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Breaking News

This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in each source note. Quotation marks are not used.

  • SOURCE: The Guardian
    6/1/2023

    The Debt Ceiling Law is now a Tool of Partisan Political Power; Abolish It

    by Mark Weisbrot

    There is no "ticking bomb" of national debt; the use of the debt ceiling to threaten the nation with default to secure spending cuts that damage Democratic presidents is by now a clearly established partisan trick, and the US government should no longer be held hostage to it, says an economic policy researcher. 

  • SOURCE: Washington Post
    6/1/2023

    Kagan, Sotomayor Join SCOTUS Cons in Sticking it to Unions

    By an 8-1 vote, with only Ketanji Brown Jackson in dissent, the Court allowed employers to bypass the National Labor Relations Board to seek potentially crippling tort judgments against unions for business losses related to strikes, removing a major incentive for good-faith negotiation by employers. 

  • SOURCE: Slate
    6/1/2023

    New Evidence: Rehnquist Pretty Much OK with Plessy v. Ferguson

    by Richard Hasen and Dahlia Lithwick

    A 1952 memo that Rehnquist wrote defending "separate but equal" was raised during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings and dismissed as work-for-hire. It is now clear that he supported the narrow interpretation of the 14th Amendment that the current court majority hopes to use to undermine civil rights. 

  • SOURCE: The Atlantic
    6/1/2023

    Richard Rothstein: The Problem with Class-Based Affirmative Action

    While Black Americans are disproportionately poor, argues a scholar of discriminatory policy, the larger numbers of poor whites make it likely that class-based admissions preferences will fail to address racial disparities, including concentrated poverty in Black communities. 

  • SOURCE: The Nation
    5/26/2023

    When Tina Turner Rocked Out for the McGovern Campaign

    As the cash-strapped campaign approached election day, Shirley MacLaine organized a concert featuring women performers to tout McGovern's antiwar position. Turner headlined the largest woman-organized rally in history. 

  • SOURCE: The Atlantic
    5/22/2023

    Was "Passive Resistance" to the Nazis Enough?

    Burkhard Bilger's memoir "Fatherland" examines how his family dealt with the reality that his grandfather had been a Nazi party chief in his Alsace hometown—but not, apparently, a very effective one. 

  • SOURCE: The Atlantic
    5/28/2023

    When Freud Analyzed Woodrow Wilson

    Working with former Wilson aide William Bullitt, the founder of psychoanalysis produced a harsh depiction of the president as neurotic and self-sabotaging. The work's twisted path to publication after Freud's death was marked by doubts about Freud's actual role in the work. 

  • SOURCE: Washington Post
    5/25/2023

    How Tina Turner Escaped Abuse and Reclaimed her Name

    by Gillian Brockell

    She escaped Ike Turner's abusive and controlling grasp with 36 cents in her pocket. Escaping the marriage required her to surrender all claim to their shared assets in exchange for the rights to use her stage name and have a second chance at stardom on her own. 

  • SOURCE: The Guardian
    5/24/2023

    Texas GOP's Ten Commandments School Bill Fails

    The Texas House did not have the votes to pass a bill approved by the state senate that would have required the display of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms. 

  • SOURCE: Washington Post
    5/23/2023

    Former Alabama Governors: We Regret Overseeing Executions

    As evidence mounts of the number of wrongful convictions in capital murder cases, one Democrat and one Republican former governor argue that it's time to stop capital punishment and reform the prosecutorial immunity that allows unfair prosecutions to proceed.