Juliana Cardoso is sitting in her office in front of a lavender, orange, and yellow mandala that was made for her. She has been a member of São Paulo’s city council since 2008. On October 2, 2022, as a candidate for the Workers Party (PT), Cardoso won a seat in Brazil’s lower house, the Federal Chamber of Deputies. Continue reading →
If the powerful leaders of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senators Jack Reed (D) and Jim Inhofe (R), have their way, Congress will soon invoke wartime emergency powers to build up even greater stockpiles of Pentagon weapons. The amendment is supposedly designed to facilitate replenishing the weapons the United States has sent to Ukraine, but a look at the wish list contemplated in this amendment reveals a different story. Continue reading →
The political civil war that is erupting in the Republican Party between loyalists of Donald Trump and Florida’s recently re-elected governor, Ron DeSantis, has the making for a full-blown Hatfield and McCoy-style feud. Although Trump supporters are largely cultists adhering to QAnon and white nationalist drivel, DeSantis supporters include several former Trump fans who are no less driven to settling scores on the streets. No sooner had he taken to disparaging DeSantis on his Truth Social platform, Trump began re-transmitting scores of anti-DeSantis postings from QAnon accounts. Continue reading →
Here we go again. Yet another “third party” candidate has “spoiled” “major party” candidates’ victory party plans by “stealing” votes that rightfully belong to … well, someone else. Continue reading →
The mid-term congressional elections are over, but the counting in some very close races continues, which extends the time for determining the margins of control over the Senate and the House. Continue reading →
After all the breast-beating by the mainstream press about the Democrats losing seats in the House of Representatives, you would think the Republicans had nothing to fear. Continue reading →
Citizen-led initiatives scored big wins in the midterms. But now this form of direct democracy is under attack.
This fall, in the lead-up to the midterm elections, a group of Catholic nuns, Protestant ministers, and other faith leaders caravanned around South Dakota on what they called a “Love Your Neighbor Tour.” Continue reading →
The European Union’s Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell is not particularly perceived by the EU’s political elite or mainstream media as a rightwing ideologue or warmonger. But seen through a different, non-western prism, it is hard not to mistake him for one. Continue reading →
Senate likely will remain in Democratic hands while razor-thin margins leave control of the House still undetermined.
WASHINGTON—Republicans who expected a GOP sweep in the elections Tuesday were dealt a major blow as voters across the country rejected fascist candidates up and down the ballot. Continue reading →
The people prefer the initiatives which Democratic Party leadership claim to support. But their interests are those of the oligarchy and not of the voters. Slim margins of legislative victory bring compromise and gridlock which the leadership don't really oppose.
Votes are still being counted in the midterm elections. It isn’t clear which party will control the House and the Senate with so many races still in contention. Democrats won a Senate seat in Pennsylvania, while a Georgia race is so close that it will probably result in a runoff election which will determine control of the Senate. Continue reading →
Americans not only get the best “democracy” money can buy, they get results determined by brazen fraud. Continue reading →
In democracy, the people choose their leaders; in fascism, the leader chooses his people.
The elections appear to be a mixed bag, with young people and women, in particular, rejecting the rightwing Supreme Court Dobbs abortion decision. The early youth vote in Wisconsin, for example was 360% higher than in 2018 according to Ben Wikler, the chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party. Continue reading →
From the United States and Brazil to Israel and Hungary, liberals approach the widening gap in political perceptions with incredulity while Illiberals see polarization as a political opportunity to destroy democracy.
Every election these days seems more consequential than the last. Continue reading →
WASHINGTON—The two reporters perhaps more expert than anyone else in presidents who violate the U.S. Constitution have come to one conclusion: Donald Trump “was a seditious president.” Continue reading →
The tenure of President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil is defined by the deforestation of the Amazon, the return of 33 million Brazilians to hunger, and the terrible governance of the country during the pandemic. Continue reading →
On Monday, October 31, Palestinians in the town of Al-Eizariya, east of Occupied East Jerusalem, observed a general strike. The strike was declared to be part of the community’s mourning of 49-year-old Barakat Moussa Odeh, who was killed by Israeli forces in Jericho a day earlier. Continue reading →
In early December 2022, Japan’s Self-Defense Force joined the U.S. armed forces for Resolute Dragon 2022, which the U.S. Marines call the “largest bilateral training exercise of the year.” Major General Jay Bargeron of the U.S. 3rd Marine Division said at the start of the exercise that the United States is “ready to fight and win if called upon.” Resolute Dragon 2022 followed the resumption in September of trilateral military drills by Japan, South Korea, and the United States off the Korean peninsula; these drills had been suspended as the former South Korean government attempted a policy of rapprochement with North Korea. Continue reading →
Mainstream media make it their task to keep Americans ignorant about socialism. Because American mass media are under the control of capitalists, mainstream media do not allow what they see as inconvenient facts competing with leftist economic systems to reach the masses. Continue reading →
WASHINGTON—Declaring “the fate of the soul of America is in your hands,” President Joe Biden urged voters, regardless of party, to defend U.S. democracy by soundly denouncing and rejecting right-wing MAGA political extremism and violence. And that must occur at the polls on Nov. 8, he declared. Continue reading →
"It feels very much like predatory behavior and that we are being stalked," the Maricopa elections director recently told county officials.
Election workers in a hotly contested Arizona county have endured more than 100 violent threats and intimidating messages leading up to Tuesday’s crucial midterms, most of them based on thoroughly disproven lies about Democratic voter fraud that former President Donald Trump and his allies have repeated ad nauseam for the past two years. Continue reading →
Democratic politicians who don’t call out powerful corporations and their CEO’s as the driving force behind inflation risk allowing the GOP, the party with no plan to combat the skyrocketing costs to consumers of almost everything, to take power in the elections next week. Continue reading →
It was April 2007. My mother was visiting Washington, DC, during the same week that former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel announced his 2008 presidential run at a press conference at the National Press Club, an event we both attended. Later that day, supporters and friends of Gravel, ourselves included, gathered at his Arlington, Virginia condominium for a reception. At one point, I glanced over at the couch in the living room to see Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank in a conversation with my mother. Quickly figuring out that my mother was not a deep-pocketed donor to the Gravel campaign up from Florida, Milbank, doing his job as a political columnist, moved on to others in the room. That brief meeting between Milbank and my mother was foremost in my mind when I read Milbank’s October 28 column titled, “American Jews start to think the unthinkable.” Continue reading →
Voter grumbling, rage and cynicism is rampant heading into the mid-term elections on November 8th. Add the flattering, flummoxing and fooling of voters by many corporatist politicians to the mix and we have the makings of an election-day disaster. Continue reading →
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 →
Big midterm victories that give me hope for the future
Posted on November 15, 2022 by Robert Reich
While it’s still too soon to know the full results of the midterms, there were some major victories on Tuesday night that spanned the entire country. Continue reading →