Last month, I applied for permanent credentials to the congressional press gallery under Capital & Empire, which would allow me to report from the Capitol on the same basis I did for years as a staff reporter at outlets like The Intercept and The Nation.

This week, I learned that Capital & Empire does not qualify for permanent credentials because too much of its revenue comes from grants and donations rather than paid subscriptions and advertising.

In other words, Congress is telling me that before I can regularly cover the institution as an independent journalist, I first need to prove that my journalism has been properly commodified.

The issue was not my reporting experience, or whether my independent outlet is a serious news organization. I have previously held congressional credentials and remain in good standing with the galleries.

The sole obstacle, the director of the Periodical Press Gallery told me, is that Capital & Empire lacks the “right” mix of revenue. Under the gallery’s rules, for-profit publications must be “supported chiefly by advertising or by subscription.” On paper, that may sound like a sensible safeguard to ensure publications are financially independent and not fronts for advocacy groups or other outside interests (though it is worth asking what qualifies as an “outside interest” in a media system where much of the mainstream press is owned by billionaires and corporations with their own material interests to protect).

In practice, however, the requirement tends to push out exactly the kinds of journalists most likely to build alternatives to corporate media: independent reporters, early-stage publications, and those without family wealth, venture capital, or elite institutional backing.

Capital & Empire is a for-profit company that I own and control, retaining full ownership and editorial independence over the publication. (Yes, I’m a Marxist and, yes, I find this funny too.) To accept grant funding and tax-deductible donations while I build the publication, I set up a fiscal sponsorship arrangement with the Alternative Newsweekly Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting small independent journalism projects across the country.

This is not an unusual arrangement. As the economics of journalism have deteriorated, grants and philanthropic support have become one of the few viable ways for independent reporters to build new outlets or work on projects without relying on wealthy patrons, venture capital, or corporate advertisers.

The fiscal sponsor relationship does not give the foundation any editorial control over Capital & Empire. It simply allows me to receive philanthropic support while retaining full ownership and independence over the publication. That support is what has made it possible for me to devote myself to Capital & Empire full time.

Now, the very funding that allowed me to launch an independent publication is being treated as evidence that the publication is not yet sufficiently established to receive permanent congressional credentials.

For reporters at major news organizations, this requirement is largely invisible. Their credentials come with the institution. But for journalists trying to build something from scratch, it creates a frustrating Catch-22: to build a sustainable congressional news outlet, you need access to Congress. But to get access to Congress, you first have to prove you have already built a financially sustainable congressional news outlet.

Legacy newsrooms are shrinking, and the most ambitious reporting is being done by independent outlets and journalists. Congress’s credentialing rules still reflect a media landscape in which legitimacy is measured primarily by whether a publication has already achieved the scale and revenue base of an established institution. They said they will give Capital & Empire credentials as soon as it starts accumulating capital on their terms.

At a time when the White House and Pentagon are actively chasing out any reporting whatsoever, Congress should not be reinforcing the same dynamic.

Start up publications, independent journalists, and reporters without institutional backing or personal wealth face the steepest uphill climb. The people most likely to build alternatives to corporate media are often the least able to survive the years of unpaid or underpaid labor required to meet standards designed for a media landscape that no longer exists.

I’ve been covering politics in Washington since I was 20 years old. Since launching Capital & Empire, I’ve reported from Palestine, where I was followed and intimidated by Israeli soldiers while documenting life under occupation. I traveled to Cuba, where I experienced rolling blackouts firsthand and saw what it looks like when an entire country is slowly strangled by decades of U.S. economic warfare. Back in Washington, I’ve covered congressional war powers fights over Iran and Cuba, and just this week sources told me about a classified CIA assessment on the Iran war.

I want to spend my time doing what I’ve done for the last decade: chasing down senators, cornering members of Congress in hallways, and asking direct questions about war, capitalism, and the political economy of American empire. There are a lot of people on the Hill I need to talk to, and endless questions that need answering. I would rather spend my energy sticking a phone in the faces of senators and other war criminals than navigating yet another layer of Washington gatekeeping.

If you value this kind of independent reporting, please consider becoming a paid subscriber to Capital & Empire for $5 a month. I don’t put my work behind a paywall because I believe journalism is a public good. But reader support is what allows me to keep doing this work and, in this case, helps me build the subscriber base needed to secure permanent congressional credentials.

If you’re not in a position to subscribe, sharing this with anyone who believes Congress could use more scrutiny would mean a great deal. With your help, I can spend less time navigating a system built to keep outsiders out and more time confronting the people who wield power and inflict suffering on working people around the world.

Just make sure your $5 to Capital & Empire is not tax deductible.

A classified CIA analysis circulating this week found that Washington’s Gulf allies are split over how much military support to provide for the Trump administration’s war against Iran, sources familiar with the assessment told Capital & Empire. The U.S. intelligence community assessment suggested that several key Gulf partners favor negotiations with Tehran and are increasingly reluctant to provide the access and political backing the U.S. and Israel would need to restart and widen the conflict.

The analysis determined that the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain would prefer if the U.S. and Israel kept striking Iran. Abu Dhabi appears to believe that Israeli Iron Dome batteries and personnel deployed to the UAE will help shield the country from the worst of any future Iranian retaliation, according to the assessment, helping explain its willingness to support further escalation despite having absorbed more Iranian strikes than any other Gulf state.

The UAE has emerged as the most hawkish Gulf state in part because it has borne the brunt of Iran’s retaliation. Iranian missile and drone strikes have hit Emirati energy facilities, airports, and hotels, while disruptions to air travel through Dubai challenged the image of stability and safety that underpins the country’s role as a global hub for tourism and commerce. Emirati leaders are furious and have doubled down on their alignment with the U.S. and Israel. The Wall Street Journal reported this week that the UAE has also carried out covert strikes inside Iran, including an attack on an oil refinery, though the Emirati government has not publicly acknowledged those attacks.

The intelligence community’s findings broadly align with the observations of Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and expert on U.S.-Iran relations. The fact that the UAE and Bahrain favor continued war is consistent with their conduct, Parsi said. Both governments fear that if Washington reaches a deal with Tehran, they will be left to contend with what they see as a more dangerous Iran without firm U.S. backing.

“This is part of the tremendous strategic insanity that the UAE and Bahrain engaged in by signing on to the Abraham Accords in the first place,” Parsi told Capital & Empire. “They made themselves frontline states against Iran. Now they’re in too deep and cannot extract themselves out of it.”

According to the intelligence community’s analysis, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait support negotiations between the U.S. and Iran rather than further escalation. The finding does not mean Riyadh has remained on the sidelines, as Reuters reported Tuesday that Saudi Arabia also carried out covert retaliatory strikes inside Iran in late March. But Saudi officials have simultaneously moved to constrain U.S. military options, including the recent decision to deny the U.S. access, basing, and overflight rights (ABO), a move that appeared to have effectively killed “Project Freedom” – a planned naval operation to escort commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

Parsi said Saudi Arabia’s shift reflects a reassessment of a conflict it initially supported. “The Saudis were at the highest levels pushing for this war,” he said. “They have come to regret it.”

Saudi Arabia stood by its decision to deny the U.S. military access to its bases and airspace for the operation despite a personal appeal from President Donald Trump to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The decision underscored Riyadh’s growing reluctance to be drawn into U.S. military escalations that threaten its economic interests and broader effort to reduce dependence on Washington.

Oman, the analysis found, opposes the U.S. military blockade of Iranian ports, military action against Iran, and may be open to joint administration of the Strait of Hormuz with Iran. Oman – the only Gulf state to remain friendly with Iran throughout the war – has long served as a backchannel between Iran and the U.S. Muscat hosted indirect U.S.-Iran nuclear talks earlier this year and played a key role in facilitating the negotiations that eventually led to the 2015 nuclear agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

The CIA’s internal assessments paint a more restrained picture of the conflict than the Trump administration’s public declarations. A separate CIA analysis leaked to media outlets earlier this month concluded that Iran can survive the U.S. naval blockade for at least three to four months before experiencing severe economic consequences – directly contradicting Trump’s claim that Iran is on the verge of collapse.

The CIA assessment this week reflects an emerging recognition within the U.S. intelligence community that even as the Gulf states remain deeply embedded in America’s security architecture, they are becoming more selective about when they align with Washington to protect their own economic and strategic interests.

Before the war, the U.S. military presence in the Gulf was widely viewed as a deterrent against Iran and other regional actors challenging U.S. power. The conflict exposed that the U.S. military footprint was a massive liability all along. The same network of American bases created a target-rich environment that enabled Iran to wage a campaign of horizontal escalation, striking U.S. and allied infrastructure and heightening political instability across the region.

“The GCC, the fact is, doesn’t exist any longer,” Parsi said. “The degree of division there now is beyond what we have seen in the past, effectively making them a non-entity. The geopolitical circumstances that brought about the GCC’s existence no longer exist.”

The Senate is expected to take up its most significant Cuba vote in years tomorrow. Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine plans to force action on a resolution that would bar President Donald Trump from launching new military action against Cuba without congressional approval and declare that the current U.S. oil blockade is already an act of war. It would mark one of the first serious congressional challenges to Washington’s long campaign to starve Cuba into submission.

Trump has said he wants to finish the war in Iran and that it “will be just a question of time” before he turns his attention to military action against Cuba. He has threatened that Cuba “will fall soon” and should “make a deal before it is too late.” The Pentagon, meanwhile, is reportedly ramping up planning for a possible military operation as administration officials discuss the potential kidnapping and attack of Cuban leaders.

Cuba is facing its worst humanitarian and economic crisis in decades, the result of Trump’s renewed siege and the U.S.’s decades-long effort to economically strangle the island. Trump’s genocidal fuel blockade on the civilian economy – imposed after the illegal U.S. abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro – has intensified nationwide blackouts, fuel shortages, food and medicine scarcity, and pushed an already strained public health system further into crisis.

Trump’s threat to “take” Cuba is the latest expression of a two-century imperial ambition. Long before Trump, American presidents and officials openly imagined annexing Cuba. With the U.S. already humiliated by its failures in Iran, Washington may be tempted to reach for what it imagines is an easier target closer to home. But Cuban forces carry a real combat record, from defeating apartheid South Africa’s military in Angola to more recent roles protecting Maduro as part of his elite security detail. Even the Trump administration has cited reports that Cuban fighters are serving, in the thousands, on the frontline in Ukraine. The fantasy of an easy victory could be costly.

“That’s a big honor. Taking Cuba in some form,” Trump told reporters last month. “I mean, whether I free it, take it – think I can do anything I want with it.”

Kaine’s Cuba war powers resolution is an attempt to stop this kind of unilateral action. The legislation, S.J.Res. 124, was introduced last month by Kaine and Sens. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., and Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and directs “the removal of United States Armed Forces from hostilities within or against” Cuba that have not been authorized by Congress, as is constitutionally required. Rep. Nydia Velázquez, D-N.Y., introduced a version of the bill in the House.

The Cuba war powers resolution does not treat a potential invasion or bombing campaign by the Trump administration as the only form “hostilities” can take. It explicitly states that a blockade or quarantine carried out by U.S. armed forces to block oil constitutes hostilities. President John F. Kennedy himself said during the Cuban Missile Crisis that “a blockade is an act of war.” Article 42 of the U.N. Charter treats blockades as a use of armed force.

A coalition of more than 40 advocacy groups is urging Congress to act. In a letter obtained exclusively by Capital & Empire, they call on senators to back Kaine’s resolution and on the House to force a vote of its own, warning that further escalation could drive Cuba toward humanitarian collapse while putting American lives at risk in any direct conflict.

“With the Trump administration engaging in illegal acts of war such as an oil blockade — a war crime of collective punishment under international law — as well as making additional military threats, such as conducting hostile military surveillance drone flights over Cuba, Congress must act now,” the groups wrote.

Signers included groups like Action Corps, Demand Progress, and Alliance for Cuba Engagement and Respect (ACERE). The letter also notes that most Americans oppose military action against Cuba. A YouGov poll found 61 percent are against military escalation, and 46 percent disapprove of the oil blockade.

“When we saw 40 senators vote to block some weapon sales to Israel last week, we understood that number to be historic, even if the resolutions didn’t pass,” said Nathan Thompson, senior policy adviser at Just Foreign Policy, one of the advocacy groups leading the effort. “This Cuba vote should be viewed in a similar light: this is our best opportunity to press Congress to vote with the majority of their constituents, who are signing petitions and calling their senators right now, and show that this kind of indiscriminate economic warfare will not be tolerated.”

Thompson added that the political pressure extends to Republicans as well because the anti-war position is the majority in the U.S., “red state farmers want to sell their goods to Cuba, too, and nobody wants a new migration crisis.”

Cavan Kharrazian, senior policy advisor at Demand Progress, stressed that tomorrow’s vote will be “one of the most important congressional votes” on Cuba in decades. “Congress must decide whether to stop an escalating conflict or let it spiral further, forcing the Cuban people to keep paying the price,” he said.

Broad based sanctions, like the ones the U.S. has maintained on Cuba for over 60 years, kill hundreds of thousands of people every year – figures comparable to the annual death toll from armed conflict globally. A 2025 study published in the Lancet Global Health journal found that unilateral sanctions disproportionately kill babies and children younger than 5 years old.

I saw the consequences of U.S. policy firsthand when I followed an international humanitarian brigade to Cuba last month: blackouts, shortages, and a population being made to pay for Washington’s failed regime change obsession. Organizers from a number of groups, including Progressive International, Code Pink, and the Democratic Socialists of America, put together the Nuestra América Convoy – a mission of hundreds of people from around the world that converged in Havana in late March to deliver desperately needed aid and show solidarity with the country.

The entire island plunged into darkness during the trip, as the U.S. embargo took down the national electric grid. A handful of solar lamps glowed faintly, and people walked through the streets using the flashlight on their phones. I woke up one day to find that the power hadn’t returned and there was no running water in the house I was staying at. (Under the U.S. embargo, Americans traveling to Cuba are only legally allowed to stay at a handful of private five-star hotels or Airbnbs.)

I walked past playgrounds and neighborhoods that looked as if they had been bombed, the result of years of deprivation, decay, and a state starved of the resources needed to maintain basic infrastructure. Most of the regular people I spoke with – from mothers and children to the men peddling bicitaxis – told me they were hungry, surviving on just a single meal a day. Without fuel for garbage collection, trash had piled up across the city. Cubans apologized, embarrassed that many of the activists were visiting for the first time and seeing their country under these conditions. The Americans apologized for the crimes our country was committing in our name.

I spoke with a 56-year-old souvenir shop owner who had seen business dry up. She choked up talking about Trump’s threats of invasion. “When they kidnapped Maduro I was terrified,” she said, adding that U.S. military action is her biggest fear. “They’re already bombing Iran.”

Hasan Piker, a Twitch streamer and left-wing political commentator who joined the Nuestra América Convoy, described the devastation in similar terms. “I saw our 60 years of economic terrorism in action at its worst stage when I went to deliver humanitarian aid to Cuba with the Nuestra America convoy,” Piker told Capital & Empire. “For Congress, this vote is an afterthought. But for the 10 million living on this island only 90 miles off our coastline, it’s a matter of life and death.”

“Like the majority of Americans, I don’t have much confidence in our government to ever do the right thing, but after seeing the impact of our decisions firsthand – I’m praying that D.C. proves me wrong,” Piker said.

A House resolution introduced by one of the Democratic Party’s most hawkish members to blunt anti-war momentum could soon force Congress to vote on ending the U.S.-Israel war with Iran – and advocacy groups are demanding that he trigger the vote immediately.

The resolution was introduced by Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., as the moderate, pro-Israel alternative to the earlier bipartisan effort to end U.S. involvement in the war – led by Reps. Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie – which fell just four votes short of passing in the House. Gottheimer’s measure, H.Con.Res. 75, was a narrower alternative intended to garner support from some of the Democratic Caucus’ most staunch allies of Tel Aviv.

The maneuver may now be coming back to haunt the war machine. The AIPAC Democrats who co-sponsored Gottheimer’s bill after voting to defeat the Khanna-Massie resolution could soon face a simple question if the measure reaches the floor. Are they prepared to vote against their own bill – publicly backtracking on their one-month war pledge – or support a measure that would force the administration to end the war on March 30?

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Gottheimer helped launch the opposition campaign to the Khanna-Massie Iran war powers resolution, coming out against the measure and effectively opposing even holding a formal debate over the conflict. Shortly after, Gottheimer and eight other House Democrats introduced their own watered-down war powers resolution requiring President Donald Trump to halt U.S. military operations against Iran within 30 days from February 28, unless Congress authorized them.

At the outset of the war, the 30-day window served as a convenient delay mechanism. Because it roughly matched the timeline Trump initially claimed the operation would take, the measure allowed lawmakers to dampen momentum behind the Khanna-Massie resolution while giving the administration room to carry out the campaign. Now, with the conflict escalating and the clock nearing its deadline, that same timeline is creating pressure for Congress to decide whether the war should continue at all.

This alternate war powers resolution will soon become eligible for a privileged vote on the House floor, allowing lawmakers to force a vote even if leadership does not schedule one. Gottheimer’s resolution, which was formally introduced earlier this month, is set to ripen on March 19. The bill’s co-sponsors say they will force a vote the week of March 23.

In other words, the same resolution introduced to slow anti-war momentum will soon become another vehicle for forcing Congress to vote on ending the war.

Gottheimer’s resolution is backed by eight Democrats: Reps. Greg Landsman, Henry Cuellar, Jared Golden, Jim Costa, Jimmy Panetta, Vicente Gonzalez, Tom Suozzi, Adam Gray.

Of the four Democrats who voted to defeat the Khanna-Massie resolution, three of them are original co-sponsors of Gottheimer’s bill. Gottheimer himself later flipped and voted for Khanna’s measure after facing intense grassroots pressure.

A Republican congressional staffer, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told me that the Gottheimer resolution’s March 30 cutoff could actually make a vote to end the war “more appealing” to GOP lawmakers.

“Based on conversations I’ve had at the staff level,” the staffer said, the time constraint of the resolution could make it “more appealing since it gives Trump some leeway while aligning with at least some of his statements that he wants this wrapped up soon.”

A coalition of peace groups is calling on Congress to force immediate votes on pending war powers resolutions like Gottheimer’s, according to a letter exclusively obtained by Capital & Empire. Rep. Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has recently said he will wait for 60 days to force a vote on his own war powers resolution.

The letter, which was signed by over 40 groups, urges lawmakers to refuse to fund the unauthorized U.S.-Israeli war against Iran and argues that the destruction of civilian and governmental infrastructure risks triggering long-term state collapse similar to what occurred in Iraq, Syria, and Libya after Western-backed military interventions.

“Congress must not fund these operations, must reject any suggestion that appropriations can substitute for authorization, and must bring available War Powers Resolutions to a vote urgently,” the groups said.

I asked Gottheimer’s office whether he still plans to force a vote on his war powers resolution the week of March 23 and whether he would consider moving the vote forward to when the measure first becomes eligible for floor consideration, given the urgency of the war. His office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. I also asked Meeks’ office why he wants to wait 60 days before forcing a vote, even as the situation rapidly deteriorates. His office did not immediately respond.

Much of the discussion among Democratic lawmakers has centered on whether the Trump administration has articulated clear “objectives” or a coherent strategy for the war. The advocacy groups argue that focusing on whether the administration has a coherent plan effectively turns opposition to the war into a critique of how the war is being managed rather than whether it should continue.

After a recent classified briefing, Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy criticized the administration’s “incoherent” war plans and warned the strategy could amount to endless bombing. Murphy also noted that officials told members of Congress that regime change was not among the war’s objectives – a point he raised as evidence of the administration’s flawed strategy. In Murphy’s telling, that means the U.S. could spend “hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars,” lose American lives, and still leave Iran’s current government – or an even more anti-U.S. one – in power.

The critique echoed a familiar line among Democrats in Washington – that the problem with Trump’s illegal foreign interventions is not necessarily the interventions themselves, but that they don’t go far enough to reshape the governments they target, an argument that liberals made during Trump’s attacks on Venezuela as well.

“There is no credible military strategy that could justify this particular war,” the letter continued. “There is zero evidence that Iran posed an imminent threat to the U.S. Iran previously adhered to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and negotiations were underway to strengthen a nuclear agreement when these hostilities began — one that experts agreed would effectively constrain Iran’s nuclear program.”

In addition to the call for immediate votes, the groups also demand “full transparency on U.S. casualties, base damage, and the financial costs of continued hostilities,” and for members to oppose all funding for these unauthorized military operations. Demand Progress, the National Iranian-American Council (NIAC), and the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft are among the signers.

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The first six days of the U.S. war with Iran cost more than $11.3 billion, according to Pentagon estimates shared with lawmakers – though the true cost is almost certainly far higher. Some Democrats haven’t ruled out supporting a multibillion-dollar funding boost as the war escalates either.

But under U.S. law, funding a military operation does not by itself authorize combat operations. Section 8(a) of the War Powers Resolution states that authority to introduce U.S. armed forces into hostilities cannot be inferred from appropriations or other legislation unless the law specifically authorizes the use of force.

Trump has repeatedly suggested the war may be nearing an end. But getting Iran to agree to stop firing missiles and drones, and to unblock the Strait of Hormuz, would require a negotiated settlement with significant concessions from Washington, as Iran retains substantial leverage over the U.S. and the global economy. A quick end to the conflict is unlikely to come on terms dictated solely by the U.S.

Bahrain, a key American ally that hosts one of the most important U.S. naval bases in the Middle East, is so concerned about domestic unrest that it is bringing in foreign security forces as protests erupt against the kingdom’s role as a launchpad for Washington’s expanding war with Iran.

Bahrain has brought in anti-riot troops from Jordan to help suppress protests, national security sources tell me, confirming rumors that began circulating last week. The deployment marks the first time since the Arab Spring that Bahrain has called in foreign forces to quell domestic unrest – a sign of how seriously the monarchy is taking the threat of protests from the country’s Shia-majority population.

Mass protests have broken out against the Bahraini ruling class and the U.S.’s involvement in the country, especially with the recent assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, one of the most prominent Shia religious leaders in the world. Bahrain’s authorities have responded violently to protesters, firing tear gas directly into crowds. The demonstrations, one U.S. official told me, speak to how “deeply unpopular” the U.S.-backed regional order is in Bahrain and “the broader Muslim world.”

In 2011, Bahrain relied on a similar regional intervention to crush mass Arab Spring protests. Troops from several Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, entered the country as part of the Saudi-led Peninsula Shield force – a security mechanism that has since evolved into what is now known as the Unified Military Command.

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Iran has been targeting U.S. bases and infrastructure in countries that allow their territory to be used for attacks against it. A senior Iranian official told Drop Site that Iran may decrease its attacks on U.S. bases in the region to shift to increasing attacks against Israel because the strikes on U.S. military infrastructure have achieved most of their aims. In effect, Tehran is attempting to shift the burden of the war onto Washington’s regional partners, raising the domestic, economic, and political costs for governments that allow their territory to be used as staging grounds for U.S. military operations.

“I hope those countries have learned the lesson,” Esmail Baghaei, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, said earlier this week. “We urge them not to allow their territories to be used by the U.S. or the Zionist entity to stage attacks against Iran.”

The U.S. State Department and the embassies of Bahrain and Jordan did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

House Foreign Affairs Committee Democrats have been working behind the scenes to try to prevent a vote on Reps. Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie’s Iran war powers resolution – a measure that would require every member of Congress to go on the record about a potential U.S. war with Iran.

A top Democratic HFAC staffer, multiple sources with direct knowledge tell me, ​​deliberately inflated projections of opposition to the bipartisan measure – warning of 20 to 40 Democratic defections – as part of a broader effort to dampen momentum and prevent the Iran war powers vote from advancing. Khanna and Massie had initially planned to force a vote on the resolution this week, but Democratic leadership is now saying they expect the vote to be delayed until next week or even later. The postponement comes as the Trump administration accelerates preparations for unauthorized military action, overseeing the largest U.S. military buildup in the region in years.

Khanna and Massie argue that Congress must weigh in before – not after – the U.S. is pulled into another regime change war in the Middle East. Their resolution would require explicit congressional authorization for any military action against Iran, a vote that could become one of the most consequential foreign policy decisions in recent congressional history.

A senior Democratic congressional staffer told me it’s “pretty clear” Democratic leadership is working to delay “or potentially sideline” the vote on the Khanna-Massie war powers resolution. “If you’ve been around the Hill, this is a familiar playbook.”

“Leadership rarely comes out and says they oppose these votes outright, because they know the underlying issue is popular with the base,” said the staffer, who works on foreign policy. “Instead, you see process concerns, timing objections, and caucus-unity arguments used to slow things down or keep members off the record. We’ve seen the same approach on past war powers votes and foreign policy amendments that clash with the national security elite consensus.”

The internal effort to sabotage momentum for the Iran war powers resolution reflects a broader strategic calculation among Democratic elites. As a recent Drop Site report detailed, many top Democrats privately believe Iran will ultimately have to be confronted militarily. But they also understand that openly backing another regime change war in the Middle East would be politically toxic. Poll after poll show there is little to no appetite for war with Iran, including lukewarm support among conservatives. The preferred outcome of many AIPAC-aligned Senate Democrats, according to a senior foreign policy aide to Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, is that Trump acts unilaterally, weakening Iran while absorbing the domestic backlash ahead of the midterms.

The war powers vote threatens to disrupt that arrangement by forcing Democrats to declare, publicly and on the record, whether they support giving Trump unilateral authority to wage war.

Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, the top Democrat in the House, critics argue, are not leading resistance to a potential war with Iran because they fundamentally agree with the aims of the Iran hawks working inside the Trump administration. In June 2025, ahead of the U.S. strikes on Iran, Schumer attacked Trump from the right, urging the administration to be “tough” on Iran and cautioning against making any “side deals” without Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s approval.

Hill sources say Jeffries and other members of Democratic leadership are not actively whipping support for the Khanna-Massie resolution. While some committee leaders have issued statements invoking Congress’s constitutional war powers, most have declined to endorse the resolution itself, even as it is the only war powers measure up for a vote.

Unlike the run-up to the Iraq war, when the Bush administration orchestrated a sustained campaign to sell the public on invasion, the Trump administration has made little effort to construct a coherent case for war with Iran. They aren’t bothering to lie convincingly to the public. And top Democrats, mainstream media outlets, and liberal commentators have been conspicuously silent.

There has been no sustained public argument outlining a clear and immediate danger that Iran supposedly poses to the U.S. Trump has cited a shifting and incoherent mix of grievances – nuclear activity, missile capability, and regional proxy activity – without consolidating them into a comprehensive narrative like the one that preceded Iraq, even as the prospect of military action inches closer. After bombing Iran in June, Trump declared Iran’s nuclear facilities “totally obliterated.” Now, eight months later, Trump officials are claiming that Iran is “weeks away” from developing nuclear bomb-making material.

I asked Schumer’s office last week whether he supports Trump’s potential strikes, and whether escalation into a broader regional conflict is a risk he considers acceptable. His office did not respond to my request for comment. Days later, and only after the Drop Site report was published, Schumer’s office issued a minimal statement in support of congressional war powers.

So far, pro-Israel Democrats and AIPAC favorites Reps. Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey and Jared Moskowitz of Florida are the only Democrats publicly opposing the Iran war powers resolution. Gottheimer joined Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., in arguing against the resolution last week – effectively opposing even a formal debate over a conflict that could spiral into a broader regional war.

“We respect and defend Congress’s constitutional role in matters of war,” they wrote in a joint statement. “Oversight and debate are absolutely vital. However, this resolution would restrict the flexibility needed to respond to real and evolving threats and risks signaling weakness at a dangerous moment.”

Votes to invoke the War Powers Resolution are historically rare on Capitol Hill – though they have increased in frequency in recent years – and party leadership in both chambers has sought to avoid them. Passed over Nixon’s veto, the War Powers Resolution of 1973 was designed to guarantee that decisions about war reflect congressional deliberation and, by extension, the will of the American people before a president pulls the trigger. Forcing members to take a recorded position on military action carries political risk and can expose internal divisions, particularly when the White House is pressing for escalation.

But there is currently scant evidence of the mass Democratic revolt against the resolution that the HFAC staffer predicted. (The HFAC staffer referred my questions to the committee’s communications team, which did not immediately respond to my request for comment.)

“We are thinking there will likely be fewer defections than that,” said a spokesperson for J Street, a pro-Israel group that opposes war with Iran. “What we are hearing is that more and more members are committing to support the War Powers resolution due to Trump’s inching toward war.”

“Leadership will always bluff to try to scare the sponsors from calling the vote,” an organizer at an advocacy group opposing Iran strikes told me. “In reality, Moskowitz and Gottheimer are likely to be quite lonely.”

“Democratic leadership is putting in about as much energy into stopping this war as they did into pressuring Biden to rejoin the JCPOA – which is to say, almost zero,” said the organizer, who works closely with Democratic offices. “It’s obvious they’re not going to fight to protect Iranian lives if that means helping Trump avoid a war that will crater his popularity.”

Even Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, a staunch pro-Israel Democrat from Florida, has flipped on the issue. She supported Trump’s strikes on Iran in June but is now publicly against unauthorized war with Iran. “Make the case to the American people. Make the case to Congress,” Wasserman-Schultz said in an interview on MSNBC. “We have not seen anything about an imminent threat that would necessitate a significant strike.”

Republican Rep. Warren Davidson of Ohio has voiced a similar concern from the right, warning that the U.S. doesn’t “need to participate in all the wars we’re invited to, regardless of who plans them for us.”

The recent Venezuela vote also offers a useful comparison. When lawmakers were asked to weigh in on another unauthorized military action just weeks ago, Democrats did not defect en masse. The Venezuela war powers resolution failed by a narrow margin in both the Senate and the House. In the Senate, Vice President JD Vance cast a tie-breaking vote to effectively kill the resolution.

Pentagon officials are privately warning that a war with Iran could mean significant casualties, munitions shortages, and a drawn-out regional conflict. Democratic leadership seems prepared to live with that – they’d just prefer not to sign their names to it.

I’m still sorting through interviews, notes, and hours of audio. I’ll have more in-depth reported pieces coming soon. But I wanted to send some initial thoughts and observations: what it was like to report from the West Bank as an American journalist, what I saw on the ground, and the messages Palestinians want people in the U.S. to hear.

Before we even entered, we were held at the border connecting Jordan and the occupied West Bank for hours and questioned one by one. I traveled with a small delegation made up of politicians, scholars, lawyers, activists, and journalists – all European, from Germany, France, Greece, Croatia, Belgium, Spain, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and more. The delegation was gathering for the Ramallah Congress on the Decolonisation of Palestine, organized by Al-Shabaka, Birzeit University, and Progressive International. I was the only one coming all the way from the United States.

One person in our group was denied entry with no explanation. We assumed his age and the stamps in his passport were enough to trigger whatever arbitrary logic Israeli officials use. A French MEP in the broader delegation, Manon Aubry, was allowed in at first. After she tweeted a few observations about the reality of the occupation, Israeli authorities emailed her to say her visa had been revoked and that she would be arrested at the next checkpoint.

It was a measure of how repressive conditions have become. Work of any kind – humanitarian, academic, or even cultural exchange – is becoming nearly impossible, and Israeli authorities are willing to threaten foreign politicians with arrest simply for describing what’s directly in front of them. The state isn’t even trying to offer symbolic gestures of openness anymore. That’s how thoroughly Israel has lost control.

When it was my turn for questioning, they asked multiple times what I do for a living and whether I knew any Palestinians. I’d written “journalist” on the border entry form, but I tried to downplay it. I said I write occasionally and wanted to see the holy sites – true, and also an attempt to avoid a Google search or an excuse to turn me away. Later, one of the European politicians told me she thought the Israeli officials were giving me a harder time because they were racially profiling me, the only non-European woman in the group.

While I was sitting off to the side of the line, already more than an hour into waiting, a white NGO worker nearby was frustrated that he and two Arab women had been pulled aside and questioned about their “connection.” “There isn’t one,” he said. “We just all speak French.”

It was a preview of the rest of the trip, and a narrow window into the barbaric conditions Palestinians are forced to live under. The control, the intimidation, the psychological warfare – the constant reminder that the Israeli occupation fundamentally stands against anything resembling a human life.

The West Bank Today

Most Americans have no real sense of what the West Bank looks like at this moment, how quickly the situation is deteriorating, or how calculated and coordinated the violence has become. On the ground, the boundary between Israeli settler terrorism and the Israeli military has entirely disappeared. Settlers and soldiers move as one force, reinforcing each other’s attacks and carrying out coordinated violence that is far more organized than in previous years. Together, Israeli forces are leading a deliberate, relentless effort to ethnically cleanse the West Bank.

In recent weeks, the occupied West Bank has seen a dramatic surge in Israeli settler terrorism, particularly targeting rural Palestinian communities during the olive-harvest season. Last month, there were 264 recorded settler attacks, the highest monthly figure in nearly two decades, according to the United Nations. Cars have been torched, olive groves burned, mosques defaced, farmers beaten, and entire harvests destroyed.

On Friday, our delegation went to meet with Eid Suleiman Hathaleen, an artist and activist from the village of Umm Al-Khair in the Masafer Yatta area in the occupied West Bank. We sat drinking tea in a small corrugated metal shelter – three walls, a roof, and a dirt floor – while the rain came down hard outside. Our guide passed around a photo of a double rainbow that had appeared over Gaza earlier in the day. Barefoot children ran in and out around us as we listened to our hosts describe life under occupation and the recent surge in settler terrorism.

Hathaleen’s father was killed by Israeli police, and his cousin Awdah was murdered earlier this year by a settler named Yinon Levi. Levi – who was sanctioned by Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States under then-President Biden for violent attacks on Palestinians – still harasses the community today. After killing Awdah, Israel held his body for 10 days and then arrested members of the grieving family. Awdah, a beloved activist and father of three, helped make the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land.

As we sipped on tea, a group of eight fully armed Israeli settlers and IDF soldiers pulled up in military vehicles to declare it a “military zone.” Some recorded and took photos of us on their phones, a routine intimidation tactic, and told us we had four minutes to leave. “Everyone with a foreign passport has to leave, and the Palestinians have to stay,” one of the masked militia members said. Hathaleen and our hosts apologized for the abrupt ending. On our way into the village, we had already been forced to reroute after discovering that the road leading in had been declared a “military zone” minutes earlier.

On our way out, two IDF soldiers peed openly on the roadside. One of their military vehicles tailed our bus for nearly twenty minutes. Palestinian roads were lined with Israeli flags for miles, and outside many villages we found settler propaganda spray painted onto walls and barriers. “No future in Palestine,” one message read. Our guide, a local peace activist, joked that this was actually unusually progressive: “They’re acknowledging the existence of Palestine now,” he laughed.

There Is No Ceasefire

People are tired. It was obvious everywhere. Palestinians are exhausted by war, displacement, and being forced to live under a system that constantly develops new methods of domination. But not one person I spoke with ever positioned themselves as defeated or without agency.

“We like to say we have two enemies: one is the Israeli occupation and the other is called capitalism,” said Ghassan Najjar, a farmer and activist in Burin, a Palestinian village south of Nablus. “We are free people, even if we are under occupation, because we are still struggling.”

I’ve reported on Congress, weapons transfers, and funding battles. But seeing the Israeli occupation up close – the state-backed settler terrorism, the surveillance, the pace of destruction – still stunned me. No amount of reading prepares you for the scale or the cruelty. Most Americans will never see it for themselves, and much of the Washington press corps has no sense of what their coverage helps justify.

Again and again, Palestinians urged the West to stop saying “ceasefire.” Nothing has stopped. “Ceasefire” is a word Western governments use to calm their own publics, not one that reflects the reality on the ground, they said.

“You’re not just fighting for us,” countless Palestinians told us. “You’re fighting for yourselves.” What’s being tested on Palestinians today, many warned, is what the capitalist class intends to enforce on people everywhere tomorrow.

“What people call conflicts of interests, Steve and I call experience,” Jared Kushner told 60 Minutes last week, defending his role in rebuilding Gaza.

At his side, Steve Witkoff, President Donald Trump’s envoy to the Middle East and fellow real estate developer, assured the interviewer that “the money raising is the easy part” and admitted they had “been working on master plans for the last two years.”

Kushner glanced toward him as he said it, an unspoken acknowledgment of how long the project has been underway.

The two men, each with deep financial ties to Saudi and Emirati investors, are central to Washington’s effort to rebuild Gaza on American terms. After abetting genocide, the United States is moving to install a U.S.-Israel-Gulf-backed government on the Palestinian people. Framed as a path to peace, Trump’s post-war plan for Gaza amounts to a neo-colonial regime imposed on a people emerging from mass death. Palestinians would have no say over their future, and would be forced to relinquish all forms of self-defense and resistance against Israeli occupation.

“Just last year, Kushner was talking about Gaza as a valuable waterfront investment. The future of Gaza should be determined by Palestinians, not by foreign businessmen,” Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., told me.

With remarkable precision, Washington has managed to turn desperation for an end to the slaughter in Gaza into support for its own long-term design for the region. The “peace plan,” which Trump unveiled last month, fuses a ceasefire with a blueprint for Gaza’s future – a blueprint first conceived under earlier administrations, in which reconstruction and control flow through American hands. The U.S. has effectively made the end of hostilities contingent on complete submission to a neocolonial regime.

Trump’s plan offers Israel impunity for its assault on Gaza, promises Gulf monarchies a stake in reconstruction, and positions Trump’s inner circle to profit from one of the deadliest atrocities of the 21st century. Palestinians, meanwhile, are left with no freedom or self-determination.

Under the administration’s 20-point plan, Gaza’s future would be managed by a technocratic administration vetted by the U.S. and its allies, with ultimate authority resting in a new “Board of Peace” chaired by Trump himself. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, remembered across the Arab world for his role as an architect of the Iraq war and for obstructing Palestinian statehood at the UN, would help oversee the Gaza transition and serve as a senior figure.

Reconstruction would be bankrolled by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies, creating vast opportunities for private profiteering and for the enrichment of Trump’s inner circle. Kushner and Witkoff – both with deep financial ties to these regimes – crafted the framework and are shaping its economic program, as they detailed in the 60 Minutes interview.

Kushner’s private equity firm, Affinity Partners, has already received billions from Saudi Arabia and hundreds of millions from the UAE, meaning the very governments expected to bankroll reconstruction are also his financiers. Most recently, his private equity firm teamed up with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund on a $55 billion deal to take the video game giant Electronic Arts private, the largest leveraged buyout in history. Witkoff has longstanding financial ties with the Qatari and UAE governments. The Witkoff family fortune is built primarily in real estate, and his son Alex Witkoff took over as Witkoff Group’s CEO two months before he was announced as Trump’s envoy.

Kushner and Witkoff have brushed off concerns about profiteering as a necessary tradeoff for experience.

“What people call conflicts of interests, Steve and I call experience and trusted relationships,” Kushner said. “If Steve and I didn’t have these deep relationships, the deal we were able to get done…would not have occurred.”

Witkoff added: “Conflict of interest is a terminology used by some, and we call it experience. We really do. Because we don’t think we crossed any ethical barriers. There becomes this sort of perception…because we can call Sheikh Mohammed in Qatar directly, or because we can call Bibi directly, or…MB Zayed in the Emirates, or MBS.”

Kushner insisted he and Witkoff would not be “involved in awarding contracts or figuring out who does business in Gaza,” even as he described working on “the master plan” and coordinating with financiers across the Gulf.

Kushner, the presidential son-in-law, is expected to play “a very active role” in the next phases of the negotiations, according to CNN. Trump has repeatedly gushed about Kushner and Witkoff’s role in negotiations. “They’ve been so involved in this process,” he said. “I don’t think anybody else could have done it or even come close.”

Plenty of details remain unsettled – including whether Hamas will disarm and what form Gaza’s governance will ultimately take – but mainstream media outlets have already branded it a peace deal, and pundits across the foreign policy establishment are hailing it as a major diplomatic breakthrough.

“The fact that it is on the Arab states to finance this plan, rather than Israel that is responsible for the destruction, is just one of the many signs that this plan is divorced from any sense of justice,” said Josh Paul, who resigned from the State Department in protest over Gaza under the Biden administration. “Because it should be Israel that is funding and financing the reconstruction of Gaza.”

Paul, who served in the U.S. occupation government in Iraq after the 2003 invasion, told me the same logic is now being repackaged for Gaza. “The United States is particularly ill-suited to carrying out what essentially is an occupation, or the governance of a country in the Middle East,” Paul said. “Any such venture that seeks to apply a foreign model to a very clearly and well-defined local political system and cultural system just will not be able to build the legitimacy that makes it sustainable.”

Democrats Fall in Line

In Congress, much of Democratic leadership has already aligned with Trump’s long-term vision for Gaza and the region – a sign of how bipartisan the consensus on U.S. control has become. Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., the top House Democrat on the Foreign Affairs Committee, said he’s “encouraged” by news of agreement on the first phase of the plan. “We all hope this moment brings the release of every hostage, the delivery of vital aid, and the first steps toward lasting peace in the region,” Meeks said in a statement.

In Trump’s first term, congressional Democrats vocally condemned the administration’s indulgence of Gulf autocracies and the revolving door between foreign policy and private profit. After the Saudi assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018, Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs Committee called for accountability and denounced Jared Kushner’s role in shielding Riyadh from scrutiny. Lawmakers blasted Kushner’s undisclosed financial ties to Gulf regimes and his blurring of diplomacy and personal enrichment.

Those same Democrats are now largely silent as Kushner and Trump’s inner circle prepare to manage Gaza’s future – a staggering reversal for a party that once demanded oversight of Trump-era corruption and foreign profiteering. I reached out to nearly every Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee to ask whether they trust Kushner, Witkoff, and Blair to manage Palestinian affairs and coordinate with the Gulf regimes post-war.

California Rep. Sara Jacobs, a Democrat on the committee who has spoken out against human rights abuses committed by Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E., declined to comment. A few offices, like Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., or Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., said they were tied up with the looming government shutdown. Most other Democratic lawmakers did not reply at all.

The office of Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American member of Congress, directed me to a statement she made on X: “Trump and War Criminal Netanyahu, perpetrators of the genocide, do not get to decide the future of Gaza,” she wrote. “Palestinians get to determine the future of Palestine.”

In late September, Rep. Khanna led 47 of his colleagues in sending a letter to the Trump administration urging the U.S. to officially recognize a Palestinian state. “We will need to work closely with the Palestinian people, the Palestinian Authority, our Arab allies, and Israel to make this feasible,” the lawmakers wrote. “This includes organizing free and fair presidential and general elections and implementing fundamental security, political, judicial, and democratic reforms.”

Paul expects Democratic criticism of Trump’s broader plan to be limited. “No one wants to be the naysayer on what appears to be, at least for now, the only option for ending the bloodshed and restoring humanitarian access to Gaza,” he said.

“But this plan is designed to play out over many years. Even if it advances, as was the case with Iraq, what looks like success at first will soon reveal itself as failure. You’ll have the same people who supported it early on later explaining in their memoirs how they changed their minds.”

A Seamless Handoff

While Trump has rebranded the project in his own bombastic style, the underlying logic was forged long before his return to office. Under Biden, U.S. officials already blurred humanitarian rhetoric with the architecture of domination, selling the illusion of a policy break with Netanyahu to credulous reporters while materially sustaining Israel’s brutal campaign in Gaza. Throughout the genocide, the Biden administration oscillated between feigning helplessness and promoting the idea that the president was growing increasingly frustrated with Netanyahu, who, they claimed, was disregarding even their most tepid humanitarian requests.

The Biden administration’s version of the plan – remove Hamas, demilitarize Gaza, and fold reconstruction into a U.S.-Gulf-Israeli framework – laid the groundwork for exactly what Trump is now aiming to formalize. Biden’s advisers had already envisioned Gulf monarchies rebuilding Gaza’s ruins in exchange for normalization with Israel, a strategy that would secure U.S. dominance, and generate new markets and alliances for the region’s ruling elites.

Top Biden administration officials were explicit from the start. Just a month after the October 7 attacks, amid Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, Daniel Mouton – formerly a senior adviser to Biden’s top Middle East hand Brett McGurk – publicly laid out the “post–October 7 U.S. strategy.”

“Long-term security in the Middle East will start with the ability to maintain an enduring regional deterrent order against Iran and its proxies,” he wrote for the Atlantic Council in November 2023. The piece sketched out a sweeping vision of coordinated maneuvering against Iran, China, and Russia, alongside a “two-state solution” that would fold Palestinian governance into a regional security architecture dominated by Washington and its allies.

“This progress will in turn allow for Israel to normalize its relationship with Saudi Arabia and more comprehensively integrate itself into the region,” Mouton wrote, adding that such a breakthrough would “fully unlock U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia.”

Biden’s Middle East strategy was itself a continuation of Trump’s Abraham Accords, a vision of regional “peace” built through Gulf normalization and the permanent deferral of Palestinian sovereignty. Trump’s post-war plan has kept all these same premises intact. His aim is to reframe regime change as peace, permanent occupation as reconstruction, and the subjugation of Palestinians as stability for the region.

Former Secretary of State Antony Blinken has also acknowledged the continuity. “It starts with a clear and comprehensive post-conflict plan for Gaza,” Blinken wrote. “It’s good that President Trump adopted and built on the plan the Biden administration developed after months of discussion with Arab partners, Israel and the Palestinian Authority.”

And when former presidents Biden and Clinton publicly celebrated Trump’s maneuvering, the inheritance was complete, with the imperial architecture passed seamlessly from one administration to the next. “Now, with the backing of the United States and the world, the Middle East is on a path to peace that I hope endures – and a future for Israelis and Palestinians alike with equal measures of peace, dignity, and safety,” Biden said.

Trump’s “peace” plan represents the culmination of a project years in the making. Its iterations have shifted from administration to administration but the goal of preserving U.S. dominance in the Middle East remains constant. That alone ensures Washington will keep trying to impose it, whatever the human cost.

For years, the United States built its foreign policy consensus around confronting China. Washington’s overriding goal, across administrations, has been to preserve a global order it no longer commands – launching a trade war against China, rallying the public with anti-China propaganda, and pitting Chinese and American workers against each other.

President Donald Trump has carried that project forward. His China policy looks just as aggressive on paper, as he continues to threaten trade war against the world’s second-largest economy. But behind closed doors, reality is setting in. Having hit the ceiling of confrontation with China, the Trump administration is quietly redirecting energy from that front, at least temporarily, and pivoting toward war with Venezuela – framing a renewed push for regime change and anti-cartel operations as the next front in “national security.”

Reflecting the administration’s pivot, the Central Intelligence Agency is now considering dissolving its China Mission Center, according to two sources familiar with the matter, as part of a broader realignment that de-emphasizes confrontation with China.

The CIA has about a dozen mission centers that cover functional focuses, including counterintelligence, counterterrorism, technology, and weapons and counterproliferation, as well as regional centers specializing in geographic areas such as Africa, Europe, and the Western Hemisphere. In 2021, the Biden administration launched a China-focused mission center – the only one devoted to a single country. The creation of this independent China mission center, which had previously fallen under the agency’s Mission Center for East Asia and Pacific, emphasized how fully the U.S. national security establishment had reoriented itself around the so-called China threat.

“If there is any country that deserves its own mission center, it is China, which has global ambitions and presents the greatest challenge to U.S. interests and to international order,” former CIA Director John Brennan said at the time.

Sources say that the CIA is thinking about shutting down the China center, in part, for its ineffectiveness, having consumed vast resources with little to show for it. This comes in the wake of one of the CIA’s worst intelligence failures in its history. Between 2010 and 2012, Chinese counterintelligence wiped out the CIA’s network of informants, killing or imprisoning nearly twenty people and destroying years of espionage work, the New York Times reported in 2017. More than a decade later, the agency has yet to fully recover.

Washington would keep losing ground in other ways, too.

Despite years of trade war, export bans, and posturing, the U.S. remains structurally dependent on China. Beijing has the ability to collapse the American military and economy through its near-total control of rare earth minerals, the critical components that power U.S. weapons systems and industrial technology alike. The state that proclaims itself locked in existential competition has no way to arm itself without its supposed enemy – a contradiction that’s finally starting to register among U.S. officials. It’s why the Trump administration was forced to retreat from its sweeping “Liberation Day” tariffs in April, and why its strategy is shifting again, at least for now.

In late March, the CIA, and broader intelligence community (IC), began ramping up its “counter narcotics” efforts and focus on the Western Hemisphere, just as Trump was escalating his tariff threats against China. In the months since, the U.S. military has followed suit. A draft of the Trump administration’s 2025 National Defense Strategy downgrades China on the list of threats, renewing focus on “defending the homeland” and “hemispheric security.” That change marks a departure from earlier doctrines that explicitly targeted China, including the first Trump administration’s 2018 National Defense Strategy, which identified China as the top priority.

Trump’s pivot away from confrontation with China and toward the Western Hemisphere is less a bold reordering than a recognition of material limits, and a temporary one, at best. China processes around 90 percent of global rare earths necessary for the production of the U.S. military and economy, and dominates the processing and magnet manufacturing that turn ores into usable defense components. When China tightened export controls on rare earths in retaliation to Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods in April, the effects on Western defense manufacturers were immediate. One drone-parts supplier reported delays of up to two months, and the price of some inputs spiked fivefold or more. One company said samarium, the element used in magnets that withstand jet-engine heat, was suddenly offered at sixty times the usual rate, defense executives said in August.

U.S. munitions stockpiles were already drained due to the proxy war in Ukraine and ongoing genocide in Gaza. The Pentagon’s factories can’t replace weapons as fast as Washington sends them abroad, and global supply chains for critical materials still run through China.

“The U.S. has very little leverage in this story at all,” said Dean Baker, an economist and co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). “He seems to think he’s doing something horrible to China – 100 percent tariffs, doubling the price of everything we get from them. But that’s a huge tax on Americans. China could live with it. They’d lose some business. We’d raise prices here.”

“Trump is utterly clueless,” Baker added. “His understanding of the world is virtually zero, and he just wants to be the tough guy. He thinks he’s pushing people around…he has no idea how powerful China is.”

The dream of a new Cold War with China is largely confined to Washington. Outside of the foreign policy establishment and defense lobby, few Americans have any appetite for conflict with China, especially over Taiwan, the Philippines, or some maritime dispute. The American working class is tired, poorer, and less convinced that distant imperialist ambitions serve them in any way. Progressive and pro-restraint advocacy groups recently wrote to Trump, urging him to make diplomatic agreements to tone down tensions over Taiwan as part of a bargain to deliver a more favorable economic deal for American workers.

As Washington quietly pulls attention and resources away from countering China, it is actively escalating in Venezuela – expanding its military footprint across the Caribbean, carrying out unconstitutional strikes on boats near Venezuelan waters, and reviving anti-drug rhetoric as the pretext for regime change. Recent polls show that both Americans strongly oppose U.S. military action against Venezuela as well.

Since early September, the U.S. military has conducted at least five lethal strikes on civilian boats in the Caribbean, which the Trump administration claims were operated by members of Venezuelan drug cartels it has labeled terrorist organizations. Trump has also acknowledged that he authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations in Venezuela, intensifying his efforts to push Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro out of power. This new authority would allow the CIA to carry out lethal operations in the country.

The CIA’s record in the hemisphere is long and bloody, from the 1954 coup in Guatemala and the 1973 overthrow of Chile’s Salvador Allende to the coups it abetted in Brazil, Argentina, and Honduras. Each intervention was justified as a defense of “democracy” against governments that threatened U.S. corporate or strategic interests.

Now, constrained by limits of its own making, the U.S. is falling further behind China and turning instead to displays of power closer to home. Trump is determined to prove the U.S. can still project strength somewhere. Even if it means punishing the Venezuelan people and, ironically, fueling migration across the region.

“He’s offered everything,” Trump said of Maduro last week. “You know why? He doesn’t want to fuck around with the United States.”

Update (October 24, 2025): After publication, a CIA spokesperson dismissed the claim that the agency is considering shutting down its China Mission Center as “false, absurd and totally baseless.” The agency did not address other parts of the inquiry, including context on the collapse of U.S. spying operations in China between 2010 and 2012.