Marco Rubio, the U.S. Secretary of State and a bulwark of the Trump administration, gave a “disquieting” imperialist speech at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday to deflect from the Epstein files fallout.

Markets are not natural, spontaneous or free. They are legal, institutional and political creations of the state. Without law, money, regulation, wages, accounting standards and trust, markets collapse into monopoly, coercion and extraction.

In this New Year’s Day video/transcript, I explain why the neoliberal myth of “free markets” is not just wrong, but actively destructive — and why rebuilding the state, rethinking capital and restoring democratic accountability must define our economic direction for 2026.

Amid concerns that he has failed to address a worsening affordability crisis, with health insurance premiums about to spike dramatically for over 20 million Americans, Donald Trump revealed on Sunday that his domestic policy chief’s main priority is building a triumphal arch for Washington DC.

Gotta keep that white enslaver god on top.

As US media try to whitewash his legacy in death, the world continues to grapple with the horrors he helped unleash.

Should you have to think twice before posting a protest flyer to your Instagram story? Or feel pressure to delete that bald JD Vance meme that you shared? Now imagine that you could get kicked out of the country—potentially losing your job or education—based on the Trump administration’s dislike of your views on social media.

On Tuesday the Trump administration staged a grotesque and openly fascistic ceremony in the White House Rose Garden to canonize the racist propagandist Charlie Kirk as a “Christian martyr,” for the MAGA-Republican Party.

In the U.S., where religion, culture and politics frequently intertwine, recognizing that sainthood in politics is always constructed – and often strategic – can better allow people to honor loss without letting mythmaking dictate the terms of public life.

I’d like to say this is an aberration.

I wish I could tell you that the Conservative Christian canonizing of Charlie Kirk was unexpected; that the hundreds of thousands of professed followers of Jesus pouring into churches, local parks, football stadiums, and social media to engage in performative histrionics are temporarily caught up in some cultic fervor that will soon lift.

Yet, as someone who pastored in predominantly white churches in the South for nearly three decades, this is all sadly on brand.

To anyone paying attention for the past few decades, and particularly during the last ten years, seeing White Evangelicals build idols out of people whose lives and public work are the antithesis of Jesus is something we’ve grown accustomed to.

After all, these are people who have been largely responsible for elevating to the presidency one of the most vile, repugnant, amoral human beings on the planet and contending he is God’s chosen vessel of national redemption.

The White Conservative Church in America has slowly eradicated the compassionate, peacemaking, power-opposing, hypocrisy-confronting Jesus from its movement....

Trump closed his remarks with a pledge “to bring back religion to America, because without borders, law and order and religion, you really don’t have a country anymore.” The slogan of fascist Italy was more concise: Dio, Patria, Famiglia.

Led by far-right Rabbi Yehuda Glick, settlers performed rituals inside Al-Aqsa for slain US right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, as Palestinians warn of efforts to Judaise the holy site ahead of the Jewish New Year.

Praising "our greatest evangelist for American liberty," now "immortal," the US president recalled that this MAGA figure loved debate without holding grudges. "That's where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponent and I don't want the best for them. I'm sorry!" The billionaire was anything but, relishing his own ferocity. In the same speech, Trump declared, "We have to bring back religion to America, because without borders, law and order and religion, you really don't have a country anymore (...) We want God back."

Sunday's memorial service for the slain activist was also a faith-based argument for American conservatism, with many speakers calling Kirk a "martyr."