Op-Ed

Walter G. Moss is a professor emeritus of history at Eastern Michigan University, a Contributing Editor of HNN, and author of A History of Russia (2 vols).  For a list of his recent books and online publications click here. Moral Imagination? What’s that? Among other things it’s the title of a book and the main essay in that […]

President Ronald Reagan, shown here speaking in Moscow in 1980, was an early adopter of neoliberalism in the U.S. Dirck Halstead/Liaison Anthony Kammas, University of Southern California Neoliberalism is a complex concept that many people use – and overuse – in different and often conflicting ways. So, what is it, really? When discussing neoliberalism with […]

August 2, 2022 – As senators gear up to vote on a long-anticipated climate, tax and energy bill as soon as this week, electric vehicles are poised for a boost. One of the landmark provisions in the package is an extension and expansion of a consumer tax credit for electric vehicle purchases, setting the stage […]

WASHINGTON, July 28, 2022 — On Thursday, Sens. Ed Markey (Massachusetts) and Ron Wyden (Oregon) and Rep. Doris Matsui (California) introduced the Net Neutrality and Broadband Justice Act, which would confirm the legal classification of broadband internet-access service as a telecommunications service under the Communications Act. Clarifying the legal treatment of broadband in this way […]

I just read this NYT column by Bryan Stryker, on how Democrats can win back the working class. I have no idea how its proposals poll, but as an economic matter, they will do little to help the working class. The big problem with Stryker’s argument is that it assumes that the working class will somehow benefit […]

July 19, 2022 – Based on press reports, it now seems likely that Biden will soon declare climate change to be a national emergency.  Would this be legal? Would it unlock important powers that could be used to fight climate change?  My answers are: It would probably be legal, and it would unlock some significant […]

July 15, 2022 – The anti-abortion zealots and their shills in public office and the media have shown their true colors over a tragic case involving a fourth-grader impregnated by rape. The attorney general of Ohio publicly derided reports that an Ohio child had to cross the state border in order to obtain abortion care […]

July 13, 2022 – The Federal Reserve has been under intense pressure in recent months to sharply raise interest rates in the name of taming inflation. The voices calling for these rate increases often explicitly say that they are worth doing even if they greatly increase the risk of recession. At their last open market committee meeting, the Fed […]

WASHINGTON, July 11, 2022 — In advance of the US president’s official visit to Jeddah, where he will attend a summit of the Gulf Cooperation Council and meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Freedom House issued the following statement: “The Saudi regime is one of the most repressive in the world, and its efforts […]

What rights will be stripped away next? Contraception. Same-sex marriage. Consensual same-sex sexual activity. Clarence Thomas said it himself: the Supreme Court is coming for your right to privacy. www.robertreich.org

June 24, 2022 – Anti-abortion ideologues on the US Supreme Court just explicitly overturned Roe v. Wade.  The decision will have enormous consequences for pregnant people across a wide swath of US states, who will now find it extremely difficult—and in many cases impossible—to get the care they want and need. Marginalized communities will be hit […]

WASHINGTON, June 24, 2022 — The Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) condemned the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization as profoundly misguided, with devastating impact for the right to privacy of people seeking reproductive care. State laws that criminalize abortion, or deputize private citizens to sue any person who performs […]

WASHINGTON, June 24, 2022  — This morning, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and nearly 50 years of precedent, eliminating the federal constitutional right to abortion, and stripping people of the right to control their own bodies. It is as dangerous as it is shocking, and it opens the floodgates for states across the […]

June 22, 2022 – The bipartisan congressional commission investigating the January 6 coup attempt has found strong evidence that Donald Trump is a criminal. As the hearings reveal, the former president illegally plotted to stay in office after the American people voted to boot him out. Now he must be indicted. Trump’s criminality is proven […]

Americans United for Separation of Church and State President and CEO Rachel Laser issued the following statement, a call to end all private school vouchers, in response to the Supreme Court’s decision today in Carson v. Makin that wrongly forces states to fund religious education under the guise of non-discrimination: “The ultra-conservative majority of the […]

92 years old and blind, in June 1937 a formerly enslaved Texan named Felix Haywood talked to a WPA writer about the Civil War and its aftermath. “ Oh, we knowed what was goin’ on in it all the time,” said Haywood, “We had papers in them days just like now.” Heywood exposed a central canard of […]

At the end of last year, at the height of the Omicron variant spread, an important battle was being fought for clean water and a healthy environment, the value of which has only become clearer during the last couple of years. At one of the many frontiers of mineral extraction in the Patagonian province of […]

Today marks the 40th anniversary of Plyler v Doe, one of our nation’s most consequential constitutional decisions and a singular achievement in the history of MALDEF (Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund). In 1977, MALDEF filed a federal lawsuit challenging a Texas law that sought to exclude undocumented children from the public schoolhouse by […]

Washington, D.C. June 6, 2022 – It’s been a turbulent few weeks ahead of the Ninth Summit of the Americas, hosted by the U.S. in Los Angeles, California. Questions are piling up around the issues that are likely to dominate the talks, what commitments will be announced, and what has happened to relations between the […]

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled recently on the government’s use of the state secrets doctrine in an opinion that will make it easier for intelligence agencies to evade accountability in future individual rights cases. In U.S. v. Zubaydah, government torture policy and state secrets converge. A torture victim requested information related to his treatment at a […]