WITH Hamze Awawde; Zack Beauchamp; Francesca Dannunzio; Shay Khatiri; Jessica Pishko; Matthew Sitman; A.E. Stallings; Rafia Zakaria
An American Wakes Up in Athens, Greece After the 2024 Elections
A.E. Stallings’ book Frieze Frame: How Poets, Painters, and their Friends Framed the Debate around Elgin and the Marbles of the Parthenon will be published in 2025.
I wake up in the dark.
In dark I went to sleep.
There is a kind of stark
Accounting of lost sheep.
The day breaks with a dawn
So much like yesterday’s.
I turn the kettle on
And brew a dark malaise.
Things go from bad to worse,
Let’s call it entropy.
The blessing is a curse,
And treachery goes free
Or something. Never mind,
Here in the cradle of
Democracy I find
There’s history enough —
There on the shining rock
The entasis of state,
The subtle curves that lock
The crooked to the straight.
The centuries were slow
Where stood its solid scenes,
It took one night to blow
The roof to smithereens.
It boasts of Marathon,
It boasts of Salamis
Five generations on,
Of hemlock’s bitterness,
Between, the city nations
Of Greeks warred tribe with tribe
Why trouble with invasions?
It’s easier to bribe.
We still read Athens’ versions,
As though the Spartans lost,
As though the prudent Persians
Did not know what they cost.
Pericles died of plague,
And Phidias in prison.
Division’s sown, and vague
Suspicions have arisen.
It took nine years to build
Those columns in the air,
But half its marbles spilled,
Over fifty to repair.
It’s like a foundered ship,
That ruin on the hill.
It makes my heartbeat skip.
I’m afraid it always will.
Palestinians Watching America’s Election from the Sidelines
Hamze Awawde is a Palestinian writer and activist.
As a Palestinian, I felt no preference in this U.S. election. Neither candidate demonstrated a commitment to Palestinian humanity—neither in their promises nor in their actions. Under Trump, we saw the embassy moved to Jerusalem, humanitarian aid to Palestinians slashed, and initiatives aimed at sidelining Palestinian aspirations. When Biden took office, he offered early signs of a different approach, yet those hopes faded. His administration continued the status quo, even pushing for a Saudi-Israeli normalization deal that excluded Palestinians, until it was disrupted by the October 7 attack. This deal, like so many before it, underscored how expendable Palestinian concerns are in U.S. foreign policy.
Now, with Trump re-elected, there are hard truths to face. The American people made their choice, fully aware of his record. They also saw the Biden-Harris administration largely carry forward Trump-era policies regarding Palestinians. This continuity suggests that Palestinian rights are simply not a priority in U.S. foreign policy—regardless of who is in power.
For Palestinians, it’s crucial to reevaluate strategy and address the systemic factors that leave us marginalized in American politics. We are not players in America’s partisan battles, but we are open to engaging in good faith with any administration willing to prioritize peace and justice. Still, we must accept that, no matter the self-reflection on our side, Palestinian rights will not feature highly in the U.S. presidential agenda.
Yet, Biden and Harris still have three months in office, with no upcoming election to constrain them. They have a chance now, freed from political calculus, to act decisively in ending a war in Gaza that, apart from Netanyahu and his coalition, has lost all justification. America, as a primary financier of this war, has the power and responsibility to press for an immediate ceasefire and a path toward peace. These final months are an opportunity for Biden to act in alignment with stated American values, recognizing that Palestinian lives matter in the pursuit of peace.
The American people must also reflect on their politics. Why do neither of their leading candidates extend human rights advocacy to Palestinians? Why is the destruction of Palestinian homes, hopes, and futures accepted as collateral in geopolitical dealings? These questions transcend partisan differences and go to the heart of America’s identity.
This election result is not the end. Americans have the power to hold their leaders accountable, to demand policies that align with justice, and to reflect on their nation’s role in global conflicts. If healing and repair are possible in America, it might serve as a model of hope for others. But if they are not achievable here—where resources and political freedoms are so abundant—then the world’s path toward justice may be even more difficult than we have dared to believe.
This System Can Break
Zack Beauchamp is a senior correspondent at Vox and the author of The Reactionary Spirit: How America’s Most Insidious Political Tradition Swept the World.
Modernity is a complex machine. Over the past several decades, and even centuries, we have built up a series of worldwide institutions that have led to unparalleled rises in human prosperity and living standards. If this machine has a central node, it’s the United States: a country whose power and influence has done more to keep the cogs of the global order humming than any other.
Donald Trump is poised to take a hammer to all that.
Think through each of his major policies. His across-the-board tariffs threaten to wreck the global trade system that has successfully prevented a Great Depression re-run. His proposals to turn NATO into a protection racket threaten the alliance system that’s deterred another continent-wide war in Europe. His plans to seize control over the federal bureaucracy threaten democracy in America and, by extension, the world.
I say “threaten” because we do not yet know, and perhaps cannot know, whether Trump’s proposals will in fact break something critical. So much depends on how adept his team proves at getting their way, how other countries choose to respond, and whether some crisis (like, say, a Chinese invasion of Taiwan) creates even further stress on the global system.
But what I can say, with confidence, is that the risks of a system-shattering shock are extraordinarily high — higher than they’ve been in any election in my lifetime. No matter how bad you think things are now, it’s easy to imagine how they’d get worse.
It’s tempting to blame the Harris campaign for failing to make this case to voters. But the truth is that it’s really hard to get people to imagine things being worse when they already think things are already bad. And it’s harder still to convince people that things they’ve taken for granted their entire lifetime, like a public health system that adequately fluoridates water, could simply collapse.
But it could! All of humanity’s works are contingent, dependent on constant maintenance and vigilant guardianship. Tuesday night, America let that slip — and the world will feel the consequences.
Texas Will Be On The Front Lines of Mass Deportation
Francesca Dannunzio is a reporter for the Texas Observer. This article was originally published by the Texas Observer, a nonprofit investigative news outlet and magazine. Sign up for their weekly newsletter, or follow them on Facebook and X.
In Texas and across the country, immigrants and their advocates are now bracing for a second Donald Trump term, which the president-elect has promised would include the nation’s “largest deportation in the history of our country.”
Should that plan be fully carried out, experts have explained, the Texas economy and Texas families could face devastation. And the Lone Star State would also likely serve as a logistics hub for Trump’s Eisenhower-esque scheme.
“Texas is definitely going to be on the front lines of a mass deportation operation,” Daniel Hatoum, a senior supervising attorney at the Texas Civil Rights Project, told the Texas Observer.
Texas’ 1,254 miles of border make up the majority of the U.S.-Mexico divide—and Governor Greg Abbott supports Trump’s mass deportation plan, even as his state’s economy has thrived on the back of undocumented labor. Texas is also already home to much of the nation’s immigrant detention capacity.
Border communities are bracing themselves as well. In the militarized city of Eagle Pass, activists with the Border Vigil, a group that gathers along the banks of the Rio Grande every month to mourn fallen and drowned migrants are “deeply saddened” by Trump’s win.
“The party that claims to value law and order has chosen a felon. They profess to care about the lives of children; we urge them to extend that care to all children, regardless of their nationality,” Border Vigil organizer Amerika Garcia Grewal told the Observer. “As global migration increases, we are witnessing the beginning of an unprecedented movement of people. This moment calls for compassion and meaningful immigration reform that prioritizes saving lives. The future of humanity depends on our response.”
Democratic Congressman Greg Casar told the Observer that now is a moment to come together to protect immigrants, and the Lone Star State is “battle tested” for that: During Trump’s first term, Casar was on Austin City Council, and he mobilized with others to raise deportation defense funds. This time, he said, advocates are more prepared.
“We’re going to defend our immigrant communities from Trump’s attacks, while we hold Trump and people like Elon Musk accountable for spreading lies and scapegoating immigrants,” Casar said. “We know that Texan struggles are actually the fault of billionaires and the politicians that serve them — like Trump.”
Guerline Jozef, the founder and executive director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance in California, said her organization is looking into legal avenues to protect all immigrants against deportation. “Haitian immigrants, the Haitian community, continues to carry the brunt of the system and continues to be the first line of defense for all other immigrant communities,” Jozef said.
During this election season, right-wing activists and politicians have attacked Haitian immigrants. On the campaign trail, Vice President-elect JD Vance falsely accused Haitians in Ohio — without any evidence — of eating pets, a claim Trump then echoed.
In addition to Trump’s promise of unprecedented deportations, activists are bracing for more extreme policies that threaten the country’s legacy of immigration entirely. For protectors of immigrant rights, the next four years are about far more than just defending people at risk of deportation.
Many people believe that Trump’s anti-immigrant tirades have been more bluster than serious plans, said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, but the appointees he is likely to pick in January are prepared to enact the extreme policies the president-elect campaigned on. “We are under no illusions that the policies in Project 2025, which includes slashing legal immigration, rounding up immigrants, creating new detention camps, are all on the table. That is not to say that all of them can be carried out or will be carried out, but we know what the options of policies out there look like,” Reichlin-Melnick said.
Advocates are also preparing for other challenges they’ve seen before: an attempt to end existing legal pathways to citizenship and legal residency, including Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Temporary Protected Status (TPS).
TPS, founded in 1990, has provided US legal status and protections to immigrants hailing from specifically designated countries including Haiti, Honduras, and Venezuela, where residents face armed conflict and violent political instability, among other tragedies. More than 1.5 million people in the United States have some form of temporary legal status, Reichlin-Melnick said, and they may see that status taken away under the incoming Trump administration.
“We also are getting ready to protect and defend the idea of immigration entirely,” said Reichlin-Melnick. “We are still a nation of immigrants.” Advocates are also preparing for other challenges they’ve seen before: an attempt to end existing legal pathways to citizenship and legal residency, including Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and Temporary Protected Status (TPS).
TPS, founded in 1990, has provided US legal status and protections to immigrants hailing from specifically designated countries including Haiti, Honduras, and Venezuela, where residents face armed conflict and violent political instability, among other tragedies. More than 1.5 million people in the United States have some form of temporary legal status, Reichlin-Melnick said, and they may see that status taken away under the incoming Trump administration.
“We also are getting ready to protect and defend the idea of immigration entirely,” said Reichlin-Melnick. “We are still a nation of immigrants.”
What If World War III Starts Now?
Shay Khatiri is a Vice President of Development and a Senior Fellow at Yorktown Institute.
When World War II started is in the eyes of the beholder. Most Americans would say 1939, but Asians would correctly point out that Japan invaded and occupied Manchuria in 1937. Others insist it started in 1935 when Italy invaded Ethiopia. All to say, World War II began as a number of regional wars that merged into one. Sound ominous yet?
A set of ongoing civil wars in the 2010s and interstate wars in this decade have shocked the international system and are exhausting existing U.S. resources to repair the order while simultaneously causing further cracks. This is while America has signaled diminishing interest in aiding a return in the first place under three presidents in a row, and one of them was just voted back in. The United States is currently unequipped to rehabilitate the international order, especially in Eurasia, where restoring stability would require significant investments which America has no interest in making. It will shock us, but it should not surprise us, if decades of neglect bear their rotten fruit during the course of the incoming administration and another great war erupts.
Prosecuting any war requires a capable commander-in-chief who can rally the American people behind the enterprise and ably keep the cabinet in order. It requires a president who commands the respect of his civilian appointees and the military alike, able to settle disputes within his administration and override the preferences of senior military commanders for the good of the nation. It requires someone who commands the respect of the American people, his cabinet, and the members of the armed forces. Lincoln and Roosevelt were presidents during our bloodiest and lengthiest wars. Lincoln read widely and often about military strategy throughout the war. His cabinet condescended to him at first and idolized him by the time he was shot. Roosevelt, a former assistant secretary of the Navy, had studied maritime strategy, corresponded with Admiral Mahan, and had been the chief civilian strategist for the Navy during the Great War. Trump is neither Lincoln nor Roosevelt. And if the past is any indication, we have not elected a president interested in learning to become what is necessary.
What would the eruption of a World War look like for us? We don’t have a mutual defense treaty with Taiwan. Even if China decides to start a war, there is no legal obligation that the United States must directly be involved. (We’re legally obliged to help Taiwan defend itself, akin to our current Ukraine policy.) The famous article 5 treaty of NATO and other allies, such as Japan, also doesn’t force us to action. It simply states that a defense against one is a defense against all. Both for the defense of a partner like Taiwan or an ally like Japan or a NATO member, Congress must declare war.
If war erupts, Congress will have three options. It can declare war and put its faith in a commander-in-chief unfit for the task. It can declare war and remove the president upon failure on the battlefield, elevating the isolationist J.D. Vance to lead the fight. Or it could simply decide that the credibility of the U.S. assurances or guarantees is not important and refrain from direct involvement, instead opting for a wobbly support for the victim nation as it has chosen to do with Ukraine. None of these three is a good option. No matter the outcome actors like Russia and China and Iran will have proof that America is unwilling to fight for its allies.
In peacetime, Congress is the leading strategist, not the president or his secretary of defense. It is congress that makes strategic decisions such as determining America’s defense budget. Let’s pray that a competent Congress decides to deter a world war from breaking out under this administration by investing in deterrence. That is our best hope. We don’t want to find out how Donald Trump or J.D. Vance will prosecute World War III.
About That “One Really Violent Day”
Jessica Pishko is the author of The Highest Law in the Land: How the Unchecked Power of Sheriffs Threatens Democracy.
In March, Donald Trump campaigned in Michigan at the office of the Livingston County sheriff. Livingston County just passed a resolution, supported by their sheriff Mike Murphy, to track contact with immigrants, whether arrests, witnesses, or victims. Murphy added that, in his opinion, any immigrant who has been in the country for “three months” was “illegal:”
“You have no business being here. Within three months of entering this country, if you’ve not been able to find a way to immigration, to seek asylum, to do it the right way, to get paperwork, then you’re up to no good. Either you want to fly under the radar and take American jobs and work for cash under the table or you’re up to something more nefarious. There’s no other explanation.”
Sheriffs play an incredibly important role in immigration enforcement. Around ¾ of all deportation proceedings begin in county jails, which are run by sheriffs. A handful of states require that sheriffs cooperate with ICE by holding people who might otherwise be released pending trial. More to the point, sheriffs can place people into deportation proceedings before a trial even happens, and it can happen for any crime. In one North Carolina county, for example, the local sheriff, who is still in office, told his deputies to “go out there and get those taco eaters.” And they did. Around 10% of the Latino immigrant community were deported until the Department of Justice sued to stop.
But there will be no Department of Justice that will save us this time. Trump has been very clear that he will let law enforcement do whatever they want under the guise of reducing crime. The reality is that this “one really violent day” will result in mass deportations, yes, but also the arrest of protestors, the tracking and arrests of those seeking abortion care, and more violence by police (something the police cannot be called to stop).
Some sheriffs will resist the Trump mechanizations. They will argue that mass deportations are bad for crime-fighting, and, because the feds cannot really force local police to comply, ICE will be forced to deploy their own people to blue cities. This will be a show of force that will inspire dread in those who live in blue cities.
But, most sheriffs will not. We already know that Trump toadies like Tom Homan — his likely pick to run ICE — are already rounding up sheriffs to deport more people, the same thing that happened during the first Trump administration. As the Butler County, Ohio, sheriff said recently, sheriffs are ready to get “back into the deportation business.”
The Morning After
Matthew Sitman is a writer in New York City and the co-host of the Know Your Enemy podcast.
It’s cold comfort, but the story of Tuesday night’s election was, in at least one essential way, the story of Western politics over the past fifty years: class dealignment and education polarization, which is to say the continued abandonment of center-left parties for the political right by working-class voters. Exit polls showed that Donald Trump won 63 percent of voters who described themselves as having never attended college, 51 percent of those who said they attended college but never earned a degree, and 56 percent of those holding an associate’s degree. When the question was simplified to whether or not a voter held a college degree, Trump won 56 percent of those who reported that they didn’t — a group that made up nearly 60 percent of the electorate. And even in this first post-Dobbs election, Trump cleaned up with white women without college degrees, getting a commanding 63 percent of their vote.
The exit polls revealed similar dynamics when sorting voters by income. Trump won 50 percent of voters both with a total family income under $100,000 and those with a total family income under $50,000 (compared to Harris’s 46 percent and 47 percent, respectively). Perhaps not unrelatedly, Trump dominated among respondents who ranked the nation’s economy as “not so good” or “poor” — a judgment shared by 68 percent of the electorate — earning 70 percent of their votes.
Based on Trump’s stated plans and proposals, there will be much about his presidency that imperils the rule of law, assaults human dignity, and challenges our nation’s already tenuous commitment to political democracy; he’s an aging, raging man set on vengeance. But amid the tumult of the extraordinary times ahead, it will be worth remembering the rather ordinary way in which Trump won the presidency — he told people who to blame for the problems in their life, real or imagined, and promised to fix it all. Trump’s felony convictions, demagogic lies about Haitian immigrants, brutal plans for mass deportations, instigation of January 6, and much else, though surely appealing to a fair number of his supporters, just didn’t matter to millions of other voters as much as the comforts and affirmations he offered. Working class Americans didn’t turn out for Trump because he threatens democracy. They did so because our democracy, such as it is, didn’t seem worth defending. Any arguments about the way forward need to begin with this depressing reality.
11:40 P.M November 4, 2024; Karachi, Pakistan
Rafia Zakaria is a Pakistani-American feminist. Her most recent book is Against White Feminism: Notes on Disruption.
The power went out twenty minutes before midnight on November 4, 2024. Election Day in the United States hurdled into our city in darkness. The lights going out was not a surprise, the power goes out often in Karachi, just like the gas and the water. The surprise for most people came in the morning papers whose headlines above the fold were split between “Government steamrolls six key bills through Parliament” and “Kamala or Trump? U.S. decides today.”
The powers that be in Pakistan had already made their big moves; the six steamrolled bills — all of which passed without opportunity for debate — gave full term extensions to the scions of the country’s omniscient military establishment; The Chiefs of the Army, the Navy and the Air Force would now have another five years in power. If this were not enough, the number of judges in the country’s Supreme Court were also increased. These new judges would be tasked with interpreting “constitutional” cases and the current Government would appoint all of them.
The Government and military establishment in Pakistan are both allied closely to the United States need not have hurried. They may have feared that a new U.S Administration would have been less tolerant of Pakistan’s illiberal and doctored version of “democracy.” By 11:49 pm local time in Karachi on November 6, 2024 FOX News became the first network to declare that Donald Trump would be the next President of the United States. Trump had already promised that anyone voting for him in this election would never have to vote again. The tactics being utilized in Pakistan ensure that the people in power will retain it forever and always.
The Pakistanis I spoke to see it differently. Many believed that Pakistan’s current Administration was put in place by the Biden Administration. Biden, they believed, had orchestrated a coup that deposed and led to the imprisonment of former Prime Minister Imran Khan. The end of the Biden-Harris Administration could herald the return of Khan who still enjoys widespread popular support in the country even while he passes his days in a prison in Lahore. The recent rush of bills and the appointment of new judges are strategies, his supporters believe, to keep Khan in prison.
In other words, a new chapter for the United States could herald an analogous one for Pakistan: the reinstallation of a populist leader who in the eyes of his supporters at least, should have been in power all along.