Op-Ed

WASHINGTON, August 13, 2020 – President Donald Trump said in an interview on Fox Business Network that he is opposed to funding the United States Postal Service because “Now they need that money in order to make the post office work, so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots. But if […]

August 11, 2020 – We’ve never cared for the cheap, lurid television programming tied to Shark Week, preferring to join with other groups and media outlets in a celebration of this apex species found in all of the world’s oceans and even sometimes in rivers. Sharks are part of an incredibly diverse taxon, a cluster […]

Aug. 9, 2020 – Walter G. Moss is a professor emeritus of history at Eastern Michigan University, a Contributing Editor of HNN, and author of An Age of Progress? Clashing Twentieth-Century Global Forces (2008). For a list of his recent books and online publications click here. It is no secret that most historians dislike President Trump. In December of […]

Washington, DC, August 8, 2020 -The following is a statement from Nancy Altman, President of Social Security Works, in response to Donald Trump’s press conference in which he promised to “terminate” FICA contributions, Social Security’s dedicated revenue, if he is reelected: Donald Trump once promised that he would be ‘the only Republican that doesn’t want to cut Social Security.’ We now know that what he […]

August 10, 2020 – Americans expect and deserve more from their President in the midst of a pandemic and an economic crisis than a photo op and phony posturing at a golf club. Unwilling and unable to negotiate with Congress to deliver a relief package to a nation reeling from COVID-19, President Trump resorted to […]

Washington, D.C. August 8, 2020 – Today, after the U.S. Senate majority failed to even vote on any legislation to address the coronavirus pandemic, President Donald Trump signed executive orders purportedly regarding unemployment benefits, eviction protections, student loans, and a payroll tax deferral. Following the announcement of the orders, Neera Tanden, president and CEO of the Center for American Progress, issued the […]

August 5, 2020 – President Trump in recent days has repeatedlylabeled as “fake news” and “a hoax” swirling allegations that Moscow placed bounties on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. But his words — which echo the Kremlin’s propaganda  — ring characteristically hollow. That’s because numerous reports have now confirmed that Trump — who vowed “to always protect our great warfighters” — […]

August 3, 2020 – Earlier this year, my college students and I joined our chaplain and a graduate student in traveling to the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC. The insensitive treatment many attendees gave the terrors that the museum was trying to educate people about are being repeated in a new way: weaponizing the Holocaust […]

July 29, 2020 – During a recent campaign event, Jenna Ellis, an adviser to President Donald Trump, cut loose with the old Religious Right chestnut that separation of church and state isn’t part of the Constitution. “The left is going to tell you there’s this separation of church and state, and that’s just nowhere in […]

July 28, 2020 – James Thornton Harris is a contributing editor to the History News Network. For more information see www.JamesThorntonHarris.com. The year 1968 was one of the darkest in the nation’s history. With the public deeply divided over the toll of the Vietnam War (35,000 combat deaths by year’s end), the country was plunged into mourning […]

July 28, 2020 –Thea Lee is the president of the Economic Policy Institute. Yesterday, Senate Republicans unveiled their coronavirus relief plan—almost two and a half months after the House of Representatives passed the HEROES Act. Aside from the reckless and unconscionable delay, the HEALS Act fails miserably on two crucial objectives: supporting the people most harmed by […]

July 27, 2020 – Donald Trump’s presidency has settled into a familiar pattern: acts of corruption that benefit him personally followed by furious attempts to cover up his wrongdoing. From personal scandals and legal violations to relentlessly using the Presidency for personal gain, there is nothing Trump won’t do to help himself—no matter the cost to […]

July 24, 2020 – The Trump administration announced Tuesday that it will exclude unauthorized immigrants from the 2020 Census data used to reapportion the 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives among the 50 states, by matching Census data with administrative records. Without commenting on its constitutionality or legality, this plan seems likely to […]

Last month, we estimated the effect of allowing the $600 supplement to weekly unemployment insurance (UI) benefits to lapse at the end of July, as is currently scheduled. We found that this would strip away enough aggregate demand from the economy to slow growth in gross domestic product (GDP) by 3.7% over the next year. This slower […]

WASHINGTON, July 23, 2020 –Unless Congress acts,millionsof renters will be at risk of eviction starting tomorrow. That’s when the federal moratorium on evictions, which the federal government put in place at the beginning of the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, expires. These protections covered most residents of federally-backed properties. (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac haveextendeda moratorium on […]

July 23, 2020 – Note: Details of the agreement between the White House and U.S. Senate Republicans on a coronavirus response package have emerged. The proposal was negotiated by U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) McConnell has taken the wrong approach in almost every way. Instead of using the last several months to negotiate […]

July 22, 2020 – Some societies center on social control, others on social investment. Social-control societies put substantial resources into police, prisons, surveillance, immigration enforcement, and the military. Their purpose is to utilize fear, punishment, and violence to divide people and keep the status quo in place — perpetuating the systemic oppression of Black and […]

July 22, 2020 – The Trump administration is apparently undertaking its latest effort to make 2020 more of a Kafkaesque nightmare than it already is. Yes, we’ve got murder hornets and a swarm of flying ants that can be seen from space over in Ireland, but maybe the scariest plague of the year is the president. […]

July 21, 2020 – Elliott Young is a professor of History at Lewis & Clark College and the author of a forthcoming book Forever Prisoners: How the United States Made the Largest Immigrant Detention System in the World (Oxford University Press). The Supreme Court just made it a lot harder for asylum seekers, but its June 25 decision in Department of […]

WASHINGTON, DC, July 21, 2020 – President Trump issued an executive order Tuesday to prohibit undocumented immigrants from being counted in the 2020 census. This is despite the Constitution’s directive that the Census count “the whole number of persons” in the country for purposes of determining representation. The executive order follows last year’s Supreme Court […]