Global
Thursday, March 26, 2026, 8:00 - 9:00 PM
Join our March People Power Action Call
Across the country, people are organizing to defend our rights and push back against abuses of power. From nationwide No Kings mobilizations to the upcoming Supreme Court decision on birthright citizenship, this moment demands organized action.
Join ACLU organizers and volunteers on Thursday, March 26 at 8 PM ET / 5 PM PT for our March People Power Action Call.
Together we'll ground ourselves in what's happening, hear updates on key campaigns, and identify the concrete roles volunteers can play in organizing this month.
On this call you'll hear:
Each year approximately 500-700 Palestinian children, some as young as 12 years old, are detained and prosecuted in the Israeli military court system. Israel is the only country in the world that tries minors in military courts in violation of human rights standards.
I would like to summarize the story of Shadi Khoury, as told by his mother, Rania Ellias, and his grandmother, Samia Khoury, because it describes the typical brutality inflicted on Palestinian children in military court system and detention.
Shadi was seized from his family’s home in Jerusalem in the early morning hours of October18, 2022 at the age of 16. The armed Israeli forces stormed his home, beat and dragged Shadi while handcuffed, blindfolded, barefoot, and wearing only his pajamas. He was placed in detention and interrogated for 41 days. During interrogation, he was subjected to repeated beatings, lost consciousness three times, suffered a broken nose, and was subjected to threats.
This is the first sentence of a column I cannot write . . . of a “war” I cannot win. There’s just no way to condense the psycho-spiritual devastation of an unleashed nuclear bomb into words. All I can do is ask a question that has no answer: What is the opposite of Armageddon?
Can a collective human embrace be larger, more intense and powerful than collective suicide? Is “peace” a force in its own right, or just a brief moment of quiet while humanity reloads?
OK, no answers, just a bit of context with which to ponder the ongoing U.S.-Israeli war on Iran (and throughout the Middle East). Lawrence Wilkerson – retired U.S. Army colonel and former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell – put it this way in a recent interview with Democracy Now: “This is a war with long legs and I think Trump has completely misinterpreted it. The only one who has interpreted it correctly is Bibi Netanyahu and I think he’s ready to use a nuclear weapon, should it become as bad as it looks right now.”
The origins of chess are contested, but few dispute that while the game began in India, it was the Sassanian Persian Empire that refined it into a recognizable strategic system. It was Persia that codified its language, symbolism and intellectual framework: the shah (king), the rokh (rook), and shatranj, the modern chess game.
This is not a trivial historical detail. It is, in many ways, a metaphor that has returned with force.
Since the start of the US-Israeli war on Iran on February 28, 2026, political discourse—across Western, Israeli and alternative media—has repeatedly invoked the analogy of chess to describe Iran’s conduct.
The comparison is seductive. But it is also incomplete.
There’s no question that Trump and his administration, virtually from the top much of the way down just do not like protest or protestors. The whole gang and their larger tribe from Congress to statehouses are lightning quick to label the least resistance as domestic terrorism, deep conspiracy, or Trump’s personal favorite, the illusive antifa. This is true in general and specifically when it comes to their obsession with heavy handed mass deportation of anyone who looks like any immigrant. It’s ironic to read about Trump’s nominee to replace the inept, narcissist South Dakota’s former governor Kristi Noem with the Oklahoma Senator who in his hearing is having to walk back his kneejerk claim that the Minneapolis nurse and citizen observer murdered by ICE was a terrorist.
John Bonifaz:
Yes. No question about it. And look, the other thing they say, right, and this was said by Hakim Jefferies and Katherine Clark and Pete Aguilar in their statement as to why they were voting present is impeachment is a complicated process. It requires thousands of hours of investigation. It requires multiple witnesses.
It requires months of hearings. We are not living in a conventional time here. And we are dealing here with in plain sight clear abuses of power that don't require thousands of hours of hearings, multiple witnesses. You know, this unconstitutional attack on Iran, the most recent abuse of power here is plain as day as why Donald Trump needs to be impeached or removed from power.
The latest 2026 report from global democracy watchdogs marks a moment that would have been difficult to imagine only a generation ago. According to the V-Dem Institute, the United States now ranks 51st out of 179 countries in measures of liberal democracy—a sharp fall from its previous position near the top tier, placing United States between Slovakia and Greece. While rankings alone do not tell the whole story, the trajectory is difficult to dismiss. This is not a statistical anomaly, but the visible outcome of long-developing institutional strain.
Democratic erosion in the United States has unfolded gradually over decades. It is reflected not only in the weakening of voting protections and the increasing politicization of the judiciary, but also in the steady degradation of norms surrounding information, accountability, and public discourse. A particularly telling dimension of this decline is the growing pressure placed on the free press and on freedom of expression—core pillars of any functioning democracy.