Portside

Most of the various predecessors to FEMA weren’t all that concerned with civilian natural disasters. They were primarily focused on responding to nuclear war; the evolution to being the first call after a hurricane, flood, or tornado came about in part because it turned out America doesn’t have all that many nuclear wars—and the equipment and supply stockpiles and disaster-response experts at FEMA’s predecessors were useful for something other than the apocalypse.

Opioids killed more than 33,000 Americans in 2015 and certainly more last year. Half of deaths involved prescription painkillers. And most of those who overdose on heroin or synthetic opiates, such as fentanyl, first became hooked on legal pills. The US, with 5% of the people, consumes 80% of the global opioid pill production. This is an American crisis, caused by Big Pharma, politicians who colluded with it, and regulators who approved one opioid pill after another.

While your staff has not shared with us the details of the current draft, we understand from colleagues in other single-payer advocacy groups that it mandates copayments for medical services for most Americans and proposes a four-year delay before the implementation of the single-payer reform.

Those challenging the pardon understand there is no precedent for this — but neither is there a precedent for a pardon of this type. “While many pardons are controversial politically, we are unaware of any past example of a pardon to a public official for criminal contempt of court for violating a court order to stop a systemic practice of violating individuals’ constitutional rights,” Fein says.

In January, Louisiana received a $48 million grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to move the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw and Houma Nation tribal members to more solid ground and reestablish their communities, making tribal members the first climate change refugees in the U.S.

This “constant campaign” carried into the community as well, with Local 236 at the forefront of battles in the late 1940s and early 1950s to desegregate Louisville. But to Jim Wright, perhaps the FE’s biggest impact came at the personal level, as those whites who had come into the Harvester plant as “real racists” became friends with black workers there.

Both involved Trump associates Michael Cohen and Felix Sater—and US sanctions.

We need a socialism that goes beyond capitalism. And not just for moral reasons.

We have an ethical obligation to stand against the fascists and racists in a way that doesn’t help them.

Spain's Catalonia region votes on independence this fall. For some, it's a referendum on austerity policies that have crippled economies all over Europe.