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Trump Has No Coherent Plan to Make Health Care Affordable
What is this year's midterm election about? President Trump wants it to be about him, stumping the country saying that he's on the ballot. Or that it's about immigrants, or Justice Brett Kavanaugh, or tax cuts, or about hurricanes, droughts and catastrophic climate change, or about an economy featuring low unemployment and stagnant wages. In fact, what is notable about the election amid all the mudslinging and name-calling is that voters are making it increasingly about health care.
Democracy in Peril
Our democracy is in peril, but we the people can preserve it. The Senate Intelligence Committee last week startled the nation with a democracy shaking report entitled "Russian Efforts Against Election Infrastructure."
Automatic voter registration a sensible first step
As Americans, we hail our democracy as a beacon to the world. And all agree the right to vote is the fundamental cornerstone of democracy. Yet in our election last fall, fewer than half of all eligible voters cast a ballot – and that is considered a relatively high turnout. We need a nationwide drive to extend and promote the right to vote, the most fundamental of all political rights in a democracy. Let’s start by automatic voter registration – registering every eligible voter automatically on his or her 18th birthday.
Trump's Stump Speech Is A Con Job
President Donald Trump is back on the stump, promising to campaign "six or seven days a week" until the general election to try to keep Republicans in control of both Houses of Congress.
Freedom and equal justice under the law requires constant struggle
Last week, on Juneteenth, the nation enjoyed the new national holiday celebrating the freedom of the slaves at the end of the Civil War. This week marks the 10-year anniversary of Shelby v. Holder and the impending decision of the Supreme Court on affirmative action in college admissions. The juxtaposition is a stark reminder that the struggle for equal justice for all is ongoing. Each step forward is met with furious reaction; each reconstruction with concerted efforts to roll back the progress. And today, we are once more in the midst of that reaction.
GOP, Not Russia, the Greater Threat to Free Elections
We all have heard about WikiLeaks and Russian interference in the 2016 election. The report of Special Counsel Robert Mueller has once more put that on the front pages. Too often lost in the furor, however, is the far more damaging TrikiLeaks -- the tricks and laws used to suppress the vote by partisans, largely Republicans here at home.
Do Trump's Actions Meet the Test of Treason?
Will Donald Trump be held accountable for the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 and what was a multi-layered conspiracy to overturn the results of the presidential election?
Democracy is on the ballot
Tuesday, Nov. 8, is Election Day. Television and social media are plastered wall to wall with political attack ads that offer voters far more heat than light. We hear more about blame than about solutions. The noise distracts from the reality: real issues are at stake in the election.
SCOTUS Nomination Is An Insult to All Ginsburg Stood For
Upon the untimely death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Donald Trump promised to name "a woman" to fill her seat, as if the sum of Ginsburg's identity was her gender. In fact, the woman that Trump has nominated -- Amy Coney Barrett -- is an insult to all that Ginsburg stood for.
How We See the Past Reflects How We Live In the Present
Our history involves both hard facts and interpretation – the context in which the hard facts are presented. Interpretation inevitably is political and contested. How we see the past reflects how we live in the present and what we hope for in the future.
Winnie Mandela Bore Scars of Battle, Helped Heal Nation
This week, Winnie Madikizela Mandela will be laid to rest and honored at a state funeral in South Africa. To many, she was loved as the "mother of the nation" even in her final days.
Why Should Iowa Always Be First?
Today, after more than a year of campaigning, debates, polls, fund-raising and ads, voters cast their first votes in the Iowa caucuses. Iowa is always first because it demands that it be first, but no matter who wins, this profoundly distorts the race.
The Lunatics Truly Have Taken Over the Asylum
The zany fight among congressional Republicans over electing their own leader as Speaker of the House dramatized the nuttiness of their extreme right. What's more worrisome for the country, however, is just how off the wall the Republican majority is as a body.
Now Is the Time to Raise the Minimum Wage
While calling themselves "populists," in 2017 Republicans passed President Trump's only significant legislation, a nearly $2 trillion tax cut that sent 82 percent of its benefits to the top 1 percent of wealthy Americans and 63 percent to the top one-tenth of that 1 percent while driving the nation's debt through the roof and accomplishing little purpose other than exacerbating America's unjust income and wealth divide.
How Trump and Company Are Gutting Protections
Trump's serial scandals -- Stormy Daniels, the Russian investigation, the Paul Manafort verdict, the Cohen guilty plea, the juvenile tweets -- fill the headlines. Beneath the noise, however, Trump's appointees and the Republican Congress are relentlessly pursuing a radical right-wing agenda that is gutting basic protections for workers, consumers and the environment.
The Supreme Court's Right-wing Crusade
This week, the right-wing majority on the Supreme Court ignored precedent, and trampled law and legal procedure to gut the Environmental Protection Agency's primary mission: the ability to curb pollution of harmful substances. It thereby erected a judicial roadblock to dealing with catastrophic climate change even as the alarming threat grows worse.
Trump's Border Threats Create Chaos
Donald Trump's flailings on immigration and the Mexican border continue to spiral into chaos. First, he threatened to close the border with Mexico. One week later, he walked that back. He declares a national emergency about the "invasion" of people seeking asylum from Central American countries, and then says he's stopped all aid to those countries, which can only worsen the conditions that cause people to leave.
U.S. Needs to Make Its Asylum Policy Clear
Today, the makeshift migrant border camp in Del Rio, Texas, is virtually empty, cleared of thousands of Haitian refugees who came there seeking asylum in America. State troopers now line the border area to discourage others from gathering.
'America is not a racist country'
“America is not a racist country.” This is quickly becoming a Republican mantra. Sen. Tim Scott, the only Black Republican in the Senate, used it in his rebuttal to President Biden’s address to the Congress. Sen. Lindsey Graham, the Republican weather vane, echoed him, as did Republicans across the country. Scott went on to accuse Democrats of dividing the country by using race as a “political weapon.”
Trump Gives Putin a Free Pass
Russian President Vladimir Putin came late to the Helsinki Summit with Donald Trump on Monday and spoke first at the news conference afterward. He handed Trump a soccer ball from the World Cup, but he clearly walked away with the trophy for the World Cup of politics, largely because Trump, in a bizarre and unprecedented performance, kept scoring own goals on Putin's behalf.
