politics

Five Democratic senators just declared all-out war on the Supreme Court

News, politics

A tone of ritualized obsequiousness pervades most briefs filed in the Supreme Court of the United States. Judges are powerful and, at the Supreme Court level, unaccountable. They wield enormous, arbitrary power not just over litigants but over the lawyers who appear in their courtrooms. So when most lawyers speak to a court, they speak with a painful awareness of the power dynamic separating the bar from the bench.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), however, is not most lawyers.

Read More

Koch-linked dark money group accuses Republican Chuck Grassley of promoting socialism

health care, Medicare, News, politics

A conservative dark money group has launched a series of radio ads attacking a bipartisan bill authored by the senior Republican in the United States Senate, Iowa’s Chuck Grassley.

Joining in the right’s “everything we don’t like is socialism” parade, the group suggests that by reducing the amount senior citizens and government insurance programs pay for prescription drugs, the bill is a socialistic plot that would stop pharmaceutical companies from cur...

Read More

The battle to save gun control by destroying it

guns, News, politics

Just over a week ago, two mass shooters murdered more than two dozen Americans in a single weekend — bringing the total number of U.S. “mass shootings” (incidents in which a person with a gun shot four or more people) to at least 251 this year.

While the nation mourns these deaths, the Supreme Court is preparing to hear a case that could gut what little remains of American gun-control laws. The case, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. City of New ...

Read More

The Trump administration can now bar immigrants for being too poor

News, politics

On Monday, the Trump administration finalized its “public charge” rule, which will more forcefully impose a health and wealth test on people seeking green cards or temporary visas in the United States.

The 800-page final rule itself begins: “This final rule amends DHS regulations by prescribing how DHS will determine whether an alien applying for admission or adjustment of status is inadmissible to the United States … because he or she is likely at any time t...

Read More

The 2020 presidential election might be the first to hinge on gun control

News, politics

When is the right time to have a meaningful, substantive debate on gun control? 

The correct answer, of course, is “yesterday.” For Republican lawmakers, the answer is “never.” For the field of Democrats running for president, the answer might finally be “now.”

It’s taken a few years — a few decades, perhaps — longer than one would hope, but Democrats in Congress and on the campaign trail are beginning to find their voice on the issue of gun control.

As recently as a f...

Read More

Lindsey Graham vows to repeal Obamacare if GOP takes control in 2020

Affordable Care Act, News, obamacare, politics

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) admitted to a local radio station this week that if Republicans regain control of Congress in the 2020 elections, they will do what they failed to during the first two years of the Trump administration: repeal Obamacare.

In a Monday radio interview first flagged by the progressive blog Joe. My. God., Graham explained that the next election would be about health care repeal.

“This is what 2020 is about. If we can get the House back and keep our major...

Read More

Before Trump criticized the urban poverty he uses to attack Democrats, he profited from it

cities, Donald Trump, News, politics

Cities are the problem, President Donald Trump told a typically riled-up crowd Thursday night in Cincinnati, and their problems are Democrats’ fault.

The latest iteration of the president’s evolving attack on urban — and specifically majority-black — communities expanded past Baltimore to encompass Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago. In each case, he said, “these communities have been run exclusively by Democrat politicians” whose tapping of federal programs amounts...

Read More

There’s a party running on unpopular ideas in 2020, and it’s not the Democratic Party

Donald Trump, News, politics, Republicans

The Republican Party has a problem. It’s abandoned the kind of popular reforms that will appeal to middle-of-the-road voters, and insists on running on unpopular ideas.

Worse, instead of rallying behind a sensible, moderate candidate with a history of winning elections in a blue state, the GOP frontrunner for the 2020 nomination is an unpopular former reality show host with little experience in elected office, and who has literally never won the popular vote in any election.

Read More

The problem from hell facing anyone who wants single-payer health care

health care, News, politics

Earlier this week, Senator and presidential candidate Kamala Harris (D-CA) released an outline for her version of “Medicare For All.” The plan would give everyone the immediate right to buy into Medicare as an alternative to private insurance, then would gradually transition everyone into an “expanded Medicare system” over the course of ten years.

Though Harris says that she would guarantee “universal coverage,” her end goal is not technically a s...

Read More