Portside

Scientists begin going rogue, create alt Twitter account and plan march on D.C.

The women's marches in Washington DC and around the country were stunning, inspiring and the first of a million steps that will be needed to build the resistance to Trump. It might not have been as black, brown or working class as many might have liked. But criticizing it from the sidelines doesn't help anyone.

In response to President Donald Trump's executive order to advance construction of the stalled Dakota Access Pipeline, tribal opponents say they will fight a restart of the project in court. While President Trump issued an executive order Tuesday intended to advance construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, restarting the stalled project may not be simple.

In November Donald Trump announced that his family will not live in the White House when he is inaugurated. Trump's announcement has implications for all of us. Who will pay for the security required for Trump's New York-based family? Who will bear the costs of the disruptions caused by frequent presidential flights to and from New York, not to mention the motorcades in and out of midtown Manhattan? The answer is: taxpayers or, as we used to be called, the public.

The Service Employee International Union, along with other public sector and service industry unions, was not invited to President Trump's meeting with certain union leaders. Its President Mary Kay Henry expects to be hit hard by Trump's cuts. She hopes by expanding the Fight for $15 campaign support for unions will broaden.

In the age of "fake news" and other mysterious media distortions, this book reminds us of a "simpler" time. Joel Whitney offers a new history of how, beginning in the late 1940s, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) simply (if much of the time secretly), paid writers, musicians, and artists, and sponsored publications, concerts, exhibitions, and cultural institutions as part of its Cold War arsenal.

While the largest protest in Washington history was going on, a few miles away, Trump was making news with an appearance at CIA headquarters. He used the occasion to attack the press for accurately reporting on the low turnout at his Inauguration, and to deny his own public statements criticizing the intelligence agency. We are in uncharted territory. America is on edge. In the streets and in the White House, people are itching for a fight.

If you go by Western press accounts, Russian leader Vladimir Putin is a strutting peacock of the Trump school of self-reflection, or maybe a classic strongman, with the caveat that he's no twit. The book under review presents Putin as more acted upon than actor, more puppet to internal and external forces than puppet master, a formidable tactician but with no grand strategy, no end-game. In other words, a politician.

That states can pass laws banning mandatory union dues is not new. Congress amended labor law in 1947 to allow individual states to pass right-to-work laws. “How it affects the workforce is really simple: It lowers wages,” said Stephen Herzenberg, executive director of the Keystone Research Center. “If you strip it to its core, this is about reducing the power of workers to bargain for a decent living.”

In an email sent Monday and obtained by the news outlet, Sharon Drumm, chief of staff for the USDA's primary in-house research arm, the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), told the department: "Starting immediately and until further notice, ARS will not release any public-facing documents... Is this the 'war on Science' or is it the start of the war on the people's access to science, or both?