President Biden’s Earth Day climate summit is a rebuke to Trump’s denialism. But it’s only a start.
America abandoned its position of leadership on climate change under Donald Trump, and it cost us. It cost us the very international standing he swore he so valued, and, more importantly, it cost us precious time to battle the climate crisis. President Joe Biden and the entire U.S. government now have a pivotal opportunity to […]
As the US withdraws from Afghanistan, what is our plan for the aftermath?
President Biden’s decision to withdraw US military forces from Afghanistan should bring back memories and lessons from previous withdrawals of American troops, and their aftermaths. In particular, there are traumatic lessons from US withdrawals out of conflicts in Southeast Asia. Related: ‘Time to end America’s longest war’: Biden announces timetable for Afghanistan withdrawal Few if […]
How Right-Wing Dark Money Is Trying to Kneecap the Biden DOJ
Someone is targeting Biden Justice Department nominees Vanita Gupta and Kristen Clarke with attacks. Why? Both nominees hold exceptional records as litigators and civils rights activists. The respect they’ve earned extends beyond the civil rights movement and progressives to law enforcement and leading conservatives. They ought to be consensus picks. But pull back the curtain, […]
Following US Capitol attack, we senators must investigate fellow members of Congress — and follow the money
My first signal that things were seriously awry was when Capitol Police officers brought a badly shaken colleague to shelter in my Capitol hideaway. “They’re in the building,” she said. Shortly after, I was evacuated as the United States of America lost control of its Capitol to a violent pro-Trump mob intent on stopping the […]
Credibility Crisis: ‘Dark Money’ Influence Could Soon Become a Constitutional Right
The Supreme Court faces a credibility crisis. This crisis intensifies after nearly $100 million in anonymous funding—known as “dark money”—entered the confirmation fights of the last three justices. At the same time, the country faces a dark-money crisis as anonymous influence spreads malicious disinformation and corrupts and disrupts our politics. And now a case before […]
Beacon a lesson for hospital merger
As prospects for a merger between Rhode Island’s two hospital systems appear to grow more promising (“Lifespan, CNE Move Forward With Letter of Intent to Merge,” PBN, Sept. 9), there are important questions of monopoly and potential abuse of market power that deserve discussion. Health care is an arena of our economy less suited to […]
Carbon pricing represents the best answer to our climate danger
One of us is a labor leader from a union whose members are hard at work in all facets of energy generation, from coal-fired and nuclear power plants to natural gas and renewable energy systems. The other represents a coastal state at grave risk because of climate change. We have come together in an unusual […]
Amy Coney Barrett rose from corporations’ crusade for power over the Supreme Court
There’s a scheme being run on the American people, and, as we embark on this rushed and bitter fight over whether to confirm Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, the American people ought to understand what’s really going on. It almost doesn’t matter who President Donald Trump picked to replace Justice Ruth Bader […]
Why we can’t just “move on”: We need accountability for Donald Trump’s misdeeds
Barack Obama’s administration made the policy decision to look forward, not back, and to leave the misdeeds of George W. Bush’s administration to history’s judgment. That would be a mistake for the incoming Biden administration. Donald Trump and his henchmen have made a concerted attack on American democracy, and done so much corrupting damage that […]
America’s Captured Courts
WASHINGTON, DC – Any objective observer of the American political system must wonder why, when the United States confronts the world’s highest COVID-19 death toll and a ravaged economy, US Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will do nothing but confirm outgoing President Donald Trump’s appointees to the federal judiciary. It’s strange behaviour. The explanation is […]
