Portside

The war hawks are wrong when they say that past negotiations, like the 1994 Agreed Framework, didn’t make a difference. August 2017 was a reminder of the scariest, and riskiest, days of the Cold War. All month long, Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un engaged in a bitter war of words that escalated into tit-for-tat displays of military might and ended with mutual threats of mass destruction.

Anti-immigrant organizations like FAIR, CIS, NumbersUSA, and IRLI, all of which have ties to white nationalists, have long taken a hardline stance that the federal government should dramatically restrict immigration and make life as difficult as possible for undocumented immigrants already living here. Their harsh viewpoints make no exception for young undocumented individuals who have been living in the U.S. since childhood.

This is a manmade climate-related disaster. To ignore this ensures our greatest challenge goes unanswered and helps push the world towards catastrophe. Not talking about climate change, and Trump's active attacks on climate science is missing a huge, crucial moment to address an enormous problem.

Trump was always, at heart, both the pitchman of, and a con artist for, American abundance, or rather for a particularly American version of conspicuous consumption. His greatest pitch and what may be the greatest selling scam in history has gotten so little attention in these last six months: to open the gold-plated spigot on American fossil fuels and sell the country’s oil and natural gas abroad in far greater quantities than at present.

After six months, Betsy DeVos has taken some major steps to change education policy, and her very presence at the head of the U.S. Education Department signals something important about the past, present and future of public education in the United States. She faces protests at many public appearances, which is why she receives special protection from the U.S. Marshals Service, at an average cost so far this year of $1 million a month.

The U.S. has a long history of upper-class whites who have benefited from racism.

"It is not the role of the Judiciary to second-guess the determination of the Executive, in coordination with the Legislature, that the interests of the US call for a particular military action in the ongoing War on Terror." Taking issue with the DC Circuit's application of the political question doctrine, it was queried, "if judges will not check this outsized power, then who will?" Our democracy is broken."

This fall the Chinese Communist Party holds its Nineteenth Party Congress. The US-China relationship is one of considerable global importance on several levels: political, economic and the situation of socialism and the international working class. Trump in his presidential campaign adopted a very hostile anti-China tone. However, after Trump assumed power, he changed; his actions towards China proved largely a continuation of established policy. Why did this happen?

On June 23rd, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt expressed that a proposal to repeal the Clean Water Rule enacted in 2015 would be sent out by the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers. This proposed repeal would not only bring back the confusion and discord over what exactly the Clean Water Act protects, but would make it easier for polluters to contaminate the nation's waters.