Mamdani and Lander, Two Strands of Progressive Politics

Inspiration and results, together again.

E.P.A. Workers Warn Trump Is Politicizing Their Work

In a public letter, employees of the Environmental Protection Agency accused the administration of engaging in unlawful partisan activity and endangering public health.

SCOTUS Affirms the Imperial Presidency

SCOTUS stripped federal judges of their authority to protect people throughout the US when the president breaks the law.

Iran: The Things It Won’t Do To Say

If Thomas Friedman’s fairytale world of light-versus-darkness were to evaporate, less noble motives for U.S. and Israeli actions might be revealed.

Dispatches From the Culture Wars – July 1, 2025

Switching gears

The Alarming Rise of US Officers Hiding Behind Masks

Mike German, an ex-FBI agent, said immigration agents hiding their identities ‘highlights the illegitimacy of actions’

This Week in People’s History, Jul 2–8, 2025

Headshot of President Trump and the headline Can Trump Actually Repeal It?
Who You Gonna Call? (1965), THIS Is Why Haiti Is So Impoverished (1825), ‘Fight—Don't Starve!’ (1930), One Pipeline Too Many (2020), Happy Birthday to The Nation (1865), Mercury Poisoning at Its Worst (1975), Cuba Stands Up to Uncle Sam (1960)

The Kentucky Group Honoring Victims of Lynchings

Since 2021, the Eastern Kentucky Remembrance Project has been planting markers memorializing Black residents killed by racist violence. On 31 May, a historical marker was placed outside the former Wayland jail where Fred Shannon was killed in 1924.

Haiti’s Political Impasse

Haiti’s current form of “checkpoint governance” represents a structural transformation in how politics works in the country. What defines Haiti now is an impasse—a condition of blockage and immobility that traps millions in place.

How the U.S. Helped Create Iran’s Nuclear Program

A reactor in Tehran is a monument to the U.S. relationship with Iran when the country was led by a secular, pro-Western monarch.
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Culture

film

28 Years Later and the Social Life of Catastrophe

Eileen Jones Jacobin
The latest installment of the 28 Days Later franchise returns with more than zombies — it explores the strange new norms that follow collapse. It’s a vision of survival horror that focuses not just on the infected but on the ways humanity adapts.

food

The Secret Life of Government Cheese

Colleen Hamilton Ambrook Research
The U.S. government encouraged producers to produce cheese and the USDA began stockpiling the surplus. Some of the same companies that benefited from USDA dairy surplus purchases now rent space in the very caverns once used to house that surplus.

poetry

Jerusalem Revisited

Mary Mackey
In "Jerusalem," William Blake vowed to fight the 'dark Satanic Mills' of early capitalism. Answering Blake, poet Mary Mackey recognizes contemporary capitalism's failures, but vows to embrace what's still good in life, not just belabor what's awful.

film

Materialists Tries To Update the Rom-Com for the Tinder Generation

Eileen Jones Jacobin
Writer-director Celine Song’s Materialists follows a professional NYC matchmaker split between two charming suitors. It’s yet another attempt to update the Jane Austen formula, but without the poignancy and beauty of Song’s acclaimed Past Lives.

Labor

labor

Abundance That Works for Workers—and American Democracy

Kate Andrias and Alexander Hertel-Fernandez Roosevelt Institute
In order to be effective, abundance policy must benefit and build power for working- and middle-class Americans—rather than enriching and empowering concentrated economic interests and generating populist backlash that undermines democracy.

labor

Emma Tenayuca Championed Class Struggle and Migrant Rights

Alex Birnel Jacobin
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.

labor

NYC Labor and Zohran Mamdani’s Victory

Duncan Freeman The Chief
Photo of a large group of UAW members with Zohran. Most of the city unions endorsed the former governor, but a few believed in Mamdani. “It means that for the first time our members will really have a mayor who supports workers,” said Brandon Mancilla, Director of UAW Region 9A.

Friday nite video

video

The Story of Woody Guthrie’s Fight with Trump

Woody Guthrie hated "Old Man Trump." The story of Woody's fight against the racist housing practices of Guthrie’s landlord, Donald's father, with full lyrics and a play along,

video

Sly & The Family Stone | Everyday People

In his 1968 hit song Everyday People, recorded  with his band Sly and The Family Stone, Sly Stone (March 15, 1943 – June 9, 2025) confronted a world beset by chaos, war and hatred with a message of profound brotherhood and compassion