Republicans Archives - Public Seminar

Politics

Listen to Joe: (Some) Republicans Do Want To Take Your Social Security and Medicare

They always have: here’s the history the GOP doesn’t want you to know

February 14, 2023 • by Claire Potter

Republicans are always trying to cut virtually every program that makes life worth living—education, the arts, research—and social programs...

Corporations

Election Day 2022: Good (and Some Bad) News for State Corporate Power Politics

Big tech antagonists did well, but so did megadeal boosters

November 14, 2022 • by Pat Garofalo

Big Tech antagonists won big in attorneys general races. So did all of the governors who have been promoting major corporate subsidy deals in recent months won their reelection races, lending more evidence to the already existing heap of it that massive corporate handouts can be potent political tools....

Election Day 2022: Good (and Some Bad) News for State Corporate Power Politics

Education

The Politics of Student Loan Cancellation

The American Left needs to keep pressing for more ambitious solutions to the problem of student debt

September 15, 2022 • by Jackson Todd

Biden’s action on student debt indicates that Americans may be ready to move on from the austerity politics that defined the Republican Party from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump....

The Politics of Student Loan Cancellation

Democracy

Donald Trump Must Face Federal Charges

A look back at the Weimar Republic should teach us a lesson about bringing insurrectionists to justice

July 19, 2022 • by Claudia Koonz

Before writing off the theatrics of the GOP as a mere sideshow, we should pause to remember how Adolf Hitler snatched victory from a catastrophic attempted putsch in 1923. ...

Politics

Movements and Parties or Movement Parties?

Our contemporary conundrum

March 30, 2022 • by Sidney Tarrow

But how deeply have these recent developments disrupted the forms of the two main political parties? Are we still dealing—as the title of my book implies—with “movements and parties?” Or with movement-parties, hybrids that have added the passions of movements to the parties, while depriving the parties of one of ...

Movements and Parties or Movement Parties?

Columnists

Conservative Democrats are Telling Stories About Republicans that Republicans Keep Blowing Up

Will being made a fool change Joe Manchin’s mind? Probably

June 22, 2021 • by John Stoehr

_____ The Democrats in the United States Senate will take up a procedural vote later today to debate of a handful of measures to overhaul the country’s voting laws. All eyes are on Joe Manchin, the conservative Democrat from West Virginia, who has offered his own voting proposal in addition to ...

Conservative Democrats are Telling Stories About Republicans that Republicans Keep Blowing Up

Democracy

As Biden Reverses GOP Policies, SCOTUS May Stand In the Way

An all-out legal attack by Republican attorneys general will be warmly welcomed by Trump appointees

March 25, 2021 • by Heather Cox Richardson

_____ As the Biden administration sets out to restore a government that can regulate business to level the playing field in the United States between workers and employers, address inequality, and combat climate change, Republicans are turning to the courts to stop him. Republican attorneys general have already launched a number of lawsuits ...

As Biden Reverses GOP Policies, SCOTUS May Stand In the Way

Columnists

Don’t Believe the Republicans. The Fix is In

The only authority they respect is theirs

February 11, 2021 • by John Stoehr

I know what Mitch McConnell said, but I’m not a fool. Neither are you. He continues to leak information about “his thinking” to reporters who in turn tell us the Senate minority leader believes a vote for Donald Trump’s guilt or innocence is a matter of conscience in his party, ...

Don’t Believe the Republicans. The Fix is In

Politics

Are Americans Rethinking Who They Are?

“Consumers” and “taxpayers” can’t save a republic

July 28, 2020 • by John Stoehr

This is bad policy and bad politics, as my friend Marty Longman wrote last week. Two hundred bucks weekly is better than a payroll tax cut. No one would see that (especially if they’re unemployed). But people would see less money coming in amid a pandemic, recession, and housing crisis just ...

Capitalism

How Billionaires Get Away With Their Big Con

The rich have been successfully chipping away at Americans’ trust in government for decades

July 9, 2020 • by Thom Hartmann

About 75 percent of Americans trusted the federal government to “do what is right” when polled during most of the last years of the Eisenhower administration and early years of Lyndon B. Johnson’s presidency. In 2019, when the Pew Research Center released its most recent poll of public trust in the government, only 17 percent ...

How Billionaires Get Away With Their Big Con

Politics

The Rise of Liberal Support for Racial Justice

The critical factor connecting protest and electoral politics today

June 25, 2020 • by Sanford Schram and Richard Fording

There has been extensive commentary about the protests over the recent murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, with some suggesting parallels to the 1960s. But a number of observers have incisively pointed out differences as well, noting the racial diversity of today’s protesters compared to those who took to the streets ...

The Rise of Liberal Support for Racial Justice

Politics

Why Don’t We Call It Treason?

John Bolton confirms what Senate Republicans already knew

June 24, 2020 • by John Stoehr

I don’t like John Bolton any more than you do. He’s a crank. He’s a snob. He’s a warmonger. One thing you can’t question, though, is his loyalty. No matter how wrongheaded, how dangerous, how much he prefers airstrikes to diplomacy, you can’t doubt his dedication to the United States. ...