Front row from left, Representatives Veronica Escobar, Judy Chu, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Jimmy Gomez and Carolyn Maloney sing "God Bless America," outside the U.S. Capitol before the House voted to pass the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act on June 24, 2022. Tom Williams / CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
People embrace during a candlelight vigil in front of the U.S. Supreme Court to denounce the court's decision to end federal abortion rights protections on June 26, 2022, in Washington, D.C. Brandon Bell / Getty Images
Gabriel Sterling appears before Congress on June 21, 2022. (Mandel Ngan / AFP via Getty)
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In politics, it all comes down to salience.
We often hear about survey research confirming that most Americans believe X or Y (usually, a relatively liberal policy), and then wonder why we can’t get lawmakers to pass X or Y. The usual cynical answer is money–the folks bankrolling the lawmakers–and there is certainly truth to that.
But the most accurate explanation is salience–or more accurately, the lack thereof. How much do the people expressing their approval of policy X or Y actually care about the issue?
For the past 15 years, since June 2007, 2 million Palestinians have lived under a strict siege in a narrow strip along the Mediterranean Sea, 20 miles long and 3 to 5 miles wide. Israel withdrew its 7000 settlers from that strip in 2005 but then surrounded it with walls, fences, and guns. No person or goods can enter or leave the Strip without Israel’s approval. Egypt also controls the one remaining opening in the South, but it does so in coordination with Israel and according to its wishes.
Republican Sen. John Cornyn is booed at a Texas GOP conference in Houston, June 19, 2022. (KHOU-11/YouTube)
In outright suggesting a “prohibition” on a Palestinian state, the platform goes farther than the 2016 national GOP platform, which withdrew Republican support for a two-state outcome.
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The Texas Republican Party approved a platform that supports the “prohibition” of a Palestinian state in lands that Israel now controls.
After Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the country’s third-most powerful democratic socialist may be a former elementary school teacher you might never have heard of.
President Joe Biden nominated media activist Gigi Sohn to the Federal Communications Commission in October, to fill a Democratic seat vacant since January 2021. He renominated Sohn this January. Why has she not been confirmed yet? Advocates suspect the corporate media lobby is trying to sink the nomination of the staunch consumer advocate.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis listens as his wife Casey DeSantis speaks during a press conference at the University of Miami Health System's Don Soffer Clinical Research Center on May 17, 2022, in Miami, Florida. JOE RAEDLE / GETTY IMAGES
With the unexpected lull in the January 6 hearings, I find myself mulling over the state of electoral play here in the good ol’ U.S.A., where everything always makes sense because there’s an algorithm or a conspiracy theory to light the way.
Let me see if I have this right.
When COVID-19 descended upon the United States, college and university administrators used the disruption caused by the pandemic to slash the jobs of adjunct faculty. Now, two years into the pandemic, these same administrators are continuing to use the conditions of the pandemic to rapidly accelerate the same neoliberal transformations they had been pushing for pre-pandemic, such as replacing “expensive” tenure-line faculty with a cheaper and more exploitable adjunct workforce.
According to the Indiana Commission for Higher Education, folks with a bachelor's degree have an average annual salary about $33,000 higher than those with a high school diploma. (Adobe Stock)
Video recordings of Republican Party operatives meeting with grassroots activists provide an inside look at a multi-pronged strategy to target and potentially overturn votes in Democratic precincts: Install trained recruits as regular poll workers and put them in direct contact with party attorneys.
Let’s start with the obvious. President Biden is right. America has to ban the legal sale of rapid-firing military assault weapons capable of murdering hundreds of human beings within minutes. Mass murderers use those weapons every year in our country to kill hundreds of people including precious little children.
We’re the only civilized nation on earth that allows military weapons with high-capacity magazines to be openly sold to civilians. That’s why we lead the world in mass murders and school shootings.
Background: After a 1996 firearm massacre in Tasmania in which 35 people died, Australian governments united to remove semi-automatic and pump-action shotguns and rifles from civilian possession, as a key component of gun law reforms.
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Purdue University and Duke Energy announced today (April 27) that they plan to jointly explore the feasibility of using advanced nuclear energy to meet the campus community’s long-term energy needs.
With interest rising worldwide in new technologies that are reliable and carbon-free, Purdue and Duke Energy intend to study power produced through Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), a move that may be unprecedented for a college campus and a potential fit for Purdue’s energy needs.
Certainly at least 99.9% of Americans do not want school children gunned down in school—or at any other location or time. Not even the most avid of gun collectors or hunters want school kids massacred by guns—or by any other means. Nor for guns to be the death of any child, anytime, for any reason. Nor does any caring person want this most powerful of nations to be unable to keep schoolchildren safe at their desks. Guns are now the leading cause of death for kids. And U.S.
It's a hard sell to call the US the greatest country in the world when politicians are allowing children to be murdered by 18 yr olds with assault weapons!
According to Feeding America, more than 834,000 Hoosiers are considered food insecure. (Adobe Stock)
President Biden on Tuesday confirmed that his administration is sending medium-range advanced rocket systems to Ukraine, responding to a top request from Ukrainian officials who say the weapons are necessary to curb the advance of Russian
CounterSpin interviews with Igor Volsky and Pat Elder on gun violence
According to a new report, about 600,000 Americans were locked up in county jails in 2021, 75% in pre-trial detention. (Adobe Stock)
Click here A Survey of Hoosiers' Environmental Opinions and Attitudes
Amid continuing violent clashes in Jerusalem with Palestinian reporters among the victims and Israeli airforce attacks on media outlets in Gaza City, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemns Israel’s disproportionate use of force against journalists, who should under no circumstances be treated as parties to the armed conflict.
Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, a well-known and much-loved Al Jazeera reporter who covered Palestine for two decades, was shot and killed by an Israeli sniper May 11 while documenting an Israeli raid on the Jenin refugee camp in the Occupied West Bank.
One evening about seven years ago in St. Andrews, Scotland, I was walking home from a long day of doctoral research. Most people out that night were not concluding studies. A scattered few exited the ancient city’s meager collection of pubs and restaurants.
[Editor's Note: Our peace partners in Israel are asking us to ask you to write to your elected Congressional representatives to call upon them to insist that their government take strong actions to challenge what Israel is doing directly to the Israeli prime ministers, defense ministers, and the international, national, and local media, which has largely ignored this outrage. - Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor Tikkun]
Courtesy of HBO Films
A new documentary about the underground abortion collective prefigures current events.
We Chicagoans are a proud bunch, and usually with good reason. For many, we’re especially appreciative of our city’s radical history, from the echoing impact of the storied Haymarket Affair to things happening now which will undoubtedly become part of our oppidan tapestry. The aptly named Windy City nevertheless endures as a weathered barometer of this country’s leftist politics.