Author: nick
A Miami–Dade County sheriff’s deputy threatened to arrest a local TV reporter for asking Mayor Daniella Levine Cava a question at a beach and bay cleanup event in a public park. Jeff Weinsier of WPLG Local 10 News wanted to ask the mayor about a series of electric buses that cost taxpayers more than $60 million were taken out of service because they kept breaking down. But as Weinsier approached the mayor, Deputy Lester Aguilar stepped in and pushed him, saying if he didn’t back off, “You will go to jail.” Weinsier said he approached the mayor at the event…
During the COVID-19 crisis, people who were not vaccinated faced all kinds of social discrimination, and health authorities went so far as to take drastic measures against the unvaccinated due to their alleged irresponsibility. This included private healthcare, which is heavily regulated by the state and where COVID-19 paranoia was also deplorable, irrespective of the right that private owners have to take discriminatory measures. In any case, a lack of common sense was the order of the day, and many unvaccinated people were denied adequate healthcare due to their vaccination status—even though vaccinated people continued to fall ill or die…
April 28, 2026 Laura Flanders James Brady in 1986. Comparisons have been drawn to the events of March 1981, when an assassination attempt was made on Ronald Reagan by John Hinckley Jr. as he entered the Washington Hilton. Out of the Hinckley shooting came the Brady Bill and Brady Handgun Act – the landmark federal gun-control measures that created the background-check system for handgun purchases. My question, which has only become more urgent, is – What will come out of this shooting, at the same hotel, this past weekend? James Brady was press secretary to President Ronald Reagan when both…
How Defeat in the Iran War Will Accelerate American Global Decline By Alfred McCoy Writing more than 2,000 years ago, the Greek historian Plutarch gave us an eloquent description of what modern historians now call “micro-militarism.” When an imperial power like Athens then, or America now, is in decline, its leaders often react emotionally by mounting seemingly bold military strikes in hopes of regaining the imperial grandeur that’s slipping through their fingers. Instead of another of the great victories the empire won at its peak of power, however, such military misadventures only serve to accelerate the ongoing decline, erasing whatever…
Bombs have been falling on Iran for fifty-nine days. As of now a ceasefire is holding, just barely, brokered under pressure from Pakistan. But before it came, a girls’ primary school in the southern city of Minab was hit on the first day of the war, at least 170 dead, most of them girls aged seven to twelve, killed by a U.S. Tomahawk missile that President Donald Trump initially denied firing. Thirty universities struck since February 28, including Iran’s equivalent of MIT. Over 2,000 Iranians killed by American-Israeli strikes. Thirteen U.S. service members confirmed dead. An American F-15E shot down…
Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair On my radio show/podcast—the Ralph Nader Radio Hour—interviews of knowledgeable people have detailed the ravages by the cruel, serial law violator, Tyrant Trump, inflicted on millions of Americans. Still, the report from the V-Dem Institute at Sweden’s University of Gothenburg produced a jolting Common Dreamsheadline: Trump is Dismantling U.S. Democracy at a Speed ‘Unprecedented in Modern History.’ The report described the first year of Trump’s second term as achieving in one year what budding autocracies take a decade to accomplish, adding that “the speed of decline is comparable to some coups d’état.” To wreck, weaken,…
Say what you will about Caligula’s plan to appoint his horse Incitatus to the Roman Senate, I find it less ridiculous than Jared Kushner’s role as Uncle Sam’s negotiator with Iran. If the stallion did attend any Senate sessions, we do not know. That Kushner negotiated with the Iranians, we do know. And we also know the results: “Nul,” as they say in France, where Kushner’s father, a criminal pardoned by Trump, is our ambassador. Kushner and Steve Witkoff, a real-estate shark friend of the Donald’s, have been Uncle Sam’s top negotiators with Iran. If the Marx Brothers were around,…
Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Monsanto Co. v. Durnell. The facts of this case are likely not of concern to most constitutional law scholars, but the dispute is of serious concern to the business community. The plaintiff sued Monsanto (which is owned by Bayer) for harms caused by the Roundup herbicide. (Don’t call it a pesticide, as Justice Thomas–a former Monsanto employee–reminded us.) The jury awarded $1.25 million in compensatory damages based on a failure to warn about possible harms. Bayer counters that the EPA did not require those additional warnings, so the state tort claims is…
This article was first published by Al Jazeera in Arabic. False historical narratives abound in our contentious and divided world, as leaders and complicit historians endeavor to use public understanding of the past to push policies and gain control in the present. One of the most egregious cases is the widely accepted account of the decision by U.S. leaders to drop the atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9 of 1945, respectively. The generally held view, which is frequently taught in schools across the U.S. and beyond, is that the bombings were…
In 1982, the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher sent a naval task force 8,000 miles across the Atlantic to expel an Argentine invasion force from the Falkland Islands, a remote archipelago 300 miles east of the Patagonian coast. The mission was to liberate 2,000 British subjects living there. It was successful, but the price for Britain was high—255 dead and seven vessels lost, including two destroyers and two frigates. Would any British government attempt anything so audacious today, even if it could somehow find the boats? The Falklands has become a live issue again, now that President Donald Trump has…