Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats thoroughly outplayed Donald Trump in January’s legislative battle over funding for his border wall; he didn’t get an additional dime. So when Trump sent up his annual proposed budget asking for still more, Democrats scoffed.…
Why Populism?
by jeff.faux •
There is much handwringing among mainstream politicians and pundits over the loss of American leadership, dangers to the liberal international world order, and the retrograde nationalism of the new populism. Yet elites on both sides of the Atlantic continue to ignore the…
Mexico’s Hopeful New President
by jeff.faux •
The election of the left populist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador as president of Mexico is an historic breakthrough for progressives there. It could also offer progressives in the United States a path out of their own political stalemate on immigration…
The Case for Solidarity; race and class fifty years after the Kerner Commission
by jeff.faux •
On March 1, 1968, a presidential commission chaired by Governor Otto Kerner of Illinois issued what became an historic report on race relations in the United States. The nation, it concluded, was actually two societies: one white, the other black–…
How What We Do There Drives Central Americans Here
by jeff.faux •
The “caravan” of some 200 Central American refugees at our southern border has given Donald Trump another opportunity to inflame the already incendiary debate over immigration from the south. Tweeting that “our country is being stolen,” he called out the National…
Attack on Syria; Who is Left to Defend the Rule of Law?
by jeff.faux •
In addition to the three Syrian chemical facilities they attacked on Friday, Donald Trump’s missiles hit a target they didn’t aim at –– the veneer of hypocrisy that allows the American governing class to justify itself as the global champion…
Why Are U.S. Troops Still in South Korea, Anyway?
by jeff.faux •
For the past year, Donald Trump and his chief advisers have responded to North Korea’s nuclear-weapons program by warning that “everything is on the table”—including war. That is not true. Missing from the table is the one option that could…
Ron Blackwell (1946–2018)
by jeff.faux •
Ron Blackwell, a friend to the Economic Policy Institute since its early days, died on February 25. Ron had a long career in the labor movement, starting with the Amalgamated Textile Workers Union in New York, moving to the AFL-CIO in…
Davos is Trump’s Kind of Town
by jeff.faux •
The global punditry is all a twitter this week with the prospect of Donald Trump going to Davos – the chic winter gathering place of the world’s rich and powerful. The media narrative is that this will be a titanic…
Trump: No Isolationist
by jeff.faux •
Denis MacShane is correct to criticize the U.S. pullout of UNESCO as unproductive (The Globalist, October 25, 2017). But to label Trump an “isolationist” who is taking the United States back to the 1920s is a misdiagnosis. Given Trump’s manic instability…