Portside

Donald Trump in explaining how effective “the wall” between Mexico and the US would be said to “ask Israel”. This is one liar asking us to ask another liar! The facts are very clear.

The world has been shocked by North Dakota’s violent reaction to the anti-oil pipeline resistance at Standing Rock. For the better part of a year, people have watched via social media, then increasingly on conventional media outlets, as heavily armed law enforcement officers and private contractors attacked unarmed civilians with rubber bullets, mace, tear gas, batons, and water cannons in sub-freezing temperatures.

Today, workers at the city’s Nissan plant are facing a familiar backlash in their 12-year struggle for the right to organize a union. In a show of solidarity, this week cities across the South also steeped in civil rights history — Atlanta, Birmingham, Charlotte, Greensboro and Nashville — are organizing local actions to support the Canton workers and build regional pressure on Nissan to allow free union elections.

The show remains as smart, savvy, and blockheaded as ever.

Trump’s expansion of the gag rule won’t reduce abortion. But it will stop poor women from getting birth control, and kill programs that help war-torn communities.

An investigation by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting found systemic race and gender discrimination throughout the temp industry, including in Chicago.

The evidence is pretty clear: the transition team's policies are problematic and unprecedented. So much so that at least some Trump administration officials have backed away from them once they became the subject of news stories.

In a country where nearly 93 million eligible Americans did not vote in the 2016 presidential election, government officials should be investigating how to make the nation’s electoral process more inclusive, rather than searching for ways to place additional burdens on eligible Americans’ access to the polls.

Trump’s use of the New Deal is emblematic of his campaign and his first week in the White House. When not directly targeting marginalized people, he has often appropriated the language of the left to drum up support for racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, and ableist policies.

Here’s an accounting of his public statements in the first seven days as president, not counting his error-plagued inauguration speech (which had eight problematic claims).