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Tidbits-Apr 23-Reader Comments: Taxing the Rich; Trump Cabinet Departures; Is the Pope Catholic?; Lack of Democracy in UFW Gave Chavez Immunity – Letter in Response; Young Communists Grow Older; “State Ideology” of Zionism; After No Kings-What’s Next

https://portside.org/2026-04-23/tidbits-apr-23-reader-comments-taxing-rich-trump-cabinet-departures-pope-catholic-lack
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Webinar: Building The Movements Against Fascism and War: After No Kings: What’s Next? - April 27  (Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS), Socialist Education Project (SEP), 4 th Monday Webinar Series)
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First They Came for the Billionaires  --  Cartoon and Commentary by Ted Rall
 

 

Conservatives are decrying New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s plan to impose a pied-à-terre tax on luxury second homes, calling it the beginning of a slippery slope that could eventually affect us all.

Ted Rall
April 20, 2026
Ted Rall
 



 

Re: Democracy Itself

(posting on Global Left Midweek — April 15, 2026)
 

Populism is about appealing to 'the people', 'our people', etc. Democracy is supposed to be people's rule. Of course it gets more complicated from there. Leftys have to get used to untrained (but not ignorant) civilians taking the wheel, with confidence in the imagination and untapped capacities of 'the demos'. Political education goes a long way, if it triggers critical thinking rather than tries to corral it.

Ethan Young
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

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Ethan Young Yes. Which leads to another thought. There are quite a few young, popular democratic candidates around now, not necessarily progressive, but with a basket of views that tilt toward working class politics. I sense a reluctance to embrace them, because they do not hew to any particular ideology and may take some positions that seem illiberal. But they are not in the pockets of corporate donors, and they express the instincts of their local constituencies. I think the left needs to drop its guard a little and open up to them. We could end up with some Fettermans, but we could also end up with some AOCs. This is the near term version of learning to live with grass roots democracy.

Anton Alterman
Posted on Portside's Facebook page




 

Trump's Attack Dogs  --  Cartoon and Commentary by Nick Anderson

 


For years, Democrats treated gerrymandering like the anti-democratic impulse that it is. They saw it as something to denounce, litigate and politely lose to. Republicans treated it like a tool. Then Donald Trump decided to stop the pretending altogether.

When Trump began openly pushing mid-decade redistricting—starting in Texas, where he insisted Republicans were “entitled” to more seats—he was upending the game board and unilaterally changing the rules of the game, in the middle of the game. Maps would be drawn not after the census, not through some pretense of fairness, but whenever power demanded it. And Republicans dutifully followed. Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio. The message spread quickly: redraw now, ask questions never.

At that point, Democrats had a choice. They could continue delivering speeches about norms and democracy while watching the House majority get carved into districts stacked in favor of the Republicans, or they could fight back. They chose the latter.

California moved first. Then, just yesterday, Virginia voters approved a new congressional map that could hand Democrats several additional seats and effectively erase the GOP’s structural advantage in the redistricting arms race.

Cue the outrage.

Suddenly, Republicans who had spent the past year aggressively redrawing maps discovered a deep and abiding concern for fairness. Gerrymandering, we are told, is now an existential threat to democracy, specifically when it benefits Democrats. This is not hypocrisy so much as performance art.

The reality is simpler and less flattering for everyone involved: the era of unilateral disarmament is over. As the New York Times bluntly put it, “pushing for maximal partisan advantage is part of the expectation of being in power,” and there is now political risk in not doing so.

That is the world Trump created.

He did not invent gerrymandering, but he stripped away its last remaining illusions and norms. What had once been a quiet, technical exercise became an explicit strategy: redraw the map, lock in power, dare the other side to complain.

Democrats complained for a while. Then they adapted.

You can argue this is corrosive. It is. You can argue it accelerates a race to the bottom. It does. But you cannot argue that one side should continue losing elections on principle while the other side redraws the playing field mid-game.

Politics is not a monastery. It is a competition for power, and power, once surrendered, is rarely returned out of courtesy.

There is a certain tragic symmetry to all of this. Both parties now insist they are not really gerrymandering. They are merely “responding” to the other side’s excesses. Each map is a defensive measure. Each power grab is, somehow, an act of restraint.

And maybe that is the final stage of the process: when everyone agrees the system is broken, but no one is willing to be the only one who plays by rules that no longer exist.

Trump didn’t just push redistricting. He normalized escalation. Democrats, belatedly, got the message.

Nick Anderson
April 22, 2026
Pen Strokes
 




 

Re: Good Riddance to Trump’s Horrible, No Good Labor Secretary
 

It's been a long long time since the Department of Labor has been anything more than the Department of F*ck-Over-Labor.

Eleanor




 

Total Agreement  --  Cartoon by Mike Luckovich
 



Mike Luckovich
April 16, 2026
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
 




 

Who to Believe  --  Cartoon by Dave Whamond
 


 




 

Re: Is the Pope Catholic? What JD Vance Thinks.
 

Thank you for posting Marina Hyde's crafty piece, Is the Pope Catholic? What J D Vance Thinks.

It is indeed curious why Vance felt his god, Mammon, was charging too much for entitlement coverage. Did he think it best to also pledge fealty to the Catholic's God of Love, in case his name was scratched off the presidential pardons list? It makes no sense; surely he knows that Jesus said, One cannot serve both God and Mammon. Or perhaps the altogether tempting 'absolution-after-confession' bit seemed merely performative, and that he could simply skip out on the actual cost of arriving at a clear conscience.

The stark parallel between Henry VIII Act of Supremacy and Trump's and Vance's break with today's pontiff needed to be said. It may be that this all about laying groundwork for America's Gangster Jesus to break with Rome and have Trump cite his own fanciful gospels. The expendable VP has already performed preliminary missteps and marketing aimed at the necessary patina of religious legitimacy. Vance, will soon establish his newfound piety in a publication and usurp pontifical authority to interpret God's Laws, hoping to influence a large swath of voters. This is completely in line with the Trump administration revisionist playbook. But not unlike Trump, Vance is hardly thorough. Honesty and remorse for one's sins in confession is the critical step towards subsequent absolution--and scoring Brownie points with the Creator, Whose protection he will sorely need.

I doubt any parish priest can afford the time required to listen to, or stomach, the litany of the VP's sins, should he ever admit to any. And, his unimaginable penance would far exceed a few Hail Mary's.

Respectfully,

Natalia Kuzmyn
Vancouver Island




 

FBI  --  Cartoon and Commentary by Rob Rogers
 


We all witnessed Kash Patel's frat-boy antics at the 2026 Winter Olympics, so it's not hard to believe the Atlantic's depiction of him as a binge-drinking, absentee FBI director.

Rob Rogers
April 20, 2026
TinyView
 




 

Re: How Flint Sit-Down Strikers Built Their Confidence

(posting on Portside Labor)
 

Don't forget the Women's Emergency Battalion, holding the line with blackjacks and baseball bats. Genora Johnson lives.

Eleanor Roosevelt
Posted on Portside's Facebook page




 

Glow up, Spring cleaning, or taking out the trash?  --  Cartoon by Lalo Alcaraz
 



Lalo Alcaraz
April 20, 2026
https://www.pocho.com
 




 

Re: A Lack of Democracy in the United Farm Workers Gave Chavez Immunity

(posting on Portside Labor)
 

Letter: United Farmworkers' Complex and Contradictory History

A Letter in Response by David Bacon
April 15, 2026
Labor Notes
 

In response to Jane Slaughter's interview of Frank Bardacke, I think Bardacke is right in pointing to the lack of democracy in the United Farmworkers as one reason why Cesar Chavez went unchallenged for so many years after sexually abusing women in the farmworker movement. The UFW had no structure between the ranch committee, the organization elected by workers at their individual employer, and the union convention, where the leadership was elected and empowered to make all decisions until the following one. This enabled Chavez to exert such power that even otherwise aggressive and militant organizers and workers were afraid to challenge him, whether about sexual abuse or political purges. Organizers could be, and were, fired at Chavez' discretion, with no recourse. That often created a fear of doing or saying anything that could lead to getting terminated.

But that fear was more than just fear of being fired. It meant being cast out of a movement in which people had given their lives. What alternatives faced families when they knew what Chavez was doing to their daughters? These were not weak uncritical people or pushovers. The choice about whether or not to speak out must have been agonizing for the young women and their families. But why didn't the people of the inner circle say or do anything to help them? Lack of democracy? Maybe in part. But the same sexual harassment happened in my union in Pittsburgh, and progressive leaders of the union stayed quiet. And we know there are more examples than that. So democracy is a protection, but not enough. What Chavez did to these young women has a lot to do with the power of men, and of the system of male supremacy that is deeply embedded in our labor movement, and society in general. We have to confront this directly, and not assume that being able to vote for leaders will take care of it.

If treating Chavez as a celebrity and putting him on a pedestal was an enabler and a fatal mistake, then we need to see the union's accomplishments not simply as the achievements of one man. The creation of the boycott was the result of many discussions among many people. The first national director of the boycott was Larry Itliong, whose political history and role in the union also needs reevaluating, as does the boycott itself.

Bardacke poses the boycott against the actions of workers in the fields. What workers did and do in the fields is fundamental, but the boycott itself also had aspects of a mass social movement. Many talented organizers, including many Communists, socialists and other left-wingers, some of whom were farmworkers and some who came from cities, made the boycotts work, and gave them real power for the union's first two decades. The contract Bardacke refers to, which created the repre system, was won as much by the lettuce boycott and pressure on certain producers, like Interharvest, as it was by the strike.

See full response here 




 

Re: Young Communists Grow Older

(posting on Portside Culture)
 

“The stories in this volume stand in notable contrast to the memoirs of New Left leaders, who mostly became college professors. These reflect more mundane, often largely unseen political work, even when the work includes the Daily World. The contributors’ activity is marked by highlights in their own lives, many captured in little black-and-white photos charming in their Retro feel. Nearly all reflect lives in and around the labor movement.”

Luis Feliz Leon
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
 

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As a red diaper baby who grew up in San Francisco whose parents left the CP in 1956 along with nearly all of their friends, I think that all the local RDBs whose parents had left did not join the party themselves but almost unanimously maintained the progressive ideas and activities of our parents, playing a major role in student protests of the '60s and '70s.

Nora Lapin




 

A Genocide Scholar Asks “What Went Wrong” in Israel
 

The Israeli historian Omer Bartov argues in his new book that a “state ideology” of Zionism has led to what he calls genocide in Gaza.

By David Remnick

April 20, 2026
The New Yorker

 

Illustration by Diego Mallo (The New Yorker)

 


Omer Bartov is an Israeli professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University. He grew up in a Zionist home and served as an officer in the Israel Defense Forces, but he has long been concerned about Israel’s use of military power. In a new book called “Israel: What Went Wrong?,” Bartov argues that Zionism has morphed into an ideology of extremism that led to genocide in Gaza following the Hamas attacks of October 7th. “There is growing criticism of American support for these kinds of Israeli policies, both on the American left and on the American right,” Bartov tells David Remnick. Bartov believes that Israel requires “shock therapy” because “it has not still come to identify the limits of its own power, because those limits are in Washington, D.C., and it’s there that those limits have to be set.” “For Israel, that would be good, because I think Israel needs to be liberated from that kind of dependence on American power. I think, for American society and for American Jewry, that’s a very bad thing because there is a rise of . . . antisemitism from the Tucker Carlsons of the world, who are a rising force right now.”


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Webinar: Building The Movements Against Fascism and War: After No Kings: What’s Next? - April 27  (Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS), Socialist Education Project (SEP), 4 th Monday Webinar Series)

 



On March 28, 2026 eight million people, marched, rallied, and tabled at the most recent No Kings Rally. As the rallies get bigger and the progressive organizations grow, the Trump Administration and its allies escalate their violence and repression at home and expand wars overseas. As Charles Dickens once wrote: “This is the best of times and the worst of times.”

This “What’s Next?” webinar is designed to hear longtime leaders of our peace, justice, and anti-racist movements address this question.

In addition, we will invite attendees to share their experiences and insights as well. At the most fundamental level this will be an important working webinar as we address these perilous times and how we must respond.

Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS), Socialist Education Project (SEP), 

4 th Monday Webinar Series

April 27, 8 pm Eastern


Register click here


Panelists:


Eight million people across the county said No Kings!
 

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