Dispatches From the Culture Wars — September 8, 2026
- The University is the Crisis
- Torture in Texas Prisons
- Public Enemy: Data Centers
- State of the Climate Movement
- Public Libraries at the Breaking Point
- How Dakota Tribes Beat a Mining Company
- Crackdown on Federal Workers
- Repression of ICE Watch
- The Right is Afraid of the Girl Scouts
- Modeling the United Front
By Rinaldo Walcott, Canadian Dimension
In recent weeks much has been said about the circumstances surrounding Jason Arday’s death. If the Arday affair is to mean something more than his individual downfall, it should have those of us involved in the university confront once and for all the inequitable foundation of the university as an institution and its unequal distribution of resources.
Torture in Texas Prisons
Strip Searches or Sexual Violence? By Khawla Nakua, In These Times
The Cycle of Repression By Jason Renard Walker, Scalawag
By Tobias Burns, CNBC
Residents in many communities are worried that the data centers will create a drain on water and energy infrastructure and that electricity prices for all customers would be raised to cover the costs of powering the data centers. Some investment banks say they consider the popular mobilization a risk to their investments and the capital expenditures made by the companies they represent.
By Kai Bosworth, Verso
There is a pervasive sense that the once-ascendent climate movement is in disarray or has even disappeared. As the second Trump administration guts environmental regulation, rejects proposed renewable energy projects, and accelerates the leasing of public lands for extraction, is there any “climate movement” to speak of?
Public Libraries at the Breaking Point
By Richard Luscombe, The Guardian
Book bans, cancelled story hours, attacks on librarians, funding cuts and the undoing of libraries’ independent governance are examined by the free expression advocacy group PEN America in its study called Out of Circulation: Expanding Censorship in Public Libraries.
How Dakota Tribes Beat a Mining Company
By Shilpi Chhotray, The Guardian
When two Oglala Lakota scouts heard drilling was expected to begin on Pe’ Sla, the sacred prairie in the Black Hills of South Dakota, they set out on back trails. What happened next was something that almost never happens in Indian country: a coalition of tribes and organizers banded together and drove out a mining company in a matter of days.
By Steve Wishnia, Work-Bites
Eight unions representing federal employees filed a lawsuit Aug. 24 challenging two rules recently imposed by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). The first rule would give OPM exclusive power to order agencies to terminate workers it decides are “unsuitable.” The second would prohibit workers from using union grievance procedures to challenge low performance ratings.
By Mike Ludwig, Truthout
Free speech groups across the country are sounding the alarm over the Trump administration’s surveillance of social movements in Minnesota and the prosecution of the Minnesota 15, a group of activists from Minneapolis-St. Paul who face federal conspiracy charges after organizing protests against brutal immigration sweeps earlier this year.
The Right is Afraid of the Girl Scouts
By Ashlie D. Stevens, Salon
The Scouts do not, by its own account, teach girls Islam. What it is willing to do is allow a Muslim Girl Scout to explore her own faith — and, more broadly, encourage girls to encounter beliefs, cultures and people beyond the boundaries of their immediate experience. The radical proposition is not that the group tells girls what to think. It tells them they are capable of finding out for themselves.
By Puya Gerami, Convergence
More and more people and organizations recognize the strategic necessity of forging a broad united front to block the Right while simultaneously building a powerful and distinguishable Left bloc within it. A crucial element is the sector of socialists–some members socialist organizations, some not–who believe in this strategic orientation, and contribute to mass struggles.