Donald Trump in South Sudan

Nick Turse TomDispatch
Nick Turse's award-winning book, Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam was a harrowing historical journey for which he traveled to small villages on the back roads of Vietnam to talk to those who had experienced horrific crimes decades earlier. In 2015, however, on his second trip to South Sudan, a country the U.S. helped bring into existence, he found himself in an almost unimaginable place where the same kinds of war crimes were being committed.

Parts and Wholes: Unpacking Reports of White Working-Class Death Rates

Jack Metzgar Working-Class Perspectives
Since 1900 life expectancy at birth has risen from 47 to 79, nearly doubling the average American lifespan. But death rates of U.S. whites aged 45 to 54 increased by 8% from 1999-2013- all among whites with a high school education or less. But efforts to explain the numbers have confused or obscured race and class, creating much misunderstanding. As Jack Metzgar argues, there are no simple answers in describing trends for white workers without college degrees.

2 Big Labor Unions Share Efforts to Gain Power and Scale

Steven Greenhouse and Noam Scheiber The New York Times
The leaders of two of the nation’s biggest, most powerful labor unions — the Service Employees International Union and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees — are completing a plan that calls for unusually close cooperation in political campaigning, organizing and bargaining in states and cities across the United States.

The Easter Rising 100 Years On: How The Irish Revolution Fired Up American Politics

David Brundage The Conversation
Irish immigrants and their descendants (our “exiled children in America,” in the words of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic) played a leading part in the Easter Rising. But the influences and inspiration worked in the other direction as well, especially in the tumultuous years following the Easter Rising.