Check out these recent articles from around the web:
Trump’s ‘forgotten man’ turns out to be Goldman Sachs by Michael Sean Winters: “President Trump and Speaker Ryan and Majority Leader McConnell are busy letting Wall Street off the hook. We know where this led before.”
The ‘best fortnight in a decade’ for conservatives? Uh-oh. by Michael Gerson: “President Trump has managed to taunt and alienate some of our closest allies — Mexico and Australia (!) — while continuing an NC-17-rated love fest with Russia. He has engaged in moral equivalence that places America on the level of Vladimir Putin’s bloody dictatorship. “Well, you think our country’s so innocent?” he said — a statement of such obscenity that it would haunt any liberal to the grave. He has issued an immigration executive order of unparalleled incompetence and cruelty, further victimizing refugees who are already fate’s punching bag. He has lied about things large (election fraud) and small (inaugural crowd size), refused to allow facts to modify his claims, and attempted to create his own reality through the repetition of deception. He has abused his standing as president to attack individuals, from a respected judge to the movie star who took over his God-awful reality-TV show. He has demonstrated a limitless appetite for organizational chaos and selected a staff that leaks like a salad spinner. He has become a massively polarizing figure within the United States and a risible figure on the global stage.”
Refugees are part of America’s fabric and its promise by Washington Post: “By conflating a dangerous fiction about immigrants with blatant disrespect for an equal branch of government, President Trump fans the xenophobic flames he did so much to ignite during the presidential campaign.”
I’m Pro-Life, and Pro-Refugee by Scott Arbeiter: “I must be “pro” everything needed for that child not just to be born, but to flourish. This means that I need to be pro education and pro job growth, and pro many other things I never considered as connected to my pro-life convictions. And I need to be ready to stand against every form of economic injustice, racism and individual or corporate greed that destroys the life of a family and a community.”
Five myths about anti-Semitism by Yair Rosenberg: “From top Iranian officials who blame the Talmud for the international drug trade to British political activists who claim that the Mossad is stealing their shoes, anti-Jewish bigotry can be bewildering and bizarre. But given the prejudice’s longevity, virulence and recent resurgence in Europe and America — witness the waves of bomb threats against dozens of Jewish centers nationwide in the past month and the controversy over the Trump administration’s repeated refusal to include Jews in its Holocaust memorial statement — it’s well worth debunking common misconceptions that impede our ability to fight it.”
We can’t let Trump go down Putin’s path by Michael McFaul: “Understanding Putin’s methods for consolidating autocracy in Russia might help us stop autocratic tendencies in the Trump era now, before it’s too late.”
Republicans to predatory companies: Grab as much as you can by Catherine Rampell: “The White House may be in chaos. But at least Congress is addressing the issue Americans care about most: making it easier for the finance industry to rip them off.”
A record number of poor kids are eating breakfast — thanks to a program many conservatives hate by Caitlin Dewey: “A record number of low-income children have begun to eat breakfast at school. But the policy most credited with boosting their numbers may be on the chopping block under President Trump.”
Why the rise of authoritarianism is a global catastrophe by Garry Kasparov and Thor Halvorssen: “If injustice and oppression aren’t bad enough, authoritarian governments bear an enormous social cost. Dictator-led countries have higher rates of mental illness, lower levels of health and life expectancy, and, as Amartya Sen famously argued, higher susceptibility to famine.”
What We’re Fighting For by Phil Klay: “From our founding we have made these kinds of moral demands of our soldiers. It starts with the oath they swear to support and defend the Constitution, an oath made not to a flag, or to a piece of ground, or to an ethnically distinct people, but to a set of principles established in our founding documents. An oath that demands a commitment to democracy, to liberty, to the rule of law and to the self-evident equality of all men. The Marines I knew fought, and some of them died, for these principles.”
What American liberals can learn from the anti-Nazi resistance by Noah Strote: “Liberals might have to alter, or at least sideline, some of their most prized platforms on abortion or secularism in the public sphere. Conservatives might need to consider welfare policy proposals they have long condemned, such as single-payer health care. Compromise on that profound level seems almost impossible at the moment. But Trump’s threat to the republic grows in proportion to the widening ideological fissure between left and right. As the German example shows, bridging the worldviews of former enemies may be the only way to avoid the abyss.”
The True Purpose of Trumpism by Jonathan Chait: “Trumpism combines an instinctive belief in zero-sum relations between countries with a narrow and retrograde definition of American identity.”
Republicans, Protect the Nation by Evan McMullin: “President Trump’s disturbing Russian connections present an acute danger to American national security.”
Severely disabled kids’ lives at risk, parents say, as Texas enacts Medicaid cost-savings plan by J. David McSwane: “Championed in 2013 by Republican Sen. Jane Nelson of Flower Mound, the changes allowed the state to cut costs and streamline health care by handing off administration of Medicaid services for medically vulnerable children to private health groups called managed care organizations, or MCOs. Instead of the state wrangling bills from thousands of doctors, it cuts a few big checks to the MCOs, which decide how much they will pay doctors and which services they will cover. One way for MCOs to turn a profit is to eliminate services they view as unnecessary. But parents say they’re cutting services they desperately need.”
My grandfather helped create Captain America for times like these by Megan Margulies: “More than five years after his death, my grandfather and his creation seemed newly meaningful. In life, my grandfather stood up for justice and taught me about compassion and understanding. Captain America contains all of that for me on a personal level, but now, in this time of turmoil for America, it’s clear that Cap represents something much larger, something we need as a nation.”
