At the Netroots Nation conference in New Orleans over the weekend, one Saturday panel addressed the Democratic Party’s spam fundraising problem. The description reads in part:
“By bombarding tens of millions of Democrats and independents with unsolicited emails and text messages each cycle – many of them demeaning and deceptive in nature – we are driving donors away, demoralizing supporters, and putting our long-term grassroots fundraising advantage at risk.”
We all know the problem. I posted on the problem just last week. Judging by the page view count, it struck a nerve. Another addressed efforts by Act Blue to get a handle on the fake PAC problem. On Wednesday, Act Blue announced major changes to how it would (and would not platform “progressive” fundraising efforts.
Some good news. ActBlue just announced major updates to crack down on deceptive fundraising. New rules ban impersonation, fake matches, and excessive spam. Big step in the right direction. Shout out to Josh Nelson and everyone who has been advocating for these changes.
The Bulwark’s Lauren Egan reports on the party’s efforts to address the “scam PACs” problem and the Netroots buzz about attempts at a fix. She references the Adam Bonica piece I mentioned last week. Amanda Litman of Run for Something tweeted, “These are promising policy changes from the @actblue team that show they’re taking the spam PACs and aggressive fundraising practices seriously. There are other levers we need to pull as a party to stop treating supporters like shit but this is a start.”
Whether or not the changes will affect change is TBD, Egan writes. There is skepticism:
But there is also clear evidence that scam PACs can be weeded out—if ActBlue wants to do it. After The Bulwark reported last summer on a slew of scam PACs associated with Democratic consultant Ryan Morgan, ActBlue tossed them off the platform. Recent filings with the Federal Election Commission show that these organizations (Democrats United, Democratic Power, and Democratic Victory PAC) have raised just a couple thousand dollars so far this year after having raised millions during the 2024 cycle.
The fundamental question is whether this is concrete progress or whether ActBlue and others are just entering a whack-a-mole phase. While the constellation of Morgan groups may have wound down, others have popped up. Tim Tagaris, one of the Democratic party’s top digital fundraisers, noted the arrival of the No Surrender Fund, which raised $1.8 million in the first six months of 2025 and spent $1.2 million of it on fundraising, with no transfers to party committees.
All of this is sparking reflection within the party about how it even allowed such dishonest fundraising tactics to get this far. And it’s sparking a push to cleanse the consultant pipeline of its grift.
Eight-mile chain of demonstrators against Trump administration.
This country is not approaching fascism, leaning toward fascism, or at risk of fascism. We’re there. When masked agents are abducting thousands of people off the streets and imprisoning them and/or disappearing them to third countries without legal process, we are living in a police state. At the Netroots Nation conference in New Orleans over the weekend, progressive activists were not closing their eyes to that reality. To halt the MAGA movement’s march toward dictatorship, Americans who still believe in the country’s ideals cannot be shy about standing up and fighting back in the country’s defense.
In a chance meeting at brunch on St. Charles Avenue, a fellow diner shared that she is keeping her progressive head down for the next three and a half years. She has relations who support Donald Trump and neighbors she doesn’t want to rub the wrong way. I recounted that I have a neighbor who months ago began flying the American flag in his yard upside down as a distress signal. When I mentioned noticing it, he responded that it would stay that way for the same three and a half years.
Clicktivism and casual criticism in the face of fascism is not enough. Direct action is a necessity. If it pisses off some it will inspire others. We must build a community of opposition to the authoritarian overthrow of the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law. For many, they will need their neighbors’ permission to take their first baby steps. Deeper commitment comes later. That’s the ladder of engagement.
Thousands join protest against ICE—link arms to form human chain 8 miles long.
Protesters lined High St from Worthington to Columbus in deep red Ohio.
“Wake up, Columbus!” yelled woman waving an upside-down flag. “Today is about democracy over a dictatorship.”
“Trump’s actions on immigration are a major reason, but everyone involved has different reasons for showing up,” said event organizers.
Organizing groups included Indivisible Central Ohio and the Westerville Progressive Alliance.
“It’s the corruption, the cruelty, and the incompetence,” another man explained. “It’s the masked men swiping people off the street and sending them to God knows where.”
Many had never protested before Trump was elected—and did not want to give full names fearing for their safety. #DemsUnited
OHIO… Thousands link arms to form human chain 8 miles long… to protest against ICE… pic.twitter.com/zYDAteFNXf
When Doug Jones ran successfully in an Alabama special Senate election in December 2017, his campaign distributed 15,000 yard signs to supporters “under strict orders to plant them outside their home and nowhere else.”
the campaign needed to show Republican voters — some of whom hadn’t voted for a Democrat in decades — that it would be OK to support one this time around. And what better way, they thought, than letting the average Alabamian see rows of Jones signs in their neighbors’ yards?
Social proof. Non-activists will need “permission” from you to “join the club.” They will do what they see others doing. Only you have to show them the way. Like with simple street protests. Regular protests.
When Jon Ossoff ran unsuccessfully for Georgia’s 6th Congressional District in a 2017 special election, his supporters found and built community that invited neighbors to take direct action:
This surge of progressive activity marks a social sea change in an area when many Democrats said they once kept their political sympathies quiet, assuming they were alone among their conservative neighbors. “I felt like I was a closeted Democrat,” said Rebecca Sandberg, 43, who I met on Monday as she stood with a cluster of other women holding Ossoff signs near a busy intersection. “The label ‘liberal’ always seemed like a bad thing. And now I’m realizing, the more we have this community, that it’s actually a good thing. Being surrounded by all of these ladies in this area—and men, too—has really empowered me to be more involved.” She’d joined Pave It Blue and become a precinct captain for the Ossoff campaign.
[…]
A private, invite-only Facebook group called Liberal Moms of Roswell and Cobb, or LMRC, [swelled] to 1,700 members. You see LMRC magnets on cars and minivans all over town, and its members have developed a ritual: When they come across an LMRC decal on a parked car, they turn it upside-down, so when the driver returns, she’ll know a friend was there.
The message: You are not alone. We see you. We stand with you.
Fly that flag upside down. Hold a protest beside the road at drive time. Will it change anything? Not overnight. That’s not the point. The point, as my friend Anat Shenker-Osorio says, is to provide social proof to others that it is normal for normal people, decent people, moral people to stand up and publicly oppose the crimes and intimidating cruelty of the Trump administration:
The thing is, people need to see, “Oh, that’s what my kind of a person thinks.” Humans are social creatures. We’re tribal. We want to find cues in our environment that tell us what our category subscribes to.
So simple actions matter. They build the community and mutual trust we will need later to implement actions like general strikes that will have more teeth.
Half of Republican voters would not abandon their vote for President Donald Trump if he were implicated in Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes.
This is according to a new survey conducted by Canadian market research firm Leger, which found that such a revelation wouldn’t sway 47 percent of Republican voters.
A further 26 percent of survey respondents said they were unsure or wouldn’t answer, leaving just 27 percent who said that they would be more likely to vote for another party.
Broken down by demographic, 61 percent of 18-34-year-olds said they would be more likely to vote for another party, while just 15 percent of respondents over 55 said the same.
Previous polling has found that a plurality of Republicans approve of the way Trump has handled the Epstein case.
Republicans still want the files released but I’m sure that’s because they think it will prove that the international cabal of pedophiles was actually led by Hillary Clinton.
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exist.” The Origins of Totalitarianism
She’s apparently quit her job working for Elon Musk and is attempting to recreate the very popular “Call Her Daddy” podcast but for conservative women. Picking that hunk JD Vance for the first interview was a choice.
There’s a story behind Katie Millers trajectory from Trump’s inner circle to Elon to podcasting but we don’t know what it is. I’m not sure I want to.
Trump: And I'm not politicking for the Nobel Prize. But it will be a great honor certainly… I think if we did not come, Ukraine-Russia would have ended up being a Wold War. And I stopped that. We brought it down a long way. pic.twitter.com/havuWVQLew
Russian officials and commentators crowed about landing a summit between President Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump on Friday in Alaska, the first time the Russian leader has been invited to the United States outside the United Nations since 2007 — and apparently without the Kremlin having made any clear concessions over its war in Ukraine.
European and Ukrainian officials, meanwhile, scrambled to respond to the administration’s sudden reversal. Days before announcing the summit Friday, Trump was expressing frustration over Putin’s continued bombardment of Ukrainian cities and threatening to ratchet up sanctions on Russia.
[…]
Sam Greene, professor in Russian politics at King’s College London, said the venue favored Russia. “The symbolism of holding the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska is horrendous — as though designed to demonstrate that borders can change, land can be bought and sold,” Greene said. “Never mind that mainstream Russian discourse maintains a claim that Alaska should be returned to Russia.”
A key difference: Czar Alexander II offered to sell Alaska. Putin has seized Ukrainian territory by force, illegally annexing Crimea in 2014 and launching the full invasion and illegally claiming to annex four other Ukrainian regions in 2022.
Trump’s all in favor of annexing. If Alaska didn’t have oil he’d probably give it back to Vlad as a gift.
Apparently, some of this can be attributed to Trump’s unqualified, incompetent “envoy” Steve Witkoff:
According to The Wall Street Journal, Witkoff presented Putin’s ceasefire plan to European officials after he met with the Russian leader. Citing anonymous sources, the publication said Moscow was prepared to withdraw from the southern regions of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson in exchange for full control of Donetsk Oblast.
The publication said that the next day, he presented a different claim—that Putin would withdraw and freeze the front line, and that during a third call, he said the Russian leader wanted Ukraine to withdraw from Donetsk in an exchange for a ceasefire.
McFaul, now a Stanford University academic said: “This is deeply damaging incompetence. Witkoff should finally start taking a note taker from the U.S. embassy for future meetings. That’s how professional diplomacy works.”
Meanwhile, other figures also criticized Witkoff. Journalist Michael Weiss wrote: “The U.S. envoy is grossly incompetent and his confusion is causing diplomatic crises.”
Read the entire Wall St. Journal article here. (gift link) It looks to me as if Trump is so eager for the Nobel Prize that he’s ready to let Putin walk all over him again in the hopes that he can push Ukraine and the Europeans to accept an unacceptable agreement. All it takes is for Vlad to whisper a few sweet nothings into his ear to get him to back off.
Citing a senior law enforcement official, The New York Times reported the shooter, identified as 30-year-old Patrick Joseph White, was fixated on the Covid vaccine, which he blamed for his health problems. In response to the shooting and reports of White’s motivations, newly appointed CDC Director Susan Monarez convened an online all-hands meeting of the agency division that focuses on vaccines — the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.
Staff described being terrified as bullets struck the buildings where they worked, and of being trapped inside until late in the evening.
As the leaders spoke, dozens of staffers posted messages in the meeting chat, many naming Kennedy, who oversees the CDC at the Department of Health and Human Services, citing his years of spreading misinformation about vaccines and vilifying the health agencies he now leads.
You can see why:
For years, Kennedy attacked the CDC. In videos from anti-vaccine conferences between 2013 and 2019, he likened the agency’s vaccine work to “fascism” and “child abuse,” called it a “cesspool of corruption” and said it was filled with profiteers. At a 2013 conference, when asked about why the CDC had failed to acknowledge the autism epidemic (which he falsely linked to vaccines), Kennedy said it was like the Holocaust. On at least two occasions, Kennedy has apologized for comparing agencies, officials and public health measures to the Holocaust. During the pandemic, Kennedy repeatedly framed the CDC and other HHS agencies as “corrupt,” falsely suggested Covid-19 was a “bioweapon,” and lied about the dangers of Covid vaccines, calling them “the deadliest vaccine ever made.”
“The hatred RFK and his allies have spent their lives stoking puts a target on the backs of anyone in public health,” said one senior official who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak for the agency and so they could speak critically about Kennedy.
It’s not at all surprising there would be some kind of violence perpetrated against the scientists considering what he and the rest of MAGA, including Trump himself, said about the CDC during the COVID pandemic. It’s still impossible to believe that Trump put that moron in charge of HHS along with the parade of clowns he’s overseeing at the other health agencies. It still boggles the mind.
Apropos of nothing, recall that Kennedy said that COVID was engineered to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people. That’s the man in charge today.
🚨RFK Jr. Said What?!
"Covid-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians & Black People, the people who are MOST IMMUNE are Ashkenazi Jews & Chinese" pic.twitter.com/xQka0Ikzf8
Mehdi Hasan tweets, “We all laugh and roll our eyes and yet I am trying to think what the reaction -especially from rightwing media – would have been in 2013 if Obama had showed a foreign dictator around the White House while chuckling and revealing 2016 third term merch to him hidden in a closet.”
Trump shows off to the Azerbaijan dictator a section in the White House dedicated to Trump 2028 merch, as they discuss Trump unlawfully pursuing another term pic.twitter.com/nK8tQEACWI
Donald Trump is, with his 1980s view of the world, trying to return the country to a 20th century that no longer exists in the 21st. His economic policies are stripping the U.S. of its innovation and competitiveness, argues Robinson Meyer in The New York Times. Manufacturing is shrinking, home starts are slowing, and only health care is seeing increased employment. His simple-mindedness is making our economy increasingly simple (gift link):
Perhaps this slowdown will soon reverse. But nearly seven months into his presidency, it’s now clear that Mr. Trump and his officials’ tax and trade policy — and their hatred for next-generation energy technologies — is distorting and, increasingly, robbing the economy of its complexity. And if he keeps at it, Mr. Trump will demote America into a deindustrialized power that relies on technology developed elsewhere and doesn’t know how to sell much more than crypto, soybeans and petroleum products.
Trump is putting the kibosh on further electric enegy development at a time when consumser clearly have shown a growing preference for electric and hybrid vehicles. He’s trending toward a Soviet-style economy that produces products no one wants to buy, while depriving the manufacturers of data for knowing what to produce.
Trump’s tariffs add to the confusion:
But the clearest example of the atrophy is in the bill’s demolition of electric vehicle tax credits. E.V.s are to the 21st century what gasoline-burning cars were to the 20th century: an important “apex” industry that builds on and incorporates the work of other sectors, like steel, mining and chemicals.
In their tax law, congressional Republicans kept some subsidies in place for companies that produce E.V.s, which will manage to keep American factories just barely cost-competitive on a per-unit basis. But they stripped out incentives to help consumers buy or lease electric vehicles. Mr. Trump’s lobotomizing of the Environmental Protection Agency means that soon there will be essentially no mechanism for the government to encourage Americans to buy E.V.s, which will leave the infant industry without a reliable source of new demand. Companies are responding as you might expect: Since Mr. Trump took office, more than two dozen E.V. or clean energy manufacturing projects across the country — totaling more than $27 billion in investment — have been paused, canceled or closed.
Smothering the E.V. industry might have been merely a regrettable mistake for a Republican to make 10 years ago. Today, it is economic idiocy. Over the past decade, China has built a new kind of industrial economy that combines a specific stack of technologies — batteries, motors, semiconductors, sensors and software — into high-end manufactured goods like cars and drones. It is better at producing these high-end goods than just about anyone else in the world. Its electric cars, in particular, are “far superior” to what’s available in the West, according to Jim Farley, Ford’s chief executive.
Put a man with dictatorial tendencies and retrograde ideas in office and watch him slam the country into reverse and right into a ditch.
Norman: I think a lot of people are seeing higher prices. Our family's in the construction business, and we get a lot of to our timber from Canada and other countries. Steel prices are up. But it's for the good of the country. Should we expect high prices for a short time? Yes pic.twitter.com/ASBqHFRInB
Oh we will all burn together when we burn. There’ll be no need to stand and wait your turn. When it’s time for the fallout And saint peter calls us all out, We’ll just drop our agendas and adjourn.
You will all go directly to your respective valhallas. Go directly, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dolla’s.
And we will all go together when we go. Ev’ry hottenhot and ev’ry eskimo. When the air becomes uranious, And we will all go simultaneous. Yes we all will go together When we all go together, Yes we all will go together when we go.
– – from “We Will All Go Together When We Go”, by Tom Lehrer (1928-2025)
The gentleman who wrote that jaunty singalong was musician, singer-songwriter, political satirist and mathematician Tom Lehrer, who slipped the surly bonds of Earth back in late July. He may be gone, but the message of that particular song (written at the height of the Cold War era) is as timely as ever; especially in light of remarks made earlier this week by the mayor of Hiroshima, Japan on the 80th anniversary of the nuclear bombing of his city:
The mayor of Hiroshima has led calls for the world’s most powerful countries to abandon nuclear deterrence, at a ceremony to mark 80 years since the city was destroyed by an American atomic bomb.
As residents, survivors and representatives from 120 countries gathered at the city’s peace memorial park on Wednesday morning, Kazumi Matsui warned that the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East had contributed to a growing acceptance of nuclear weapons.
“These developments flagrantly disregard the lessons the international community should have learned from the tragedies of history,” he said in his peace declaration, against the backdrop of the A-bomb dome – one of the few buildings that survived the attack eight decades ago.
“They threaten to topple the peace-building frameworks so many have worked so hard to construct,” he added, before urging younger people to recognise that acceptance of the nuclear option could cause “utterly inhumane” consequences for their future.
Despite the global turmoil, he said, “we, the people, must never give up. Instead, we must work even harder to build civil society consensus that nuclear weapons must be abolished for a genuinely peaceful world.”
As applause rang out, white doves were released into the sky, while an eternal “flame of peace” burned in front of a cenotaph dedicated to victims of the world’s first nuclear attack.
The ceremony is seen as the last opportunity for significant numbers of ageing hibakusha – survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – to pass on first-hand warnings of the horror of nuclear warfare.
Just under 100,000 survivors are still alive, according to recent data from the health ministry, with an average age of just over 86.
Surely, our current U.S. administration is acknowledging this week of remembrance by contemplating ways it can do its part (on behalf of all Americans ) to help build that “genuinely peaceful world”…right?
Moscow broke its silence on President Donald Trump’s comments ordering two nuclear submarines to “the appropriate regions” in response to “provocative” remarks by a former Russian president.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told Russian state media on Aug. 4 that the country was “very attentive” to the topic of nuclear non-proliferation and believed “everyone should be very, very cautious with nuclear rhetoric.”
Peskov also played down the significance of Trump’s comments, saying it was clear to Russia that U.S. submarines were already on combat duty. He said Russia had no appetite for getting into a prolonged argument with Trump.
Still, Trump’s deployment of the nuclear submarines appears to be the first time social media rhetoric has led an American president to apparently reposition parts of the United States’ nuclear arsenal. (Trump did not specify whether he was referring to nuclear-powered or nuclear-armed submarines.)
Trump said the move was in response to statements from Dmitry Medvedev, who was the Russian president from 2008 to 2012 and prime minister from 2012 to 2020. He is now the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council. Medvedev, who in recent years has taken to social media to post spiky, rabble-rousing comments aimed at the United States, said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that Trump’s recent threats to sanction Russia, including a tariffs ultimatum, were “a step towards war.”
Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Putin himself has frequently resorted to nuclear threats. The Kremlin has repeatedly suggested that Moscow could use nuclear weapons under certain circumstances.
The latest spat follows Trump’s trip to Scotland, where he said he was reducing his 50-day deadline for Russia to make moves toward trying to end its war with Ukraine – down to a new deadline of 10 or 12 days. That deadline is Aug. 8. Trump warned of “very severe” sanctions on Russia if it does not commit to a ceasefire.
Anyway, I think it would behoove any reasonable world leader to heed the warnings of the hibakusha. In solidarity with their message on this solemn anniversary, I am re-posting the following piece.
(The following was originally posted on August 3, 2024)
Happy End of the World: Top 15 Anti-Nuke Films
“The atomic bomb made the prospect of future war unendurable. It has led us up those last few steps to the mountain pass; and beyond there is a different country.”
-J. Robert Oppenheimer
[Shame mode] All the times I’ve zipped by the I-82 turn-off to Richland, Washington while driving on I-90 and thought “hey, isn’t that where that Hanford superfund nuclear thingy is?” I’ve never stopped to ponder its historical significance. Adjacent to the Hanford Nuclear Site that was built in the early 1940s to house nuclear government workers at the height of the Manhattan Project, Richland is, in essence, a company town; a true “atomic city” with a problematic legacy.
Then again, according to Irene Lusztig’s absorbing documentary Richland (which I caught at last year’s Tribeca Film Festival), how “problematic” depends on who you talk to. Many current residents don’t see why anyone would fuss over the local high school football team’s “mascot”, which is …a mushroom cloud.
The town manufactured weapons-grade plutonium for decades following the end of WW2-to which they had a direct hand in “ending”, via providing the plutonium for the ”Fat Man” nuclear bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki. Lusztig incorporates archival footage for historical context; these segments reminded me of the 1982 documentary The Atomic Cafe. I wasn’t able to track down whether the film is streaming anywhere; but here’s the trailer:
Speaking of which…we are several days away from the 79th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. So what have we learned since 8:15am, August 6, 1945-if anything? Well, we’ve tried to harness the power of the atom for “good”, however, as has been demonstrated repeatedly, that’s not working out so well (Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima, et al).
Also, there are enough stockpiled weapons of mass destruction to knock Planet Earth off its axis, and no guarantees that some nut job, whether enabled by the powers vested in him by the state, or the voices in his head (doesn’t matter-end result’s the same) won’t be in a position at some point in the future to let one or two or a hundred rip. Hopefully, cool heads and diplomacy will continue to keep us above ground and rad-free.
After all, if history has taught us anything, it doesn’t take much to trigger a global conflict. Interestingly, just last week TCM ran their premiere showing of Nathan Kroll’s 1964 documentary The Guns of August. The film is based on historian and journalist Barbara W. Tuchman’s eponymous Pulitzer Prize-winning 1963 book, which focuses on the first year of World War I (1914) and the events leading up to it (Kroll’s film covers the entire conflict through 1918).
I hadn’t seen the film in decades; I’d forgotten how straightforward and sobering it was in illustrating how an unfortunate series of blunders, miscalculations, misinterpretations and failed diplomacy among the ruling houses of Europe triggered a conflict that ultimately led to 20 million people dead and 21 million wounded (military and civilian casualties combined).
Most famously, the flashpoint occurred on June 28, 1914 with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand (presumptive heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne) and his wife Sophie, the Duchess of Hohenberg by a Bosnian Serb revolutionary (and the rest, as they say, is History).
Now we’d like to think that such arcane regional bickering and random acts of political violence half a world away from our comfortable living rooms cannot possibly lead to a horrific global conflict ever again…right? I mean, in this day and age? What are the odds?
The U.S. is adding to its military presence in the Middle East in an effort to help defend Israel from possible attacks by Iran and its proxies in the coming days, as well as to protect U.S. troops, the Pentagon says.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Friday that he ordered more ballistic missile defense-capable cruisers and destroyers to the Middle East and Europe. An additional fighter jet squadron will also be sent to the Middle East. Austin added that the U.S. is also taking steps “to increase our readiness to deploy additional land-based ballistic missile defense.”
The USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group will also be moved to the Middle East in order “to maintain a carrier strike group presence.” It will replace the USS Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group after the end of its deployment.
This week, tensions in the Middle East pushed to a critical point after top leaders from the militant groups Hamasand Hezbollah were killed and Iran and its proxies vowed revenge. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said Saturday that Tehran’s retaliation will be “severe and (taken) at an appropriate time, place, and manner,” Reuters reported. […]
Austin said in a statement on Friday that while the U.S. is taking additional measures to support Israel, its priority is to prevent a wider war in the Middle East.
Let’s hope so. In such volatile regions of the world, prevention is preferable to escalation.
Speaking of which …in light of the upcoming presidential election in November, one of the most pressing questions (no pun intended) voters should ask themselves before marking their ballots is this:
Whose finger would you rather see hovering over the proverbial “red button”? Which candidate is less likely to fumble the “nuclear football”? The what?
Officially called the “ Presidential Emergency Satchel, ” the “nuclear football” is a bulky briefcase that contains atomic war plans and enables the president to transmit nuclear orders to the Pentagon. The heavy case is carried by a military officer who is never far behind the president, whether the commander-in-chief is boarding a helicopter or exiting meetings with world leaders.
Today, nearly 80 years after the beginning of the nuclear age, the risks posed by nuclear weapons are escalating. U.S. presidential leadership may be the most important factor in whether the risk of nuclear arms racing, proliferation, and war will rise or fall in the years ahead.
As UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in a June 7 statement: “Humanity is on a knife’s edge. The risk of a nuclear weapon being used has reached heights not seen since the Cold War. States are engaged in a qualitative arms race. [W]e need disarmament now. All countries need to step up, but nuclear weapons states must lead the way.”
American voters are increasingly aware and, according to recent polling, deeply concerned about nuclear weapons dangers. A 2024 national opinion survey found that a majority of Americans believe that nuclear weapons make the world more dangerous. Overall, just one in eight Americans (13 percent) think nuclear weapons are making the world a safer place, while 63 percent think the opposite, and 14 percent say neither.
In 2024, the candidates’ approaches to these dangers deserve more scrutiny.
How exactly the winner of the 2024 race will handle the evolving array of nuclear weapons-related challenges is difficult to forecast.
Just something to keep in mind come November. No pressure.
With those happy thoughts in mind, I thought I’d share my picks for the top 15 cautionary films to watch before we all go together (when we go). Uh…enjoy?
The Atomic Café – Whoopee, we’re all gonna die! But along the way, we might as well have a few laughs. That seems to be the impetus behind this 1982 collection of cleverly reassembled footage culled from U.S. government propaganda shorts from the Cold War era (Mk 1), originally designed to educate the public about how to “survive” a nuclear attack (all you need to do is get under a desk…everyone knows that!).
In addition to the Civil Defense campaigns (which include the classic “duck and cover” tutorials) the filmmakers have also drawn from a rich vein of military training films, which reduce the possible effects of a nuclear strike to something akin to a barrage from, oh I don’t know- a really big field howitzer. Harrowing, yet perversely entertaining. Written and directed by Jayne Loader, Pierce Rafferty and Kevin Rafferty (Kevin went on to co-direct the similarly constructed 1999 doc, The Last Cigarette, a take down of the tobacco industry).
Black Rain– For obvious reasons, there have been a fair amount of postwar Japanese films dealing with the subject of nuclear destruction and its aftermath. Some take an oblique approach, like Gojira or I Live inFear. Other films, like the documentary Children of Hiroshima and the anime Barefoot Gen deal directly with survivors (who are referred to in Japan as the hibakusha).
One of the most affecting hibakusha films I’ve seen is Shomei Imamura’s 1989 drama Black Rain (not to be confused with the 1989 Hollywood crime thriller of the same title that is also set in Japan). It’s a simple tale of three Hiroshima survivors: an elderly couple and their niece, whose scars run much deeper than physical. The narrative is sparse, yet contains more layers than an onion (especially considering the complexities of Japanese society). Interestingly, Imamura injects a polemic which points an accusatory finger in an unexpected direction.
The Day after Trinity– This absorbing 1981 film about the Manhattan Project and its subsequent fallout (historical, political and existential) remains one of the best documentaries I have seen on the subject. At its center, it is a profile of project leader J. Robert Oppenheimer, whose moment of professional triumph (the successful test of the world’s first atomic bomb, three weeks before Hiroshima) also brought him an unnerving precognition about the horror that he and his fellow physicists had enabled the military machine to unleash.
Oppenheimer’s journey from “father of the atomic bomb” to anti-nuke activist (and having his life destroyed by the post-war Red hysteria) is a tragic tale of Shakespearean proportion. I think this documentary provides a much more clear-eyed (and ultimately moving) portrait than Christopher Nolan’s well-acted but somewhat overwrought 2023 blockbuster Oppenheimer. Two recommended companion pieces: Roland Joffe’s 1989 drama Fat Man and Little Boy, about the working relationship between Oppenheimer (Dwight Schultz) and military director of the Manhattan Project, General Leslie Groves (Paul Newman); and an outstanding 1980 BBC miniseries called Oppenheimer (starring Sam Waterston).
Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb- “Mein fuehrer! I can walk!” Although we have yet to experience the global thermonuclear annihilation that ensues following the wheelchair-bound Dr. Strangelove’s joyous (if short-lived) epiphany, so many other depictions in Stanley Kubrick’s seriocomic masterpiece about the tendency for those in power to eventually rise to their own level of incompetence have since come to pass, that you wonder why the filmmakers even bothered to make it all up.
It’s the one about an American military base commander who goes a little funny in the head (you know…”funny”) and sort of launches a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. Hilarity and oblivion ensues. And what a cast: Peter Sellers (as three characters), George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Slim Pickens, Keenan Wynn, James Earl Jones and Peter Bull. There are so many great quotes, that you might as well bracket the entire screenplay (by Kubrick, Terry Southern and Peter George) with quotation marks.
Fail-Safe– Dr. Strangelove…without the laughs. This no-nonsense 1964 thriller from the late great director Sidney Lumet takes a more clinical look at how a wild card scenario (in this case, a simple hardware malfunction) could ultimately trigger a nuclear showdown between the Americans and the Russians.
Talky and a bit stagey; but riveting nonetheless thanks to Lumet’s skillful knack for bringing out the best in his actors. Walter Bernstein’s intelligent screenplay (with uncredited assistance from Peter George, who also co-scripted Dr. Strangelove) and a superb cast that includes Henry Fonda (a commanding performance, literally and figuratively), Walter Matthau, Larry Hagman, and Fritz Weaver.
There’s no fighting in this war room (aside from one minor scuffle), but there is an almost unbearable amount of tension and suspense. The final scene is chilling and unforgettable.
I Live in Fear-This 1955 Akira Kurosawa film is one of the great director’s most overlooked efforts. It’s a melodrama concerning an aging foundry owner (Toshiro Mifune, unrecognizable in Coke-bottle glasses and silver-frosted pomade) who literally “lives in fear” of the H-bomb. Convinced that South America would be the “safest” place on Earth from radioactive fallout, he tries to sway his wife and grown children to pull up stakes and resettle on a farm in Brazil.
His children, who have families of their own and rely on their father’s factory for income, are not so hot on that idea. They take him to family court and have him declared incompetent. This sends Mifune spiraling into madness. Or are his fears really so “crazy”? It is one of Mifune’s most powerful and moving performances. Kurosawa instills shades of Shakespeare’s “King Lear” into the narrative (a well he would draw from again in his 1985 film Ran).
Ladybug, Ladybug– I didn’t have an opportunity to see this chilling 1963 drama until 2017, which is when Turner Classic Movies presented their premiere showing (to my knowledge, it had never been previously available in any home video format). The film marked the second collaboration between husband-and-wife creative team of writer Eleanor Perry and director Frank Perry (The Swimmer, Last Summer,Diary of a Mad Housewife).
Based on an incident that occurred during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, the story centers on how students and staff of a rural school react to a Civil Defense alert indicating an imminent nuclear strike. While there are indications that it could be a false alarm, the principal sends the children home early. As teachers and students stroll through the relatively peaceful countryside, fears and anxieties come to the fore. Naturalistic performances bring the film’s cautionary message all too close to home.
Miracle Mile- Depending on your worldview, this is either an “end of the world” film for romantics, or the perfect date movie for fatalists. Anthony Edwards and Mare Winningham give winning performances as a musician and a waitress who Meet Cute at L.A.’s La Brea Tar Pits museum. But before they can hook up for their first date, Edwards stumbles onto a fairly reliable tip that L.A. is about to get hosed…in a major way.
The resulting “countdown” scenario is a genuine, edge-of-your seat nail-biter. In fact, this modestly budgeted, 90-minute sleeper offers more heart-pounding excitement (and much more believable characters) than any bloated Hollywood disaster epic from the likes of a Michael Bay or a Roland Emmerich. Writer-director Steve De Jarnatt stopped doing feature films after this 1988 gem (his only other feature was the sci-fi cult favorite Cherry 2000).
One Night Stand –An early effort from filmmaker John Duigan (Winter ofOur Dreams, The Year My Voice Broke, Flirting, Sirens), this 1984 sleeper got lost in the flurry of nuclear paranoia movies that proliferated during the Reagan era (Wargames, The Manhattan Project, Red Dawn, et.al.).
Four young people (three Australians and an American sailor who has jumped ship) get holed up in an empty Sydney Opera House on the eve of escalating nuclear tension between the superpowers in Eastern Europe. In an effort to quell their anxiety over increasingly ominous news bulletins droning from a portable radio, the quartet find creative ways to keep up their spirits.
Uneven, but for the most part Duigan (who scripted) deftly juggles romantic comedy, apocalyptic thriller and anti-war statement. There are several striking set pieces; particularly an affecting scene where the group watches Fritz Langs’s Metropolis as the Easybeats “Friday on My Mind” is juxtaposed over its orchestral score. Midnight Oil performs in a scene where the two young women attend a concert. The bittersweet denouement (in an underground tube station) is quite powerful.
Special Bulletin– This outstanding 1983 made-for-TV movie has been overshadowed by the nuclear nightmare-themed TV movie The Day After, which aired the same year (I’m sure I will be raked over the coals by some readers for not including the aforementioned on this list, but frankly I always thought it was too melodramatic and vastly over-praised).
Directed by Edward Zwick and written by Marshall Herskovitz (the same creative team behind thirtysomething), Special Bulletin is framed as a “live” television broadcast, with local news anchors and reporters interrupting regular programming to cover a breaking story.
A domestic terrorist group has seized a docked tugboat in Charleston Harbor. A reporter relays their demand: If every nuclear triggering device stored at the nearby U.S. Naval base isn’t delivered to them by a specified time, they will detonate their own homemade nuclear device (equal in power to the bomb dropped on Nagasaki). The original airing apparently panicked more than a few South Carolinian viewers (a la Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds radio broadcast in 1938). Riveting and chilling. Nominated for 6 Emmys, it took home 4.
Testament- Originally an American Playhouse presentation, this film (with a screenplay adapted by John Sacred Young from a story by Carol Amen) was released to theaters and garnered a well-deserved Best Actress nomination for Jane Alexander. Director Lynne Littman takes a low key approach, but pulls no punches; I think this is what gives her film’s anti-nuke message more teeth and makes its scenario more relatable than Stanley Kramer’s similarly-framed but more sanitized and preachy 1959 drama On the Beach.
Alexander, her husband (William DeVane) and three kids live in sleepy Hamlin, California, where afternoon cartoons are interrupted by a news flash that nuclear explosions have occurred in New York. Then there is a flash of a different kind when nearby San Francisco (where DeVane has gone on a business trip) receives a direct strike.
There is no exposition on the political climate that precipitates the attacks; this is a wise decision, as it puts the focus on the humanistic message of the film. All of the post-nuke horrors ensue, but they are presented sans the melodrama that informs many entries in the genre. The fact that the nightmarish scenario unfolds so deliberately, and amidst such everyday suburban banality, is what makes it very difficult to shake off.
As the children (and adults) of Hamlin succumb to the inevitable scourge of radiation sickness and steadily “disappear”, like the children of the ‘fairy tale’ Hamlin, you are left haunted by the final line of the school production of “The Pied Piper” glimpsed earlier in the film… “Your children are not dead. They will return when the world deserves them.”
Thirteen Days– I had a block against seeing this 2000 release about the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, for several reasons. For one, director Roger Donaldson’s uneven output (for every Smash Palace or No Way Out, he’s got a Species or a Cocktail). I also couldn’t get past “Kevin Costner? In another movie about JFK?” Also, I felt the outstanding 1974 TV film, The Missiles of October (which I recommend) would be hard to top. But I was pleasantly surprised to find it to be one of Donaldson’s better films.
Bruce Greenwood and Steven Culp make a very credible JFK and RFK, respectively. The film works as a political thriller, yet it is also intimate and moving at times (especially in the scenes between JFK and RFK). Costner provides the “fly on the wall” perspective as Kennedy insider Kenny O’Donnell. Costner gives a compassionate performance; on the downside he has a tin ear for dialects (that Hahvad Yahd brogue comes and goes of its own free will).
According to the Internet Movie Database, this was the first film screened at the White House by George and Laura Bush in 2001. Knowing this now…I don’t know whether to laugh or cry myself to sleep.
The War Game / Threads– Out of all of the selections on this list, these two British TV productions are the grimmest and most sobering “nuclear nightmare” films of them all.
Writer-director Peter Watkins’ 1965 docudrama, The War Game was initially produced for television, but was deemed too shocking and disconcerting for the small screen by the BBC. It was mothballed until picked up for theatrical distribution, which snagged it an Oscar for Best Documentary in 1967. Watkins envisions the aftermath of a nuke attack on London, and pulls no punches. Very ahead of its time, and it still packs quite a wallop.
The similarly stark and affecting nuclear nightmare drama Threads debuted on the BBC in 1984, later airing in the U.S. on TBS. Director Mick Jackson delivers an uncompromising realism that makes The Day After (the U.S. TV film from the previous year) look like a Teletubbies episode. It’s a speculative narrative that takes a medium sized city (Sheffield) and depicts what would likely happen to its populace during and after a nuclear strike, in graphic detail.
Both productions make it clear that, while they are dramatizations, the intent is not to “entertain” you in any sense of the word. The message is simple and direct-nothing good comes out of a nuclear conflict. It’s a living, breathing Hell for all concerned-and anyone “lucky” enough to survive will soon wish they were dead.
When the Wind Blows– This animated 1986 U.K. film was adapted by director Jimmy Murakami from Raymond Brigg’s eponymous graphic novel. It is a simple yet affecting story about an aging couple (wonderfully voiced by venerable British thespians Sir John Mills and Dame Peggy Ashcroft) who live in a cozy cottage nestled in the bucolic English countryside. Unfortunately, an escalating conflict in another part of the world is about to go global and shatter their quiet lives.
Very similar in tone to Testament (another film on this list), in its sense of intimacy amidst slowly unfolding mass horror. Haunting, moving, and beautifully animated, with a combination of traditional cell and stop-motion techniques. The soundtrack features music by David Bowie, Roger Waters, and Squeeze.
And now to sing us out, the late great Tom Lehrer…
