Finding out it's trainable, makes it feel less hopeless.
Oct 10, 2026
ICEhole
When government needs a veil of secrecy to conduct public policy is a strong indicator of creeping authoritarianism.
ROXBURY, N.J. — On a warm morning on Sept. 4, masked immigration agents rolled into Dover, N.J.
Footage of the raids rippled across social media, sent people into hiding and reignited rumors that had been circulating for months: Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were taking people to a nearby warehouse.
D.E., who requested NPR use his initials only, stands near the location two blocks from his home, in which he was violently arrested by ICE officials without a warrant, in Long Branch, NJ. D.E., 44, who has had a brain tumor growing in his head for years, was denied medication by ICE officers, and as a result, suffered from several seizures.
The warehouse in Roxbury was one piece of a billion-dollar plan by the Department of Homeland Security to detain migrants as part of President Trump's mass deportation efforts.
That plan to convert warehouses into detention centers faced fierce backlash and legal challenges from residents and immigrant advocates. It was largely abandoned, and in several sites, including Roxbury, the government is legally forbidden by a court order from converting them to a detention facility, pending environmental assessments.
But an NPR investigation has found signs that the New Jersey facility is being used. And the state's Office of the Attorney General says it is looking into similar reports.
Contractor says he was told Stephen Miller wanted facilities to be "cruel"
In early 2026, Homeland Security bought 11 warehouses to turn into ICE detention facilities. They spent about a billion dollars on these.
NPR spoke to an official at a government contractor whose company was approached to convert several of the warehouses into ICE facilities. He spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from the government.
"No one that we spoke to at DHS was for this idea whatsoever. The deputy director told us point-blank that they had pushed back very hard on it. Everybody knew warehouses are horrible places to put people," he says.
At a meeting with a deputy director at DHS, he says, his company proposed an alternative: FEMA-style camps in Texas that would be more humane.
He says that idea was swiftly shot down. While White House adviser Stephen Miller was not at the meeting, they were told that this was not what Miller wanted.
The contractor says his understanding from that meeting was that "Miller did not want the facilities that were comfortable. He did not want facilities that were humane. We were told point-blank that that was not what the administration wanted."
"Steve Miller certainly seemed to make that point to everyone that he wanted it to be cruel. This was what Miller had stated to the DHS at that time, to the DHS director and deputy director. What surprised me was just how adamant the people were that it was going to happen. Damn the consequences. I would say in 25 years of working with the U.S. government, I've never been in that position before."
In a statement to NPR, White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said the contractor's comments were "false hearsay allegation(s) from someone who has never even met or talked with Stephen Miller." Bis also said that Miller "has never made any remarks to anyone about wanting illegal aliens to have worse detention facility conditions. It simply isn't true and this is defamatory."
The White House did not respond to repeated requests to speak to Miller directly.
DHS is holding on to the strategically positioned warehouses
Early on, the warehouse plan was met with protests in both conservative and liberal towns. Several state attorneys general filed lawsuits to halt construction, based on environmental concerns.
"It very quickly became an absolute boondoggle," says Michael Wriston, a former military intelligence analyst who co-founded Project SaltBox, a watchdog group that tracks ICE's expansion. "It was really about the optics of people being kept in these cages and these large warehouses. They wanted a lot of what they called B-roll to play on social media, but they didn't do any due diligence of making sure that they conformed with environmental policy or that the construction wouldn't disturb local water tables."
A DHS official who served during Trump's first term, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared government retaliation, says that while they were not in the meeting the contractor described to NPR, they had often heard higher-ups in the administration wanting to make a point of showcasing difficult conditions immigrants were being held in.
Then, with the departure of DHS Secretary Kristi Noem in March, there was a shift: Her replacement, Secretary Markwayne Mullin, sought to do less showy immigration crackdowns. Today, Homeland Security is selling several of the warehouses.
But they're still holding on to a few, including in Hagerstown, Md., Surprise, Ariz., and Roxbury, N.J. "These locations are very critical to ICE's deportation agenda," says Wriston, "because they fill in the gap in places where ICE does not have a robust detention network. They don't have a lot of jails there." They are also located in areas where there are no partnerships with the police who can house detainees in local jails.
In Maryland, Arizona and New Jersey, following lawsuits from each of the state attorneys general, DHS has either agreed or been ordered by a judge to halt the conversion of the warehouses into detention centers, pending environmental impact assessments. But throughout the summer, in the towns surrounding the Roxbury warehouse, rumors started to bubble.
A summer of arrests and rumors
Over the summer, there was a historic surge in ICE arrests: around 100,000 people in July and August.
In New Jersey, the rumor mill started churning. The Roxbury warehouse is located in a wooded area, on a road right off Route 46. Project NINJA (No ICE in North Jersey Alliance), a coalition that opposes ICE detention expansion, says several neighbors reported vehicles, often in a caravan, speeding up the road.
"They're holding people in that warehouse," one woman says in a WhatsApp group in the town of Dover, which is about 15 minutes from Roxbury. "I have a co-worker who was taken there. They hold them there and at night they take them somewhere else." The message was forwarded to NPR by Dover Council Member Sandra Wittner.
"But, you know, it's like third- and fourth-hand accounts," says Wittner. "It just didn't seem probable at the time because of the court order. But it kind of made you scratch your head a little bit."
Then the morning of Sept. 4 happened.
"We were taken to the Roxbury warehouse"
A woman says she was driving to work when she saw a raid taking place in Dover. She decided to follow the car carrying people who were detained. "I just needed to know, is he going to Roxbury?"
She took video as she trailed them up Route 46. She asked that NPR not use her name because what happened next made her fearful of what the government might do.
She says the car she was following turned onto the woodsy road that leads to the warehouse.
She says she waited to see if there was any more movement.
"And then maybe five minutes after that, a white Dodge Durango started kind of circling around me," she says. "And then on his last loop, he started filming me. He had a yellow case on his cellphone. After that, a black Tahoe started doing the same thing. I was on a public sidewalk, and it was intimidating. It was really intimidating. I'm scared. But I am more scared for our community."
Councilwoman Wittner says she strongly suspects ICE is using the Roxbury warehouse: "The immigration enforcement activity happened in Dover between 7 a.m. and 8 a.m." Wittner points to the woman who was able to follow the vehicle up Route 46: "The last vehicle entered the warehouse road at 8:25 a.m."
Meanwhile, footage of the raid started circulating on social media.
Back in Dover, another woman says she saw the videos as she got her kids ready for school. NPR viewed the videos and confirmed their authenticity.
In one of them, a worker is cornered against a wall by two masked agents. She says she was thunderstruck.
"That's my father," she told NPR.
She asked that we not use her name because she fears being targeted.
At 8:25 a.m., she says, she got a call from her father. He's 59, she says, and he sounded disoriented. He told her he was handcuffed in some kind of jail.
She found it strange, she says, because the Roxbury warehouse would be the only place he could have been taken in that short a time span.
She also discovered a friend of hers had been picked up.
She hasn't been able to speak to her father since then, and neither has NPR. But NPR located her friend in Honduras, where he's been deported. He requested anonymity, because he fears repercussions for his loved ones who are still in the U.S.
"I was picked up on my way to work, on Friday, Sept. 4. The agents loaded me into a van. They took us to Roxbury," he said.
He says he and the other people detained were handcuffed and held in the parking lot for several hours. He counted nine other men with him. "I just went into a state of shock," he says. "I signed my deportation papers. The next morning I regretted it. But I was scared. Eventually, they transferred us to a real facility."
In a statement to NPR, DHS did not respond to a question about whether it was holding people at the Roxbury location. But it did give NPR a statement it has previously sent about ICE detention, saying DHS upholds strict standards and that immigrants can choose to leave detention by being deported.
"We need our Congress members to conduct an oversight visit yesterday"
The activists at NINJA say ICE's actions violate the legal order. The order lists several actions ICE can take with the site — mainly upkeep — but nowhere on that list is detention an acceptable action, they say.
Harvard professor Andrew Mergen, a former attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice Environment & Natural Resources Division, says ICE may technically not be violating the court order, which stipulated it would not convert the place into a detention center pending an environmental assessment.
Ultimately, Mergen says, the situation shows the limitations of using environmental claims. "The community is acting here to prevent people from being detained," says Mergen. "And the administration seems to have cleverly elided that intention, by sort of saying, 'Well, we're not going to build this facility, but we're going to use this space in furtherance of detention.'"
He says he understands the frustration: "It's just infuriating if what you are trying to do is say 'No. Not here. Not here.' "
Wittner says since the raid, she's heard from other close relatives or close friends of two men who were picked up that day, who say they were inside the Roxbury warehouse.
She says the situation is unacceptable: "We need our Congress members to conduct an oversight visit yesterday, quite honestly. We need our state to aggressively pursue this investigation and demand to get inside."
She says DHS has had time "to go in and clean up their mess if they, in fact, got caught doing something that they shouldn't have."
Meanwhile, in Dover, the streets where the raid happened remain deserted.
At an empty diner at lunchtime, a waitress who did not want to be named because of the climate of fear in town says one of the workers who was taken used to come here for a bite.
Then she leans over and asks: "Do you know where they took those men?"
Election Politics, A.I. And Polling
It's a long one - almost an hour and a half. But it's chock full of great little nuggets.
Midterms and Democrats = start
Data center construction is crowding out other building projects.
- New housing - down 14%
- Manufacturing plant - down 23%
- Schools - Down 12%
- Office space - down 10%
- Hospitals - down 10%
Polling problems and suspicions = 57:25
Oct 9, 2026
Trump's Deal
Trump's amazing deal for 300K tons of Russian diesel will carry us for about 18 minutes.
All told, we get less than 2 hours of fuel spread over 3 months, while Putin gets the sanctions lifted so he can make billions that he'll use to kill Ukrainians.
War Profiteering
Donald J Trump is a fuckin' crook.
Key Points
- President Donald Trump’s nine largest disclosed oil and gas holdings gained an estimated $1.5 million to $4.4 million from the eve of the Iran war through Aug. 31, according to a CNBC analysis.
- Trump’s accounts have continued buying and selling energy stocks including Exxon and Chevron during the conflict, making trades on days when his decisions jolted oil markets.
- CNBC found no evidence Trump directed the trades or had advance knowledge. The White House says independent managers control the portfolio, and the Trump Organization has said Trump’s asset managers use automated trading.
As President Donald Trump’s wartime directives in Iran repeatedly jolted global markets, his personal energy portfolio surged.
Throughout the first six months of fighting, Trump’s investment accounts continued aggressively trading energy stocks. Between the eve of the war, on Feb. 27, and Aug. 31, his nine largest oil and gas holdings gained approximately $1.5 million to $4.4 million, according to a CNBC analysis of his annual financial disclosure, quarterly corporate reports and FactSet market data.
CNBC identified the nine holdings by aggregating Trump’s year-end 2025 positions in the same oil and gas companies across his investment accounts and ranking them by their disclosed value. They are:
- Chevron
- ConocoPhillips
- Exxon Mobil
- Kinder Morgan
- Marathon Petroleum
- Occidental Petroleum
- Phillips 66
- Valero Energy
- Williams Companies
Trump’s accounts reported purchases and at least 23 sales involving the nine companies through June 29, which is the most recent date Trump has disclosed any trades. Because the filings do not disclose exact share counts, execution prices or which shares were sold, the estimates do not represent realized profits or Trump’s precise current holdings.
CNBC found no evidence that Trump or his investment managers traded on advance knowledge of his decisions, that his financial interests influenced policy, or that he directed any specific transaction.
“Neither President Trump nor any member of his family has any ability to direct, influence, or provide input regarding how the portfolio is invested or when investments are bought or sold,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle told CNBC in response to questions about Trump’s energy investments. “All investment decisions are made entirely by independent managers. There are no conflicts of interest.”
The Trump Organization did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this story. The Trump Organization previously told CNBC that outside financial institutions control individual investment decisions and that Trump’s assets are held in fully discretionary accounts that rely heavily on automated strategies.
Still, the filings are the latest example of Trump holding a multimillion-dollar financial stake in an industry directly affected by his administration’s military and diplomatic decisions.
“When a president can move a market through official decisions and personally benefit from the result, the public is left wondering where national policy ends and private financial interest begins,” said Donald Sherman, president and CEO of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a liberal-leaning government ethics watchdog.
Trump made profits from his oil-industry holdings as he publicly blasted Exxon and Chevron by name for “making too much money based on a shortage.”
“I don’t like it,” Trump told reporters Aug. 3, days after they reported soaring second-quarter profits. “Chevron, too much money. ExxonMobil, too much money ... They’re going to give some of that back to the public and they better cut the retail price, the consumer price.”
Despite Trump’s misgivings and his accounts having outside managers, ethics experts say outsourcing daily trading doesn’t erase the underlying conflict of interest.
“A discretionary account is a smokescreen, not a blind trust,” said Scott Greytak, deputy executive director of Transparency International U.S., a nonpartisan, nonprofit anti-corruption organization.
“Someone else might be executing the trades, but [Trump] still knows he is heavily invested in energy,” Greytak told CNBC. “Trump likely knows where his money is parked and would still see the upside when his administration’s actions send those [energy] stocks climbing.”
Moving the market
Trump’s accounts repeatedly traded energy stocks on days when wartime developments sent markets swinging.
On March 2, the first trading day after the initial U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran, Trump’s accounts reported purchases of shares in eight major oil and gas companies, including buying between $100,001 and $250,000 of shares in Exxon.
Trump entered the war with between $3.2 million and $12.5 million invested in Exxon, according to his financial disclosures. By market close on Aug. 31, the rise in Exxon’s share price had added an estimated $176,000 to $690,000 to that initial stake, before accounting for later trades, based on a CNBC analysis of Trump’s holdings and share prices.
“Everything that has happened with oil has been directly tied to the largest oil supply disruption in history from the war,” said Pavel Molchanov, a senior investment strategist who covers the energy sector at Raymond James & Associates. “Oil is a global commodity, so no one is immune from price increases.”
Three weeks after the March 2 purchases, on March 23, Trump postponed threatened strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure before the market opened, citing “very good and productive conversations.”
Brent crude plunged nearly 11% on the prospect of de-escalation. That day, Trump’s accounts reported 16 oil and gas stock buys and no sales, worth a combined approximately $163,000 to $570,000, including shares of Exxon, Chevron and Phillips 66.
“Trump’s work to get a ceasefire directly played into investment decisions his accounts were pursuing and benefiting for the president,” Greytak told CNBC.
The timing of sales is equally striking, watchdogs say.
On April 7, a Trump investment account reported selling between $500,001 and $1 million in Exxon shares. A little more than two and a half hours after the market closed, Trump announced a two-week ceasefire with Iran.
Exxon opened more than 6% lower the next morning. If the shares sold had been held since before the war, CNBC estimates that, in addition to averting the next day’s loss, they had gained roughly $35,000 to $70,000 since Feb. 27. The disclosures do not identify the purchase dates for the shares that were sold, so the estimate does not represent the transaction’s actual profit.
In all, Trump’s accounts reported at least 23 sales involving the nine companies through June 29, the latest transaction date disclosed. If those shares had been held since before the war, CNBC estimates they would have been worth $36,000 to $95,000 more when sold than on Feb. 27 — a fraction of the larger paper gains Trump continued to hold.
“The optics of avoiding thousands in losses right before a market-moving announcement are impossible to defend,” Sherman told CNBC. “The selling is just the tip of the iceberg.”
Democratic staff on the congressional Joint Economic Committee estimated in an August report that Trump’s broader oil and gas portfolio had increased in value by as much as $15.5 million this year.
“Donald Trump held millions in oil and gas company stocks at the end of 2025. Today, those stocks are worth as much as $15.5 million more,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., wrote on X following the report. “What happened? He started a war with Iran this year — and sent oil and gas stocks soaring.”
Trump’s energy holdings are part of broader financial interests related to the Middle East, including tens of millions of dollars in income from a booming foreign real-estate licensing business.
Several congressional Democrats have raised the prospect of investigating Trump’s stock trading and his family’s business ventures if they win control of either chamber of Congress in November’s midterm election.
On Aug. 27, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., opened an investigation into 1789 Capital, where Donald Trump Jr. is a partner, alleging the firm benefited from Trump administration contracts, funding and regulatory actions. Trump Jr. told The Guardian the allegations were “unsubstantiated talking points.”
Pressure at the pump
On March 2, the first trading day after the initial U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran, Trump’s accounts reported purchases of shares in eight major oil and gas companies, including buying between $100,001 and $250,000 of shares in Exxon.
Trump entered the war with between $3.2 million and $12.5 million invested in Exxon, according to his financial disclosures. By market close on Aug. 31, the rise in Exxon’s share price had added an estimated $176,000 to $690,000 to that initial stake, before accounting for later trades, based on a CNBC analysis of Trump’s holdings and share prices.
“Everything that has happened with oil has been directly tied to the largest oil supply disruption in history from the war,” said Pavel Molchanov, a senior investment strategist who covers the energy sector at Raymond James & Associates. “Oil is a global commodity, so no one is immune from price increases.”
Three weeks after the March 2 purchases, on March 23, Trump postponed threatened strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure before the market opened, citing “very good and productive conversations.”
Brent crude plunged nearly 11% on the prospect of de-escalation. That day, Trump’s accounts reported 16 oil and gas stock buys and no sales, worth a combined approximately $163,000 to $570,000, including shares of Exxon, Chevron and Phillips 66.
“Trump’s work to get a ceasefire directly played into investment decisions his accounts were pursuing and benefiting for the president,” Greytak told CNBC.
The timing of sales is equally striking, watchdogs say.
On April 7, a Trump investment account reported selling between $500,001 and $1 million in Exxon shares. A little more than two and a half hours after the market closed, Trump announced a two-week ceasefire with Iran.
Exxon opened more than 6% lower the next morning. If the shares sold had been held since before the war, CNBC estimates that, in addition to averting the next day’s loss, they had gained roughly $35,000 to $70,000 since Feb. 27. The disclosures do not identify the purchase dates for the shares that were sold, so the estimate does not represent the transaction’s actual profit.
In all, Trump’s accounts reported at least 23 sales involving the nine companies through June 29, the latest transaction date disclosed. If those shares had been held since before the war, CNBC estimates they would have been worth $36,000 to $95,000 more when sold than on Feb. 27 — a fraction of the larger paper gains Trump continued to hold.
“The optics of avoiding thousands in losses right before a market-moving announcement are impossible to defend,” Sherman told CNBC. “The selling is just the tip of the iceberg.”
Democratic staff on the congressional Joint Economic Committee estimated in an August report that Trump’s broader oil and gas portfolio had increased in value by as much as $15.5 million this year.
“Donald Trump held millions in oil and gas company stocks at the end of 2025. Today, those stocks are worth as much as $15.5 million more,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., wrote on X following the report. “What happened? He started a war with Iran this year — and sent oil and gas stocks soaring.”
Trump’s energy holdings are part of broader financial interests related to the Middle East, including tens of millions of dollars in income from a booming foreign real-estate licensing business.
Several congressional Democrats have raised the prospect of investigating Trump’s stock trading and his family’s business ventures if they win control of either chamber of Congress in November’s midterm election.
On Aug. 27, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., opened an investigation into 1789 Capital, where Donald Trump Jr. is a partner, alleging the firm benefited from Trump administration contracts, funding and regulatory actions. Trump Jr. told The Guardian the allegations were “unsubstantiated talking points.”
Pressure at the pump
The war’s disruptions have delivered a windfall for oil companies while driving up costs for consumers.
The nine energy companies in Trump’s portfolio reported a combined $47.6 billion in second-quarter profit, triple the $15.9 billion they earned a year earlier, according to a CNBC analysis of company filings.
Exxon and Chevron, Trump’s two largest energy holdings, reported a combined $26.6 billion in profit, up from $9.6 billion a year earlier as higher oil prices and refining margins lifted earnings. Marathon, Phillips 66 and Valero, three refiners in his portfolio, collectively reported another $12.7 billion in combined second-quarter profit.
The forces driving those profits — and raising costs for consumers — could persist. On Exxon’s July 31 earnings call, CEO Darren Woods said refining capacity relative to demand was the tightest he had seen outside the pandemic. “These high margins lead to high product prices,” he said.
Phillips 66 CEO Mark Lashier struck a similar note Aug. 5 in his company’s earnings call, saying refining conditions would remain strong “even if peace broke out tomorrow.”
That could prove politically toxic in the midterm election, based on polling.
Affordability issues such as gas prices are dominating the midterm campaign: 48% of Americans rank the cost of living as their top voting issue, while 70% disapprove of Trump’s handling of it, according to an early August Reuters/Ipsos poll of 4,505 general population adults aged 18 or older, with a margin of error of plus or minus 1.5 percentage points.
Even after a recent pullback, U.S. crude traded around $91 on Friday, 36% above prewar levels. Gas averaged $4.09 nationally, with the Labor Day weekend expected to be the most expensive ever for gas, according to AAA.
Since the war began, Americans have paid an extra $71.5 billion for gasoline, or about $604 per household, according to an analysis of federal and AAA data by congressional Democratic staff on the Joint Economic Committee.
“When the war ends, oil prices — and likely energy stocks — should fall,” Raymond James’ Molchanov told CNBC. “But when that happens is ultimately a political decision.”
HCR
Nobody gave us our rights.
Our founding documents make it clear that we own our rights - they belong to us. Government didn't bestow them on us - they're ours. And the only thing a government can do concerning those rights is to deny them to us.
In an election, we choose to loan our power to representatives, believing they'll do what we hired them to do.
Two years ago, we hired the wrong people, so we have to show up and reclaim that power - our power - our rights.
Refuse to be denied.
Trump's Crimes
I've noticed a considerable effort online to attack the ICC, and to rationalize America's belligerent behavior.
Despite the obstacles, foreign governments and U.S. lawmakers can begin the process of holding the president accountable.
U.S. President Donald Trump stood in front of the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 22 and made two explicit threats. He threatened to use military force in Latin America in service of U.S. interests, and he threatened annihilation for both the Iranian government and the Iranian people. The actions he proposed contravene both the international laws prohibiting war and the international humanitarian law that protects civilians in conflict. What’s more, the U.N. Charter prohibits even threats of aggression, while the laws of war, themselves part of U.S. law, prohibit indiscriminate threats against a civilian population. Accordingly, Trump’s public deliberations about who to invade and who to annihilate were themselves crimes, committed in full view of thousands of diplomats and heads of state.
Trump is accustomed to asserting the primacy of force over law and clearly anticipates no punishment for doing so in front of a body dedicated to saving humanity from the scourge of war. Indeed, his administration is bent on shrinking the U.N. and dismantling the International Criminal Court (ICC)—“brick by brick, if necessary,” in the words of U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
The administration’s hostility to the principle and mechanisms of international legal accountability makes eminent if cynical sense in light of its many transgressions. These include, but are not limited to, the crime of enforced disappearance by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) against both U.S. citizens and foreign nationals; the deaths of people in ICE custody via neglect; the rendition of refugees and asylum-seekers to foreign prisons and hostile third countries; the bombing of civilian targets in Iran; the United States’ ongoing campaign of murder on the high seas against unspecified and unknown individuals in Latin America and the Caribbean, at least some of whom have been identified as civilians, most of whom have not been identified at all; and the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development and its downstream consequences, which, according to epidemiological models, “has already caused the deaths of six hundred thousand people, two-thirds of them children,” and by 2030 is projected to result in more than 14 million additional deaths, a figure that includes between 4 million and 5 million deaths among children under the age of 5.
Many in the United States and around the world are desperate to see Trump and his top advisors held accountable for all this lawlessness but are at a loss for how to do so. Both the domestic power that accrues to the American president and an international balance of power dominated by U.S. military and economic might obstruct easy pathways toward justice. But there are still meaningful steps that both America’s domestic opposition and the international community can take. These steps include supporting the ICC, enabling international investigations into enforced disappearances and civilian deaths, and rebuilding America’s foreign aid architecture.
For the U.S. domestic opposition, the clearest pathway toward accountability is pledging to join the ICC when the Democratic Party takes office and vocally supporting the ICC as it is repeatedly targeted for destruction by the Trump administration. Joining the ICC, as scholars Beth Simmons and Allison Danner argue, allows states moving through violent periods to make credible commitments that human rights violators will be prosecuted. This is a strategy that helps build trust with both foreign governments and with domestic publics reeling from abuses, who do not have to trust that the government itself will hold perpetrators to account if it has bound itself to an institution that will undertake investigations and prosecutions if it does not.
A frequent U.S. argument against joining the ICC has been that U.S. domestic institutions are strong enough to impose accountability on American officials. But while lower courts in the U.S. have demonstrated their fidelity to the law, the U.S. Supreme Court has established presidential immunity as the law of the land. Joining the ICC is no bar against domestic prosecutions, since the court operates on the principle of complementarity, only beginning its work if domestic courts have indicated they cannot or will not pursue accountability.
Another common concern is that joining the ICC would increase the risk that U.S. nationals would face prosecution. But the ICC can already investigate crimes committed by Americans against foreign nationals regardless of whether the U.S. is a party to the ICC. Accordingly, joining the ICC and cooperating with its investigations would be an extra measure of good faith, and a strong way for the domestic opposition to signal it will not hold the U.S. above international law.
Foreign governments play a key role here as well. Last month, U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen argued European countries and other signatories to the ICC should sanction Rubio and Trump for obstructing the ICC’s investigations into Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. This is a classic pathway for enforcing international law: domestic opposition calling on other countries to help discipline their governments into compliance.
The Trump administration is reportedly preparing an extensive sanctions regime against the ICC, ramping up the measures that have thus far only targeted individual court officials, and ultimately forbidding most transactions with the ICC for companies, banks, and individuals. These actions would effectively collapse the court and even potentially set free those standing trial for or already convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
A formal coalition of countries has emerged to challenge Israeli violations of international law. A similar coordinated effort to diplomatically isolate the U.S. officials attempting to break the ICC will be necessary to ensure the international community’s continued ability to prosecute the highest crimes against humanity.
Pursuing prosecutions at the ICC is not the only international tool available to Americans who object to the Trump administration’s actions. The U.N.’s human rights bodies also provide avenues toward subjecting state treatment of civilians to scrutiny. Panels of independent experts and researchers operating under a multilateral mandate can investigate how governments treat those within their borders or at the receiving end of their actions. The U.S. domestic opposition can draw on these tools, and foreign governments can support them.
In 2016, for example, the U.N. General Assembly established the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism. Its mission was to “assist in the investigation and prosecution of persons responsible” for the most serious crimes against the Syrian people beginning in 2011 and gather evidence at a standard designed to facilitate thousands of prosecutions at any court that has standing to bring a case, and it was established without the involvement of the Syrian government at the time. Beyond laying the groundwork for legal accountability, investigations of this kind can also simply help people learn what happened to loved ones, with truth serving as a kind of remedy in the absence of any other.
An investigative mechanism like this one might help U.S. opposition leaders and concerned foreign governments in their quest to learn who is being murdered in the United States’ boat-bombing campaign in the Caribbean. U.N. experts have condemned the killings; highlighted the complex, multilayered nature of the violations; and said they are in touch with the U.S. government on the issue. If Democrats take the House, investigations into the campaign and the decision-making process that produces will be vital. But even absent that, congressional Democrats can partner with international experts to help determine who was killed and for what ostensible reason. Support from the international community could provide vital access and funding, as victims might be of many nationalities, and regional governments might be less likely to undertake independent investigations themselves.
The U.N.’s standing committees on human rights can also help U.S. domestic actors to track down and repatriate the people ICE has disappeared. Civil society groups, nongovernmental organizations, reporters, and individual elected officials are doing remarkable work to try to find those who have vanished into ICE’s detention facilities. Reporters have tracked individual removal flights. Elected officials have attempted oversight of nearby detention facilities at sometimes great personal cost, and Rep. Joaquin Castro has tried to find those who have disappeared into the Dilley detention center in his district in Texas and secure their release. Some U.S. groups are already working with the U.N.’s Committee on Enforced Disappearances as part of an effort to locate those kidnapped by ICE. A coordinated effort by elected Democrats to back these tools would signal their substantive interest in addressing the harms the United States’ immigrant apparatus has inflicted.
Indeed, we can gauge the importance of these multilateral mechanisms from the steps criminal actors take to escape their oversight. When the Committee on Enforced Disappearances requested information about Venezuelan migrants the U.S. sent to CECOT in El Salvador, for example, the government of El Salvador took great pains to argue that the chain of responsibility under international law implicated only the U.S. government in crimes.
The Trump administration cannot carry out its plans without the assistance of other willing governments. These other leaders may be able to envision a world where there will be repercussions for their actions, even if Trump can’t. This makes these U.N. committees important. Both international and U.S. domestic human rights advocates can work with these international experts to build bodies of evidence that might later help establish justice or facilitate repatriation.
Finally, recommitting the U.S. to meaningful foreign aid is a mode of accountability. Nothing can bring back the lives cut short when the U.S. suddenly slashed foreign aid. The people Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency betrayed weren’t passive recipients of U.S. charity, however—they were active partners in implementing international programs addressing HIV/AIDS, infant mortality, maternal mortality, food insecurity, cholera, and conflict-related death, among others. Their work warrants renewed support.
Foreign aid is not a winning electoral issue, but most voters do not make their decisions based on foreign aid, either. Accordingly, there is ample space for Democrats to build new, more just pathways for projecting power in the world. Future iterations of foreign aid will have to be more just, less sensitive to changes in U.S. leadership, and even more anchored in community-led projects and partnerships. In practice, this may mean the U.S. funding and supporting programs that are designed, led, and facilitated by local experts through long-range, multilaterally managed funds that cannot be easily terminated.
Accountability is core to building the world these partnerships promise. The Trump administration has been proceeding as though there will never be justice for its crimes and making foreign-policy decisions as though military power can substitute for reliability, consistency, and credibility. U.S. opposition leaders should act now to embrace a different path. This means pledging to join the ICC, cooperating with U.N. bodies investigating war crimes, and making plans to restore U.S. foreign aid. These measures will signal that the United States still seeks to be a good international partner and hold the Trump administration accountable for slashing foreign aid, abusing human rights, and threatening war.
Oct 8, 2026
Numbers
Key Points
- The cost of many everyday items would have declined without President Donald Trump’s legally fraught tariff policy, according to a report from the New York Federal Reserve.
- Shoppers saw a 2.9 percentage point increase in inflation on a sample of 67 types of goods as of February due to tariffs imposed in 2025 and early 2026.
- Without the tariffs, the team found that prices for goods would have pulled back in that period.
The cost of many everyday items would have declined last year and early this year without President Donald Trump’s tariffs, according to the New York Federal Reserve.
The cost of 67 categories of goods was 2.9 percentage points higher as of February thanks to tariffs, according to a paper from a team of researchers at the central bank’s New York arm.
Without the levies, the team found that prices for the products they studied would have pulled back by almost 1%.
The New York Fed’s report offers the clearest evidence yet of the impact of Trump’s tariffs — a core policy of his most recent campaign and second term in the White House — on consumers’ wallets. Economists had widely expected his levies to push up prices, though the precise effects had been hard to estimate due to the changing nature of the policy and the lack of transparency on how companies set their prices.
The researchers didn’t say which 67 types of goods they evaluated.
For each percentage point increase in the average tariff, the team said that consumer goods prices were higher by roughly a quarter of a percent a year later.
Annual price growth in the dozens of goods they tracked peaked at the start of 2026, according to the report. But consumers are still expected to pay elevated prices into 2027 as a result of the policy, it said.
Roughly two-thirds of the tariff-related price impact has directly come from the levies themselves, according to the New York Fed’s report. The remaining increase was driven by knock-on effects, such as U.S.-based companies that use imported parts and materials in their products.
“Tariffs have a larger and more drawn-out impact on consumer prices than the direct effect alone would suggest,” the study’s three authors, Mary Amiti, Sebastian Heise and David Weinstein, wrote.
Trump argued that companies could absorb the increased cost from tariffs rather than pass them down to shoppers in the form of price hikes. The New York Fed team said that around 26% of last year’s tariff increases ended up trickling into higher prices.
The Supreme Court in February struck down many of Trump’s tariffs, resulting in billions of dollars in refunds to retailers. The White House has vowed to push forward with levies through alternative measures, and products imported from many countries now often face tariffs of about 10%. In many cases, that is significantly less than what they were under the earlier round of tariffs.
The cost of 67 categories of goods was 2.9 percentage points higher as of February thanks to tariffs, according to a paper from a team of researchers at the central bank’s New York arm.
Without the levies, the team found that prices for the products they studied would have pulled back by almost 1%.
The New York Fed’s report offers the clearest evidence yet of the impact of Trump’s tariffs — a core policy of his most recent campaign and second term in the White House — on consumers’ wallets. Economists had widely expected his levies to push up prices, though the precise effects had been hard to estimate due to the changing nature of the policy and the lack of transparency on how companies set their prices.
The researchers didn’t say which 67 types of goods they evaluated.
For each percentage point increase in the average tariff, the team said that consumer goods prices were higher by roughly a quarter of a percent a year later.
Annual price growth in the dozens of goods they tracked peaked at the start of 2026, according to the report. But consumers are still expected to pay elevated prices into 2027 as a result of the policy, it said.
Roughly two-thirds of the tariff-related price impact has directly come from the levies themselves, according to the New York Fed’s report. The remaining increase was driven by knock-on effects, such as U.S.-based companies that use imported parts and materials in their products.
“Tariffs have a larger and more drawn-out impact on consumer prices than the direct effect alone would suggest,” the study’s three authors, Mary Amiti, Sebastian Heise and David Weinstein, wrote.
Trump argued that companies could absorb the increased cost from tariffs rather than pass them down to shoppers in the form of price hikes. The New York Fed team said that around 26% of last year’s tariff increases ended up trickling into higher prices.
The Supreme Court in February struck down many of Trump’s tariffs, resulting in billions of dollars in refunds to retailers. The White House has vowed to push forward with levies through alternative measures, and products imported from many countries now often face tariffs of about 10%. In many cases, that is significantly less than what they were under the earlier round of tariffs.
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