Portside

A moment of stinging clarity is now upon us. President Donald Trump signed an executive order to set in motion the process of building a wall along the US-Mexico border, stripping federal funding from sanctuary cities, increasing the size of US Border Patrol forces and increasing deportations. In response, we must plunge even more urgently into the hard local work of building sanctuary.

Medicaid spending exceeds half a trillion dollars, and the program represents more than half of all federal funds spent by states. Medicaid has changed dramatically from its beginnings as a program largely for women and children on welfare. It now has more than 70 million beneficiaries, and its reach is so broad that almost two-thirds of Americans say that they, a family member or a friend have been covered by Medicaid at some point.

I was among more than 400 people who attended a Protect RP organizational meeting Monday night, an extraordinary display of how hungry people are to Do Something.

Marx wrote these passages nearly 150 years ago, and he was certainly not infallible: in the same letter he suggested optimistically that independence for Ireland might hasten "the social revolution in England." But a great deal of his analysis sounds remarkably contemporary.

The civil rights pioneer and scholar is most famous for his book The Souls of Black Folk, but his use of data to show inequality is still profound today

The last few weeks of activism have been a sign that “scientists have woken up and are ready to fight back."

Taboo is about the return of the repressed, but also the suppressed, with the protagonist serving as a vessel for social commentary about the species-wide violence and corruption wrought by imperialism, racism, and capitalism.

On Tuesday, over 15,000 U.S. bank workers with the Spain-based bank Santander will declare their intent to establish this country's first bank workers' union. They'll deliver petitions, take over corporate lobbies and begin the long struggle to bring collective bargaining to an industry with predatory practices and lots of low-wage workers.

For followers of Hayek eager to smash the “para-government,” Trump must look like a godsend. How might conservatives do so? By advancing drastic institutional changes even Hayek conceded could seem undemocratic, such as making voting a once-in-a-lifetime act, for example, and lengthening legislative terms to fifteen years. Resting on popular support, the welfare state’s curtailment required attacking democracy.

Georgia will have to do away with its exact-match voter registration verification scheme thanks to a lawsuit filed last year by voting rights advocacy groups. The program resulted in the disenfranchisement of some 42,000 people, disproportionately people of color -- but now it's being considered by other states including Florida, Virginia and West Virginia.