Featured Articles + Videos
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Courage, Persistence & Optimism for a Long Three Years, Robert Hubbell
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The Next Terrorist Attack, Timothy Snyder
History teaches us how terrorist attacks are exploited. Our advantage is that we know this history, and so react sensibly. Do not give the present regime the benefit of the doubt after it allows a terrorist attack to take place on American soil. Be skeptical about its account of who is to blame. Insist that Trump take responsibility. A terrorist attack is no reason to concede anything to this regime. On the contrary: such a failure by the government would be one more reason, and a very powerful one, to resist it.
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Neither Democrats nor Republicans have a coherent U.S. energy policy.
Republicans are trying to support an AI-driven electricity boom, keep energy prices low, and block renewables growth. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act is harmful to wind, solar, and EV adoption, but preserves support for batteries, advanced geothermal and nuclear.
Democrats face cutting emissions while keeping energy affordable. President Biden embraced climate as an “existential” in part under the belief that young voters and voters of color would reward them for the shift. But,
Democrats saw their numbers crater with young people, voters of color, and environmental justice communities in the 2024 election. The climate voter, to the extent they exist, is likely already a Democrat.
Core constraints for both parties are demand growth (e.g. data centers), rising distribution costs, supply chain constraints, and disaster-driven rebuild costs. U.S. prosperity and climate goals increasingly depend on rapidly expanding the grid and energy infrastructure, likely requiring public investment and regulatory reform.
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Trump’s Lawlessness Will Haunt America & The World, Professor Robert Reich
“Every time people or corporations or countries that are richer and more powerful attack and exploit those that are not, the fabric of civilization frays. If such aggression is not contained, the fabric unravels. If not stopped, the world can descend into chaos and war. It has happened before. We now inhabit a society and world grown vastly more unequal. Political and economic power are more concentrated than ever before. This invites the powerful to exploit the weaker because the powerful feel omnipotent.
The wealth of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, Charles Koch, and a handful of others is almost beyond comprehension. The influence of Big Tech, Big Oil, and the largest aerospace and defense corporations extends over much of the globe. AI is likely to centralize wealth and power even more. The destructive power of the United States, China, and Russia is unmatched in human history.
Trump — enabled by cowardly congressional Republicans and a pliant majority on the Supreme Court — has turned the U.S. presidency into the most powerful and unaccountable agent of American government in history.
History shows that laws and norms designed to constrain the powerful also protect them. Without such constraints, their insatiable demands for more power and wealth eventually bring them down — along with their corporations, nations, or empires. And threaten world war. Trump’s blatant lawlessness will haunt America and the world — and civilization — for years to come.”
It“Every time people or corporations or countries that are richer and more powerful attack and exploit those that are not, the fabric of civilization frays. If such aggression is not contained, the fabric unravels. If not stopped, the world can descend into chaos and war. It has happened before. We now inhabit a society and world grown vastly more unequal. Political and economic power are more concentrated than ever before. This invites the powerful to exploit the weaker because the powerful feel omnipotent.
The wealth of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, Charles Koch, and a handful of others is almost beyond comprehension. The influence of Big Tech, Big Oil, and the largest aerospace and defense corporations extends over much of the globe. AI is likely to centralize wealth and power even more. The destructive power of the United States, China, and Russia is unmatched in human history.
Trump — enabled by cowardly congressional Republicans and a pliant majority on the Supreme Court — has turned the U.S. presidency into the most powerful and unaccountable agent of American government in history.
History shows that laws and norms designed to constrain the powerful also protect them. Without such constraints, their insatiable demands for more power and wealth eventually bring them down — along with their corporations, nations, or empires. And threaten world war. Trump’s blatant lawlessness will haunt America and the world — and civilization — for years to come.”
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Trump & Big Oil in Venezuela, Oil Policy Analyst Antonia Juhasz
They don’t care about remaking Venezuela. [The war in Iraq] was very driven by privatization and oil interests, but it had an imperial ambition. Trump, in his National Security Strategy and in his actions, has made clear he is concerned about a sphere of influence and about other autocrats who he wants to be on a team with.
So Putin maintains his sphere of influence, and Mohammed bin Salman maintains his sphere of influence, and Trump gets his sphere of influence. And let’s just lay it out: These are all fossil fuel-based powers, right? Putin needs a world committed to fossil fuels to maintain power. Mohammed bin Salman needs a world committed to fossil fuels to maintain power.
Trump has joined that club, and to join that club, he needs to support their position. The United States is not dependent on fossil fuels at all, but U.S. oil companies are. We don’t have to have that same agenda.
There was so much in that National Security Strategy document that had alarmed me, and somehow I had forgotten this particular line: “We reject the disastrous ‘climate change’ and ‘Net Zero’ ideologies that have so greatly harmed Europe, threaten the United States, and subsidize our adversaries.” So that is clearly the policy that this administration is advocating for domestically and internationally.
And anything that keeps us locked into a fossil fuel agenda reduces the time we have on our clock to avert the most disastrous harms of the climate crisis. This administration is taking time off of that clock as aggressively as it can.
For the people of Venezuela, we’ve already seen increased repression from the current Venezuelan government against any dissidents and journalists. This is an agenda that will further strengthen the hand of the U.S. oil industry and the oil industry more broadly, and those who it supports. That is going to make it more difficult to address democracy anywhere.
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America’s Problems Are Solvable, Prof. Adam Bonica
Americans work longer hours, pay more out-of-pocket for college and childcare, lack parental leave, and enjoy less economic mobility [compared to other OECD nations]. The share of income going to the top 1 percent is nearly double the OECD average. American CEOs earn, on average, 354 times as much as their workers. More workers are trapped in poverty-wage jobs. Collective bargaining covers fewer workers. And social protections are less generous for those who fall on hard times, with the government raising less in taxes and spending more on the military. …
We spend nearly twice as much on healthcare as other wealthy countries do. Yet life expectancy is well below average, infant and maternal mortality rates are alarmingly high, and more Americans remain uninsured. We suffer from overlapping public health crises—the highest rates of teenage births, drug overdoses, obesity, and gun deaths among peer nations. …
These outcomes flow from a political system designed to suppress participation and amplify affluent voices. Americans express similar interest in politics as citizens of other democracies. Yet our turnout remains depressed through deliberate barriers—voter ID laws, purged rolls, Election Day on a workday, gerrymandered districts.
Our society generates enormous prosperity while deliberately withholding it from those who need it most. That is the American exception. …
America’s problems are solved problems. Universal healthcare is not some utopian fantasy. .... Affordable higher education is not an impossible dream. ... Sensible gun regulation is not a violation of natural law. ... Paid parental leave is not radical. ... There is another America inside this one, visible in the statistics of nations that made different choices. Call it Latent America: the nation that would exist if our democracy functioned to serve the public rather than protect the already powerful.
My deepest fear is not that we fail to survive this moment—it’s that we survive it only to return to the status quo that made it possible. That we exhale, declare victory, and leave in place the Electoral College, the filibuster, the gerrymandered maps, the money-soaked elections that allowed a minoritarian movement to capture the state in the first place. The point is not to get back to normal. Normal is how we got here. …. Despair makes sense when nothing can be done. We know exactly what can be done. We can see it working. … document the failures, design the remedies, prepare for the moment. -
Video: What Each Of Us Can Do In 2026, Rev. Wm. Barber, Our Moral Moment
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Trump’s Stupidest Move, Prof. Paul Krugman
Donald Trump's fixation on acquiring Greenland may be the weirdest. …. also consequential. European nations are taking it seriously … they have sent military forces into Greenland … to serve as a tripwire that would mean that U.S. forces trying to seize the island would have to open fire on allies. …. Trump now vows tariffs on eight European nations over Greenland.
· European deterrence has worked. …. mad dictator … has just realized that he can’t send in the Marines
· A tariff to promote territorial expansion is clearly illegal, …
· These are nations that allegedly made trade deals with Trump. They’ve just learned what they should have known from the beginning: a deal with Trump lasts until he feels like breaking it
· Greenland? We’re going to demolish what’s left of our credibility for Greenland?
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Business End Your Trump Faustian Bargain, Prof. Paul Krugman
The lesson for businesspeople is that Faustian bargains never end well. Take a lesson from watching Scott Bessent – appease Trump and he will demand that you debase yourself even further. It’s been astonishing how quickly corporate greed has been replaced by corporate fear: Businesses who hoped to profit from Trump now toe the line because they’re afraid of being punished.
But despite what corporate CEOs tell themselves, they do have a choice. The reality is that Trump is growing weaker by the day. Americans aren’t falling into line behind his attempted authoritarian takeover. On the contrary, their resistance is stiffening. The Trumpists can’t even cow Minneapolis into submission, let alone the rest of the country. As he flails wildly in an attempt to recapture his lost momentum, his policies keep getting crazier.
So businesspeople have a choice: Continue to abase themselves, destroying their dignity and their reputations, in an attempt to curry favor with a wannabe dictator who’s falling short, or show some spine. And that stiffening of the spine must be a collective endeavour.
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“Knock On The Door”, Ben Grosscup
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Trump Pocketed $1.4 Billion, NYTimes
President Trump has never been a man to ask what he can do for his country. In his second term, as in his first, he is instead testing the limits of what his country can do for him.
He has poured his energy and creativity into the exploitation of the presidency — into finding out just how much money people, corporations and other nations are willing to put into his pockets in hopes of bending the power of the government to the service of their interests.
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Trump Devastates U.S. Science, Bill McKibben Substack
Thanks to Nature for a roundup of just how much damage Donald Trump managed to do to American science in the course of a year. More than 7,800 research grants terminated or frozen. Some 25,000 scientists and personnel gone from agencies that oversee research. Proposed budget cuts of 35% — amounting to US$32 billion.
These are just a few of the ways in which Donald Trump has downsized and disrupted US science since returning to the White House last January. As his administration seeks to reshape US research and development, it has substantially scaled back and restricted what science the country pursues and the workforce that runs the federal scientific enterprise.ion
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Jack Smith Testimony to Congress, MS Now (full video)
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When Protectors Rise, Rev. Cameron Trimble
In the streets of that city this week, people did not gather simply as “protesters.” Many have begun calling themselves protectors,1 … Protection is a standing-with. It carries the weight of community, … It emerges … from relational exposure: people watching for one another, defending one another, refusing to let state force deny one other’s humanity.
… When people organize from the grassroots, from intertwined webs of shared life — neighbors, siblings, elders, newcomers, long-time residents — they weave a relational fabric that is resilient because it is communal, not centralized. It is not about one person speaking for many; it is about many people standing with one another.
Their anger is real. Their fear is real. Their grief is real. And it is all bound up with the lived reality of federal agents deployed in force, of ICE raids that feel like occupation, of violence that feels sanctioned rather than investigated. Denying or minimizing that grief would be a betrayal of moral clarity. A community does not rise in resistance when it feels safe. It rises when it feels endangered, unseen, and unheard.
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People Are Good, Antonia Scatton
The displays of violence and power by Trump (and the tragic rejects he manages to recruit for his cause) are meant to get us to give up hope in humanity, but we’re not going to do that. We will stand up for each other. Their cruelty only drives our solidarity, causing us to set aside our petty differences to realize how much we mean to each other. …. The only way to beat their message is to point out incessantly how so many people are good, in so many ways, in so many places. We need to talk about how human society is based, not on competition, but on the recognition of our interdependence and concern for our neighbors, whether those neighbors are from the other side of the world, like the Somalis and Hmong in Minnesota, or on the other side of the ocean, as the people of Greenland are to the people of Europe.
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Sir Nicholas Winton saved hundreds of children from Nazi death camps.