Portside

The confrontation came after President Trump welcomed Mr. Erdogan to the White House on Tuesday and praised him as a stalwart ally in the battle against Islamic extremism. Mr. Trump did not speak of Mr. Erdogan’s authoritarian crackdown on his own people.

Kris Kobach, Kansas secretary of state and vice-chair of the Presidential Advisory Committee on Election Integrity is a known voter suppressor. He has been brought to court — and lost — several times for suppressing the constitutional rights of citizens to vote in Kansas.

That one of our major political parties allows a figure like Clarke to exist comfortably within it at all is deeply disturbing. That he would even be considered for a position at a security agency, where he would presumably work to implement his fascistic beliefs, is one of the most disturbing signs yet of the Trump administration’s increasingly evident disregard for democratic norms.

Defining Trumpism: Breaking the spell; Speaking bitterness; SCOTUS stirs; Paying the cost of being DeVos; When pigs fly

To cut short what seems to be the nation’s inevitable slide into constitutional crisis, Congress should obtain and possibly disclose those returns under authority of a law first passed in 1924.

The world loses as destruction and mayhem know no bounds. After seven months of unending battle in that single city, perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that Mosul has receded from the news here, even as civilian casualties grow, at least half a million Iraqis have been displaced, and the Iraqi military has suffered grievous losses.

The future of our democracy depends on us completing the work of a Third Reconstruction.

President Trump’s decision to review the designations of 27 national monuments has raised fears of a corporate giveaway – and the pueblos of the Rio Grande valley are worried.

Motivated by his deep-seated biases and those of President Donald Trump, Attorney General Jeff Sessions is pursuing a draconian agenda on voting rights, immigration, crime, policing, the drug war, federal sentencing and the privatization of prisons.

Venezuela updates.