IMPORTANT READS

SCOTUS - The Dobbs opinion overturning Roe. v. Wade is another marker on the road to where Republicans and the U.S. Supreme Court's conservative super-majority are taking the country.

MID TERMS - Armageddon comes November 8. Pundits and progressives have been warning Democrats for months that if they don't change course and achieve significant legislation promised in 2020, they will go down in flames on election day, along with our democracy.

RIGHTS VS. SCOTUS - In June alone, the conservative-slanted Supreme Court voted to weaken Miranda rights, required states to fund private religious schools, protected border patrol agents from excessive force claims, and lessened the requirements for concealed carry laws.

SUPPLY CHAIN - It’s a tough time to be the parent of a newborn in the United States today.

GUEST COMMENTARY - Last weekend in Houston, Texas Republicans got a taste of just how far right their party has become.

UN-AFFORDABLE HOUSING - The affordable rental housing situation in the US has been in crisis from as early as the 1960s, and it has only worsened over time.

EMANCIPATION - One day in late June, 1865, Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas. They carried some historic news:

HISTORICAL RECORD - What's the use of the hearings by the House committee to investigate the January 6 insurrection—

AN 6 JUSTICE - Nobody on the Left should deride as insignificant the current public US House hearings on Donald Trump’s effort to stay in power ultimately through violent means in the wake of Joe Biden’s clear victory in the 2020 presidential election. Unimportant?

EXECUTIVE PRIViLEGE? - Steve Bannon is trying to keep at least one conversation with Donald Trump shielded from the House select committee.

FINANCIAL CRISIS - It wasn’t just cryptocurrencies that crashed Monday, it was crypto exchanges, crypto mining stocks, publicly-traded companies holding large investments in crypto, and crypto ETFs.

MASS SHOOTINGS - “They were at places that seemed safe — but few spaces in America are guaranteed safe anymore.”

GUN REFORM - A group of 20 U.S. senators announced a deal Sunday on an outline of a bill designed to give the appearance that they are taking meaningful action on gun violence and mass shootings.

SCOTUS WATCH - This month, Politico broke the news that the US Supreme Court had decided to overturn the historic abortion rights decision Roe v. Wade, according to an initial draft majority opinion.

WOMEN’S RIGHTS - With the U.S. Supreme Court expected to issue a ruling later this month that could overturn Roe v. Wade and imperil abortion rights nationwide, a group of 25 senators on Wednesday urged President Joe Biden to do all he can through executive action to protect reproductive freedoms at the federal level.

TAXING THE VERY RICH - Whenever there are new or proposed changes to tax law, your eyes may glaze over as they skim the headlines.

CRIME WATCH - In 1993 I was living in a house in Kenyon Street in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood of Washington DC when a gunman started shooting pedestrians from his car nearby.

US ECONOMY - Unless we address this growing imbalance, corporations will continue siphoning off the economy's gains into their CEOs' and shareholders' pockets—while everyday Americans get shafted. 

HISTORY REPEATS - Several years ago I went to a small conference in Washington, D.C., and sat in on a lecture on “a new era of statecraft.”

GUN REFORM - As I write this column on Wednesday 25 May, the death toll from the US's latest mass shooting, at Robb Elementary School in the town of Uvalde, Texas, has climbed to 21—19 children aged between eight and ten, and two adults.

FOR MEMORIAL DAY - JFK'S Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, was in France in the early 60's when DeGaulle decided to pull out of NATO.