Beto O’Rourke is sick of people telling him to run for Senate again. “You know the question’s going to keep coming up,” MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell told O’Rourke on Thursday, “this question of what about dropping out of this presidential race and taking up the race for the Senate.” “Let me make your show the place […]
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It took 243 years, but the path to the United States presidency, or at least the Democratic nomination, will run through Indian Country. On August 19 and 20, eight presidential candidates will descend on Sioux City, IA, to participate in the Frank Lamere Native Presidential Forum. The two-day event, named after the late member of […]
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The recession alarm bells are sounding. Anxiety about the direction of the global economy has been growing for some time, amid concern about President Trump’s trade war with China, economic slowdowns in major economies like China and Germany, and Brexit. On Wednesday, the country received perhaps the strongest signal yet of an upcoming recession when […]
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If you have $10 million or so lying around, you can buy your way into a Democratic debate. That, at least, was one lesson from Tom Steyer’s announcement Tuesday that he had—after spending $7 million on television commercials and $3.5 million on online advertisements (including $2.6 million on Facebook ads alone)—likely purchased a lectern at […]
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Donald Trump at a campaign rally Aug. 13, 2019, in Monaca, Pa.Photo: Jeff Swensen (Getty) No matter how unpopular Donald Trump is (approval rating at last check a mere 42 percent), there are many a pundit predicting the Electoral College will come through for him and his re-election hopes come Election Day 2020. But a […]
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For nearly three decades, American immigration policies have re-enforced the false notion that undocumented immigrants are dangerous criminals. From Bill Clinton’s militarization of the southern border in 1993 to the creation of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after the 9/11 attacks—and now to Donald Trump’s detention of asylum seekers in concentration camps—Washington has normalized the […]
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It all started in the sleepy upstate town of Hydesville, New York. There, in March of 1848, the Fox sisters—10-year-old Kate and 14-year-old Maggie—convinced their older sister, 34-year-old Leah, that they contacted a spirit with the ominous name of Mr. Splitfoot who, by raps, knocks, and the cracking of toe joints, conveyed knowledge from the […]
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“Abolish the Electoral College,” Bernie Sanders recently tweeted. The Senator’s statement was in response to an op-ed authored by The Cook Political Report’s Dave Wasserman, who posited that though President Donald Trump suffers from a low national approval rating, the Electoral College could still hand him a victory. Earlier in the day, The New York […]
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“Abolish the Electoral College,” Bernie Sanders recently tweeted. The Senator’s statement was in response to an op-ed authored by The Cook Political Report’s Dave Wasserman, who posited that though President Donald Trump suffers from a low national approval rating, the Electoral College could still hand him a victory. Earlier in the day, The New York […]
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Photo: Mario Tama (Getty Images) Young black people are more likely than their peers to consider themselves Democrats—and “strong Democrats” at that—but nearly a third of them believe the Democratic Party doesn’t care about them, according to a recent poll. A new study from Gen Forward, a University of Chicago-based polling initiative, takes a deeper […]
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Pity the poor optimist who was hoping to see Joe Biden or Kamala Harris tested on a core component of the job they’re seeking. The president of the United States, as the country’s primary representative abroad, commander of the armed forces, and overseer of all ambassadorial relations, has extraordinary power to shape global affairs. But […]
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In 1971, soon-to-be Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. wrote a memo to Eugene Sydnor Jr., the education director at the United States Chamber of Commerce. Powell told Sydnor and the Chamber that if the capitalist class wanted to be taken seriously in the halls of power, it would have to engage in a […]
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Rep. Al Green (D-Texas)Photo: Chip Somodevilla (Getty) Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) set off the impeachment bomb in the House Tuesday evening when he formally submitted articles of impeachment against Donald Trump over the misgivings of House leadership and some of his Democratic colleagues. According to the New York Times, the move came hours after the […]
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For most of this year, Joe Biden has strutted across stages in New Hampshire and Iowa, and at swanky fundraisers in New York and California, as if he were already the Democratic nominee. Questions about attacks from his rivals were, more often than not, met with a toothy grin—and a politician’s version of “I don’t […]
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Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) speaks during the Spotify House Of Are & Be Podcast Session Presenting “Jemele Hill Is Unbothered Live With Senator Kamala Harris” on July 6, 2019, in New Orleans.Photo: Daniel Boczarski (Getty Images for Spotify) “Some might think that breaking barriers means you start out on one side of the barrier and […]
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In this 2014 photo, Rep. Lacy Clay (D-Mo.) speaks to demonstrators gathered in Ferguson, Mo., to protest the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown.Photo: Scott Olson (Getty) Veteran African-American Democrats in the House are taking freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to task over how she’s come for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and comments AOC’s chief of […]
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On Wednesday, Nancy Pelosi reminded her caucus who the real enemy is, telling them that they needed to present a united front in the fight against Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump. “Without that unity, we are playing completely into the hands of the other people,” Pelosi said, according to the Associated Press. “We’re a family […]
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Voters in North Carolina, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Maryland deserve fair maps that don’t lock in a partisan advantage for either Republicans or Democrats. Federal courts nationwide had recently begun to insist on that, repeatedly declaring districts tainted with extreme partisan intent unconstitutional. The Supreme Court put an end to that dream last week. Its […]
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Donald Trump tried to turn Independence Day into a celebration of himself. It was— thanks to poor planning, bad weather, and his hubris—a catastrophe. But a day later, Trump found another, less expensive way to throw a victory parade: The release of the unexpectedly good jobs numbers from June. “Record 157,005,000 Employed; 19th Record of […]
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Hours before Thursday’s Democratic presidential debate, the Supreme Court issued two rulings that could greatly affect our democracy. One decision failed to stop the drive toward increasingly partisan gerrymanders, and the other temporarily blocked the Trump Administration’s attempt to leverage the decennial United States Census for partisan advantage. Despite this timely news peg, the debate moderators failed to […]
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