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.