Portside

An anthropologist investigates how archaeology helped the U.S. colonize the Panama Canal Zone—just as the current U.S. government threatens to retake it.

The court’s ruling in Medina v. Planned Parenthood twists logic, common sense, and the law to further the right-wing assault on bodily autonomy.

While the most horrific acts of injustice in German courtrooms may have occurred during the reign of Hitler, in many ways the courts had been corrupted by right-wing extremism years before, and helped facilitate his rise to power.

Southern lawmakers have neglected basic worker protections and disinvested in social safety net programs while offering hefty subsidies to corporations, privatizing public goods, and giving the wealthy big tax breaks.

GOP lawmakers want to nationalize Medicaid work requirements to offset Trump’s proposed tax cuts. Yet Georgia’s example shows that this could threaten health care for nearly 16 million Americans and cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.

Almost a century ago, labor activist Emma Tenayuca led Mexican American women in San Antonio’s legendary pecan shellers’ strike, facing down bosses, police, and the Klan. Today amid renewed nativist hate, we can learn from her example.

And that’s the other tenth of the show—a clear-eyed portrayal of the evils of imperialism and the colonialism that empowered it.

De jure segregation, the backdoor draft, and elite immunity are part of a recurring cycle of American inequality. As the U.S. threatens new war in Iran, history again points to who will bear the cost—and who will benefit.

Polling shows Americans are ready to support independent populists running on economic platforms. But what they don’t want is anything associated with the Democratic Party’s brand.

Can we create more modest AI systems that assist human workers and support creative and socially beneficial work? The answer is yes. But that is not the road corporations want to take.