Friday Nite Videos | July 18, 2025

Crossroads | Playing For Change. Jordan Klepper on the Trump-Epstein Relationship. Wall Street Jacked Up Your Electricity Bill. The Fiercest Debate in Linguistics. Three Phrases That Get You Arrested While Filming Police.

Jeffrey Epstein Is a Policy Issue

There’s an incorrect belief that the Epstein case is somehow separate from the real concerns facing America, a conspiracist concoction. But it’s actually about the two-tiered system of justice and accountability in America.

Trump Can Hurt PBS and NPR, but He Can’t Kill Them

Killing funding to CPB is expected to have devastating effects for many public radio and TV stations. CPB grants keep smaller stations — including many in Trump-loving rural America — afloat.

80 Years After Trinity

In 1945, scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico worked feverishly to complete the first atomic bomb. Meanwhile, their colleagues at the University of Chicago mounted a final, ultimately unsuccessful effort to prevent its use.

More Woody Guthrie Songs? Yes, and They're Homemade.

A new, intimate album will include 13 previously unheard songs, written, performed and recorded by Woody himself in a “home studio” that eerily foreshadows TikTok. Among the songs is a rewrite of “This Land Is Your Land.”

Why Did This Farmworker Die in an Immigration Raid?

With Trump and Stephen Miller cheering on ICE’s terror tactics, Jaime Alanis Garcia’s fatal fall in the raid on Glass House Farms was the most recent example of a death foretold. Inspiring terror, as a tactic, is openly acknowledged.

I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It.

A professor of Holocaust and genocide studies comes to a painful conclusion about Israel’s actions in Gaza. My inescapable conclusion has become that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people.

Mamdani Has Awakened a Powerful New Political Force

Where all politics is tribal, Mamdani has emerged as a leader of New York’s South Asian community, 600,000 strong, which is now following its Irish, Italian, Jewish, Black, and Latino predecessors in demanding a seat at the table inside City Hall.

Labor-Backed Coalition to Flip 35+ House Seats in 2026

"Working people deserve leaders who will fight for them, not grovel at the feet of their billionaire donors," said Maurice Mitchell of the Working Families Party, one of the groups involved in the new coalition.

Reader Comments & Tidbits, July 17, 2025

Readers Comments: GOP Budget ‘Total Betrayal’ of Working Class; Immigration and Health in Rural America; Story behind removal of Univ of Virginia president - eliminate DEI as fight against anti-Semitism; David Schwartzman-RIP; Announcements; more...
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Culture

poetry

Electrodomestico

Prartho Sereno
Marin County poet Prartho Sereno meditates on the ironic response of her mother's generation to the promises of technology.

books

Red Channels: America’s Lasting Legacy of Repression

Ed Rampell The Progressive
Writer Rampell looks at a long-forgotten, but deeply influential, document from the domestic Cold War that served the unofficial blacklist for radio and television performers, with the aim of helping draw lessons for today.

film

Yes, Superman Has Always Been an Immigration Story

Andrew Slack, Jose Antonio Vargas The Hollywood Reporter
Accusations that James Gunn has “politicized” Superman come laughably late, as the world's most famous superhero has always been political, write narrative strategist Andrew Slack and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas.

poetry

Marat / Sade Medley

Judy Collins
In honor of Bastille Day, a medley of tunes from Peter Brooks' production of Peter Weiss's play, Marat / Sade. Sung by Judy Collins.

music

Living Life With a Purpose: Tim Sheard’s Solidarity Songs

Kurt Stand Portside
We live in an era in which, from the White House on down, meanness has become normalized, become normalized. Music can provide an antidote, reminding us of who we can be, as anyone listening to Tim Sheard’s Solidarity Songs will discover.

Labor

labor

America’s Brutal Capitalist Class Tamed Its Labor Movement

Maya Adereth Jacobin
Across Europe, trade unions have a long history of making political demands for universal health care and benefits. The unique brutality of the US capitalist class bred a labor movement that has often limited itself to being a private insurance provi

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