Somewhere between New York’s Studio 54 disco and the White House, Donald Trump became infused by militant Christianity. At the same time, he also seems to have been imbued by the most extreme, far-right Zionism.

Politics do odd things. Trump may espouse a lot of oddball causes, but he’s no fool. He lives and breathes politics.

This week’s political rabbit out of the hat is, of all places, Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nations, with 232 million rambunctious people. As with many of today’s world problems, Nigeria was a creation of British imperialism. The British took a very large swathe of West Africa comprising all sorts of peoples, religions and tribes, drew a line around its borders, and called it Nigeria.

Northern Nigeria, which abuts the Sahara, was predominantly Muslim. Southern Nigeria, where vast stores of oil were eventually discovered, became largely Christian thanks to intense British missionary activity. The two huge communities occasionally squabble or fight, most often over land disputes, cattle rusting and kidnapping of women.

In the face of the international legal and political systems' paralyzing silence and utter failure to hold Israel accountable for its genocide in Gaza, international civil society has refused to stand idly by. Instead, it continues to forge a path, presenting essential working models for what true justice in Palestine must look like.

Let him rest in . . . peace?

I don’t know. The irony of those words is a little too much for me to grasp as I sit here contemplating the death of Dicke Cheney at age 84. Cheney, mastermind and primary organizer on the “war on terror,” which, in a 20-year span of insanity, cost the United States some $8 trillion and killed (murdered) nearly a million people, according to Brown University’s Costs of War Project.

And as though that total weren’t high enough, the Project notes that this number is very much an undercount, since it doesn’t include indirect deaths of the war  caused by “disease, displacement and loss of access to food or clean drinking water.”

In November of 2025, Zohran Mamdani—a youthful progressive who, just a few months before, was polling in the single digits—won the mayoral election in New York City. He succeeded in the country’s largest city, home to the highest Jewish population of any city in the world. He achieved this despite the political establishment, billionaires, and media landscape pivoting against him with unusual bipartisan cohesion. For a country that has spent the past decade doubting its own democratic immune system, this is a matter of consequence. It tells us that America may still be able to self-correct when it counts the most.  

As someone who has seen public life in the United States move further away from any moral center—particularly concerning the Middle East, justice, and the worth of Palestinian life—Mamdani’s win represented something I had not experienced in years: American democratic hope.  

Tucson, AZ — AUDIT USA and its Executive Director, John R. Brakey, have filed a Motion for Reconsideration asking the Arizona Court of Appeals, Division Two, to correct several legal errors in its October 20 ruling in Santa Cruz County v. AUDIT USA. The Court, which sided with AUDIT USA in its Opinion, previously agreed the County’s lawsuit should never have been filed but declined to award attorney fees and sanctions — despite statutes requiring them.

In 2022, Santa Cruz County sued AUDIT USA and John Brakey simply for requesting a copy of an election record – the Cast Vote Record (CVR) – from the August 2022 Primary Election. Although the Superior Court judge promptly dismissed the County’s case, the County continued its unjustified litigation by appealing twice to the Arizona Court of Appeals.