Youth Advocacy
Youth Advocacy
Year 5, Week 08 (310 total reports)
20.05.2026-26.05.2026
REVIEW and ANNOUNCEMENTS
Dr. Jerry Goebel
From Trump’s Iran blunders to the Pope’s warning on AI oligarchy, the U.S. is teetering on the brink. The world is moving on, and we cannot afford to look away. Read my full weekly advocacy briefing on why we must dig deep and fix our broken democracy for the next generation:
Visual Stories!
Systemic injustice relies on quiet, everyday compliance. Drawing from 40 years in juvenile justice and social reform, I wrote "This Banality of Evil" to confront the bureaucratic systems that compromise our humanity. Watch the video, reflect, and refuse to look away: youtu.be/njQcZglwRmc?...
Top Links of the Week
26.05.2026
Do You Trust Trump to Make a Deal?
The diplomatic dance with Iran drags on.
https://apple.news/ASFkoeDdjQW2OsTL7GLKQeQ
The National Review is a pretty conservative magazine, and Jeffrey Blehar is a regular contributor with a podcast (Political Beats) under the magazine’s cover. Despite his conservative leanings, even he can’t figure out where the president is this week in reference to Iran. Here’s what Blehar has to say: “So what to make of the situation? Nothing, except to fall back on common sense and all prior experience with Trump: He blundered, he’s in a jam, and he is desperate to at least pretend that he has wriggled his way out of it.” In a separate article by another conservative-leaning magazine, Michael Doran of “The Free Press” quotes Lindsay Graham as saying the following about Trump’s negotiations with Iran: “If a deal is struck to end the Iranian conflict because it is believed that the Strait of Hormuz cannot be protected from Iranian terrorism,” Graham warned on X over the weekend, “then Iran will be perceived as being a dominate [sic] force requiring a diplomatic solution.” Graham is a hawk whose opinions make one wonder if he is actually in the employ of Netanyahu. What Graham gets desperately wrong is a perception bias. Iran will not be perceived as a dominant force. Instead, the U.S. will be seen (is being seen) as a significantly subordinate force. Such is the way of Donald T.R.U.M.P.; his legacy is to break things: businesses, relationships, and now countries. Plus, we need to keep in mind that this president wants his armed forces in the Pacific blockading and threatening Cuba. He’s bored with Iran and wants the problem to go away. Or, as Blehar said, “He blundered, he’s in a jam, and he is desperate to at least pretend that he has wriggled his way out of it.” The Epstein Files and habitual blundering will be the legacy of this president. He wants to be remembered as “A Great Man”; he won’t be. He’ll be remembered as a blunderer who took his country to near ruin and left us all with the generational debt. He is a “bankruptor,” not a negotiator. He ruins what he touches; he is malignant. He is a living cancer.
25.05.2026
Pope calls for robust regulation of AI in manifesto that ponders the future of humanity
Pope Leo XIV has called for robust regulation of artificial intelligence and for its developers to work for the common good rather than profit.
https://apple.news/APVNbs5ZTRf-XYmA5_cPBpg
AP News’ Nicole Winfield, Kaitlyn Houmani, and Paolo Santalucia present us with an important and timely article about Pope Leo XIV’s first Encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas” (Magnificent Humanity). The primary essence of my own blog has always been to advocate for young people, and my review today is at the top of that focus. Most of my time over the last three years has focused on the impact of losing the democracy in the United States to the T.R.U.M.P. administration. As Pope Leo points out in this encyclical, the humanities’ oversight of AI development will determine whether the future of our young people will be controlled by an oligarchical billionaire few focused on using the most powerful technology available in modern human history for increasing their wealth, power, and position, or whether that technology will be used for human development. The article also points out that the Vatican’s stance will undoubtedly put it at odds once again with the current U.S. Administration as it has fought to free AI and use it to unfetter capitalism and wage war against enemies, both abroad and internally. This is a timely missive our world needed, and I believe (along with the reporters) that it will become a framework for analyzing the use of AI well into the future.
22.05.2026
Your Neighbour Canada
https://open.substack.com/pub/americanpulse/p/special-report-your-neighbour-canada
A friend sent me this Substack by George Froehlich, Editor of the American Pulse, and it reminds all of us of a critical event in this world. It is the “World Outside of Donald.” It reminds me personally that I can’t afford to lose focus (or let you). The world is not moping about mourning the presidency of the U.S. and the loss of its democracy. The world is moving on, forging new ties, building new relationships! It’s not that Donald T.R.U.M.P. has betrayed the world; the people of the U.S. have. We voted this abomination into office… (twice!). He was the worst president in history, once! Then, we returned him to power. There may be all sorts of excuses for that (but not really). The MAGA cult may have been duped. But this doesn’t explain this loss completely. There are also those who stayed home. There are also those who said to their neighbors, family, and friends that they were voting for the Democrats, then, at the last moment, betrayed those sensibilities and pulled the lever for a heinous, malignant narcissist. The Democrats fell asleep while the Republicans plotted. We became the liberal elite and forgot the responsibilities incumbent upon our short-term victories. We empowered a pedophile and convicted rapist. We tolerated Mitch McConnell, John Roberts, Stephen Miller, Steven Bannon, and Project 2025. The world will not trust us again… and they are rightfully moving on. Meanwhile, in the U.S., we can’t afford to move on. Unlike Donald T.R.U.M.P., who focuses on breaking things (like the Strait of Hormuz) and then leaving others to fix them, it will be up to the U.S. to fix the system under Donald J. T.R.U.M.P., under the GOP, under Epstein, and under the billionaires. We can’t walk away. Walking away means leaving our children and their children to watch over the demise of a once-great democracy—not a perfect democracy—but at times a “light on the hill.” No, we must dig deeply into our resolution and ask how we became so broken. What fears and systems led to such a divided country, a distrusting, and angry population? The world does not trust that the U.S. won’t do this again. That we’ll elect another Obama, and then the pendulum will swing again, and the haters, the racists, and the Christian nationalists will use the minority protections of the Constitution to steal back the government.
21.05.2026
With Castro indictment, Trump bets his Venezuela playbook will work in Cuba
Washington is trying to pressure Havana into submission, but there are differences between that government and Caracas. https://apple.news/AB1UB4zCQSfWkCuOfXUuqbw
José de Córdoba and Santiago Pérez of “The Wall Street Journal” offer insights into the next war-of-choice this president is leading the United States into. Preparation for this invasion has been ongoing for months—even years. T.R.U.M.P. has wanted to invade Cuba since his first term, and Marco Rubio has wanted to take over Cuba apparently since he was a child. The murder indictment of Raúl Castro made by the U.S. Department of Justice (D.O.J.) pits two senile old men against each other with their civilians as economic weapons and military pawns. Here are the words this president is using to justify his attack: “The indictment and removal of Maduro sent a clear message to his socialist allies in Havana: this is our hemisphere, and those that destabilize it and threaten the United States will face consequences.” If the rhetoric sounds familiar, it’s because this is from the same playbook as the Venezuelan invasion. That, according to these reporters, is where the comparison ends. Does any of this make sense to sane people? Of course not, but how often are wars started by sane people? A number of weeks ago, we looked at an article from The Atlantic* examining the “Great Man Theory,” of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. This president has taken himself to be among the “Great Disrupters” of history; the “Great Men.” According to this theory, these men were all misunderstood in their time, with their greatness only becoming apparent in the centuries following their rule. In short, T.R.U.M.P. wants himself compared to Caesar, Alexander the Great, and Napoleon, rather than Caligula, Hitler, and Benito Mussolini (personally I’d throw in Marie Antoinette, not because she was a great ruler or male, but because she was so clueless of the people she ruled, as Melania’s coat said, “I don’t really care, do you?”). This is Donald’s fantasy, and the GOP is allowing him to play it out. We are the chess pieces. I have a suggestion for pursuing this invasion. Let’s have Donald and Raúl battle this out in an MMA ring on the front of the White House lawn to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
* 30.04.2026, The YOLO Presidency, The Atlantic, Ashley Parker and Mike Scherer
20.05.2026
Takeaways from primaries where Trump demonstrated power over GOP
It was a big night for the president as his favorites swept Republican foes in Georgia, Pennsylvania and Kentucky.
https://apple.news/A-SYwNachQaW3pgKe-W7TPg
Washington Post reporters, Hannah Knowles, Dan Merica, and Patrick Marley reveal that T.R.U.M.P. still rules the Republican party as his faithful won strong at primaries across the United States. In short, for the primaries, the Republicans are circling up their deck chairs on the T.R.U.M.P. Titanic. Sadly, perhaps the most tragic loss (for those hoping to keep the Pedophile Protector Party in check) was that of Thomas Massie in Kentucky. Perhaps the sliver of sunshine in this ominous cloud of derangement is that the ever-Trumpers are digging themselves deeper into the murky, nauseating pockets of a man who is a clear loser in popular polls. If you had any hopes of this MAGA disease decomposing like their demi-god prior to the midterms, let this be your warning bell. The Orange One is going to loom large among his constituents. All the more reason to turn up at the polls in record numbers and make sure your vote counts this year. If we want to impact the fascist direction of this nation, the clock is ticking. Make your voice irrepressible and your spirit unbreakable. On the wings of the Roberts Racist Supreme Court and fueled by gerrymander victories throughout the South, your stand has never been more imperative.
