By Liz Theoharis and Shailly Gupta Barnes ( Tomdispatch.com ) – On April 22nd, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments for Grants Pass v. Johnson, a case that focuses on whether unhoused — the term that has generally replaced “homeless” — people with no indoor shelter options can even pull a blanket around themselves outdoors […]
Trumpism, Race and Authoritarianism: The Storm is Coming
By Clarence Lusane ( Tomdispatch.com ) – Consider Donald Trump to be in a racial bind when it comes to election 2024. After all, he needs Black voters to at least defect from Joe Biden in swing states, if not actually vote for him. Yet, more than ever, he also needs his white nationalist base […]
Who will Tell the Story of Regional Climate Disasters when the News Desert Swallows all Local Newspapers?
By Jane Braxton Little ( Tomdispatch.com When wildfires began erupting in the Texas Panhandle in February, Laurie Ezzell Brown, the editor and publisher of the Canadian Record, was in Houston on a panel discussing ways in which losing local newspapers represents a danger to democracy. Running the once-a-week Record from the Panhandle town of Canadian, […]
War Culture Hates the Ethical Passion of the Young
By Norman Solomon ( Tomdispatch.com ) – Persisting in his support for an unpopular war, the Democrat in the White House has helped spark a rebellion close to home. Young people — least inclined to deference, most inclined to moral outrage — are leading public opposition to the ongoing slaughter in Gaza. The campus upheaval […]
Donald Trump and O.J. Simpson: Testing the Limits of Justice
By Robert Lipsyte ( Tomdispatch.com ) – It was the jokes about Trump’s rumored flatulence in the courtroom that pushed me toward despair. And don’t think it was disgust with the subject matter either. After all, I’ve lived with teenagers and I wasn’t all that surprised by yet another Trump-inspired trivialization of a critical civic […]
The Right is weaponizing Antisemitism to Distract from Israel’s Atrocities and Smear Campus Protests
By Helen Benedict ( Tomdispatch.com ) – Helicopters have been throbbing overhead for days now. Nights, too. Police are swarming the streets of Broadway, many in riot gear. Police vans, some as big as a city bus, are lined up along side streets and Broadway. Outside the gates of the Columbia University campus, a penned-in […]
Dead on Arrival: Israel’s Blowback Genocide
By Ellen Cantarow ( Tomdispatch.com ) – Words can’t express the horrors of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. To actually feel the nightmare, you would have to be there under the bombs, fleeing with Palestinians desperately seeking a safe place that doesn’t exist; seeing building after building destroyed; treading through blood in one of the few, […]
Spending Unlimited: The Pentagon’s Budget Follies come at High Price
By Julia Gledhill and William D. Hartung ( Tomdispatch.com ) – The White House released its budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2025 on March 11th, and the news was depressingly familiar: $895 billion for the Pentagon and work on nuclear weapons at the Department of Energy. After adjusting for inflation, that’s only slightly less than […]
Stop Treating Gaza as a Natural Disaster: Armed by US, Israel Trashes Genocide Convention
By Priti Gulati Cox and Stan Cox ( Tomdispatch.com ) – It’s been almost two months since the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to stop killing Gazans and destroying their means of subsistence. So let’s look back and ask (1) how Israel has responded to its “orders,” and (2) how hard the Biden administration […]