Progressive leaders and Democratic Party supporters are raising last-minute alarms over the unparalleled catastrophe that would result if the Republican Party—an organization many see as a creeping fascist force in the United States and on the world stage—manages to win control of one or both chambers of Congress in Tuesday’s midterm election. Continue reading
A new analysis out Monday reveals that far-right dark money groups and donors are pouring millions into secretary of state races across the U.S. this election cycle, far outpacing such giving in previous years and a worrying sign that Trump’s 2020 “Big Lie” has grotesquely altered races for powerful state-level posts that could control the fate of the nation’s democratic future. Continue reading
A new analysis released Wednesday argues the right-wing majority now controlling the U.S. Supreme Court has dragged the institution to its lowest point in history by overtly and repeatedly attacking the bedrock foundation upon which the nation was built: representative democracy itself. Continue reading
“This is who they are,” said the Minnesota Democrat. “And we have to be able to stand up to them. And we have to push them to reckon with the fact their party right now is normalizing anti-Muslim bigotry.” Continue reading
Colin Powell, the former U.S. Secretary of State who helped President George W. Bush under whom he served to sell the 2003 invasion of Iraq to the United Nations and the American people, has died at the age of 84. Continue reading
A lawsuit against a widely criticized voter suppression law in Texas was filed Friday by a group of civil rights organizations who argue the new restrictions imposed by Republican lawmakers in the state violate core constitutional protections. Continue reading
After more than a decade of grassroots organizing, agitation, and tireless opposition by the international climate movement, the final nail was slammed into the Keystone XL’s coffin Wednesday afternoon when the company behind the transnational tar sands pipeline officially pulled the plug on its plans. Continue reading
U.S. President Joe Biden cracked many decades of U.S. government silence on Saturday by publicly and officially recognizing that the systematic killing of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottomans during the First World War was—as historians, survivors, and their descendants have long known—a “genocide.” Continue reading
“Anyway, tax the rich,” concluded Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in her brief Twitter assessment of the ongoing saga. Continue reading
Pinpointing a reality denounced as “morally obscene” by Sen. Bernie Sanders, a new government study shows how some of the nation’s largest and most profitable corporations—including Walmart, McDonald’s, Dollar General, and Amazon—feast upon taxpayer money by paying their employees such low wages that huge numbers of those workers throughout the year are forced to rely on public assistance programs such as Medicaid and food assistance just to keep themselves and their families afloat. Continue reading
A very overt and obvious effort to distract the U.S. voting public from an unprecedented historic collapse of the U.S. economy made even more evident on Thursday? Check. Continue reading
A new study out Tuesday estimates that worker layoffs unleashed by the coronavirus pandemic in the United States have already caused more than 1.5 million people to lose their employer-provided health insurance in recent weeks, with another 5.7 million likely to become uninsured by the end of June. Continue reading
Without urgent international action to address runaway global heating, there will be almost no communities or regions in the contiguous United States unaffected as the number of lethally hot days each year—including those characterized as “off-the-charts” hot—doubles by mid-century and quadruples by the year 2100. Continue reading
Millions of U.S. energy consumers are unwittingly propping up a coal industry by paying more than $1 billion annually over recent years for dirty energy that renewable sources could have provided at much cheaper prices. Continue reading
Longtime U.S. Senator John McCain, the Republican from Arizona whose pro-war record includes aggressively pushing for the illegal invasion of Iraq by the United States in 2003, has died. He was 81. Continue reading
Offering a stark warning to the world, a new report out Monday argues that the reticence of the world’s scientific community—trapped in otherwise healthy habits of caution and due diligence—to downplay the potentially irreversible and cataclysmic impacts of climate change is itself a threat that should no longer be tolerated if humanity is to be motivated to make the rapid and far-reaching transition away from fossil fuels and other emissions-generating industries. Continue reading
Surrounded by his top military aides in a White House meeting less than a year ago, the Associated Press on Wednesday reports that President Donald Trump wanted to know why the U.S. military couldn’t “just simply invade” the country of Venezuela. Continue reading
The nation’s largest union of federal workers filed suit against the Trump administration on Wednesday over an executive order signed by President Donald Trump that seeks to deny workers the right to job site representation—an established guarantee in existing labor law. Continue reading
To expose the outsize role the U.S. president is playing in the willful destruction of planet Earth’s natural systems by dragging his feet on addressing the crisis of global warming, a climate activist group in Finland has announced plans to carve Donald Trump’s face onto a floating iceberg in the Arctic. Continue reading
As the brutal attack on immigrant families and communities by President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress continues, the video of a husband and father being ripped from the arms of his wife and two teenage kids and deported on Monday—which happened to be Martin Luther King, Jr. Day—offers the last up-close and personal example of what the GOP’s cruel and far-reaching policies look like in practice. Continue reading
With the release of its National Climate Assessment on Friday, the U.S. government has released a report—which states the current period is “now the warmest in the history of modern civilization”—that critics say directly and irrefutably undermines the climate denialism and inaction of President Donald Trump and his administration. Continue reading
Though it is not quite the kind of large-scale “shock” she explores in her new book, author and activist Naomi Klein says that people should stand firm against anyone who tries to exploit for political purposes the “horrific” violence that took place Wednesday morning when a lone gunman targeted Republican lawmakers and others during practice for a congressional baseball team. Continue reading
In the letter announcing his former FBI director’s termination last month, President Donald Trump went out of his way to thank James Comey for telling him “on three separate occasions” that he was not under investigation. Continue reading
White House press secretary Sean Spicer confirmed Monday that the Trump administration is actively—and in his words “substantively”—reviewing the nation’s libel laws as it explores ways it could more easily sidestep First Amendment protections and target press coverage or news stories it deems objectionable. Continue reading
In his first official remarks following Tuesday’s release of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the torture program conducted by the CIA during the presidency of George W. Bush, President Barack Obama on Tuesday night indicated that the abuses detailed in the report conducted in the name of the American people—described as “horrific,” “ruthless” and “much more brutal than previously thought”—should not be followed by further inquiries or prosecutions as many have long urged. Continue reading
Internet users who use online privacy tools or read certain websites may themselves become targets of NSA surveillance, according to a new investigation by public broadcasting outlets in Germany published on Thursday. Continue reading
WikiLeaks published a previously tightly-held and secretive draft of a trade document last Thursday that, if enacted, would give the world’s financial powers an even more dominant position to control the global economy by avoiding regulations and public accountability. Continue reading
In announcing a final agreement in Bali, Indonesia on Saturday morning, head of the World Trade Organization Roberto Azevedo, said: “For the first time in our history, the WTO has truly delivered.” Continue reading
The explosion of hydraulic fracturing in the last several years, according to a new report, is creating a previously ‘unimaginable’ situation in which hundreds of billions of gallons of the nation’s fresh water supply are being annually transformed into unusable—sometimes radioactive—cancer-causing wastewater. Continue reading
In a display of what critics were quick to interpret as the rhetorical equivalent of U.S. military imperialism and its hubris in foreign policy matters, President Obama defended the idea of “American exceptionalism” and its outsized role in international affairs during his address at the UN General Assembly in New York on Tuesday. Continue reading
In the most serious action since the nuclear plant was first damaged in 2011, Japan’s Nuclear Regulatory Authority is on the verge of raising the international alarm—and the official threat level—over the spiraling crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Continue reading
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Food lobby colossus sues Vermont over GMO ‘right to know’
Powerful lobbyist groups claim 'free speech' as they file suit against law that says consumers should know what's in their food
Posted on June 17, 2014 by Jon Queally
Vermont’s Attorney General William Sorrellon has said his office is ready for a “heck of a fight” after some of the most powerful members of the nation’s food industry filed suit on Thursday challenging the state’s new law that requires the labeling of packaged food containing genetically modified (GMO) ingredients. Continue reading →