The Trump-Vance defamatory and baseless attacks on immigrants are nothing new in U.S. or world history.  Immigrant-bashing is a deeply rooted political strategy of the economically and socially privileged and their parties on the Right to undermine popular pressure for greater economic and social equality.  As many a demagogue or unscrupulous politician has learned, fear or hatred of the "other" can be effective in stirring up a mob or winning an election. 

Why does war's widespread destruction and human suffering persist in the modern, ostensibly "civilized," world?  Although many explanations have been advanced, one of the most powerful is global anarchy.  With this in mind, a number of prominent individuals over the past century have sought an effective remedy in strengthened global governance:  Albert Einstein called for world government, Norman Cousins proposed world federation, and Benjamin Ferencz championed the development and enforcement of world law.  And there have been indications that this approach can be effective.

Project 2025 -- a Heritage Foundation blueprint for a new GOP administration authorized by Trump and prepared by at least 140 people who had worked in his first administration -- proposes to ban public employee unions, empower the states to ban unions in the private sector, and give states the right to ignore federal minimum wage and maximum hour protections.  In addition, it calls for eliminating child labor rules that protect children from working in mines, meatpacking plants, and other hazardous occupations.  To help implement this draconic program and its other astonishing recommendations (for example, abolishing the Department of Education), Project 2025 advocates the firing of 50,000 federal government workers and replacing them with Trump loyalists.

During the Trump administration's four years in office, it weakened the Occupational Safety and  Health Administration and rolled back critical U.S. health and safety regulations.  As a result, in 2019 (the year before the advent of the deadly coronavirus pandemic), U.S. deaths on the job soared to 5,333 and an additional 95,000 American workers died elsewhere from occupational diseases.  Furthermore, according to the AFL-CIO, American workers suffered between 7 million and 10.5 million injuries per year.

Although action by the United Nations has, at times, prevented or ended wars, reduced international conflict, and provided a forum for useful discussion of international issues by the world community, more effective global action against war could be secured by implementing a variety of measures.  These include setting limits on the veto in the UN Security Council, increasing the number of nations accepting the compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice, and securing wider ratification of the founding statute of the International Criminal Court.

The heightening danger of nuclear war owes a great deal to Donald Trump, who, as U.S. President, not only wrecked key nuclear arms control and disarmament agreements of the past and future, but launched his nation and others on an escalating nuclear arms race.  Openly threatening nuclear war, Trump quickly revealed himself as remarkably willing to launch it, leaving top members of his administration aghast and scrambling to head off a nuclear Armageddon.

Donald Trump has a record of consistently working to sabotage the nation's labor movement, as this article shows in detail.  Despite Trump's repeated claims that he has supported workers and their unions, the  AFL-CIO recognized reality when it declared:  "Trump spent four years in office weakening unions and working people. . . .  We can't afford another four years of Trump's corporate agenda to . . . destroy our unions."

International law -- the recognized rules of behavior among nations based on customary practices and treaties -- has been agreed upon by large and small nations alike.  Yet, as Israel's military invasion of Gaza and Russia's military invasion of Ukraine should remind us, governments continue to defy it.  What is missing in international affairs is not law, but its consistent and universal enforcement.

Although Donald Trump, as President, proclaimed in his 2020 State of the Union address that he had produced a "boom" in workers' wages, the reality was quite different.  Using his control of the executive branch of the U.S. government, Trump repeatedly undermined the wages of American workers by blocking wage raises and imposing wage reductions.

Why has there been a revival of the nuclear arms race?  One reason is that, with the decline of the nuclear disarmament movement, governments have been freer to arm themselves with the most powerful weapons available.  A second, less apparent reason is that the nuclear disarmament movement and government officials alike have forgotten that the motor force behind nations' reliance upon nuclear weapons is international anarchy.