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Friday Nite Videos | March 14, 2025

Portside
Why the US Has Birthright Citizenship. Who Is the Leader of the People | Edwin Starr. Oligarchs Are Our Modern Day Kings. Sen. Jeff Merkley Asks if Trump Is a Russian Asset. Blood Moon, Trump Trade War, MAGA Stock Market.

Why the US Has Birthright Citizenship

The short answer is that birthright citizenship in the US came about as a way of granting citizenship after the American Civil War to the large population of formerly enslaved Black people

Marx Goes to Texas

Ryan Moore Protean
In October of 1845, having been silenced by government censors—and on the run from possible extradition—Karl Marx once thought about moving to Texas.

books

How German Atheists Made America Great Again

S. C. Gwynne New York Times
What was the Civil War about? In a word, slavery. The driving force in American politics in the decades after the American Revolution was the rise of an arrogant, ruthless, parasitic oligarchy in the South, built on God-ordained economic inequality.

It Was Never a Civil War

Michael Podhorzer Washington Monthly
The threat posed by Trump and the MAGA movement, like the Confederate States, is not “conservative” or even “extremist” but criminally anti-democratic.

Incapable of Sustaining Weeds

Tom Stevenson London Review of Books
What are​ the major wars of our time? Ukraine and Gaza, of course. But what about Syria, Yemen, Ethiopia, Myanmar, Sudan? Most of these are civil wars with very large numbers of fatalities. This is a review of "Understanding Ethiopia’s Tigray War"

A Brief History of the Ku Klux Klan Acts

Joseph Patrick Kelly The Conversation
The 1870s laws passed by the Reconstruction Congress to enforce 14th Amendment rights and to protect Black voters, ignored for decades, are now being used against Trump.

This Week in People’s History, June 27–July 3

Portside
Newspaper headline: World Court Supports Nicaragua International law? What's that? in 1986. First marches for Gay Pride in 1970. Saving a bridge in 1923. Torturers unwelcome in 1980. Bronx hospital patients first in 1970. Guantanamo opens in 1903. Gettysburg in 1863.

Juneteenth, Explained

Fabiola Cineas Vox
The holiday’s 158-year history holds a lot of meaning in the fight for Black liberation today.
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