North America Archives - Page 7 of 22

North America

A Reality-Show Coup with Real Fascists Inside

The MAGA insurrection will be a forever reality show for recruiting new right-wing activists

January 18, 2021 • by Todd Gitlin

On January 6, Donald Trump’s spectacular MAGA insurrection radiated far beyond Capitol Hill. It was screened everywhere, over every known medium—broadcast, social, antisocial, what have you. The events and their meanings have been stockpiled in a cornucopian arsenal of propaganda, digital weaponry that is not done ravaging the world. The videos ...

A Reality-Show Coup with Real Fascists Inside

Democracy

Hopeful New Year!

Five Notes Against Despair, 2021

January 14, 2021 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

The Covid-19 pandemic is spreading and is ineffectively controlled, as is the global political pandemic, spectacularly on view in Washington, D.C. White supremacy and politicized misogyny, homophobia and transphobia are becoming ever more virulent, supporting an ascendent right-wing authoritarianism around the world. Economic and social inequalities are increasing, as police ...

Columnists

The Trump Administration Wanted You and Your Kids to Get Sick

December 17, 2020 • by Heather Cox Richardson

The reality that Joe Biden is about to become president, and Kamala Harris vice president, is sinking in across Washington, and we now have some indications of what that’s going to mean. Stories about what exactly happened in the Trump administration are coming out, and they are not pretty. For members ...

The Trump Administration Wanted You and Your Kids to Get Sick

North America

Is Trump Right Not to Surrender?

How the Commander in Chief’s refusal to face defeat squares with the U.S. military’s Code of Conduct

December 16, 2020 • by Kelsey Baker

It’s become another endless loop of the Trump administration: the constant refrain that the President won the election, the recurrent assertion that massive fraud occurred on November 3. Sources within the White House have compared the President’s refusal to concede to the ramblings of Mad King George. Ironically, Trump’s refusal to ...

Democracy

Stoking the Flames

The Trump wing of the Republican Party continues its attacks on American democracy as the COVID-19 death toll continues to rise

December 10, 2020 • by Heather Cox Richardson

Today’s big story remains the loss of our neighbors to COVID-19. On Wednesday, the official United States death count for 24 hours passed the number of those killed in the 9/11 attacks. On that horrific day in 2001, we lost 2,977 people to four terrorist attacks. On Wednesday, December 9, ...

Democracy

Donald Trump’s Lies

Why presidential falsehoods are part of United States political history

December 8, 2020 • by Eric Alterman and Claire Potter

Do Americans think presidential lying no longer matters? Perhaps a better question, journalist and historian Eric Alterman asks in his new book, Lying in State: Why Presidents Lie—and Why Trump is Worse (Basic Books, 2020), is whether it ever mattered to voters. Following in the tradition of Isadore F. “Izzy” ...

Democracy

None Dare Call It Treason

Is calling for a military coup Michael Flynn’s payback for his pardon?

December 3, 2020 • by Heather Cox Richardson

On the evening of December 2, Trump’s disgraced former National Security Advisor, retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn-- whom Trump recently pardoned after he pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with then-Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak before Trump took office-- retweeted a news release from ...

North America

Democrats Have a Religion Problem

2020 confirms a trend of religious voters moving away from the Democrats, with a few notable exceptions

December 2, 2020 • by Musa al-Gharbi

_____ In a previous essay I demonstrated that Democrats have been consistently losing ground with both people of color and people of faith in virtually every midterm and general election cycle after 2008. Republicans, meanwhile, have seen consistent gains with many constituencies. What occurred in 2016, therefore, was not an aberration – but the culmination ...

Columnists

Can the Republican Party Move Forward After the Inauguration?

As Biden creates a cabinet that looks like America, Trump is determined to keep hold of a party that has courted White Supremacists for decades

November 25, 2020 • by Heather Cox Richardson

At about 6:00 on Monday, Emily Murphy, the Trump appointee at the head of General Services Administration who has been holding up the transition to a Biden administration, notified President-Elect Joe Biden that she recognizes his status and will release the money set aside for the transition. This should launch ...

Can the Republican Party Move Forward After the Inauguration?

Columnists

How the Constitution Stopped Trump’s Attempted Coup d’État

Federalism saved us

November 24, 2020 • by John Stoehr

The US government “ascertained” Joe Biden’s victory on Monday night. That means the President-Elect can get on with the business of building a new administration. The move came after Emily Murphy, the head of the General Services Administration, found the political cover she needed to authorize his transition team. Donald Trump has ...

How the Constitution Stopped Trump’s Attempted Coup d’État

Democracy

New Voters and Bells: What Toppled Trump

In one of the most pivotal elections in our history, first-time and young voters found their voices

November 24, 2020 • by Ryan Keeney

Joe Biden is the President Elect. As we wait for the Trump administration to finish its thrashing death throes in court, it’s important to remember in a time of vastly unequal wealth distribution (thank you Mr. Bezos!), in spite of overt attempts from Republicans to suppress voters in the 2020 ...

New Voters and Bells: What Toppled Trump

Democracy

A Chinese Student’s Perspective on America’s Presidential Election

Young Americans and Chinese have more in common than meets the eye

November 24, 2020 • by Liuchang "Helen" Tan

On the night of November 3rd, I, like many of the 360,000 Chinese students in the U.S., was compulsively refreshing the electoral map and rooting for the Democrats to win by a landslide. In the previous four years, Chinese students had watched in shock and horror as the Trump administration relentlessly ...