Portside

Cathy Glasson is the farthest left candidate in recent memory to mount a serious campaign for Iowa governor. She is betting on a coalition of service workers, many of them immigrants and people of color; members of manufacturing unions, many of them white and some of whom supported Trump; and young members of DSA.

Younger people consistently see human rights—racial, immigrant, gender, LGBT—as important and uncontroversial.

The selection of Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) as the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee was the clearest sign yet of how seriously House Democrats consider the possibility of a full-blown constitutional showdown with Trump.

A new idea called the “information bottleneck” is helping to explain the puzzling success of today’s artificial-intelligence algorithms — and might also explain how human brains learn.

The Australian poet Joyce Parkes brings us the word “swags,” meaning the bedding rolls used by homeless persons, asking why in a wealthy country so many remain homeless.

Trump promises to protect US jobs have proven false as Nabisco shuts down its Chicago plant to move to Mexico and Ford reneges onits promise to reinvest in Detroit. Under the new tax bill, even more manufacturing jobs are likely to move overseas.

Progressive leaders said they will punish House and Senate Democrats politically, including by withdrawing endorsements in 2018, if they do not demand passage of the Dream Act by the end of the year. Pressure is on Sen. Schumer and Rep. Nancy Peloisi who have signaled they may back GOP effort to fund government without DACA or CHIP action. Progressive activists say that approach is unacceptable.

It's over. Jeff Merkley, the liberal Democrat from Oregon, asked his Republican “friends” to consider what could have been achieved by spending a trillion dollars on fixing America’s infrastructure, or making health care more affordable, or improving the education system. “This is the biggest bank heist, not just in American history but in the history of the world,” Merkley declared.

Trump became president despite the will of a majority of the American people. A recent poll shows that 53 percent of voters want him to resign. The Resistance has been able to slow but not stop Trump’s agenda. Trump has done more to spur progressive political organizing than Bernie Sanders, George Soros and Saul Alinsky combined.

Two visions of Spain have always existed. One sees Spain as a uni-national state, centered in the capital of the Spanish Kingdom, Madrid. This vision denies the existence of other nations in Spain. It is the vision of the Bourbon Monarchic State, including the armed forces and the Catholic Church; it is the conservative version of Spain. Another vision of Spain, however, is plurinational, recognizing other nations in Spain, including Catalonia, the Basque Country, and Galicia.