Op-Ed

Nov. 14, 2016 – Statement of Tyson Slocum, Director, Public Citizen’s Energy Program Note: In a letter sent Thursday, the Alliance of Automobile Manufactures asked the incoming Trump administration to roll back fuel efficiency standards. Legislation signed by Republican President George W. Bush in 2007 directed the U.S. Department of Transportation and the U.S. Environmental […]

Nov. 14, 2016 – America died on Nov. 8, 2016, not with a bang or a whimper, but at its own hand via electoral suicide. We the people chose a man who has shredded our values, our morals, our compassion, our tolerance, our decency, our sense of common purpose, our very identity — all the […]

President-elect Donald Trump’s first White House hire tells you everything you need to know about his commitment to his campaign’s bigoted message. Stephen Bannon, an anti-Semite who ran the white nationalist “alt-right” website Breitbart News before taking a leave of absence to become the Trump campaign CEO, will be Trump’s chief strategist and senior counselor. […]

November 10, 2016 – Over the coming weeks there will be much navel gazing. How did we get it so wrong? There were so many uncertainties in the lead up to the 2016 US election result, but one thing is clear: journalism, just like the pollsters, failed. Stuck in their offices in Washington and New York, […]

Nov. 9, 2016 – Today, we’re facing a new reality – a president-elect who has denigrated people because of their race, their religion, their ethnicity, their gender, and more. Our mission is to hold Donald Trump to what he is saying now – that he will be a president for all Americans and that he […]

Nov. 10, 2016 – As a first step, I believe it necessary for the members and leadership of the Democratic National Committee to step down and be replaced by people who are determined to create a party that represents America – including all those who feel powerless and disenfranchised, and who have been left out […]

November 9, 2016 – The campaign is done. The votes are counted. And America is waking up from one of the strangest, angriest and most divisive presidential campaigns in recent memory. So I’ll be the first to say it: Congratulations, President-elect Trump. For the good of the nation, I hope you succeed. We don’t agree […]

Nov. 7, 2016 – After the drudgery of the 2016 election, many Americans may want to take conflict mediator Mark Gerzon’s advice for a “transpartisan vacation.” In The Reunited States of America, readers are invited to suspend their regular partisan identities, to be free from “defending all your old positions from those who disagree.” But […]

November 7, 2016 – The 2016 American presidential campaign has renewed concerns about the specter of violence in American electoral politics. The campaign has been marked by tense – and occasionally violent – altercations between supporters and critics of Republican nominee Donald Trump. Trump encouraged his supporters to “knock the crap” out of protesters, and […]

November 2, 2016 – Ray Raphael’s The U. S. Constitution: The Citizen’s Annotated Edition (Vintage, 2016) is now available as an ebook. Among his nine previous books on the Founding Era are Mr. President: How and Why the Founders Created a Chief Executive(Knopf, 2012) andConstitutional Myths(The New Press, 2013). Two weeks ago, Senator John McCain […]

WASHINGTON, DC, Nov. 2, 2016 – Statement of Wenonah Hauter, Executive Director, Food & Water Watch After months of unceasing pressure from peaceful water protectors at Standing Rock, people backed by unprecedented unity among North American tribes, it’s not surprising that President Obama has been forced to comment on the controversial Dakota Access pipeline. Now he needs […]

Nov. 2, 2016 – Evading security cameras in the remote expanse along the U.S. border, three Guatemalans waited till dusk to slip illicitly into our country. This is the stuff of Donald Trump nightmares — and if he were to witness such a scene, we can only imagine the furious rants that would follow. But […]

Nov. 2, 2016 – When 95-year-old Rosanell Eaton first registered to vote in the Jim Crow South, she was forced to pass a written literacy test and recite the preamble of the Constitution from memory. Seven decades after becoming one of the first African American voters in her county, Eaton once again found herself facing […]

Nov. 1, 2016 – The anti-Muslim think tank Center for Security Policy (CSP) announced that it will present the current Israeli ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer, with its highest award at a Dec.13 ceremony in New York City. The decision by the ambassador to accept CSP’s Freedom Flame award not only further legitimizes this organization, but could […]

CHICAGO, Oct. 31, 2016 – Statement of Mary Meg McCarthy, Executive Director, National Immigrant Justice Center The National Immigrant Justice Center joins our colleagues at 230 immigrant and civil rights organizations in condemning the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) rapid expansion of its immigrant detention system. Twelve former immigration judges and members of the Board […]

PORTLAND, Ore. October 28, 2016 – The trial of seven people involved in the armed takeover of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in southeastern Oregon came to a close last night with the announcement of a jury verdict acquitting the defendants. The trial included federal charges brought against Ammon Bundy, the leader of an anti-government group […]

Oct. 28, 2016 – This morning, politics is crowded out by injustice. Every preposterous and painful image from North Dakota is another reminder of injustice: The massive military-style police occupation of Standing Rock treaty lands, the rush to protect the frantic construction schedule for the Dakota Access pipeline, and the brutal law enforcement march against people […]

Oct. 30, 2016 – The parallels are striking. In the last decades of the nineteenth century – the so-called “Gilded Age”— America experienced inequality on a scale it had never before seen, combining wild opulence and searing poverty. American industry consolidated into a few giant monopolies, or trusts, headed by “robber barons” who wielded enough […]

Oct. 31, 2016 – Ronald L. Feinman is the author of Assassinations, Threats, and the American Presidency: From Andrew Jackson to Barack Obama (Rowman Littlefield Publishers, August 2015). A paperback edition is coming in March 2017. In the Presidential Election of 2016, we have two third party movements that could impact the results of the election and […]

Oct. 27, 2016 – Every now and then, I find it useful to take a break from monitoring the familiar Religious Right groups and venture into the darker corners of the web where the lunatic fringe lurks. You see some interesting – and disturbing – things there. For example, a group of far-right, fundamentalist Lutherans […]