Portside

Organizing in Omaha and small towns with meatpacking plants is altering politics in this reddest of states. At the top of the city's power structure sit representatives of large corporations. The corporate elite has transformed the downtown, now brimming with office towers, condominiums and a redeveloped Old Market tourist mecca. Corporate domination has failed to transform the lives of Omaha's working-class families for the better, however.

John Oliver | Third Parties. Leonard Cohen | You Want It Darker. Where Does Complexity Come From? The Park of Friendship in Tijuana. Monkeys Can Make Stone Tools Too.

In Mexico, Trump is solemn and praising; in Arizona, he's back to hysterical horror shows. His return to his old self was swift. Trump's Wednesday night speech was fiery, leaning on his usual depictions of immigrants as murderous, villainous, sexually deviant leeches. And then, he not only pledged every harsh anti-immigration tactic he'd floated for the past year, he expanded on them all - aimed at revving up his conservative base.

On both sides of the Atlantic, citizens are seizing upon trade agreements as a source of their woes. While this is an over-simplification, it is understandable. Today's trade agreements are negotiated in secret, with corporate interests well represented, but ordinary citizens or workers completely shut out. Not surprisingly, the results have been one-sided: workers' bargaining position has been weakened further, compounding the effects of legislation undermining unions.

'What Europe needs more than ever to avoid a slide into a xenophobic, deflationary, 1930s-like abyss'

The U.S. Supreme Court has voted 4-4 in one of the most consequential immigration cases in recent history, United States v. Texas. The High Court's failure to fall one way or another in the case leaves in place a lower court decision that blocks the Obama administration's deferred action immigration initiatives known as DAPA and the expansion of DACA from being implemented. An Atlanta coalition of local community organizations have launched an ICE Free Zones campaign.