Portside

Rachel Maddow’s podcast tells the story of American Nazis in the 1940s. But the era’s real and lasting authoritarian danger came from the spectacular growth of a national security state.

A law proposed by New York socialist legislators would prohibit charitable organizations in New York from funding Israel’s illegal settlements — and pick a fight with the powerful pro-Israel organizations that regularly try to destroy progressive can

The rate of prenatal growth directly relates to how big an adult brain grows. How and when Homo sapiens‘ high prenatal growth rate evolved has been a mystery, until now.

The Red Scare and the fall of the IWW. A new history examines the lost promise and fierce persecution of the IWW.

The US hospice system is supposed to provide compassionate end-of-life care. But private equity firms have swallowed up the industry: 7 out of 10 hospice agencies are now for-profit, putting profit maximization over patient well-being.

Succession is heading toward its series finale, having settled into a portrait of how the ultrarich’s quest for limitless accumulation crowds out any semblance of humanity. The show is the most potent piece of class critique on TV in recent memory.

Despite a crackdown on labor activists there, Chinese workers continue to strike. The strike wave continues to grow, and strikes are not only in the private sector or in companies that manufacture for export. Last year saw a large wave of teacher strikes, and as this article shows, nurses in public hospitals are also striking.

A farmland mapping project by a UC Merced professor indicates that most areas of the country could feed between 80 percent and 100 percent of their populations with food grown or raised within 50 miles. The study immediately generated comment, including positive accolades from author and influencer Michael Pollan (also a UC professor). Many have noted the importance of the study in filling a research gap about local food.

An evolutionary burst 540 million years ago filled the seas with an astonishing diversity of animals. The trigger behind that revolution is finally coming into focus.

While some communities are currently enjoying the fruits of the recovery, others have sunk further into poverty. According to the authors, this pattern of distress vs. prosperity not only “diverges between cities and states but even more starkly within cities at the neighborhood level." In the period of recovery following the Great Recession, the authors find, jobs in the median U.S. ZIP code grew at less than half the national rate.