On March 12, 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic.

A federal program created by Congress more than 30 years ago transferred 80,000 rifles, 12,000 bayonets, 4,000 combat knives, nearly 500 ‘bomb detonator robots,’ 50 airplanes, ‘night-vision sniper scopes,’ and more to local police

Most Americans are probably unaware that police departments across the country have access to grenade launchers, drones, armored vehicles, and other military-grade equipment. But they do, thanks to an obscure federal policy allowing the military to transfer surplus equipment to law enforcement. 

It’s very likely that Stacey Abrams is not governor of Georgia today because in 2018, she and thousands of the state’s voters were victims of voter suppression that propelled then–Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp into the governor’s office.

Even though President Donald Trump had telegraphed his intent months in advance to steal the 2020 election, by planning to get judges, state legislators and/or the Electoral College to illegitimately declare him the winner—laying out a pretext by lying about widespread voter fraud—corporate media were slow to accurately convey the reality and significance of Trump’s election theft efforts.

When I was a small child, my parents took me to Starved Rock State Park, in LaSalle, Ill. Three hundred years earlier, on a rock formation 125 feet above the Illinois River, a group of Native Americans had taken refuge while being attacked by enemies from below. Fully surrounded, cut off from the outside world and its sustenance, they had eventually died of hunger and thirst.

U.S jails and prisons, already death traps, have been completely ravaged by COVID-19. Crowded quarters, a lack of PPE, inadequate medical care, an aging population, and unsanitary conditions have contributed to an infection rate 5.5 times higher than the already ballooned average in the U.S.

Janine Jackson: Proposition 22, or the “Protect App-Based Drivers and Services Act,” passed in California on November 3, after what the New York Times glossed as a “really, really expensive battle over the future of work.” In reality, the spending was quite one-sided—companies, including Uber and Lyft, spent

When Alexia Isais’s phone registered a Blue Alert earlier this fall, informing her that there had been an attack on a local police officer, she quickly tweeted her reaction. “They can all go fall into the abyss and society would be better without them,” she wrote.

Isais, a political science student at Arizona State University, is known for being outspoken. “As a Mexican American woman, I have a right to object to conditions and institutions that have ruined people’s lives,” she told Truthout. Among her most frequent subjects: Police abuse, racism and white supremacy.

Juvenile crime rates are plummeting, and the number of Americans in juvenile detention has dropped. One report shows the juvenile incarceration rate dropped 41 percent between 1995 and 2010.

In a House Education and Labor Committee hearing Monday, lawmakers predicted the ongoing coronavirus pandemic could widen racial funding gaps between wealthy and low-income public school districts. 

It’s well known that students of color are underrepresented in gifted programs compared to white and Asian students. Attempting to understand why, a new study from Vanderbilt University investigates how student, teacher, and school characteristics affect pupil assignment to gifted programs in reading and math.

To pay the bills, they must go to work. And theirs is work that cannot be done from the confines of home, distanced by email and Zoom meetings from the deadly dangers of the coronavirus.

People across the country are waking up to structural racism and coping with police brutality and civil unrest while also living through the nightmare of the COVID-19 pandemic. They’re mourning losses and longing for life to get back to normal.

The developing United States international obsession with China (leaving aside the super-exploitation of Chinese labor and profound anti-Chinese racism in the United States), has its roots in the rise of the US as a great power. As historians such as William Appleman Williams have pointed out, the United States emerged as an industrial power on the world stage between the end of the Civil War and the 1890s.

Corporate media outlets such as Forbes (9/11/20), Bloomberg (9/15/20), CNN (9/15/20) and the Washington Post (

The first thing you need to understand about Florida’s poll tax—which U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle sharply limited on Sunday—is that the state has no idea how to implement it. Setting aside the racial and democratic implications, the law sounds straightforward: It obligates former felons to pay all fines and fees associated with their sentence before they can cast a ballot.

Nearly five months after Newark schools went entirely virtual and just one week before online classes resume, the state’s largest school district is still struggling to get every student online.

INDIANAPOLIS -- One in four U.S. households faces a high energy-cost burden, and it's a hardship that a new report finds disproportionately affects certain demographics.

Israel is bombing Palestine again, although you likely wouldn’t guess that from watching TV news. For the eleventh straight night, Israeli Defense Force warplanes have been bombing the densely populated Gaza Strip. Israel’s bombs have caused considerable damage, forcing the shutdown of the area’s only power plant.

Across the U.S., the push to reopen schools is predicated on troubling beliefs about schools and families. Time at home is assumed to result in “learning loss” because our institutions measure learning and achievement by standardized test scores, and do not consider students’ families as a source of education. Besides chasing test score gains, the driving goal for reopening schools is facilitating parents’ return to work — regardless of the health consequences for all involved.

A short and rather vaguely worded open letter published in Harper’s Magazine (7/7/20) earlier this month caused an unlikely media storm that continues to rumble on. Glossing over right-wing threats to the First Amendment, the letter, signed by 150 writers, journalists and other public figures, decried a new intolerance to dissent and a threat to freedom of speech coming from the left.

Several months into the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, lower-income families are struggling to pay their energy bills.

Public education in the U.S. has been under severe attack for many years now, thanks to the dominance of neoliberal thinking and policies across the societal spectrum. However, the coronavirus pandemic has sparked a new crisis in the nation’s public education system as a result of having created huge holes in school budgets, especially in high-poverty areas. Yet, there are ways to prevent the collapse of the public education system in the U.S., if there is a will to do so.

Congressional leaders are squaring off over the next pandemic relief bill in a debate over whom Congress should step up to protect: front-line workers seeking more safeguards from the ravages of COVID-19 or beleaguered employers seeking relief from lawsuits.

Democrats want to enact an emergency standard meant to bolster access to protective gear for health care and other workers and to bar employers from retaliating against them for airing safety concerns.

NDIANAPOLIS -- New research outlines where Indiana stands in terms of people's educational achievement after high school, and highlights the value of credential programs for workers.