Youth Advocacy

Welcome to Year 5, Week 10

09.06.2026 - 03.06.2026

📣 REVIEW and ANNOUNCEMENTS

Weekly Review: Standing at the Brink

Dr. Jerry Goebel

Whether it is a presidency teetering on malignant narcissism, a rogue legislative agenda stripping healthcare from the dying, or a nation tolerating modern-day concentration camps on its soil—this week's news brings us straight to the brink. Drawing from 40 years on the frontlines of youth development and systemic justice reform, this briefing serves as an uncompromised audit of our current socio-political crisis. Inside, we confront Project 2025’s quiet war on Medicaid, the astronomical financial and moral graft of Florida's immigration camps, and the authoritarian effort to dismantle presidential accountability. We cannot afford the luxury of disengagement or neutrality. Read the reports, listen to the music of creative resistance below, and let’s dig deep to demand a just, accountable future. communitiesoftrust-jerrygoebel.com

🖼️ Visual Stories

The Power of Creative Resistance: Music bypasses traditional cognitive walls and speaks direct truth to institutional power. In this section, I translate our weekly macro-political and economic critiques into original visual stories and lyrical compositions developed via Canva and Suno.

✊ Featured Single: "The Trauma and the Terror"

This track serves as a chilling, visceral reflection on the everyday human costs of systemic state cruelty—from the modern concentration camps in Florida to the calculated stripping of healthcare from our most vulnerable citizens. It is a sonic witness to the emotional and physical warfare being waged on our democracy. Listen, reflect, and share it with someone who refuses to remain silent. https://youtu.be/H9wR4GoT2QA?si=tIzRBc5OQAvpe2Ws

📺 Subscribe on YouTube

Join my Official YouTube Channel to explore my fully categorized playlists, splitting my catalog into Social Justice & Reform and Relationships & Personal Growth.

🔗 Top Links of the Week

📅 09.06.2026 | The Alligator Alcatraz Boondoggle

Source: The Atlantic

If one wanted to examine the extent of the cruelty of the current white Christian nationalist administration and its lackeys, this report by Eric Schlosser of The Atlantic would be a good starting point. Schlosser examines the inhumane treatment taking place in one of this regime’s prison camps. OK, let’s just be honest and call it a Concentration Camp for people who are not white. The cruelties are too large to list, but covered deftly in this article. The cost is astronomical.

Here is one comparison by the journalist: “It would have been less expensive to buy each of the men detained at Alligator Alcatraz his own one-bedroom condo in Orlando and pay for a personal, full-time guard to keep an eye on him.” The accountability is completely absent from a human rights, financial, and environmental viewpoint. In short, Alligator Alley is a prime example of the way anything Donald Trump touches turns into a model of graft and bankruptcy. Apparently, a substantial percentage of U.S. citizens want concentration camps because they voted for these monsters—or stayed home and allowed these racists free rein over their government.

But we can still say, “NO!” We can still demand that the U.S. examine its moral and political groundings. Although deep damage has already been done to our international reputation—and certainly to the human beings whose rights this administration has trampled—that doesn’t mean we continue to shut our eyes and bury our heads while this inhuman travesty continues. As said by Bishop Desmond Tutu, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor."

📅 08.06.2026 | People with cancer or HIV could lose Medicaid

Source: NPR News

While the president pouts about losing congressional funding for his ballroom, builds a UFC arena in front of the White House, and continues funding a war in Iran and blockading Cuba. While Congress cuts taxes for the indecently wealthy and lines their own pockets on stock trades announced by this administration, the middle-income and poorer people of the United States are informed that they must continue working following a cancer diagnosis (or in the early stages of HIV) or risk losing their Medicaid coverage.

Changes made by the One Big Beautiful Bill designed by Project 2025 and passed by a Republican Congress will deepen the mudsill intentions of this bought-and-paid-for white, Christian, conservative Congress. They seem intent on getting away with as much as they possibly can and then entrenching themselves with gerrymandering so they will not experience the consequences of turning against their own constituents. Vote them out! Tax the rich and wealthy. Create a just system that protects the vulnerable instead of the elite.

📅 05.06.2026 | Donald Trump’s Superficiality Is Bone-Deep

Source: The Atlantic

In examining this presidency, Jonathon Chait of The Atlantic tells us the primary word we should keep in mind is “Superficiality.” He describes his cabinet members, not based upon their character or ability, but upon their appeal to “Central Casting,” or how they would look on stage. Chait uses Pete Hegseth and RFK, Jr. as cases in point. Both often appear in their own taxpayer-funded semi-clad workout videos showing off their pectorals while their departments visibly deteriorate.

Chait also points to this president’s constant need for optics that resonate with his questionable taste. It appears much more important to him that he have a ballroom than the war in Iran ends. Superficiality is not uncommon among the malignant narcissist—and the White House has frequently been home to self-centered megalomaniacs. But, as Chait identifies, superficiality is a defining thread of this president’s raison d’être. His “reason for being.” Indeed, this reporter tells us, “Future historians looking for a set piece to embody the Trump era might linger on the forthcoming UFC cage fight at the White House.” This president is still living out his “glory days,” from “The Apprentice,” but the whole world is his audience. When we ask, “What will Donny do next?” The answer will inevitably be, “What looks good on the surface?”

📅 04.06.2026 | Another Chance for Trump to Cash Out

Source: The Atlantic

The Atlantic’s David Frum identifies an urgent issue that may lie beneath the radar of all but the most astute government observers. This administration is making every effort to disregard the Presidential Records Act, which was so fundamental in the resignation of Richard Nixon. As Frum illustrates, “A new Congress will ask questions about President Trump’s actions. The Trump administration will refuse to answer. The administration will argue that the Constitution grants Congress little power to order the executive to do much of anything. The executive, this administration insists, can do whatever isn’t explicitly forbidden; Congress can do only what is explicitly permitted.”

This administration is no doubt emboldened by a Supreme Court that seems intent on deferring to the president’s whims and wishes. That is, if it is a white, conservative, racist president that will hold authoritarian power without checks and balances. This should be alarming to every democratic voter, and Frum has done an outstanding job focusing our attention on this dilemma. This president (and his cultic supporters) know they have disregarded the law, undermined the Constitution, and stolen from the people of the United States. Now, it is doing all it can to make sure they cannot be held accountable for their high crimes and misdemeanors. They want to be impeachment-proof, they want to be trial-proof, they want to be consequence-proof.

📅 03.06.2026 | How Megalomaniac Leaders Establish Their Grip on a Group — and How They Lose It

Source: The Conversation

This article by Jean Poitras of “The Conversation” is as timely as it is informative. We are watching the real-time implosion of Donald Trump as the Republican faithful slowly begin to realize the cost they are about to pay for their cultic worship of this megalomaniac monster. He won’t be awarded his lawsuit against himself, his $1.776 billion revenge fund, his billion-dollar ballroom funding, his name and likeness must be taken down from the Kennedy Center, entertainers are not flocking to his birthday party, and the Iran War is not going as he planned.

This article describes both how megalomaniacs come to power as well as how they lose power. Donald is faltering, but he is not done. It is no time to lighten the pressure against him. As recent Republican primaries show, there are still many brainwashed worshippers willing to hide from the truth and do his bidding. As also evident from the ruling by the Roberts Court, there are still plenty of White Conservative Racists left in the halls of power, and with gerrymandering, apt to be more.

We have no opportunity to rest yet; if anything, we must intensify our pressure for complete change. This administration—and its supporters—must be left with no doubt that this is not the United States that we will accept. That this has been a shameful anomaly in history and that we won’t forget and repeat it.