Throughout U.S. history, conservative and reactionary forces have taken advantage of the perfectly legal ways that the Constitution allows political minorities to veto or derail the popular will. That was how the Jim Crow Democrats maintained their control over the South and the federal government for a century. It’s how the loser of the popular vote became president five times, including twice in the last quarter century.
Just as slavery did not end because plantation owners suddenly developed a conscience, today’s ruling class will fight tooth and nail against making concessions to workers and the oppressed until they are forced to, from below.
The U.S. deferred all its ostensible reasons for the war— “regime change,” Iran’s nuclear program or Iran’s support of regional allies—to an undetermined future, if they are considered all. In diplomatic practice, deferring “hard questions” to future negotiations is often a way of never resolving them.
As the conference closed, what remained was not simply a collection of workshops, panels, or speeches, but a clear call to action: incarcerated journalism cannot survive in isolation. Again and again, speakers returned to the idea that writing is not merely documentation—it is resistance, survival, accountability, and connection.
The Trump administration has hijacked the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Declaration of Independence not only for its crass grifts, but to promote its ideological view of U.S. history. This view rests on comforting myths about the history of the nation that conservatives and many liberals embrace. Two U.S. socialists dispel the myths and tell a history that Trump and his enablers would like to bury.
With a few weeks to go before the start of the Teamsters’ union convention in Las Vegas, a major push is on to deny Richard Hooker the five per cent of delegates needed for him and his Fearless slate to be nominated. While there is still much skullduggery afoot to trash the reputation of Richard Hooker, the first African-American candidate for General President of the Teamsters, most of it is now quite open and increasingly nasty, as he challenges Sean O’Brien, the pro-Trump leader of the union.
By the late 1970s, the rank-and-file rebellion was over, and the “party-building” projects of many groups had collapsed and disintegrated, in many cases with great regrets, anger, and bitterness among people who only a few years earlier had been committed comrades. There are many lessons for today for from this era, both good and bad, but to mine the past requires honesty, sometimes brutal honesty to assess what happened and why, and what were the political consequences.
We oppose any U.S. invasion. We call for an end to the current U.S. blockade of oil deliveries. And we call for an end to the U.S. embargo that dates from the early 1960s. Moreover, if Cubans want to emigrate to the U.S., we welcome them along with all other immigrants who are targets of Trump’s xenophobia.
The United States has grown wary of long-term occupations. Abandoning the pretense of exporting democracy, the Trump administration has chosen to force existing powers to comply with its rule.
Given the victories of the nationalist parties, there is a real possibility of the break-up of the UK in the next few years which would pose huge changes to the structure of politics and society on the British Isles.
For all the liberal tribute paid to the sacrifices of civil rights activists in the 1960s, liberal and Democratic Party leaders have seemed strangely subdued in their reaction to the Supreme Court’s tearing the heart out of the VRA. The solution Democrats offer is to more aggressively gerrymander “blue” states to maintain Democratic parity with the Republicans. Even Black politicians who may find themselves out of office after Republican gerrymanders eliminate their seats have not issued calls for mass opposition to this rights rollback.
At its core, this is a crisis of the existing social order—one that is not temporary or accidental, but historical and structural in nature, and which manifests itself across all spheres, including the economy and politics. Figures such as Donald Trump are not the cause of this crisis, but rather its symptoms.
Though the resolution on the D9 bulldozers failed by a vote of 59 to 40, it was notable the large number of Democratic Senators that voted for it, nearly 80% of them. Yet, the crucial seven votes that killed it also came from the Democratic side of the aisle.
If some of the largest manifestations of opposition to Trump don’t clearly foreground antiwar or anti-imperial messages, it’s because the political presence of a left that raises those demands is weaker than at any time since those politics won a mass hearing during the Vietnam War.
In the short term, global inflation is going to rise. If the conflict lasts longer, then rising inflation will be joined by falling economic growth and the likelihood that even some of the major economies could slip into a slump. Stagflation is certain and slumpflation is possible.
