Portside

Congress’s 1965 decision to limit immigration from Latin America and the Caribbean coincided with an increase in that immigration—largely, as a result of U.S. policies, including support for vicious dictatorships in many countries, the funding of civil wars in Central America, and the promotion of neoliberal economic programs throughout the region. The result is our current undocumented population of about 11.7 million, including some 8 million workers.

Cuts in U.S. Census funding threaten to produce an undercount of minorities and the poor and to reduce their share of federal aid.

Sabaaneh’s mordant cartoons celebrate what Palestinians call “popular resistance”

Cooperative colonies — ants, termites, and some wasps and bees — have fascinated scientists for more than a century because they pose an evolutionary conundrum. Only a very small number of insects actually get to reproduce: the queens and their mates. The rest give up their chance to contribute to the gene pool, caring for the offspring of others instead. How did this lifestyle, known as eusociality, evolve?

Recounts the short, complicated history of the Black Panther Party. Using remarkable black-and-white archival footage, the current voices of more than twenty former Panthers, a former FBI agent, several retired police officers, a number of Panther lawyers and community activists, and a collection of historians and accompanied by some soul stirring period music, the lessons to those engaged in today’s struggles against racism and for justice are there for all to see.

Donald Trump’s highly touted and almost certainly inappropriate hosting gig on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” turned out to be an anemic and halfhearted dud.

Despite Sanders’ deep support for labor, the national nurses’ organization that Almada sought to join is the only major union to endorse Sanders in the race for the Democratic nomination for president. It is dwarfed by much larger labor groups that are lining up with his arguably less committed, less reliable rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Hagan presents herself as above the fray, but she is propelled by a populist mobilization that will help get out the vote, despite the voting changes and despite the off-year malaise afflicting voters generally and Democratic voters particularly.

In the context of the Cold War, there’s an argument to be made that this strategy worked—the Soviet Union collapsed, after all—but in the actual conflicts, the outcomes were ambiguous and the wars longer and bloodier than they might have been otherwise. (Angola’s civil war lasted 27 years.)

This is terrorism. It is the use or implication of violence to achieve a political end. And as in so many other instances of terrorism (harassment of abortion providers, for instance), aimed at women, the government is not protecting its citizens.