though, Bawden at last felt authorized to celebrate Mass, hear confessions, and ordain others, a possibility that he seized with his first (and possibly only) seminarian, Phil Friedl.

His movement remained minuscule, with perhaps a few dozen core followers, but the internet gave Pope Michael surprising reach, drawing adherents from as far away as India and the Philippines. One of those, a Filipino bishop named Rogelio Martínez, became his right-hand man and, after Bawden’s death in 2022, Martínez was elected by his predecessor’s remaining followers to become “Pope Michael II.” He still posts to the movement’s YouTube channel, but viewership remains scarce.

Share

LEO XIV’S PAPACY HAS NOW BEGUN. The Chicagoan begins his tenure at a time when papal authority is contested. Pope Francis, pastoral reformer that he was, was a figure of great controversy among both liberals and conservatives in the Church, and especially among hyperonline traditionalists, for whom he represented a corruption of the office. For years, such figures accused him of sowing confusion, undermining tradition, and embracing a modernist agenda. Some of his critics began to flirt openly with sedevacantist ideas, creating a cultural commotion in the Church.

So it is that in our digital present, when YouTube apologists, livestreamed liturgies, and anonymous Twitter accounts shape the Catholic imagination, the claims of figures like Bawden no longer feel quite so radical or strange. This is part of what Leo XIV has inherited from Francis: a Church that is struggling, along with every other societal institution, to find its way in an increasingly chaotic information environment—a virtual world in which, it seems, everyone gets to be their very own pope.

What Happened: Three Democratic senators asked the Justice Department and other federal authorities to investigate whether members of the Department of Government Efficiency helping to downsize federal agencies violated conflict of interest laws by holding stocks in companies that their agencies regulate.

The letter sent Wednesday by Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Ron Wyden and Jack Reed cited ProPublica reporting on how one such aide assigned to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau helped oversee the mass layoffs of the agency’s staff while holding as much as $715,000 in stocks that bureau employees are prohibited from owning.

What They Said: The DOGE aides’ cases “underscore what appears to be a pervasive problem with Elon Musk and DOGE employees trampling ethics rules and laws to benefit their own pockets at the expense of the American public,” the lawmakers said in the letter.

Warren and Reed sit on the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. Wyden is the ranking member of the chamber’s Committee on Finance.

The letter asked Attorney General Pam Bondi, the Office of Government Ethics and three inspectors general with jurisdiction over the CFPB, Treasury and IRS to investigate the DOGE aides’ finances, including whether they’d appropriately divested from any conflicted holdings, and their specific work at the agencies. “The American people deserve answers regarding whether their own interests may have been undermined by Trump Administration officials that acted in violation of federal ethics laws,” the letter said.

Background: In recent weeks, ProPublica reported that at least two DOGE aides assigned to the CFPB helped coordinate mass layoffs at the agency while maintaining financial arrangements that experts have said either are or appear to be conflicts of interests. In the case of Gavin Kliger, ProPublica reported that ethics attorneys at the bureau warned the 25-year-old software engineer that he could not hold onto his stocks and also participate in major agency actions. Days later, he nevertheless helped oversee the layoffs of nearly 90% of the CFPB’s staff — an action that one expert called a “pretty clear-cut violation” of the federal criminal conflict-of-interest statute.

Response: The DOJ declined comment. Neither the Treasury Department, the IRS, DOGE nor the CFPB responded to requests for comment. A spokesperson for the OGE said the agency doesn’t comment on “situations in specific agencies.” Kliger didn’t respond to emails seeking comment. The White House has previously said that “these allegations are another attempt to diminish DOGE’s critical mission.” It added that Kliger “did not even manage” the layoffs, “making this entire narrative an outright lie.”

Why It Matters: The Trump administration has repeatedly tested the boundaries of mixing personal and public business, from the president’s own foray into the cryptocurrency industry to Elon Musk’s dual roles as both DOGE’s founder and a major federal contractor. (Musk announced Wednesday that he’s leaving the administration.)

The lawmakers’ letter adds to a growing chorus of good-government groups that have called for an outside investigation into Kliger’s actions at the CFPB. Federal prosecutors can bring charges against government workers who violate the criminal conflict of interest statute, an offense that’s punishable with a fine of up to $250,000 and up to five years in prison. But one expert previously told ProPublica that’s unlikely to happen under Trump, as the administration “greatly deprioritized public integrity, ethics and public corruption as issues for them.”

In 2020, as the world was gripped by the coronavirus, the killing of George Floyd shocked Americans into action and into the streets by the millions, protesting the unrelenting killing of Black people by police. 

The moment sparked a nascent reckoning in America around systemic racism and institutional inequality — in many cases, with Black women at the center. They led  protests and were hired to fix broken institutions and diversify boards. They also did the emotional labor of educating their friends and neighbors. Already the backbone of our democracy, many were called on to also be a bridge to racial healing.

Then, it seemed like the country was ready to listen, understand and move toward a freer, fairer, more equal democracy. Five years later, many of these same Black women find themselves at the center of a backlash, confronted with attacks on the diversity, equity and inclusion efforts that were previously championed. 

As I reflected on the five-year anniversary of the start of the reckoning, I thought about the Black women who were on the frontlines — in the streets and workplace, from the boardroom to the classroom. At this milestone, I wanted to hear from them about what this moment had cost them, then and now.

I reached out to several Black women I talk to often with a single question: “Five years after the racial reckoning of 2020, what did that moment ask of you — and what, if anything, did it give back?” Their answers, in their own words (with some editing for length and clarity), were insightful and honest. 

Nikole Hannah-Jones, staff writer, The New York Times Magazine

The so-called racial reckoning of 2020 asked me to do all that I could, with the platform I had, to use that moment to push us past the superficial to a deeper historical understanding of what spawned the reckoning and the scale of the debt that justice required. Those of us who are students of history, who spend our time analyzing this country from a racial lens, understood that the racial reckoning would not last long because the American attention span to injustice is always fleeting. 

We also knew an intense backlash was sure to follow. So, I tried with my writing and my voice to push us as far towards transformation as possible, understanding the short window we had. That was my obligation. But in trying to fulfill that obligation, the reckoning also asked me to open myself up to an intensity of personal attack and efforts to discredit my work that I had never known. In that period, I saw how alone you can be in doing this work once it becomes unpopular. In every way, the so-called racial reckoning of 2020 was a time of clarity. 

What did the racial reckoning of 2020 give back five years later? It gave back everything. The allies who marched in the street for racial justice have gone largely silent, and companies have abandoned their efforts. Black people striving for equality have been blamed for the electoral choices of White voters. People are being killed by the police in higher numbers than they were when George Floyd was murdered. And a significant segment of the media has abetted the backlash. Things have reverted so fiercely that the racial reckoning feels like it was but a dream because we are most certainly now living in a nightmare.

Joy-Ann Reid, host and commentator

The uprisings that spread across the [United States] five years ago despite the pandemic were passionate and multiracial. Even the fires and the damage were quickly revealed to be both rare and often caused by right-wing interlopers. Minneapolis-based Target led a veritable corporate parade of embracing Black Lives Matter, Black people, Black executives, Black small businesses and Black customers. We watched as at long last, military bases named inconceivably for Confederate traitors were renamed. Even the face of American leadership and justice changed, as a new president, Joe Biden, brought powerful Black women with him, including Vice President Kamala Harris and Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. 

Still, I honestly was shocked when former officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of killing Mr. Floyd. But it felt like a new wind was blowing in America. 

But like everything in this country, the wind shifted back quickly. Trump defeated Harris to become president again. The Justice Department has ended all federal intervention against violent police departments. Trump’s wholly unqualified defense secretary moved to change the names back. 

The violent insurrection of January 6, 2021, has been certified as patriotic and pardon-worthy by Trump and his party. And our democracy itself is being dismantled around us, by men and women whose apparent true religion is hating diversity, equity and inclusion. What I’ve learned about America five years after George Floyd’s public lynching on that ordinary street in Minneapolis is what I already knew: that this country changes only with vicious reluctance, and that it shows no greater passion than when it changes back.

Karine Jean-Pierre, former White House press secretary

As a Black woman, I wasn’t newly awakened in 2020 — I was already living the reality the world was suddenly recognizing. What that moment did ask of me was to hold space for others’ awakening, to carry even more weight in naming and resisting the structures harming us, all while navigating my own grief and exhaustion. It demanded visibility, labor and vulnerability — often without adequate care or reciprocity.

And yet, five years later, I sit with the weight of this anniversary and ask: Are we worse off now than we were then? In many ways, yes. The initial wave of momentum — the commitments, the DEI initiatives, the promises of transformation — are being undone or abandoned. We’re seeing backlash codified into policy, historical truths banned from classrooms, and the language of equity distorted and weaponized. This isn’t fatigue — it’s systemic resistance. And as we look around today, it’s hard not to feel that we are going backwards.

But that doesn’t erase what the reckoning gave us: sharper clarity, deeper solidarity and a refusal to be gaslit. It taught me that the work we do — whether seen or unseen — is sacred and ongoing. I’m reminded of the words of Maya Angelou: “We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.” The system may try to undo the progress, but our presence, our resistance and our vision for justice endure.

Janai Nelson, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund 

The 2020 racial reckoning dared Black people to suspend a cynicism born from centuries of betrayal in guarded hope that America might do better. Five years later, it’s been reconfirmed that this country remains gripped by a deep-seated and irrational fear of equality and justice and has yet to learn the hard lesson of linked fate. 

Nonetheless, we are somehow stronger for it. We have more converts to fight for racial justice. More clarity about who are our foes. And more resilience to withstand the battles ahead knowing that we who believe in freedom are growing in number with a generation that witnessed a radical reckoning that we can’t unsee. 

Karen Finney, Democratic consultant

It asked everything. And what it gave back is the unwavering understanding that we must continue — not because the system is changing, but because we are still here — and we refuse to be erased.

I just couldn’t sit through one more conversation where someone tried to soothe the nation with the same old platitudes — “This isn’t who we are.”

No.

This is who we are.

But it’s not who we have to be. 

The truth was undeniable — especially in the midst of a global pandemic that was already exposing the deep, layered inequities in how different communities were being impacted.

In polling and focus group work that summer, even disparate groups — like infrequent Black voters and White suburban women who leaned Republican — agreed: There was an urgent need for criminal justice and policing reforms. Even many in the political establishment — largely run by White consultants who usually advise candidates to avoid talking about race — had to acknowledge that silence was no longer an option. 

What that moment required of me was to show up — fully, boldly, unapologetically — as a Black woman in politics. I was called into and embraced by a circle of Black women where I could breathe, cry and strategize. We lifted each other up. We worked to amplify our sister-leaders and push forward a national conversation about the need for leaders who bring a different lived experience.

MAGA Republicans are back in the White House, and Project 2025 is their guide—the right-wing plan to turn back the clock on women’s rights, remove abortion access, and force women into roles as wives and mothers in the “ideal, natural family structure.” We know an empowered female electorate is essential to democracy. That’s why day after day, we stay vigilant in our goals to dismantle patriarchy at every turn. We are watching, and we refuse to go back. This is the War on Women Report.

Since our last report…

+ Some good news out of North Carolina: After a six-month legal battle, Republican Jefferson Griffin has finally conceded the North Carolina Supreme Court race to Democrat Allison Riggs. Riggs won the election in November, but Griffin refused to acknowledge his loss, attempting to challenge the election results by claiming tens of thousands of ballots were invalid.

+ The FDA approved the first at-home alternative for Pap smears. The wand-like device, created by Teal Health, will allow women to screen for cervical cancer and HPV without having to visit a doctor, simplifying the testing process and making it less painful by using a swab rather than a metal speculum.  

+ Maine has made progress toward enacting a law that would allow doctors to withhold their names from abortion medication bottles. The bill would protect providers of mifepristone and misoprostol from harassment and serve as a shield law by permitting doctors to print the names of their medical practices on prescription bottles rather than the names of individual doctors.

+ This month, the world learned of Adriana Smith, a 30-year-old Georgia woman who died in February from brain blood clots. Because she was pregnant, Georgia’s strict abortion laws require the hospital to keep her body on life support. “She’s been breathing through machines for more than 90 days. It’s torture,” said her mother, April Newkirk. The family is now burdened with mounting medical bills. Emory Midtown Hospital plans to keep Smith on life support until the fetus can survive outside the womb—even though doctors say it has severe brain damage and may not survive. “This decision should’ve been left to us,” Newkirk said.

In an emergency episode of On the Issues, host Michele Goodwin pointed to 13th Amendment concerns, likening Georgia’s actions to the historical reproductive servitude of Black women.

Let’s not forget what else was sent our way this month …

Monday, April 28: Ultra-Conservative Think Tank Publishes Faulty Report Claiming the Danger of Abortion Pills

The report, simply titled “The Abortion Pill Harms Women,” features several false claims regarding the safety of these medications. The ‘research’ claims that over 10 percent of women experienced what they call “serious adverse effects” such as sepsis or hemorrhage following a mifepristone-induced abortion. Notably, the ‘study’ defined such an event as including a mere visit to the emergency room within 45 days of taking mifepristone, thus miscategorizing thousands of patients and skewing the data to favor antiabortion policy.

The report, published by the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC), has since prompted concerns regarding the FDA’s approval of medications like mifepristone and misoprostol. Referring to the safety of abortion pills, FDA commissioner Marty Makary stated, “We can’t promise we’re not going to act on that data that we have not yet seen.”

The FDA first approved mifepristone in 2000, and as of 2023, medication abortions account for roughly two-thirds of abortions in the U.S. More than 100 studies have since proven the safety of abortion pills.

Thursday, May 8: Pope Leo XIV at Odds With U.S. Catholics on Reproductive Rights

Catholic cardinals elected the first American pope, Chicago-born Robert Francis Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV. Although the pope has posted criticisms of Trump and JD Vance on social media, he has strongly opposed abortion and expressed hesitancy over IVF, upheld the Catholic tradition that women cannot be ordained as priests or deacons, and stated that marriage is between a man and a woman, criticizing the “homosexual lifestyle” and “alternative families” in a speech to bishops in 2012.

Chris Wimbaush, interim president of Catholics for Choice, noted Pope Leo disagrees with the majority of U.S. Catholics on his antiabortion stance, and said, “The future of our church depends on greater inclusion and nuance on reproductive health decisions like abortion, contraception, and IVF.”

Friday, May 9: Rümeysa Öztürk, the Tufts Student Detained by ICE, Released From Detention on Bail

Öztürk, a Turkish doctoral student at Tufts University, was arrested on March 25 and released May 9 following an order from a federal judge in Vermont, William K. Sessions III. The judge, who had previously expedited her hearing, had to issue a second order calling for her immediate release due to federal officials’ attempts to require her to wear an ankle monitor.

Although she was arrested outside her home in Somerville, Mass., she was held in an immigrant detention center in Louisiana for six weeks before her release. Sessions expressed concern for the state of free speech in the wake of Öztürk’s arrest, stating noncitizens “may now avoid exercising their First Amendment rights for fear of being whisked away to a detention center from their home.”

Monday, May 12: Louisiana Opens Second Case Against New York Dr. Margaret Carpenter Over Alleged Mailing of Abortion Pills

In February, Louisiana issued an extradition warrant for the arrest of Dr. Carpenter for allegedly ordering abortion pills to a woman in Louisiana via telehealth, violating the state’s near-total abortion ban. In response, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed legislation strengthening the state’s 2023 shield law seeking to protect providers like Dr. Carpenter from out-of-state litigation. 

This month, Louisiana is investigating a second case involving Carpenter, who was also fined for sending abortion pills to Texas. Attorney General Liz Murill alleges Dr. Carpenter was involved in prescribing abortion pills to a woman she claims was “20 weeks pregnant.” Murrill alleges, “after she gave birth [she] took the baby, wrapped it in a towel and threw it in a garbage can.”

Gov. Hochul has previously stated she would not sign an extradition request to send Carpenter to Louisiana for arrest. 

Saturday, May 17: Southern California Fertility Clinic Bombed in Attack on Repro Healthcare

Four people were injured and one was killed in a bombing attack on the American Reproductive Centers (ARC) Fertility Clinic in Palm Springs, Calif. Police believe the man killed—25-year-old California resident Guy Edward Bartkus—was also the perpetrator of the bombing. Bartkus posted alarming content online before the attack, including videos of him testing the explosives and expressions of his “misandrist” beliefs.

“Basically, I’m anti-life,” he said in one recording that LAist cited, “and IVF is like kind of the epitome of pro-life ideology.”

Although staged on a fertility clinic, this attack is reminiscent of the last few years’ surge in violent attacks on abortion clinics and other reproductive healthcare facilities. IVF—which Bartkus cited in his attack on the Palm Springs clinic—is a target for many antiabortion extremists. Although IVF facilities have not faced as many attacks as other kinds of reproductive health clinics, they have seen a rise in protestors by so-called abortion and IVF “abolitionists.”

Monday, May 19: Texas Woman Kept in Jail for Five Months for a Miscarriage

Texas has finally dropped charges against Mallori Patrice Strait, a 34-year-old woman arrested on Dec. 19, 2024, for “abuse of a corpse” after she miscarried in a public restroom. Although prosecutors dropped the case for insufficient evidence, she was in prison for five months after a judge set her bail at $100,000. While she was in prison, a local crisis pregnancy center (CPC) took custody of the fetal remains, named the fetus and held a public funeral.

The Bexar County Medical Examiner determined that Strait had miscarried and her fetus died naturally, while the district attorney’s office stated there was no evidence that Strait tried to flush the fetus down the toilet despite sensationalist headlines claiming that she tried to flush her “baby girl” down the toilet and news websites publishing her mugshot.

Strait’s case is eerily similar to that of Brittany Watts, the woman in Ohio who sued the state in January after she lost her pregnancy at home and was arrested for “abuse of a corpse” despite suffering from a natural miscarriage. As with Strait, the media exaggerated and sensationalized Watts’ case with melodramatic headlines.

“Texas arrested [Strait] for a miscarriage, jailed her for nearly half a year, let an anti-abortion group name and bury her fetus—and then quietly dropped the charges once they realized they never had a case to begin with,” Jessica Valenti wrote. Regarding Strait’s and Watts’ cases, she also explained, “The people criminalized for their pregnancy outcomes tend to be marginalized—they’re often women of color, low income, immigrants, unhoused, or have substance abuse issues. Black women, in particular, are targeted by law enforcement and hospital staff.”

Wednesday, May 21: Judge Blocks Abortion Leave for Workers

A judge struck down federal regulations that required U.S. employers to give workers paid time off for abortions. The ruling from U.S. District Judge David Joseph comes despite existing guidance from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which includes abortion among the pregnancy-related medical conditions covered by the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act of December 2022.

Thursday, May 22: Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” Passed in the House

The budget reconciliation bill passed in a 215-214 vote by House Republicans, threatening severe funding cuts to Medicaid and SNAP, along with implementing $5 trillion in tax reductions while removing aid for farmers. 

The bill would cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by roughly $300 billion, which is bound to impact over 42 million Americans who depend on the nation’s largest food assistance program if it passes in the Senate.

MAZON, a Jewish nonprofit organization fighting hunger, along with the Electronic Privacy Information Center, is suing the Department of Agriculture following its demands that states submit SNAP recipients’ personal information to the USDA in order to receive aid. In the complaint, attorney Daniel Zibel stated that the suit intends “to ensure that the government is not exploiting our most vulnerable citizens by disregarding longstanding privacy protections.”

Tuesday, May 27: Extreme Texas Abortion Pill Bill Fails to Advance

To the relief of reproductive rights advocates across the country, Texas’ bill SB 2880 has died in the state legislature. The sweeping antiabortion bill would have targeted anyone who manufactures, distributes, mails or otherwise provides abortion medication in the state of Texas.

It would have also allowed private citizens to sue anyone helping someone obtain an abortion—even out of state—for a minimum of $100,000. This meant that a mother paying for a plane ticket for her daughter to fly to another state for an abortion, or a friend offering childcare while a mother in need of an abortion travels out of state, could have faced lawsuits and prison sentences.

In April, the bill passed Texas’ Republican-led Senate, and received approval from a House committee last week; however, the bill did not make it to the governor’s desk before the legislative session ended this week.

Back in April, before the senate passed SB 2880, Republican Sen. Bryan Hughes, the bill’s sponsor, insisted that the bill wouldn’t amount to a travel restriction on pregnant women. But Houston Democrat Sen. Molly Cook said, “We don’t believe you that this isn’t a travel ban and there is nothing in this bill that says you won’t be prosecuted for leaving the state.”

Meanwhile, Drexel law professor David S. Cohen, co-author of After Dobbs: How the Supreme Court Ended Roe but Not Abortion, highlighted how SB 2880 centered around trying to stop the spread of abortion pills and telehealth abortion medication. (About one in five abortions in the U.S. are now done through telehealth.) “The antiabortion movement knows if they want to stop abortion in the future, they have to stop pills, but historically, that’s a hard thing to do,” he said. “It’s a hard thing to do to stop a drug. That’s partly why the antiabortion movement is flailing.”

We rely on contributions from you, our viewers and listeners to do our work. If you visit us daily or weekly or even just once a month, now is a great time to make your monthly contribution.

Please do your part today.

Ameca, a humanoid robot, smiled and blinked at the crowd at Dubai AI Week 2025, a celebration of all things artificial intelligence. Landmark announcements marked the event, including a $545 million hyperscale data center to supply Microsoft and Dubai’s first PhD program in AI. 

AI engineer Nair, 29, felt inspired. Since moving to the United Arab Emirates last October from Kerala, India, she had applied to hundreds of entry-level jobs and faced rejections, scams and exploitative offers. Rest of World is not revealing her first name to protect her identity.

Now she remembered why she’d emigrated. “Dubai is emerging as a global AI hub,” she told Rest of World. “It was fascinating to see how companies are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible.”

Tech workers like Nair are moving to the UAE, attracted by a Golden Visa program that gives 10 years of residency to skilled professionals, no taxes, high salaries and the ease of setting up business, recruiters and tech professionals told Rest of World. 

“The UAE ranks second only to the U.S. in attracting top AI talent, with many of these experts now calling the UAE home,” Abdulla bin Touq Al Marri, UAE’s Minister of Economy, said last year.

The UAE has positioned itself as the U.S.’ tech ally.  During President Donald Trump’s recent visit, it secured access to 500,000 of the most advanced Nvidia chips, critical for AI development. It also announced plans to build the largest AI campus outside the U.S. in collaboration with American tech companies. And last year, Microsoft and Emirati AI firm G42 announced they are working together to create a “skilled and diverse AI workforce.” 

The UAE’s laser-sharp focus on AI makes it attractive for tech workers at a time when opportunities are shrinking in the West. More than 50,000 tech workers, mostly mid-level managers and developers, have been laid off in the U.S. this year from about 100 companies, according to the layoff tracker Layoffs.fyi. There are also fewer openings for roles such as software developers, and many tech workers fear the Trump government’s stringent immigration policies. Venture capital investment in startups, too, has cooled in the West. 

But beneath the UAE’s sheen of opportunity, the job market can pose challenges for tech workers depending on where they’re from, workers and recruiters told Rest of World. Senior tech talent from the West are often headhunted for top positions at high salaries. Experienced AI experts from South Asia and Ukraine fill the lower ranks, for lower pay. 

And young talent like Nair fall in a gray area of AI professionals who struggle to get hired. With a Master’s in electronics engineering and specialization in AI hardware from an Indian college and one year of work experience, she has been job-hunting for months.

“You get automatic rejections,” she told Rest of World. “Companies want candidates with four to five years of experience for entry-level roles, or they hire through referrals.”

This is not due to a dearth of jobs. Dubai has more than 800 AI firms, most of them startups, according to the Dubai Center for Artificial Intelligence. Abu Dhabi has over 400 AI companies. Most of them plan to recruit this year. 

But the UAE also has an “abundance” of tech workers, according to a 2024 talent report by the UAE Ministry of Economy and immigration law firm Fragomen. Most of these workers are not qualified for specialized AI roles, the report said. 

About 95% of 50,000 companies surveyed in the report said they hired tech professionals from outside the Middle East. 

“There’s not enough domestic university talent so we recruit candidates from India and Ukraine,” Vahid Haghzare, director of SVA Recruitment based in Dubai, told Rest of World.

The UAE is a “global migration node,” Froilan Malit Jr., a visiting scholar at American University in Dubai and an expert on migration to the Middle East, told Rest of World. It is a transit space for people from developing countries to gain experience before moving West, while Western professionals can leverage their expertise for higher pay and long-term residency in the UAE, he said. 

Western professionals are attracted by Dubai’s lifestyle perks, while Asian and Muslim tech workers appreciate a culture that’s a mix of East and West, Malit Jr. said. “It’s a win-win: tax-free income, top schools, security, and cosmopolitan living.”

Workers get different salaries based on their years of experience, and also where they are from, he said. Workers from developing nations experience a “citizenship penalty” and command a lower salary in the UAE than their western counterparts, Malit Jr. said. 

“That’s what triggers a lot of tech workers from the Global South to move to the West, and then return [to the UAE] with a new passport,” he said.

Jarkko Moilanen, head of data products at the Abu Dhabi Department for Government Enablement, which oversees the city’s digital transformation, moved to the UAE in 2022 from Finland after being recruited as one of 200 global experts to help drive the effort.  

“I needed a change,” said the 50-year-old AI professional, who has helmed transformations at various tech companies in Finland. A year later, he decided to stay long-term in the UAE and applied for a Golden Visa.

The nation has made relocation relatively frictionless, especially for AI-related specialists, developers and entrepreneurs. Dubai had issued an estimated 158,000 Golden Visas by 2023.

Moilanen said that he is incentivized to stay in the UAE rather than go back to Europe, which he perceives as being in economic decline. In contrast, Abu Dhabi has gone all in on AI, and plans to become the world’s first AI-native government, laying the groundwork to fully automate and digitize government processes.

Moilanen said that he has also received multiple job offers from recruiters in Saudi Arabia, but has turned them down as he hopes to launch an AI and data business in the UAE.

“The data and AI combination here is hot. They have the money to execute fast,” he said.

AI startups are thriving in the UAE, with support from funds like Hub71, an Abu Dhabi-based incubator. In Dubai, Sandbox, funded by Oraseya Capital, supports existing startups, while the Dubai Future Accelerators helps companies collaborate with the government. 

Entrepreneur Nidhima Kohli, originally from Luxembourg, recently launched her startup, The AI Accelerator, an online course meant to help entrepreneurs and executives use AI tools to improve productivity.  She migrated to Dubai in 2022 and received a Golden Visa the following year. 

“I’ve lived in London, Paris, and the U.S., but never felt as safe as in Dubai. It is international, people are approachable and happy to connect with you,” she told Rest of World. 

She said she appreciates the ease of networking and setting up a business in the UAE. “The UAE is putting money where its mouth is. They want to grow and not stifle innovation.”

But for less experienced workers from South Asia, like Nair, hurdles persist. She has seen many scam jobs on LinkedIn, including a recruiter who asked her to pay $1,000 for a certification course. She has also received exploitative offers. One company offered her 3,000 dirhams ($816) per month, much below market rate. Another asked her to work seven days a week, without paid leave or sick days. 

Despite all the setbacks, Nair remains hopeful for the road ahead. “I’m excited about the opportunities to grow, learn, and make a meaningful impact here.”

Sam Stein is joined by Greta Peisch, former General Counsel for the U.S. Trade Representative, to explain the latest legal developments in Trump’s tariff policies, including a court ruling challenging his use of emergency powers to impose broad trade restrictions, and how the ongoing legal uncertainty could affect future negotiations.

Leave a comment

As always: Watch, listen, and leave a comment. Bulwark+ Takes is home to short videos, livestreams, and event archives exclusively for Bulwark+ members.

Don’t care for video? Use the controls on the left side of the player to toggle to audio.

Add Bulwark+ Takes feed to your player of choice, here.