US politics

( Tomdispatch.com ) – Under the guise of efficiency, the Trump administration is taking a sledgehammer to essential programs and agencies that are the backbone of America’s civilian government. The virtual elimination of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and plans to shut down the Department of Education are just the most visible examples […]

Authoritarianism

Trump Harvests Autocratic Powers Planted by Bush and Cheney

Rebecca Gordon

( Tomdispatch.com ) – In 2003, the Macedonian police arrested Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen vacationing in their country. They handed the unfortunate man over to the CIA, who shipped him off to one of their “black sites.” For those too young to remember (or who have quite understandably chosen to forget), “black sites” was […]

Featured

Trump Administration to draw Down Troop Presence in New, Fundamentalist Syria

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Tara Copp at AP reports that the Trump administration will withdraw some of the 2000 troops now based in southeastern Syria. Some 600 will come out, leaving about 1400. The US has 8 small bases there and will close 3 of them. According to the UAE press which draws on […]

African-Americans

African American History and the Black Civil Rights Movement teach us how to Confront Trump

Tomdispatch

By Douglas H. White ( Tomdispatch.com ) – Recently, in an executive order, President Trump directed the removal of “improper, divisive, or anti-American ideology” from the Smithsonian Institution. That order was, in essence, an attempt to rewrite history on race and gender. One-hundred-and-one-year-old Colonel James H. Harvey, one of the last of the famed Tuskegee […]

Donald Trump

The Power of the Poor in Trump’s America: Organizing

Tomdispatch

By Liz Theoharis and Noam Sandweiss-Back ( Tomdispatch.com ) – The day after Donald Trump won the 2024 election, the 10 richest people in the world — including nine Americans — expanded their wealth by nearly $64 billion, the greatest single-day increase in recorded history. Since then, an unholy marriage of billionaire investors, tech bros, […]

Bill of Rights

‘Immoral, Inhumane, and Illegal’: ICE Arrests Palestinian Columbia Protest Leader at urging of Far Right Zionist Betar Org.

Common Dreams

“He came to this country hoping to be free to speak out about the atrocities he has witnessed, only to be punished for such speech,” said Mohsen Mahdawi’s lawyer. ( Common Dreams ) – A month after the international far-right pro-Israel group Betar named Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi as the next target in its […]

Donald Trump

Trump’s “1984”-Like Vision for a New World Order

Alfred W. McCoy

( Tomdispatch.com ) – Most of us can remember at least a few troubling scenes from George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984: the mandatory love demanded for the spectral dictator Big Brother; the malleability of facts at the Ministry of Truth; or the ruling party’s memorably grim slogans, “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery.” But for […]

Bill of Rights

Condemnation of Trump targeting noncitizen Students, Researchers for Constitutionally protected Speech

Middle East Studies Association

Middle East Studies Association MESA Board Joint Statement with the TFCHR regarding deportations The MESA Board of Directors and the MESA Task Force on Civil and Human Rights condemn in the strongest terms the Trump administration’s targeting of noncitizen students and researchers for their constitutionally protected speech and advocacy. As part of an expansive […]

Donald Trump

Trump Faces Palestine: The Colonial View of the World Never Dies

Tomdispatch

By Aviva Chomsky ( Tomdispatch.com) – In the colonial view of the world — and, in its own strange fashion, Donald Trump’s view couldn’t be more colonial — White European colonizers were embattled beacons of civilization, rationality, and progress, confronting dangerous barbaric hordes beyond (and even, sometimes, within) their own frontiers. Colonial violence then was […]