US politics

The Revolt of the Rational: Women and other Mainstream Americans rise against the Forced-Birth Republicans and MAGA Fascism

Chicago (Special to Informed Comment) – Fury at the MAGA majority on the Supreme Court and disgust at the lunatic extremism of MAGA candidates have helped make abortion the central issue of the 2022 midterms and have improved the odds of defeating the fascist Trumpists. The economy is improving and gas prices are dropping, even […]

Donald Trump

House Oversight Committee wants to Know why Saudis gave Jared Kushner $2 billion

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The House Committee on Oversight and Reform, chaired by Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-NY), sent a sharp letter to Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner last June, wanting to know whether he illicitly profited from his government service as Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East to receive $2 billion from the […]

Pentagon

US Smug about Russia’s Failures in Ukraine, Forgetting the Iraq and Afghanistan Quagmires

Andrew J. Bacevich

(Tomdispatch.com) – In Washington, wide agreement exists that the Russian army’s performance in the Kremlin’s ongoing Ukraine “special military operation” ranks somewhere between lousy and truly abysmal. The question is: Why? The answer in American policy circles, both civilian and military, appears all but self-evident. Vladimir Putin’s Russia has stubbornly insisted on ignoring the principles, […]

Arms Sales

Spending Unlimited: Contractors Cash in as Congress Adds Billions to the Pentagon Budget

Tomdispatch

By Julia Gledhill and William D. Hartung | – ( Tomdispatch.com) – Congress has spoken when it comes to next year’s Pentagon budget and the results, if they weren’t so in line with past practices, should astonish us all. The House of Representatives voted to add $37 billion and the Senate $45 billion to the […]

Climate Crisis

Climate Emergency Caused our Scorching Summer, but Inequality meant it hit Workers Hardest

Sam Pizzigati

( Inequality.org ) – The heat. Never been hotter in our lifetimes. This past spring the mercury nearly hit 124 in the Pakistani city of Jacobabad, “just below,” notes science writer David Wallace-Wells, “the conventional estimate for the threshold of human survival.” This summer’s U.S. daily high temperatures are continuing our torrid global pace. America’s […]

Donald Trump

The Trump Supreme Court Is Nothing New: A History of the Tyranny of the Supremes

Tomdispatch

By Steve Fraser | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – Has the Trump Supreme Court gone rogue? The evidence mounts. Certainly, its recent judicial blitzkrieg has run roughshod over a century’s worth of settled law. A woman’s right to get an abortion? Gone (at least as a constitutionally protected civil right). Meanwhile, voting rights are barely […]

African-Americans

Community Groups and Activists pivot to Mutual Aid amid ongoing Water Crisis in Jackson, Mississippi

Waging Nonviolence

By Sara Herschander | – ( Waging Nonviolence ) – After major flooding last week and years of infrastructural neglect, 150,000 residents of Jackson, Mississippi have been left without safe drinking water, leaving community groups scrambling to address the crisis. “We’re always on alert, and we’re always in the community,” said Efren Nuñez, an organizer […]

Books

Of Course there were Africans in Middle Earth, Just as there Were in Medieval England

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – American white nationalism has attempted to appropriate certain cultures, times and places as quintessentially “white,” and so it is no surprise that, as John Blake at CNN writes, there is controversy on the American Right about the multicultural casting visible in the Amazon Prime series Rings of Power, based on […]