Tidbits-May 14- Reader Comments: Voting Rights Still Need Protection; Those Accompanying Trump on His Trip to China; the Art of the Deal – Now Iran; 2026 Future of Care Work Convening – Protecting Care in Times of Disruption – Conference; More…
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Voting Rights Still Need Protection -- Meme and Commentary (Feminist News)
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Those Accompanying Trump on His Trip to China -- Meme (The Other 98%)
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Re: Should Billionaires Exist? (Ken Lawrence)
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Massive Life Support -- Cartoon and Commentary by Nick Anderson
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Re: Zionism Didn’t Go Wrong, It Was Always Built This Way (Anton Alterman)
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Electoral Booty -- Cartoon and Commentary by Rob Rogers
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Art of the Iran Deal -- Cartoon by Rick McKee
Announcements:
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RED LIVES: Our Years in the U.S. Communist Party - Busboys and Poets Books - Washington, DC - May 21 (co-sponsored by Labor Heritage Foundation and Metro DC DSA)
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2026 Future of Care Work Convening - Protecting Care in Times of Disruption - New York City - June 5-6 (The Worker Institute at Cornell)
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Voting Rights Still Need Protection -- Meme and Commentary
Let's be very clear: Racism isn't "over." It's just inconvenient to admit.
The only people who believe racism is a thing of the past are those who have never felt it — and those who have the most invested in pretending it doesn't exist. For white conservatives, being called racist isn't a moral reckoning. It's an inconvenience. It exposes their intentions. So they decided to just... declare it over.
Chief Justice John Roberts has spent his entire career dismantling the Voting Rights Act under the pretense that racism has been "corrected." Last week, the Supreme Court finished the job — gutting Section 2 of the VRA entirely. And within DAYS of that ruling, nearly every former Confederate state began moving to eliminate majority-Black congressional districts. This isn't a coincidence. This is a coordinated rollback. The Court's own ruling is expected to produce the largest-ever drop in Black representation in Congress — a record not broken since the end of Reconstruction in 1877.
Meanwhile, a federal judge just ruled that DOGE's mass firings were "blatantly" racist and unlawful. Judge Colleen McMahon found that DOGE staffers used ChatGPT and DEI-related search terms to specifically target grants connected to Black civil rights history, Holocaust survivors, Native American children, and women — then cancelled them. They used algorithms to automate racial discrimination and called it "efficiency."
This is what the "anti-woke" crusade was always about. They never hid it well. "Woke" was always a dog whistle for one thing: anti-Blackness. Dismantling diversity programs, gutting the VRA, firing Black federal workers en masse, redrawing maps to erase Black political power — this is a system working exactly as designed by people who benefit from it.
Feminist News
May 9, 2026
Those Accompanying Trump on His Trip to China -- Meme
Re: Should Billionaires Exist?
No, billionaires should not exist. But leading liberal Democrats don't under stand that. In his May 6 blog, the former Clinton administration Labor Secretary Robert Reich wrote in his daily blog:
"First, let’s stipulate that there is nothing inherently wrong about being a billionaire, a multibillionaire, or even, as [Elon] Musk is likely to become, a trillionaire.
"Wealth isn’t a “zero-sum” game in which these vast accumulations at the top depend on the rest of us losing an equal amount. In fact, the super-wealthy may help the rest of us do somewhat better than we were doing before."
The opposite is true, and Reich ought to know it. As Matt Jones sang, "The rich are rich because the poor are poor, and brother, that ain't good." That isn't a "zero-sum game" claim; it's a summary of how capitalists exploit labor to extract and accumulate surplus-value (Karl Marx's term for profit).
Ken Lawrence
Spring Mills, Pennsylvania
Massive Life Support -- Cartoon and Commentary by Nick Anderson
There’s a new doctrine emerging from the Trump administration, and it deserves a name. Let’s call it “Simultaneous Victory and Escalation.”
Under this doctrine, a war can be declared over—terminated, finished, wrapped up—while also being very much ongoing, deteriorating, and potentially about to intensify. It’s a flexible system.
Nick Anderson
May 12, 2026
Pen Strokes
Re: Zionism Didn’t Go Wrong, It Was Always Built This Way
To argue with the misleading claims in what Bartov says is less difficult than teasing out the underlying moral point of view and presuppositions of the tone in which he says it. This opinion piece is not even worth the effort. "Zionism" means whatever you want it to mean - for Levy it's a religious fundamentalist river-to-the-sea ideology. Granting that provides enormous ideological resources to anti-Semites who want to disguise themselves as "anti-Zionists". Add to it that Jews "stole the land" from indigenous Palestinian Arabs and the ground is laid for the ideology of Hamas.
Anton Alterman
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
Electoral Booty -- Cartoon and Commentary by Rob Rogers
The Republicans, at the behest of Trump, are continuing to push their Jim Crow-era voter discrimination tactics, including racist gerrymandering. The only recourse for Democrats is to try to pull back some of those votes with gerrymandering of their own.
Rob Rogers
May 12, 2026
TinyView
Art of the Iran Deal -- Cartoon by Rick McKee
Rick McKee
April 8, 2026
Rick McKee
May 21, 2026 6:30 pm
Busboys and Poets Books
235 Carroll St NW,
Washington, District of Columbia, 20012
Red Lives: Our Years in the Communist Party, 1950-2000 covers decades when thousands felt that capitalism was not the answer and sought out and explored different socialist organizations. We think that those experiences, of what people did, what lessons they drew, what victories they won can offer lessons for today. But there were huge set-backs as well from which we can also learn.
Editor Jay Schaffner and contributing author Chris Townsend, who were each part of that movement, are joining us on the Busboys stage for conversation moderated by Elise Bryant and Kurt Stand about their experiences and its meaning for our day. Copies of the book will be available for purchase during and after the event, and Schaffner and Townsend will be signing following the program.
This event is free and open to all. Doors will open to guests at 6pm. Our program begins at 6:30 pm, and will be followed by an audience Q&A. Copies of RED LIVES will be available for purchase before and after the event. Please note that this event is in-person.
We ask that guests RSVP in order to receive direct updates about the event from Busboys and Poets Books
This event is co-sponsored by Labor Heritage Foundation and Metro DC DSA
Protecting Care in Times of Disruption
June 5-6
The Worker Institute will host the 2026 Future of Care Work Convening on June 5-6, with the theme Protecting Care in Times of Disruption. This event will bring together care workers, advocates, labor leaders and researchers to protect care workers and strengthen their collective power during a critical moment.
Speakers for the event include:
- Julie Su, Deputy Mayor of New York City for Economic Justice
- Veronica Faison, Counsel on Income Security/Child Care Team, National Women's Law Center
- Michael Kinnucan, Health Policy Director, Fiscal Policy Institute
- Tammie Miller, Chairwoman, UFT Day Care Providers, United Federation of Teachers
- Zakiyah Shaakir-Ansari, Co-Executive Director, New York State Alliance for Quality Education
- Cristina Santos, Co-Lead, Healthcare Justice Committee at UnidosMN
- Austin Smith, Co-Lead, Healthcare Justice Committee at UnidosMN
- Mimi Whittaker, Staff Attorney, Legal Aid at Work's National Origin and Immigrants' Rights Program
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On June 6, the morning panel, Mapping the Challenges, will lay out how healthcare cuts and attacks on the rights of workers, immigrants, and people of color are affecting care workers.
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The Worker Institute at Cornell
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