Portside

Gorsuch is likely to vote to further loosen remaining restrictions on campaign donations by billionaires and corporations, restrict voting rights, allow the expansion of partisan gerrymandering, close courthouse doors to workers and consumers, overturn environmental and financial regulations, mix church and state, and make it more difficult for women to control their bodies and their health.

She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted...Last night, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) spoke out against the nomination of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) for attorney general, reading a letter from Coretta Scott King. In a highly unusual move, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) led a vote to silence Warren?-?a rebuke not extended to several of her male colleagues. It follows an old and very sexist playbook.

The struggle for a more perfect union is the struggle for a union that welcomes all voices. As important as it was to elect a black president in 2008 and as it will be to elect a woman president in 2016, that is simply not good enough. We are neither post-racial nor post-gender. We must be honest about the depth of the problem in order to unloose the structural barriers that contribute to it -- the money, the process, the lineage. It may require some to step aside.

Campaign finance reform, long a lonely political backwater frequented only by good government groups, is suddenly becoming a hot new address for some of this year’s candidates. Whether that will lead to a vibrant new political community remains the open question.

The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) - what's at stake? Why the secrecy, why the rush, why cut-off debate and input? The reason is - Money, big money, says the New York Times. Major American business interests, from Nike to Boeing and Hollywood to Silicon Valley, want the deal badly. Labor and environmental groups see it as a threat to American workers at the expense of profits.

Reader Comments - Obama and the TPP; Stop-and-Frisk; White Americans and Police Accountability; Vietnam and Anti-War History and the Ongoing Debate; Remembering Jackson State Murders; Greece, Organizing New York; Those Who Work in Customer Call Centers; Announcements - Immigration, Work and Wages - Washington - May 21; Film Showing and Discussion - Blood Fruit - New York - May 22

Reader Comments- Sports, NFL, Tax Subsidy; Unions Today; Domestic Worker Organizing; Students Against Sweatshops; Greece, Germany & the EU; TPP; Israel, Iran, Iraq; Keystone XL; Cuba; Ukraine; Selma; American Sniper; Resource: Where Do We Go from Here? Mass Incarceration and the Struggle for Civil Rights; After the Greek Elections New York forum- Feb 6 - new location Hold the Date- Fighting Corruption in America and Abroad - Fordham Law School - New York - Mar 6

Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell is proving that he is a man of the past, not a leader for the future. No matter how much he may stick his head in the ground, climate change is already a real and present danger. He is showing that he has no understanding of climate change, or of bi-partisanship.

Today, the Supreme Court handed down a decision striking a Massachusetts law that protects patient access to abortion clinics. The Court, upheld the historically broad interpretation of the president's recess appointments power, and opened the door to new forms of Senate obstruction by ruling that the president's recess appointments were invalid because the Senate had used "pro forma sessions" - sessions in name only - to avoid going into recess.

Summary - Reader Comments - Big Lie about Mayor Bill de Blasio and Charters; Ukraine; Disgraceful Rejection of Debo Adegbile; Salt of the Earth - Sixty Years and Still So Vibrant; Attack on Public Schools; Member-to-Member Harassment; NAFTA Scorecard; Vermont Public Bank; Women in Labor History; 25th Anniversary of the Web; Today in History - Senate Approves Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty