As the NATO Parliamentary Assembly sat for its spring session, hundreds of protestors representing a broad coalition of the peace movement, workers, and environmentalists demonstrated just on the other side of the perimeter to protest, loudly, against the continued expansion of NATOs imperialist mission.

Demonstrators gathered early Saturday morning on the grassy lawn of the Dayton public library, closed to the public for the day to accommodate the NATO meeting. Outside hundreds gathered to hear speeches from the coalition of organizations behind the protests, including Veterans for Peace, the Ohio Peace Council, the Ohio Nuclear Free Network, and the Communist Party USA.

Just next door, separated by 12 foot high portable security fencing and dozens of heavily armed police, representatives and staff of the 32 nation NATO alliance were contained within a multi-block security perimeter in the Oregon riverfront district of downtown Dayton. Windows of the hotels looked down over the day's festivities and the protesters just outside the walls.

Donald Trump’s lethal fossil/nuke attack on the US renewable energy industry is poised to destroy America’s ability to compete in global markets for the foreseeable future. 

“Drill baby drill” and yet another “nuclear renaissance” are Trump’s siren calls for a destroyed American economy.

Despite Trump’s “Big, Beautiful” hype, wind, solar, geothermal, battery storage and other green sources are far cheaper, safer, cleaner, more reliable, faster to build and job producing than fossil fuels and nuclear reactors.

Thus, more than 80% of the world’s new energy production continues to come from wind, solar, geothermal, battery storage and other green sources.  Both nuclear power and fossil fuels are in steep global decline.

Though photovoltaic cells were first deployed at New Jersey’s Bell Labs in 1957, the booming solar panel industry is now dominated by China. The U.S. does have the capacity to produce a substantial 50 gigawatts of solar panels every year.  

This Memorial Day weekend, Veterans For Peace is calling on its members and friends to reflect on the gravity of the day, whose official purpose is to “honor all those who died in service to the U.S. during peacetime and war.” Veterans For Peace chooses to honor ALL who have died in wars, both combatants and civilians. Our hope is that a sober accounting of the casualties of war will mitigate against the tendency to turn Memorial Day – like Veterans Day – into a patriotic celebration of U.S. militarism.

We remember the words of President Eisenhower, who during World War II, was the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces in Europe:

“War is a grim, cruel business, a business justified only as a means of sustaining the forces of good against those of evil”. He also famously stated, “I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.”

Medal of Honor winner Marine Corps General Smedley Butler took it a bit further:

We are at a perilous time, when our most basic freedoms are at risk.

It is vital that we not hand President Trump even more power to wreck our democracy than he already has. Among other things, that means not confirming anyone he nominates to be a federal judge.

In early May, Trump announced the first group of judicial nominations of his second term. One is for the Sixth Circuit, which covers Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee. The other four are for district courts in Missouri. Senators on the Judiciary Committee are poring over the nominees’ records in preparation for a hearing expected in early June.

Senators are right to look at a nominee’s record. But in these unprecedented times, the most important record for them to look at is that of the president making the nomination. And Donald Trump’s record shows that he’s dangerously unqualified to be appointing lifetime judges to the bench.

Fair and independent courts are a vital part of our checks and balances. And with the Republican-controlled Congress so far unwilling to stop Trump’s ongoing abuses of power, the courts are more important than ever.