Portside

With the feeling that there’s a “war on science” afoot, savvy scientists are thinking about how to defend their work.

Running up the deficit so extravagantly would serve two strategic purposes.

Commentators Melvin Rogers, Patrisse Cullors, Carol Anderson and Shailja Patel discuss the impact of the debate and struggle for racial equality.

Decades after the company tried to tackle sexual misconduct at two Chicago plants, continued abuse raises questions about the possibility of change.

Biographer Chernow "gives us a military genius who understood the full scope of the war and pursued a winning strategy," writes reviewer Richard Moe, "and a sometimes inept president who, though unschooled in politics, made his highest priority the protection of the lives and rights of freed slaves."

The left’s role is to move opposition in the direction of politics — enabling working people to apply pressure when it can change the situation in their favor, building their (small-d) democratic strength. This is our mission inside and outside the Democratic Party, in social movements, in unions and in intellectual settings.

The election of Donald Trump produced a rash of commentaries heralding the death of organized labor, or at minimum an existential crisis. Although these epitaphs are not new and are very overblown, it is true that organized labor prematurely backed the corporate Democrat, failed to elect the candidate it did back, and is left divided over how to deal with the presidency of Donald Trump.

Journalists working for Al Jazeera America (AJAM) voted to be represented by the The NewsGuild of New York.

Bernie Sanders crushed the debates by every measurable indicator except one: pundits’ opinion.

The Man Booker prize, given annually for best English language novel published in the United Kingdom, was awarded this week to Marlon James, for his novel, A Brief History of Seven Killings. He is the first writer from Jamaica to win the prize. The novel is a tale of 1970s-1980s Jamaica, CIA plots, and violence. It is "a story about Jamaica that doesn’t only take place in Jamaica," says Kei Miller, who reviewed the novel late last year.