Youth Advocacy
Youth Advocacy
Year 5, Week 14
Briefing Period: 24.06.2026—30.06.2026
By Dr. Jerry Goebel
📣 REVIEW and ANNOUNCEMENTS
Weekly Review: Standing at the Brink
Whether it is a quiet weaponization of the DOJ targeting the civil rights of disabled children, an administrative power grab illegally choking off foreign humanitarian aid, or a nation bowing to the spiteful whims of unaccountable billionaires—this week's news brings us straight to the brink.
My blogs don’t focus on the immediacy of each day (which are often intentionally designed by this administration to be a distraction), but on longer-term trends that examine the direction of the U.S., the globe, and particularly our role as responsible adults in protecting our children’s future.
The erosion of institutional guardrails we are witnessing right now isn't just a political crisis; it is a direct theft of the stable democracy, safety net, and global reputation that belong to our youth. As responsible adults, we cannot look away from these trends. We must build Communities of Trust to insulate our children from this top-down cruelty.
🖼️ 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: "Resistance, Resilience"
While we bear witness to the trauma of our current systems—from the threats of mass re-institutionalization to the systemic defunding of global health—we must also feed the spirit that allows us to fight back.
This week, we are highlighting "Resistance, Resilience." It serves as a powerful musical reminder that our survival depends on community, collective strength, and an absolute refusal to break under institutional pressure. It is available to watch, stream, and share right now on our main page. Please consider purchasing the track in our store to directly fund our ongoing youth advocacy work.
Listen & Support: Communities of Trust Music Store
📺 Archive Spotlight: "The Trauma and the Terror"
If you missed last week's briefing, you can still catch our deep-dive 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 calculated stripping of healthcare from our most vulnerable citizens to the psychological warfare played out on the global stage.
Watch on YouTube: "The Trauma and the Terror" Music Video
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
30.06.2026
Source: ProPublica
“A Huge Grab of Power”: Trump Is Defying Congress on Foreign Aid
In yet further proof that this administration, with direction from Project 2025, is determined to create a mudsill economy where people exist to serve a class of billionaires and trillionaires, or die of malnutrition or disease. It has cut, as Anna Maria Barry-Jester informs us, under Jeremy Lewin, a 29-year-old lawyer who came into government via Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) with no prior humanitarian experience and who is in charge of foreign aid, “…upended the world’s largest foreign aid provider last year, terminating thousands of programs and firing nearly all of its staff. Its plan for the agency was clear: Eliminate it entirely.” But because USAID is a program under the purview of Congress, it had to seek congressional approval to cut the program. According to Barry-Jester, Congress refused their request and, “…detailed precisely how much the State Department should spend on foreign aid and for what, including $9.4 billion on global health to treat and prevent maladies like HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria, and more than $5 billion on emergency humanitarian aid. They also insisted on regular, detailed reports about how the administration was spending the money.”
This administration has not even attempted to follow these directives in a manner similar to a petulant child refusing to share toys with others. It remains sequestered in the White House, screaming, “Mine, mine, mine!” According to David Super, a professor of law and economics at Georgetown University and a leading scholar on administrative and constitutional law, “this is a huge power grab by the Presidential Branch of the Government and expressly illegal.” To date, the Office of Management and Budget, run by Russell Vought, has refused to allocate money to be spent on foreign aid despite bipartisan support from seemingly every member of Congress, save for Trump boot-licker, Lindsay Graham. The damage being done to the U.S.’s reputation and respect globally is immeasurable, but that is nothing compared to the legacy of deaths that will occur from disease and malnutrition. Trillionaire Musk apparently can’t stomach that anyone else would receive money from U.S. taxpayers, and this administration is “all in.” In its effort to keep every dime for the extremely wealthy, people are dying, and the cycle of disease will remain in effect for generations.
29.06.2026
Source: Salon
America abdicates as global superpower — and it’s about time
The Executive Editor of Salon, Andrew O’Hiher, helps us reflect on some positive points to this administration’s multiple failed adventures abroad. These points are somewhat hard-to-find and only visible in a much larger context and with a much longer view. They certainly won’t be promoted by the MAGA/GOP cult surrounding this president, but let’s dive into some of O’Hiher’s important notes. Here’s how he opens: “Trump returned to the White House last year determined to wreak revenge on a long list of real or imagined enemies and to leave his mark on the world. He has undeniably done both, and has caused almost unimaginable damage in many directions. It seemed implausible (and still does) that such a small-minded, ignorant, and incurious person could become a world-historical figure, but at least in that respect, we have misjudged him. He has changed the world, but done so in exactly the opposite direction from his expressed intentions.”
This description of the president is one of the best I’ve seen; the word, “Incurious” certainly describes the approach an egotistical narcissist takes to the world around him. I think it is safe to say we have had incurious presidents before, but likely none as mentally stagnant as the current occupant of the UFC Circus/Algae Infested/White House.
O’Hiher points out the failure in Iran may have finally resulted in a long-term rupture of the U.S.’s relationship with Benjamin Netanyahu. It certainly has resulted in the U.S. being seen as weak by multiple nations around the globe, including European allies, Russia, and especially China. O’Hiher quotes China analyst Ryan Hass’ essay for Brookings: ‘The United States and Israel fought Iran, and China won.’ In his analysis, the U.S. once again squandered its resources and its global credibility in a counterproductive and pointless struggle for military hegemony, while the Chinese remained focused on this century’s ‘defining geopolitical contest: the battle for technological leadership.’”
China is painting the U.S. as a reckless aggressor in the world with itself as a “reliable steward of the international order.” Who would have thought that would be plausible before this president undermined this United States’ credibility worldwide?
In the long run, O’Hiher suggests we see this administration as helping the world become less reliant on fossil fuels and fossil fuel energy, less reliant on standard industrial military tactics, and certainly less reliant on the U.S. The most honorable thing this President could do at this time is resign. But the likelihood of T.R.U.M.P. doing something honorable is close to nil. Perhaps, given his growing dementia and physical decline, the fact that being the Bully of the World is not working, and being booed at nearly every venue where he shows his face, will begin to wear on him. Perhaps, if mid-terms reveal the depth of the GOP crises in the U.S., his avid supporters will begin to count the cost of supporting an incurious, malignant narcissist nearing his demise. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps… but we have to do more than hope and wish. We have to raise our voices, show up to vote, and keep calling out evil when it reveals itself.
26.06.2026
Source: NPR
DOJ memo stokes fear among disability advocates of a return to institutionalization
Thank you to both NPR and Cory Turner (editor for NPR’s Ed Team) for bringing attention to this easily overlooked, but critically important issue of the civil rights of those disabled in the United States. According to Turner, a new memo released this week by the Justice Department and prepared by Lanora Pettit, principal deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel, “quietly calls into question decades of civil rights protections for Americans with disabilities and stirred fear and anger among advocates and families.”
One might question why, until we examine the devious direction of Project 2025 and this administration to ensure they are “unburdened” by those who are not contributing to the tax system funding the wealthy in this country. As Turner reports, Trump’s own campaign promises make this clear: In a 2023 campaign video, President Trump himself pledged: “For those who are severely mentally ill and deeply disturbed, we will bring them back to mental institutions, where they belong.”
If you voted for this president, you own this. If you stayed home, your silence allowed this to happen, and you better hope that no one you know—or you, yourself—ever has need of support (or even community) if you should become disabled. The question we should also ask at this time is, does this law apply to the President himself? He is quite obviously a danger to society and quite obviously mentally ill. Does this law allow us to step in and institutionalize him? We could only hope so.
25.06.2026
Source: Current Affairs
A Trillion Dollars Isn’t Worth It If You Have to Be Elon Musk
Alex Scopic and Nathan J. Robinson open this cautionary tale about Elon Musk with a quote from one they call “some homeless Palestinian.” “What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? And, indeed, this is a cautionary tale about a man who has everything (at least more financial wealth than anyone else in the world) and yet, seems to feel like he has nothing. They divide the article into five important sections: You can’t buy human connection. You can’t buy cool. You can’t buy peace of mind. The money is kind of fake anyway. You’d feel sorry for him, if not for the body count. The authors compare Musk’s urges with another oligarch, Jeffrey Epstein, saying, “…like Musk, Epstein reportedly hoped to ‘seed the human race with his DNA by impregnating women’ on a large scale, and had a compound of his own at Zorro Ranch in New Mexico for that purpose. Like Musk, much of his harassment took place on a private plane, where the women in question were a captive audience.” And, “The common denominator between the two men is treating women as things to acquire and collect, rather than people. It’s a form of perversity that’s really only available to the super-rich.”
Towards the end of the article, the authors identify why, despite being such a pitiable character, one can’t feel sorry for Musk. In their words, “…Musk isn’t just stingy with his own fortune. When he took a role in the federal government he deliberately used his position to take food and medicine from the world’s poorest people, gleefully destroying the agency that provided U.S. medical aid to needy countries, resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths. Musk is a supporter of brutal imperialism (‘we will coup whoever we want’), and even flirts with outright neo-Nazism. He is a booster of some of the most hateful and dangerous politicians around the world, and even said that the serial sexual abuser Andrew Tate would make a good U.K. prime minister. Musk bears a significant responsibility for the second Trump presidency. He vowedthat even though “I can’t be President… I can help Trump defeat Biden and I will.” And he did, by spending hundreds of millions of dollars on the election. Every horror we are now experiencing, from killings by ICE agents and the building of huge immigrant concentration camps to the brazen attempts to loot the public treasury, are squarely the responsibility of Elon Musk. So there are about 8 billion people on Earth we should feel sorry for before we feel even an ounce of sympathy for Musk, as pathetic a figure as he may be.
Scopic and Robinson close with this insightful summary, “And yet his entire existence is a cautionary tale, a living moral fable. Yes, our primary focus should be on how capitalism affects the lives of the global poor and the working class, because they are the vast majority of humanity. But Musk shows us that capitalism isn’t good for the rich, either. Like a black hole or a neutron star, the gravitational pull of all that money warps their lives into shapes they would never otherwise have taken. It turns them grotesque, sucks away their joy and humanity, and kills their ability to relate normally to others. Removing Musk’s outlandish wealth and power is not just necessary for the preservation of democracy. It’s a favor to him, and offers the only hope for his redemption.”
Are those we will support in the next election up to the challenge ahead of all of us? Biden, who was an obvious enemy of Musk, was undermined largely by Musk’s money and social media machine. No one should underestimate the reach of his wealth accompanied by the internal void that makes him both dangerous and spiteful. The current president was made in Musk’s image and through Musk’s dollars. Establishing guardrails on billionaires—and trillionaires—must be a major priority of the 2027 congress. Will Musk, Bezos, and others have enough money to prevent this? They have in the past and no doubt will continue to make the U.S. into their personal oligarchy. This is a crucial time for our children and generations to come. Your vote and resistance was never more important.
24.06.2026
Source: The Atlantic
The Price of Defeat in Iran
There is no other way to describe the proposed conclusion to Trump’s war-of-choice with Iran as anything less than a surrender. Indeed, this president is high-tailing it back to battles he’s losing in the American hemisphere with his tail between his legs and egg upon his face; except the U.S. elected him, so it is egg upon the face of the United States. In this article, Thomas Wright of The Atlantic compares the settlement reached by this Administration to a Marshall Plan for the Middle East, only costing twice as much in real dollars as the original with no foreseeable benefits for the world. As most of you know, the Marshall Plan was vital for the political stabilization and psychological renewal of Western Europe. This “Memorandum of Understanding” or really, “document of surrender” will have the opposite effect in the Middle East than the Marshall Plan in Europe. Most likely, it will create a power vacuum that future U.S. administrations will fear filling. Israel will play heavily in determining the future of the Middle East, and its war with Iran will continue unabated. Israel will also be at odds with Turkey, and the Middle East leadership gap will be filled by China and Russia. Here’s how Wright summarizes the deal: “The deal is a bad one. But Washington has no good choices at this point. Judged by the administration’s own objectives, the outcome is difficult to describe as anything other than a defeat.” The United States entered the conflict seeking to eliminate Iran’s leverage, constrain its regional influence, and force it to accept strict limits on its nuclear program. Instead, Iran emerged with sanctions relief, a pathway to generous reconstruction financing, continuing ambiguity over key nuclear issues, and new leverage over the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran was contained by Obama’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Trump’s plan rewards Iran for engaging in a war with the U.S., closing the Strait of Hormuz, and firing on its neighbors. Whether we will ever know the economic costs of this war is difficult to tell, but we do know the cost in human lives, in infrastructure, and we are watching the cost at our gas pumps around the world. The actions that Iran made post-Israel and the U.S.’s initial strikes were predicted, but this war was the “brainchild” of Bibi Netanyahu and Donald J. Trump, which is a scary thought by itself, given the dangerous brains that were involved.
