Portside

• The Interview  --  Cartoon by Scott Rogo

• She Interrupted Me  --  Cartoon by Barry Blitt

• Re: The US House Is Trying To Stop Donald Trump’s War on Iran  (Deborah R Kingery)

• Re: The Strange Emptiness of the Crowded Governor’s Race in California  (Nora Lapin)

• Flawed Candidate  --  Cartoon by Michael de Adder

• Re: Wemby Is Going Down!  (Amy McCarthy)

• MSG Seat Map  --  Cartoon by Jason Chatfield and Scott Dooley

• Re: Update From Vietnam  (Paul Buhle; Tom Edminster)

• Re: Revealed: Israel’s Curriculum for ‘Influencing Public Consciousness’  (Suzanna Miller)

• Asleep at the White House or Sheep Sleep and Trillionaire Trash  --  Cartoon by Steve Sack

• Re: Buckle Up for Phil Cohen’s ‘Maximum Leverage’  (Tim Sheard)

• Re: Protein Powder Shortage Threatens America’s Biggest Food Craze  (Eleanor Roosevelt)

• Roberts Guts the Voting Rights Act  --  Cartoon and Commentary by Jen Sorensen

Resources:

• The True Total U.S. Military Budget  (POGO - Project on Government Oversight)

• Ecosocialist Bookshelf, June 2026  (Climate & Capitalism)

Announcements:

Fighting Back: the Corporations Behind Data Centers - Virtual Event - June 24  (Third Act)
.




The Interview  --  Cartoon by Scott Rogo

Scott Rogo
June 7, 2026
Scott Rogo Facebook page
 

She Interrupted Me  --  Cartoon by Barry Blitt
 

Barry Blitt
June 7, 2026
Barry Blitt Facebook page
 

Re: The US House Is Trying To Stop Donald Trump’s War on Iran
 

No they haven’t been doing a damn thing but bend over

Deborah R Kingery
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Re: The Strange Emptiness of the Crowded Governor’s Race in California
 

I thought the New Yorker article about the California governor's race was surprisingly off-target for the usually more astute magazine.  The race certainly wasn't empty because Tom Steyer, the billionaire Democratic contender, is actually a very progressive candidate who is strongly supported by the left despite the unavoidable anxiety about supporting a billionaire.

Nora Lapin

Flawed Candidate  --  Cartoon by Michael de Adder
 

Michael de Adder
June 8, 2026
https://deadder.substack.com/
 

Re: Wemby Is Going Down!
 

Thanks for a good read!

Amy McCarthy
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

MSG Seat Map  --  Cartoon by Jason Chatfield and Scott Dooley

 

Jason Chatfield and Scott Dooley
June 8, 2026
The New Yorker
 

Re: Update From Vietnam
 

we remember Juliet so well from the Marxist school and congratulate her on her good continuing work.

Paul Buhle
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

     =====

Good article/reporting/ overview...

Tom Edminster
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Re: Revealed: Israel’s Curriculum for ‘Influencing Public Consciousness’
 

so much controlled and planned manipulation  leaves no place for truth

Suzanna Miller
Posted on Portside's Facebook page

Asleep at the White House or Sheep Sleep and Trillionaire Trash  --  Cartoon and Commentary by Steve Sack

 

Trump keeps nodding off during cabinet meetings, and maybe it’s not such a mystery after all. There’s only so much time a person can spend listening to a room full of hand-picked loyalists baa-baa-baaing their agreement before the eyelids get heavy. When every idea is brilliant, every decision is historic, and every sentence ends with enthusiastic applause, the line between a cabinet meeting and counting sheep starts to disappear.

The worst part about it is he always eventually wakes up.

Steve Sack
June 11, 2026
The Art of Sack
 

Re: Buckle Up for Phil Cohen’s ‘Maximum Leverage’
 

Great PORTSIDE review of new Labor memoir: Buckle Up For Phil Cohen’s ‘Maximum Leverage’ 

It’s just after 9 p.m. in the fall of 1992 and union organizer Phil Cohen is inside a dingy cement-block building in Cornelius, North Carolina wondering if he’s quick enough to pull the .38 special in his shoulder holster before the two irate Klansmen in front of him start shooting.

The pulse-pounding vignette is just one of many harrowing encounters Cohen recounts in Maximum Leverage: From the Streets to the Picket line—the legendary labor organizer’s ultra-gritty new memoir from Hard Ball Press.

“As the engagement spiraled downhill, I noted Buddy’s hand twitching within a thigh pocket of his hunting trousers,” Cohen writes. “Lloyd and James both had one hand resting on their hip beneath an open jacket. I was carrying a .38 special in a shoulder holster, taking in the room to see whose hand would move first. Time slowed and began unfolding in freeze frames.”

Cohen spent 30 years in the field as Special Projects Coordinator for Workers United/SEIU specializing in, but not limited to, beating back union-busters in the Deep South. Back in ’92 the union had dispatched Cohen to break the KKK’s stranglehold on Local 2500 in Cornelius, North Carolina and do an internal rebuild.

He pulled it off.

Tim Sheard
Posting on Facebook

Re: Protein Powder Shortage Threatens America’s Biggest Food Craze

(posting on Portside Culture)
 

Almost seven decades on, and I've never once participated in a food craze.

Eleanor Roosevelt
Posted on Portside's Facebook page
 

Roberts Guts the Voting Rights Act  --  Cartoon and Commentary by Jen Sorensen
 

This cartoon is, of course, addressing the recent Supreme Court ruling that eviscerated the Voting Rights Act. The recent ruling allows gerrymandering that will severely curtail the voting power of entire communities. States are already scrambling to redistrict before the midterms. 

John Roberts, who has a long history of hostility to the VRA, made the statement that “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating based on race” in 2007 during a case about school integration plans. In 2023, when the Roberts court basically ended affirmative action, Justice Kentaji Jackson Brown wrote in her dissent, “With let-them-eat-cake obliviousness, the majority pulls the rip cord and announces ‘colorblindness for all’ by legal fiat. But deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life.” 

Jen Sorensen
May 20, 2026
https://jensorensen.com/
 

Jen Sorensen is a cartoonist for Daily Kos, The Nation, In These Times, Politico and other publications throughout the US. She received the 2023 Berryman Award for Editorial Cartooning from the National Press Foundation, and is a recipient of the 2014 Herblock Prize and a 2013 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award. She is also a Pulitzer Finalist.

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The True Total U.S. Military Budget  (POGO - Project on Government Oversight)
 

There are several ways to calculate the true cost of our military. All add up to at least $1.5 trillion — and that's before the proposed half-trillion-dollar increase.
 

June 9, 2026
By David Vine, John Bellamy Foster, and Gisela Cernadas
Project on Government Oversight
https://www.pogo.org/reports/the-true-total-u-s-military-budget

• "annual [U.S.] military spending is at a minimum between $1.5 trillion and $1.8 trillion, and between $1.7 trillion and $2.3 trillion when counting interest payments on U.S. government debt attributable to military spending."
• "there are hundreds of billions of dollars in military spending outside the DOD’s annual budget appropriated by Congress."

Foreword
By Greg Williams

Director, Center for Defense Information at the Project On Government Oversight
 

For many years, the Center for Defense Information (CDI) at the Project On Government Oversight has offered analyses of how much the United States spends on our military, including amounts that fall outside the budget of the Department of Defense. We do so in order to support CDI’s goal of building a far more effective national security policy at a significantly lower cost — a task that would prove impossible without a comprehensive understanding of what our military costs today.

To illustrate the variety of ways one can quantify military spending in the United States, this report compares the methodologies used by a diverse set of experts and introduces a novel methodology for calculating this spending. While the total cost produced by each method differs from the others, they each support one important conclusion: Military spending in the United States has long been radically underestimated.

It’s reasonable to wonder why a group of budget analysts with, collectively, decades of experience could not agree on a single way to define the United States’ military budget. As this report explains, however, each methodology brings its own benefits and comparing them helps us recognize the right questions to ask when adding up our nation’s military spending.

Read further here 

Download report here - PDF
 

Project On Government Oversight (POGO) 
1100 13th Street NW, Suite 800
Washington, DC 20005

Phone: (202) 347-1122

Email for general inquiries: info@pogo.org

Ecosocialist Bookshelf, June 2026  (Climate & Capitalism)
 

Ecosocialist Bookshelf is hosted by Ian Angus. Books described here may be reviewed at length in future. Inclusion of a book does not imply endorsement, or that C&C agrees with everything (or even anything!) it says. Climate & Capitalism has received review copies of some of these books, but we do not receive any payment for reviews or for reader purchases.

Todd Dufresne
THE FUTURE BELONGS TO THOSE WHO FIGHT
Climate Revolution for Beginners
McGill-Queen’s University Press
Capitalism, the essential driver of carbon emissions, is reaching its inevitably brutal endgame. We need to prepare for climate revolution. A manifesto against well-mannered nihilism that dares to imagine a new world built on empathy, justice, and reason.

Jeremy Lent
ECO-CIVILIZATION
Making a World That Works for All
Penguin Random House
Humanity faces an imminent choice: continue with a system built on extraction and endless growth or remake civilization. Lent offers his view of a regenerated Earth that he believes is not only desirable, but entirely feasible.

Daniel Simberloff
ECOLOGICAL EXPLOSIONS
The History of Biological Invasions and Invasion Science
University of Chicago Press
An invasive species expert examines the development of invasion science, from early research to the field’s future. He explores asks how ecosystems might adapt to a rapidly globalizing world and ever-increasing numbers of introduced species—including the joro spider, lionfish, spotted lanternfly, common reed, and Asian carp.

Gerald Kutney
CLIMATE DENIAL IN AMERICAN POLITICS
#ClimateBrawl
Routledge
Climate denial in the White House and Congress, and the ‘climate brawls’ on social media. A comprehensive survey and analysis of the sordid history of the propaganda that has promoted climate denial and corrupted politics in America.

Jamie Woodward
A LITTLE HISTORY OF THE EARTH
Yale University Press
From the formation of the Solar System, the evolution of our atmosphere and oceans, and the first signs of life, through to dinosaurs, mammals, and humans. A fast-paced, informative and lively account of how our planet came to be.

William D. Hartung and Ben Freeman
THE TRILLION DOLLAR WAR MACHINE
How Runaway Military Spending Drives America into Foreign Wars and Bankrupts Us at Home
Bold Type Books
A hard-hitting investigation into how the Pentagon’s runaway spending embroils America in foreign wars, squanders its wealth, and enriches a privileged elite. Policy experts Hartung and Freeman show who is pulling the strings and pushing for war, and offers a blueprint for shutting down the war machine.

Fighting Back: the Corporations Behind Data Centers - Virtual Event - June 24  (Third Act)
 

People everywhere are demanding a halt to the rapid expansion of AI-driven data centers. Join us to take a closer look at real-world tactics that target corporations, and how these tactics can help us to win data center moratoria.

Events Details

June 24, 2026

6:00 PM ET
5:00 PM CT
4:00 PM MT
3:00 PM PT

Location
Join from anywhere

Register Here - Click here 

About this event

Driven by the explosion of AI infrastructure and its immense resource demands, data centers have become a highly salient, contentious, and rapidly evolving political and environmental issue. A lack of public oversight threatens to only further enrich the ultra-wealthy technocrats who are undermining our democracy.

The window is closing for rational voices to intervene. Third Act is convening monthly calls on data centers this year to cover multiple strategic pathways to counter the threat: we’ll cover legal, corporate, political, and narrative approaches to winning these fights.

We’ve discussed legal and regulatory approaches to moratoria in April; this month we’ll review opportunities to target corporations to stop data center construction.

Pony Knowles, Organizing & Campaigns Lead, Third Act

Pony Knowles’ (he/they) former Director, National Campaigns, Trans Justice at the ACLU National Political Advocacy Division, working with a team that fights for LGBTQ and trans rights at the federal level, including access to gender affirming care, employment and housing, sex work decriminalization, and full inclusion in communities. Prior to working at the ACLU, Pony was the US Campaigns Director at Change.org, responsible for expanding media coverage, helping develop product innovations for better civic engagement opportunities, and most importantly identifying and developing campaign opportunities across a full slate of issue areas. Notable campaign victories include bringing Brittney Griner home, protecting gender affirming care in states like Kansas, and clemency for Julius Jones and Rodney Reed.

Previous to his work at Change.org, Pony led the National Engagement team at SAGE, leading innovative initiatives to connect LGBTQ elders to larger communities of care and policies that protect and affirm them as they age. Other past experience includes leading student engagement for Empty the Shelters and Poor Peoples’ Human Rights Campaign, and teaching French literature and history — with a particular focus on the stories we tell each other about revolution and social change — at a number of universities in the US and abroad.

Michael Richardson, Third Act Campaigns Director
Prior to joining Third Act staff, Michael co-founded the Third Act Working Group in Upstate New York. He has been a leader within New York’s climate movement, serving on the steering committee of NY Renews – the coalition behind the landmark New York State climate law – and as co-chair of Public Power NY – the coalition for furthering the buildout of publicly-owned renewable energy.

Across a wide-ranging career—including organic farmer, solar heating contractor, labor economist, county legislator, and municipal consultant Michael has consistently applied his skills to strengthening democracy, protecting the climate, and advancing community-led solutions.

Who We Are

At Third Act, we are a dedicated group of organizers, campaign strategists, and communications professionals working together to build a powerful elder-led movement for climate action and democracy protection. Our team operates across multiple departments, each playing a crucial role in advancing our mission.

There are so many ways to get involved with Third Act and plug into our campaigns. Check out opportunities below to get started on your third act.

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