Portside

Reading her life story will change the way you view the world. This is not simply a story about a formerly incarcerated woman dedicated to working for justice and freedom in the era of mass incarceration. It is a story of a black woman who, as she often tells me, is “nothing special” and yet has somehow managed to transform her own life as well as hundreds of lives around her. She has emerged as a leading figure in the movement to end mass incarceration.

Quebec's broad party of the left, Québec solidaire (QS), congress opens May 19 in Montréal – the 12th congress in its 11-year history. The delegates face a challenging agenda: the final stage of adoption of the party's detailed program, a process begun eight years ago; discussion of possible alliances with other parties and some social movements including a proposed fusion with another pro-independence party, Option nationale; and renewal of the party's top leadership.

Larry Krasner's victory for Philadelphia District Attorney is huge! Krasner has been the main defense attorney for #BlackLivesMatter and Occupy and has freed 80 prisoners on wrongful conviction charges. He ran to end stop-and-frisk, end cash bail, and treat drug law violators via the public health rather than criminal justice system. A huge victory for the movements against police brutality and mass incarceration - for progressive and racial justice movements nationwide.

The establishment complains I don’t play the rules: by which they mean their rules. We can’t win, they say, because we don’t play their game. We don’t accept that it is natural for Britain to be governed by a ruling elite, that the people just have to take what they’re given. And in a sense, the establishment is right. I don’t play by their rules. And if a Labour Government is elected on 8 June, we still then we won’t play by their rules either.

Constitutional scholar Lawrence Tribe and Robert Reich weigh in. A majority of the public agrees. To rescue democracy, we need to make it happen.

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.