Portside

During the Great Depression, a period of vast unemployment and underemployment, at least over a million—Joe Dunn thinks in terms of maybe almost 2 million—individuals, Mexican nationals and American citizens of Mexican descent, were swept up and expelled out of this country.

Traditionally state vaccination policy and school vaccine mandates have been as close to a nonpartisan issue as we have in this country. There has usually been broad bipartisan support for such mandates and the idea that children should be vaccinated in order to attend school. It’s a consensus that has served the country well for many decades now. What I fear is that this consensus is breaking down, and—even worse—school vaccine policies are becoming a partisan issue.

The capability upgrade has happened outside the attention of most government officials, who have been preoccupied with reducing nuclear warhead numbers. The result is a nuclear arsenal that is being transformed into a force that has the unambiguous characteristics of being optimized for surprise attacks against Russia and for fighting and winning nuclear wars.

Declines in manufacturing employment are shaping the structure of the American family.

“Saturday Night Live” took a departure with its cold open this week, taking us out of the Trump White House — and into the universe of the 1994 movie “Forrest Gump.” Instead of Tom Hanks, it was Attorney General Jeff Sessions (Kate McKinnon) at the bus stop, eating chocolates and confiding in strangers about a rather momentous week.