US politics

Oakland, CA. (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – The branding of MAGA creeps as “weird” is horribly unfair to all the decent weird people in this world. Let’s get this straight: Donald Trump, JD Vance and the MAGA acolytes are not weird. They are very creepy, destructive and mean-spirited. “Weird” is a misapplied euphemism in […]

Israel Lobbies

AIPAC Hijacks Rep. Cori Bush’s Race — and Our Elections

Medea Benjamin

( Code Pink ) – Representative Cori Bush, a progressive black woman from St. Louis, MO who is a member of the “Squad” and has been a powerful voice in Congress for poor people, women’s rights, healthcare, housing–and Palestine, just lost her primary because pro-Israel lobby groups flooded the race with outside funding. Her loss […]

Democratic Party

Walz called Gaza situation “Intolerable,” sought ceasefire, praised Uncommitted; Shapiro did not

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Presumptive Democratic Party standard-bearer Kamala Harris’ pick of Minnesota governor Tim Walz as her running mate has widely been implied to have something to do with his stance on the Gaza genocide. That proposition is likely almost entirely untrue. Governors of states don’t usually have much to say about international […]

Donald Trump

The Man Behind Project 2025’s Most Radical Plans

ProPublica

By Alec MacGillis | – ( ProPublica ) – In January 2023, a group of about 15 people gathered for three days at the Heritage Foundation, the conservative Washington think tank a few blocks from the Capitol. Their aim was ambitious and farsighted: to start building the next Republican administration, two years before a Republican […]

Donald Trump

Just how Traumatizing will Election 2024 Be?

Karen J. Greenberg

( Tomdispatch.com) – Imagine my surprise when, nearly eight months ago, commenting on the state of the country as it approached the 2024 presidential election, New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg noted that “Biden has set himself the task of trying to jolt the country out of its learned helplessness in the face of Trump’s […]

Featured

Did Netanyahu Rub Out Hamas’ Haniyeh to counter the Rise of Kamala Harris and Demands he negotiate with… Haniyeh?

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Israel’s assassination of Hamas civilian Politburo head Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran was a crime, and we all know from police procedurals that the investigator has to look for “means, motive and opportunity.” The government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu certainly had the means and the opportunity. It has assassinated […]

Donald Trump

Project 2025: The Christian Nationalist Vision to be Imposed on America

Tomdispatch

By Liz Theoharis and Shailly Gupta Barnes ( Tomdispatch.com ) – Roman poet Juvenal coined the phrase “bread and circuses” nearly 2,000 years ago for the extravagant entertainment the Roman Empire used to distract attention from imperial policies that caused widespread discontent. Imagine the lavish banquets, gladiatorial bouts, use and abuse of young men and […]

Democratic Party

Kamala Harris denounces “Catastrophic levels of Food Insecurity” in Gaza, Calls for Permanent Ceasefire, in Pivot From Biden

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Vice President Kamala Harris met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday, having had a convenient campaign event out of town that allowed her to be absent from his disgraceful address to Congress, which more than half of congressional Democrats also boycotted. In 1955, sociologist Will Herberg published Protestant, […]

Pentagon

Suicide Squad: U.S. Troops are losing a War with their Deadliest Enemy

Nick Turse

( Tomdispatch.com ) – At the end of the last century, hoping to drive the United States from Saudi Arabia, the home of Islam’s holiest sites, al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden sought to draw in the American military. He reportedly wanted to “bring the Americans into a fight on Muslim soil,” provoking savage asymmetric conflicts […]