Portside

Historians are so accustomed to viewing slaveholders at the top of a complex pyramid of class, racial, and gender hierarchies in Southern society that we forgot that they were also the nation’s most powerful political leaders, and the world’s most powerful slaveholding class. Only in the past fifteen years or so have historians begun to look more systematically at slaveholders as leading national and international actors, as well as Southern social elites.

Voting rights advocates have won a string of court battles, but state election officials have found ways to restrict early voting anyway—often at the behest of GOP leaders. ----- Rethinking about our two party system and our election system: Ranked-choice voting opens up elections to a broader, more diverse range of candidates and ideas. ----- Modernizing our voter registration system.

New details are emerging about how AT&T has been spying on Americans for profit with a secret plan called Project Hemisphere.

Gov. Bruce Rauner is on track to spend $50 million on legislative races this year. Even for a guy like Rauner, that’s a lot of money– nearly twice what he spent on his own campaign two years ago. Two Rauner allies, billionaires Ken Griffin and Richard Uihlein, are also spending tens of millions of dollars. The end game is taking down unions and squelching voting rights.

The rise of fascism shaped Schrödinger’s cat fable.

In a historic step toward lifting the blockade on Cuba, the United States abstained in the United Nations General Assembly vote calling for the end of the Cold War practice. On Wednesday, 191 of the 193 member states in the Assembly voted for the resolution. Only the United States and Israel abstained. The U.S. abstention is significant, but only the U.S. Congress, where Republicans have rebuffed normalized relations with Cuba, has the power to lift the blockade.

The largest injection of money from donors linked to a MassPRIM money manager came from Berkshire Partners executives Bradley Bloom, David Peeler, Robert Small and Ross Jones. Together they have given a quarter-million dollars to Great Schools Massachusetts. Their 2016 donations came only months after the MassPRIM board committed $175 million to a Berkshire-managed fund. Assuming standard fee rates, that deal could generate more than $3 million in annual management fees

The shocking images of the National Guard destroying tepees and sweat lodges and arresting elders this week remind us that the battle over the Dakota Access Pipeline is part of the longest-running drama in American history -- the United States Army versus Native Americans.

The current deadlock on the Supreme Court makes it particularly attractive for plaintiffs looking to block Obama administration policies to file suit in federal courts in Texas, sometimes directing their cases to particular judges there. Any appeals go to the 5th Circuit, widely viewed as the most conservative federal appeals court in the country.

The Movement for Black Lives is calling on cities to launch participatory budgeting processes to make public spending fairer.