Opinion

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Celebrating our 55th year, the Columbus Free Press will honor five outstanding community activists and a community organization at our November 2025 Salon and Awards event on Saturday, November 8 from 1:30-4:30pm at the First Unitarian Universalist Church, 93 W. Weisheimer Road. One of our "Libby" Award honorees is Palestinian activist Jawhara Qutiefan.

Jawhara Qutiefan (Jay) is a writer, activist, and community organizer whose work bridges advocacy, journalism, and grassroots mobilization. Raised in Ohio, she is guided by a deep belief that writing and sharing information are acts of resistance

I met with Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez just days after he was kidnapped. I’ll tell you about that, and the current President Nicolas Maduro’s visit to my New York office. But first, you must know three things about Venezuela to understand why Donald Trump has ordered a covert operation to overthrow their government.

• 1.     Venezuela has the largest reserves of oil on the planet.

• 2.     Venezuela has the largest reserves of oil on the planet.

• 3.     Venezuela has the largest reserves of oil on the planet.

Look it up: According to OPEC’s own site, Venezuela’s 303 billion barrels in proven reserves are four times the reserves of Saudi Arabia.

(By the way, Donald, when you announce a “covert” operation, it’s no longer covert. But never mind.)

For years, I was BBC Television’s correspondent covering Venezuela and US attempts to overthrow their elected government. Trump invented nothing. This is at least the fourth US-backed attempt at overthrow and assassination of a Venezuelan president.

Israel is the only place in the world where you can steal human organs of another person without being punished or considered a criminal. The act of stealing from enemy's dead or wounded combatants is considered a war crime under both customary international law and international treaties. The Fourth Hague Convention specifically bans the looting of the corpse of an enemy soldier or the wounded left on the battlefield. The law also applies to non-combatant populations.

It has been documented in the last 20 years in both Palestinian and Israeli media and in court proceedings that Israeli Occupation Forces are operating a human butcher shop, at Abu Kabir in Tel Aviv. Israeli forces routinely kidnap Palestinians at checkpoints, raids, hospital wards, or exhume them from cemeteries in order to harvest their organs for profit inside and outside of Israel, all without the family’s knowledge.

I recently won an election for a seat on the Clintonville Area Commission on a simple but urgent platform: put community needs before campaign donors, developers, and political insiders at City Hall.

I didn’t run because I was looking for a title. I ran because something is fundamentally broken in how Columbus is governed. In this city, competitive elections barely exist. The scales are tipped, the rules are rigged, and outcomes are too often decided by appointments and money , not voters.

Area commission elections—small as they may seem—are one of the last remaining places where democracy, even a symbolic version of it, still survives in Columbus. And that is exactly why they matter.

Development Isn’t the Problem—Who Controls It Is

We are nine months into the Donald Trump presidency and the road ahead seems pretty clear. There is an unsustainable one trillion dollar Pentagon budget supporting a newly renamed Department of War and Washington is engaged in conflicts that could escalate in Europe, Asia, South America and Africa. If it were possible to stage a bellicose incident near or in Antarctica that would also no doubt become a target, just as the Arctic region is currently playing into fantasies involving Greenland and Canada. Trump has even stopped talking to friendly neighbor Canada about trade relations over an ad that he did not like and no doubt will be discussing invasion soon. And let’s not forget the conflict here at home where Trump is citing the Insurrection Act regularly, signaling his intention to expand the already existing use of the military to carry out law enforcement functions in America’s states and cities, something that is of questionable legality under the Posse Comitatus Act.

The Orange King, Donald Trump, has given people literally thousands of reasons to hate him. A few current issues: $172 million so Kristi Noem can have two private jets, $200 million to build Trump a ballroom, $40 billion to bail out Argentina—for a MAGA billionaire. But no bailout for soybean farmers crushed by tariffs, No support for families drowning in grocery prices, No help for anyone who can’t find a job in this economy and no mercy for immigrants.

I will explain my hatred of Trump by considering 3 categories: Character, Domestic policy, Foreign policy.

Character: The entire world knows that Trump is a narcissist, a racist, a misogynist, and a pedophile. We also know that he lacks empathy, and is cruel beyond imagination. He is a stupid man, not well educated, not well read, not a student of history. He may be the only person in America who has never visited a National Park, with the exception of photo ops at Arlington Cemetery. He is simply a clueless, bumbling idiot.

Free Press readers are likely aware of the efforts of John Brakey and AUDIT USA. The thrust of their work is that “Elections must be transparent, trackable, and publicly verified”. All the efforts of AUDIT USA revolve around this concept, including the fight for hand-marked paper ballots; opposition to ballot-marking devices (BMDs) for all voters; and the ongoing effort in multiple states to require the retention of ballot images and make those images a public record.

AUDIT USA’s successful litigation in 2016 forced Arizona counties to preserve ballot images and the organization’s current litigation in Arizona will make ballot images a public record. AUDIT USA’s current litigation in Florida will require Florida counties to retain ballot images in accordance with state and federal laws. AUDIT USA has been the primary driving force in the U.S. behind the increasing recognition of ballot images as vitally important, redundant election records that must be retained and must be available to the public.

Celebrating our 55th year, the Columbus Free Press will honor five outstanding community activists and a community organization at our November 2025 Salon and Awards event on Saturday, November 8 from 1:30-4:30pm at the First Unitarian Universalist Church, 93 W. Weisheimer Road. One of our "Libby" Award for Lifetime Achievement in Community Activism honorees is Bob Krasen. 

Bob worked in Columbus for non-profits, United Cerebral Palsy, American Red Cross Blood Services, and Vision Center of Central Ohio. He volunteered for 12 years with Suicide Prevention Services.

After retiring in 2006, he became a volunteer in Healthcare for All Ohioans / SPAN Ohio, assuming a leadership position in 2014 as Columbus Regional Coordinator. He continues in active membership, stepping down from leadership positions in 2023.

Celebrating our 55th year, the Columbus Free Press will honor five outstanding community activists and a community organization at our November 2025 Salon and Awards event on Saturday, November 8 from 1:30-4:30pm at the First Unitarian Universalist Church, 93 W. Weisheimer Road. One of our "Libby" Award honorees is Bob Krasen. 

Bob worked in Columbus for non-profits, United Cerebral Palsy, American Red Cross Blood Services, and Vision Center of Central Ohio. He volunteered for 12 years with Suicide Prevention Services.

After retiring in 2006, he became a volunteer in Healthcare for All Ohioans / SPAN Ohio, assuming a leadership position in 2014 as Columbus Regional Coordinator. He continues in active membership, stepping down from leadership positions in 2023.

Healthcare for All Ohioans is a state wide volunteer organization started in 2003, to promote passage Healthcare for All legislation in Ohio as the Ohio Health Care Act, (HB 289 & SB 78, 2025-26). The organization also supports the passage of Enhanced and Improved Medicare for All (HR 3069 & SR 1506, 2025-26) in Congress.

The Washington Post quoted Trump on Tuesday, Oct. 21, that “the federal
government owes him ‘a lot of money’ for prior Justice Department investigations
into his actions and insisted he would have the ultimate say on any payout because
any decision will ‘have to go across my desk’”. The implication
is that Trump thinks he can use the power of his office and his control over the
Justice Department to ensure that he will be given this money. And it is a
substantial amount of money.
The Post story further explains the issue in question.
“Trump’s comments to reporters at the White House came in response to questions
about a New York Times story that said he had filed administrative claims before
being reelected seeking roughly $230 million in damages related to the FBI's 2022
search of his Mar-a-Lago property for classified documents….”
The flaw in Trump’s views of the case is that he did break federal law when, after
the end of his first presidency, he took boxes of public documents to his Florida