Portside

The Trump administration today pulled out of the Paris agreement on climate change. That pits the U.S. against the world and the scientific consensus on global warming. Trump's comments on climate change during his meeting with European leaders prompted German leader Angela Merkel to conclude that Europe must increasingly go it alone. The Obama administration could have done more, while the Trump administration couldn't have done less. (John Feffer, FPIF)

Millions are threatened by famine, as Riyadh prepares an assault on the country’s key port.

Motivated by his deep-seated biases and those of President Donald Trump, Attorney General Jeff Sessions is pursuing a draconian agenda on voting rights, immigration, crime, policing, the drug war, federal sentencing and the privatization of prisons.

Voters got a package deal with Trump - the whole clan. First daughter Ivanka who, along with her husband, Jared Kushner, are key political advisers to the president. Both have offices in the White House. They have multiple security clearances, access to high-level leaders whenever they visit, and the perfect formula for the sort of brand-enhancement that now seems to come with such eminence. President Trump sees the Presidency like a business... a family business.

n this report, we look closely at President Trump’s actions in his first 100 days in office and ask: Do these actions benefit or harm U.S. workers and our economy?

"Donald Trump's greatest threat to our society and to our democracy is not necessarily his authoritarianism, but his essential ignorance—of history, of policy, of political process, of the Constitution. Saying that if Jackson had been around we might not have had the Civil War is like saying that one strong, aggressive leader can shape, prevent, move history however he wishes. This is simply 5th grade understanding of history or worse." David Blight, Yale historian.

Campaigns to silence criticism of Israel don’t protect Jews — they endanger them. A national conversation on what antisemitism is — and what it isn’t — is long overdue. Recent reshuffling among the Trump administration may have Steve Bannon on the outs, but we are only weeks removed from a white supremacist as “the shadow president.”

Twenty years after the murders of students at Kent State (May 4) and Jackson State (May 15), in 1970, Holly Near wrote "And It Could Have Me." in 1990. "The song has grown over the years, new verses being added as violence continues to interrupt human potential." Today with Trump as President and a right-wing GOP-cabal in control, the song has new meaning - "it could have been me; But instead it was you; So I’ll keep doing the work you were doing as if I were two."

In its first 100 days, the Trump administration has deployed Secretary of Defense General Mattis, Secretary of State Tillerson, and now Vice President Pence to South Korea and Japan. Speaking at the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), Pence stated that "the era of strategic patience is over" and threatened that "if China is unable to deal with North Korea, the United States and our allies will."

Unprecedented global inequalities can only be sustained by ever more repressive and ubiquitous systems of social control and repression.