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      I spent years studying American communism. Here’s what I learned | Maurice Isserman

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      I’ll leave it to future historians to puzzle out the reasons why, but in the second decade of the 21st century, in the unlikely setting of the most thoroughly capitalist country in world history, large numbers of Americans, mostly young, displayed a new interest in socialist ideas, values and policy proposals, and in turn in the often neglected history of socialism and communism in the United States.Having written three books early in my scholarly career dealing with one or another aspect of the tangled history of American communism, the last appearing in 1990, I figured I’d said all I had to say on the subject, and turned to other topics. Enough time had passed by the time of the 2010s socialist revival that the several score ageing communists and ex-communists whom I’d interviewed for my early books were now long dead.But in 2020 an editor at a New York publishing house, noticing the upswing in interest among young Americans in leftwing (although non-communist) politicians like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, contacted me wondering if there might be a readership emerging for a new narrative history of the Communist party USA, from its founding in 1919 to the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991.We decided there was, and the result, out this month, is Reds: The Tragedy of American Communism.A lot of what I had written in earlier books on the subject still seemed valid to me. But some things needed to change. For one thing, no one writing on the subject in the 1970s and 1980s had any real idea of the extent to which the party was involved in Soviet espionage activities in the 1930s and 1940s. More generally, what struck me as I returned to the topic was the mystery of why so many often highly intelligent and in many ways admirable people, as communists were when considered individually, could have remained so loyal for so long to a fundamentally flawed movement that never had a chance of success in the US.Most of the interviewees I met while researching my earlier books, starting when I was a graduate student in the 1970s, were in their 60s and 70s by the time I sat down with them, armed with my primitive cassette tape recorder. I came to think of them as the “YCL generation”: teenagers or young adults who had joined the Young Communist League in the early days of the Great Depression, graduating to the adult movement in the course of the decade, some of them fighting in Spain, others organizing unions of steel workers in Ohio and agricultural workers in California, some writing for and editing publications like the Daily Worker in New York and the People’s World in San Francisco.Not a few of them wound up spending time in federal prison in the 1950s for violating the Smith Act, a law that made it a felony to conspire to advocate the overthrow of the government. Most had left the movement before the 1960s, disillusioned by Nikita Khrushchev’s “secret speech” in Moscow in 1956, in which the then Soviet leader indicted his recently deceased predecessor, Joseph Stalin, as a bloodthirsty tyrant.By the time I met them, after the passage of another two decades, these American ex-communists, and the few who remained in the party, generally as dissidents, had had a long time to think over the errors they’d made, and the crimes they’d apologized for, in younger days.And because they were, as a rule, so thoughtful, introspective, self-critical, and eager to share their insights with a then twentysomething-year-old researcher – hoping in doing so, I imagine, to persuade a younger generation via my books not to repeat their mistakes – I forgave them a lot. I like to think I didn’t apologize for their blindness to Stalin’s crimes, or for their willing support of a movement that, had it actually come to power in the US, might well have been responsible for similar crimes.But I don’t think I fully understood, or at least fully conveyed, how the elderly men and women from whom I learned so much might not have seemed so appealing to me if I’d encountered their younger selves decades earlier, when they were still true believers. And this, despite the fact that some of them told me as much: “I was a little Stalin,” Dorothy Healey said of her early years as a Los Angeles communist party leader. “I’m not talking about anybody else.”The central contradiction of American communism – one that defined it from its founding in the aftermath of the Bolshevik revolution to its essential demise with the end of the Soviet Union 70-odd years later – was, as I write in Reds, that it “attracted egalitarian idealists, and it bred authoritarian zealots”. Some clung longer to their idealism and resisted the authoritarian temptation better than others, but only at the price of concealing their true feelings.Mary Heaton Vorse, a free-spirited feminist and socialist from Greenwich Village, was a labor journalist who seemed to be on the scene of every major moment that American labor challenged the power of capital, from the 1912 textile workers strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts, to the 1937 auto workers’ strike in Flint, Michigan. She noted in her diary in the early 1920s that the people she met in the newly-established Communist party all seemed to have “closed minds, so certain, so dull. They bore me, bore me, bore me,” underlining the last words for emphasis.A few years later, however, she joined the party herself, and remained a member into the 1930s. But she retained the habit of confiding to her diary her dislike for many of her comrades. “I am a communist because I don’t see anything else to be,” she wrote in 1931. “But I am a communist who hates communists and communism.”Writing the history of American communism requires an appreciation of such contradictions. Somewhere along the line, I showed a draft of an early chapter of Reds to a friend and fellow historian familiar with my earlier works. Getting back to me a few days later, he said he liked it well enough, and saw how it grew out of my first books on the topic. But, he added: “You seem less patient with the communists than you used to be.”That was a shrewd observation. Now that I’m in my 70s, roughly the age of those I interviewed back when I first began studying the history of American communism, now that I’ve had ample time to reflect on some of my own youthful political follies in the 1960s, I probably am (in retrospect) less inclined to be patient with my interviewees in their younger days. Understanding, yes. Patient, not so much. As the great British historian EP Thompson, himself a former communist, wrote in his 1963 masterpiece, The Making of the English Working Class, understanding the “obsolete”, “utopian” and “deluded” English working-class radicals of the early 19th century required rescuing them from “the enormous condescension of posterity”.Condescension, historically, can take the form of a patronizing dismissal of those who came long before us for failing to live up to the high standards of moral intelligence and practical knowledge we like to imagine we possess. But it can also take the form of cutting our ancestors perhaps too much slack.In the case of American communism, the appeal of the Soviet “experiment” in the 1930s and 1940s in a world racked by the Great Depression and menaced by domestic and foreign fascism is perfectly comprehensible. At the same time, it shouldn’t have taken a speech by Khrushchev to reveal Stalin’s all-too-evident crimes against humanity in his three decades of misrule over the Soviet Union; lots of people, including many on the American and international left, had figured that one out for themselves long before.In the end, studying the history of communism should be neither an exercise in filiopietism, the excessive veneration of ancestors, nor of demonology, the classification of malevolent spirits. I hope that in Reds I have avoided both (readers, please advise), and thus have been fair to my old and now departed friends, those veterans of the communist movement, whose memories and insights I taped so many years back.American communists in the 20th century included in their ranks people of talent, vision, and genuine idealism. Their tragedy lay in their willingness to subvert their own best instincts in their devotion to a flawed and irrelevant historical model, the Bolshevik revolution and the Soviet state. And in doing so, they helped set back for generations the opportunities for the emergence of a genuinely American left. May the new generation emerging on the left avoid their mistakes.
      Maurice Isserman teaches history at Hamilton College. His most recent book is Reds: The Tragedy of American Communism More

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      Redone, hidden, burnt: seven famous subjects and the portraits they hated

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      Vincent Namatjira’s portrait of Gina Rinehart has found no favour with the subject, with the mining tycoon asking the National Gallery of Australia to remove the painting from an exhibition. But Australia’s richest womanis not the first person to take a painting of their likeness to task.Here we take a look at seven notable examples.Winston Churchill by Graham SutherlandDespite being one of the most highly regarded artists of his time, Graham Sutherland produced a portrait of Winston Churchill that was so detested it was secretly burnt by his wife.The painting was commissioned by the Houses of Parliament to mark the former prime minister’s 80th birthday in November 1954. In it, Churchill was seated and wore a dark suit, displaying his famous bulldog demeanour.The wartime leader is said to have found his likeness “like a down-and-out who has been picked out of the gutter”. The painting was taken to his home, Chartwell in Kent, where destroyed it in a bonfire.Germaine Greer by Jeffrey SmartPrim, seated and with her hands clasped around a handbag, a likeness of the author and feminist Germaine Greer was so unlike her, the sitter reportedly complained of the 1984 portrait painted by Jeffrey Smart.The sitter and artist were friends but Greer reportedly refused to pose after seeing initial pencil studies of her face, forcing Smart to use a body double. While Greer may have hated the painting, it sold for $1,227,273 in 2022.Bernard Breslauer by Lucian Freud A double chin was to blame for the destruction of the portrait of the millionaire antiquarian book dealer Bernard Breslauer by Lucian Freud. The art academic Catherine Lampert made the discovery in 2008 after visiting Breslauer’s New York apartment, where she reportedly learned that he had not been flattered by Freud’s depiction of his baldness and bulging chin.Freud was told of the painting’s fate when he was 85, some 50 years after the portrait was completed. Had it survived, the portrait could have fetched a seven-figure sum at auction. Malcolm Fraser by Bryan WestwoodThe prime minister’s first official portrait was instantly rejected when it was revealed in 1983, with Malcolm Fraser reportedly “loathing it at first sight”.Bryan Westwood, who went on to twice win the Archibald prize, captured the prime minister standing with folded arms against a dark background.Westwood’s agent, Robin Gibson, told the Canberra Times that the late former PM saw the painting as “too casual and domestic”. The painting was originally consigned to a National Gallery storage unit but was eventually moved to Old Parliament House. Lyndon B Johnson by Peter HurdThe president is said to have called his likeness, standing and clutching a history book with the Capitol at dusk in the background, “the ugliest thing [he] ever saw”.In turn, its painter, Peter Hurd, was not shy about calling LBJ’s behaviour “very damn rude”.Theodore Roosevelt by Théobald ChartranAfter the 1902 portrait was unveiled, Theodore Roosevelt felt the Frenchman had made him look more like “a mewing cat” than the powerful leader he preferred to imagine.He reportedly hid the painting in a wardrobe before having it destroyed. A second – and more successful – official portrait was commissioned, this time by John Singer Sargent.Ronald Reagan by Aaron ShiklerThe 1989 official portrait of Ronald and Nancy Reagan was a second attempt after Aaron Shikler’s first version was rejected because it reportedly lacked a “twinkle in his eye”.Two years later, the official portrait was replaced by a third, by Everett Raymond Kinstler.Other notable unlikenessesGough Whitlam refused to sit for his prime ministerial portrait after his dismissal. His Archibald-winning likeness by Clifton Pugh was instead chosen as his official portrait. Lucian Freud’s painting of Queen Elizabeth was both admired and derided when it was unveiled in 2001. While some said the likeness was more like that of a corgi than the Queen, the sitter tactfully told Freud: “Very nice of you to do this. I’ve very much enjoyed watching you mix your colours.”  More

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      Louisiana must use House map with second mostly Black district, US supreme court rules

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      The US supreme court on Wednesday ordered Louisiana to hold congressional elections in 2024 using a House map with a second mostly Black district, despite a lower-court ruling that called the map an illegal racial gerrymander.The order allows the use of a map that has majority Black populations in two of the state’s six congressional districts, potentially boosting Democrats’ chances of gaining control of the closely divided House of Representatives in the 2024 elections.The justices acted on emergency appeals filed by the state’s top Republican elected officials and Black voters who said they needed the high court’s intervention to avoid confusion as the elections approach. About a third of Louisiana is Black.Like much of the south, voting is racially polarized in Alabama so any majority-Black district is likely to favor Democrats. Republicans narrowly control the US House and are fighting for an advantage in every seat.It is the latest development in a long and twisted legal saga over Louisiana’s congressional districts.Louisiana lawmakers were forced to add a second majority-Black district last year after a federal judge said the map they drew violated the Voting Rights Act. The state approved a map, but then non-white voters challenged it in court, saying lawmakers relied too much on race when drawing it. Lower federal courts agreed the map should be struck down, and the state said it should not be required to use the map for this year’s elections.The supreme court’s order on Wednesday halts that argument and means the map with a second majority-Black district will be used for this year’s election. What happens after that is unclear.The supreme court has previously put court decisions handed down near elections on hold, invoking the need to give enough time to voters and elections officials to ensure orderly balloting. “When an election is close at hand, the rules of the road must be clear and settled,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote two years ago in a similar case from Alabama. The court has never set a firm deadline for how close is too close.The court’s three liberal justices, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, all said they would not have granted the request to intervene. Only Jackson explained her reasoning.“There is little risk of voter confusion from a new map being imposed this far out from the November election,” she wrote in a brief dissent. “We have often denied stays of redistricting orders issued as close or closer to an election.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionJackson was objecting to what has come to be known as the Purcell principle – a novel idea adopted by the supreme court that they should not intervene in an election dispute when election day is near. The liberal justices and other critics have accused the court of using the principle to benefit Republicans.Louisiana has had two congressional maps blocked by federal courts in the past two years in a swirl of lawsuits that included a previous intervention by the supreme court. More

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      US interior department staffer is first Jewish Biden appointee to resign over war in Gaza

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      An interior department staffer on Wednesday became the first Jewish political appointee to publicly resign in protest of US support for Israel’s war in Gaza.Lily Greenberg Call, a special assistant to the chief of staff in the interior department, accused Joe Biden of using Jews to justify US policy in the conflict.Call had worked for the presidential campaigns of both Biden and Kamala Harris, and was a longtime activist and advocate for Israel in Washington and elsewhere before joining the government.She is at least the fifth mid- or senior-level administration staffer to make public their resignation in protest of the Biden administration’s military and diplomatic support of the now seven-month Israeli war against Hamas.She is the second political appointee to do so, after an education department official of Palestinian heritage resigned in January.Her resignation letter described her excitement at joining an administration that she believed shared much of her vision for the country. “However, I can no longer in good conscience continue to represent this administration,” she wrote.In an interview with the Associated Press, Call pointed to comments by Biden, including at a White House Hanukkah event where he said “Were there no Israel, there wouldn’t be a Jew in the world who was safe” and at an event at Washington’s Holocaust Memorial last week in which he said the 7 October Hamas-led attacks that triggered the war were driven by an “ancient desire to wipe out the Jewish people”.“He is making Jews the face of the American war machine. And that is so deeply wrong,” she said, noting that ancestors of hers were killed by “state-sponsored violence”.The Hamas-led attacks on 7 October killed about 1,200 people in Israel. Israel’s military campaign against Hamas in Gaza has killed more than 35,000 Palestinians.The Biden administration has pointed to its repeated calls to Benjamin Netanyahu’s government for more precise targeting of Hamas so as to spare more civilians. It recently paused a shipment of bombs to Israel, saying it wanted to prevent Israeli forces from dropping them on the crowded southern Gaza city of Rafah.“I think the president has to know that there are people in his administration who think this is disastrous,” Call said of the war overall and US support for it. “Not just for Palestinians, for Israelis, for Jews, for Americans, for his election prospects.” More

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      Donald Trump comes face to face with former fixer Michael Cohen – podcast

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      This week, it was Donald Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen’s turn to take the stand in the hush-money trial in New York. Cohen walked the jury through the steps he says he took to make any potential story that would damage Trump’s image go away, in advance of the 2016 election.
      The defence is trying to chip away at Cohen’s credibility, to sow seeds of doubt among the jury listening to his testimony. So how did he do? Jonathan Freedland asks former federal prosecutor Ankush Khardori what he makes of the prosecution’s star witness so far

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

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      Joe Biden and Donald Trump agree to two US presidential debates

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      Shortly after the Biden-Harris re-election campaign proposed two TV debates between Joe Biden and Donald Trump ahead of November’s presidential vote, both men have agreed upon two debate dates: 27 June and 10 September.CNN confirmed that it would host the first debate of 2024 on that date at 9pm ET from the crucial battleground state of Georgia.ABC later confirmed they’d host a second debate on 10 September during prime time.A third date, 2 October, has been proposed by Trump in a Truth Social post on Wednesday afternoon: “Let this TRUTH serve to represent that I hereby accept debating Crooked Joe Biden on FoxNews. The date will be Wednesday, October 2nd. The Hosts will be Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum. Thank you, DJT!”Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, with the Trump campaign, told ABC News of the upcoming and pending debate dates: “We propose a debate in June, a debate in July, a debate in August, and a debate in September, in addition to the Vice Presidential debate. Additional dates will allow voters to have maximum exposure to the records and future visions of each candidate.”On Wednesday morning, Biden said in a video shared on social media: “Donald Trump lost two debates to me in 2020, and since then he hasn’t shown up for a debate. Now he’s acting like he wants to debate me again. Well, make my day, pal. I’ll even do it twice.”He then jabbed: “So let’s pick dates, Donald. I hear you’re free on Wednesdays,” referring to the free day in Trump’s current campaign finance violations trial in New York.In a post on Twitter/X, independent candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr accused Biden and Trump of “colluding to lock America into a head-to-head match-up that 70% say they do not want. They are trying to exclude me from their debate because they are afraid I would win. Keeping viable candidates off the debate stage undermines democracy.”Biden’s proposal bucked a tradition of three debates, typically held in the fall, that are organized by the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates. Democratic party officials said in a release on Wednesday that moving the timing up, reducing the number of debates and ending them sooner reflected changes in the “structure of our elections and the interests of voters”.The Democrats’ proposal also noted that debates in previous elections cycles had not concluded until after early voting started and the commission’s debates were “structured like an entertainment spectacle and not a serious exchange of ideas that reflect the enormous stakes of the election”.The commission “has consistently demonstrated an inability to enforce their own rules” in the debates and called for a firm time limit on answers, and alternate turns to speak “so that the time is evenly divided and we have an exchange of views, not a spectacle of mutual interruption”.Later on Wednesday morning, Trump accepted Biden’s offer to debate him in June and September, telling Fox News Digital that “it is time for a debate to take place – even if it has to be held through the offices of the Commission on Presidential Debates, which are totally controlled by Democrats and who, as people remember, got caught cheating with me with debate sound levels”.He added on Truth Social: “Crooked Joe Biden is the worst debater I have ever faced – he can’t put two sentences together.”That missive concluded with Trump saying: “I would strongly recommend more than two debates and, for excitement purposes, a very large venue, although Biden is supposedly afraid of crowds – That’s only because he doesn’t get them. Just tell me when, I’ll be there. Let’s get ready to Rumble!!!”Biden volleyed back with a message on X shortly after Trump’s various remarks, saying he was up “for a debate on June 27th. Over to you, Donald. As you said: anywhere, any time, any place.”Arranging the presidential debates has become increasingly vexed, with both parties seeking a competitive advantage. But they are considered highly important in gaining the attention of crucial swing voters who may only then be tuning in to the choice of candidates.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhile not mandated in any constitutional sense, they are now considered an intrinsic part of the election process. But even the Democrats’ proposal on Wednesday was designed for point-scoring.“As Donald Trump has said he will debate ‘anytime, anywhere’, we hope both campaigns can quickly accept broadcast media debate invitations on the parameters above,” the Biden campaign chair, Jen O’Malley Dillon, wrote in a letter to the commission before Trump’s acceptance of the challenge. “Americans need a debate on the issues – not a tedious debate about debates.”The Biden campaign had said it would work directly with news organizations to set up the debates, sidelining the debating commission which has overseen them since 1988. In CNN’s press release announcing the 27 June debate, the news organization noted it would take place “in CNN’s Atlanta studios” and “no audience will be present”.Until now, there has been uncertainty about whether Biden would agree to debate Trump at all. Trump skipped every Republican primary debate, pointing to his polling lead in that selection process, and Biden refused to debate his Democratic challengers.Trump, who has polling leads in five of six crucial swing states, has goaded Biden often, saying last month he was willing to debate his rival “anytime, anywhere, any place”, starting “now”.The Trump campaign called for presidential debates to be held earlier and more frequently so voters “have a full chance” to see the candidates in action and argued that by the time of the first scheduled debate, on 16 September, more than 1 million Americans will probably have already voted, with more than 8.7 million voting by the third debate, penciled in for 9 October.Last month, 12 US news organizations issued pleas to the campaigns to agree to TV debate schedule.“If there is one thing Americans can agree on during this polarized time, it is that the stakes of this election are exceptionally high,” the organizations including ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, PBS, NBC, NPR and the Associated Press said in a statement.“Amidst that backdrop, there is simply no substitute for the candidates debating with each other, and before the American people, their visions for the future of our nation,” they added.In 2020, Biden and Trump debated twice, with a third debate canceled after Trump tested positive for Covid-19. 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      We’re in a pivotal moment in American history. We cannot retreat | Bernie Sanders

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      In 1776, Americans, living in a British colony, put their lives on the line and fought for independence from the king of England. They wrote the strongest democratic constitution that had ever been written as they created a new nation. That was a pivotal moment in American history.In 1861, civil war broke out in the United States and more than 600,000 Americans died in the war between the states. Slavery was abolished. Over the ensuing decades, racist forces regained power and established an apartheid form of government throughout the old confederacy. That was a pivotal moment in American history.In 1929, Wall Street collapsed. The United States and much of the world experienced the Great Depression. Unemployment rose to 25% and millions of Americans descended into economic desperation. In 1932, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected president and the federal government’s role in addressing the needs of working people was transformed. That was a pivotal moment in American history.In 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and an unprepared United States was forced to mobilize and fight a world war on two fronts: Hitler in Europe and Japan in Asia. The future of democracy and the prevention of barbarism in the world was at stake. That was a pivotal moment in American history.Today, in 2024, our country once again faces a pivotal moment in American history. The crises facing us are enormous. The consequences if we fail are unthinkable.As the nation moves rapidly toward oligarchy, the billionaire class exerts enormous influence over the economic and political life of the nation. While the rich become much richer, 60% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, and real, inflation-adjusted wages for the average US worker have actually declined over the last 50 years. Never before have the 1% done so well, or enjoyed so much power.Our political system is corrupt. Thanks to the disastrous Citizens United supreme court decision, billionaires and their Super Pacs are able to spend hundreds of millions to elect or defeat candidates they target. As a result, more than 90% of House elections and more than 80% of Senate elections are won by the candidate who spends the most money.Our life expectancy and birth rate are in decline. Despite spending far more per capita on a broken healthcare system, the average American now lives 77.5 years – 18 months less than in 2019 – and the lowest of any wealthy nation on earth. Further, our total births last year fell to 3.59 million, the lowest level ever recorded.The climate crisis threatens the very future of the planet. The last 10 years have been the 10 warmest years on record. 2023 was by far the hottest year in recorded history and 2024 is on track to be even hotter. Unless there is a huge reduction in carbon emissions we will continue to see more drought, more flooding, more forest fires, more extreme weather disturbances, more mass migrations and more deaths as a result of the climate crisis.Artificial intelligence and robotics are radically transforming our society, causing enormous anxiety among workers. Most of the jobs we have today will likely not be here in 15 years. Will the increased productivity that AI brings simply make corporations wealthier as they discard their employees, or will workers benefit? The wellbeing of tens of millions depends upon that answer.The basic human rights that women have struggled to win are under severe attack. Since the supreme court’s disastrous decision overturning Roe v Wade, 14 states have passed near-total abortion bans, some with no exceptions for victims of rape or incest. Will the war against women continue? Will women once again, be reduced to second-class citizenship?The US now spends almost 1tn a year on the military, more than the next 10 countries combined. This is more than all federal funding for food, housing and education. Tens of billions of those dollars are currently supporting the horrific war in Gaza waged by the rightwing extremist Israeli government of Netanyahu.So. That’s where we are, and it’s not a pretty picture. People feel hopeless. They are exhausted. They are worried about the kind of future that awaits their kids and grandkids.We are in the midst of another pivotal moment in American history. How do we respond?First, we cannot simply turn away from the painful and complex realities that we face and bury our heads in the sand. We cannot stop reading the news or turn off the TV. The world is what it is. It is a mess. And the situation is not going to improve unless we do the hard work required.Second, we must be actively involved in the 2024 national elections – the most consequential in our lifetimes.Yes. I know. Biden is not popular and many progressives, including me, strongly disagree with his policies regarding Israel and this disastrous war in Gaza.But, let’s be clear. Biden is not running against God. He is running against Donald Trump, the most dangerous president in American history whose second term, if he is re-elected, will be worse than his first. And, on his worst day, Biden is a thousand times better than Trump.Are you concerned about the extreme income and wealth inequality we are experiencing, and the decline of the middle class? Trump wants to give huge tax breaks to billionaires and, as president, appointed viciously anti-union officials to high office. Biden, on the other hand, is the first president to ever walk a picket line – in support of striking UAW workers. He has helped create millions of decent paying jobs rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure and investing in manufacturing. Biden has also forgiven the debts of millions of struggling young people.Are you concerned about the right of women to control their own bodies? Trump brags about how he appointed three supreme court justices who helped overturn Roe v Wade. Biden is solidly pro-choice.Are you concerned about the climate crisis? Donald Trump thinks climate change is a “hoax”. A Trump victory will tell the entire world to continue their support for fossil fuels, and the planet we leave our kids and future generations will be increasingly unhealthy. Biden, on the other hand, has helped invest more money into sustainable energy and energy efficiency than any president in history.And if you have problems with Biden’s position on Israel and the war in Gaza, Trump’s position is far worse. Biden has at least restricted some powerful bombs from going to the Israel and has been critical of Netanyahu. Trump and his Republican colleagues are “all in” for the massive destruction of the Palestinian people.Oh. And there’s one other thing. And that’s the small matter of retaining our democracy. Biden is a traditional American politician who believes in democracy, free elections and the right of dissent. That’s not what Trump believes. He and his supporters have spent the last four years undermining faith in the rule of law and our democratic form of government. He is weighing pardons for more than 800 of his supporters who attacked the Capitol in the January 6 insurrection. And his advisers are drawing up plans to invoke the Insurrection Act to allow him to deploy the military against civil demonstrations.Clearly, our job is not just to re-elect Biden. It’s much more than that. We must defend the many progressives that we have elected to the House, some of whom who face significant financial opposition from Aipac and other special interest Pacs. And we must elect more strong progressive candidates who are on the ballot to the House, and state and local governments.We must work in coalition with all those who understand that we must do everything possible to defeat Donald Trump and his extreme rightwing Republican party, not just because he is “worse”, but because nothing less than the future of our democracy is at stake in this election.Further, we must demand that Biden and the Democrats begin campaigning on a truly progressive agenda that addresses the needs of the working families of our country.Yes. Healthcare is a human right.Yes. The billionaire class must start paying their fair share of taxes.Yes. We must raise the minimum wage to a living wage and make it easier for workers to join unions.Yes. We must seriously address the housing crisis, which exists in almost every state in the country.Yes. We must strengthen public education in our country and make higher education available to all regardless of income.Bottom line: we must have the guts to take on and defeat a powerful and greedy ruling class and create a government which works for all, not just the few. The path forward is not easy. But now is not the time for despair or cynicism.During this pivotal moment, we must do what Americans have always done when change is needed: we must stand together, organize and fight for the country we know we can become.
      Bernie Sanders is a US senator, and chairman of the health education labor and pensions committee. He represents the state of Vermont and is the longest-serving independent in the history of Congress More

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      Stormy Daniels’ husband says they’ll likely leave the US if Trump is acquitted

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      The husband of Stormy Daniels said there is a “good chance” that the couple will leave the US if Donald Trump is acquitted in his criminal trial over paying hush-money payments to the adult film star.“I think if it’s not guilty, we got to decide what to do. Good chance we’ll probably vacate this country,” Barrett Blade told CNN host Erin Burnett on Tuesday.“If he is found guilty, then she’s still got to deal with all the hate. I feel like she’s the reason that he’s guilty from all his followers, so I don’t see it as a win-win situation either way.”Blade’s comments come after Daniels appeared in court last week to deliver lurid and powerful testimony on her alleged sexual affair with Trump nearly 20 years ago.Among the questions she said Trump asked her was: “What about testing? Do you worry about STDs?”Daniels also said Trump compared her to his daughter Ivanka, saying: “You remind me of my daughter. She is smart and blonde and beautiful and people underestimate her as well.”She testified that upon returning from using the bathroom in Trump’s hotel room, she found him on the bed, wearing boxer shorts and a T-shirt. Daniels said she tried to leave but Trump stood between her and the door.“He said, ‘I thought we were getting somewhere. I thought you were serious about what you wanted,’” Daniels recalled.Daniels and Michael Cohen, Trump’s former fixer, are at the center of Trump’s historic criminal case. Prosecutors allege that Cohen allegedly worked alongside tabloid publisher David Pecker to bury unfavorable stories that would potentially affect Trump’s 2016 presidential bid, and that Cohen facilitated a $130,000 hush-money payment to Daniels shortly before the election.Trump has since been charged with falsifying business records. Prosecutors allege that the former president falsely listed his repayments to Cohen as legal service fees.Trump’s defense team attempted to discredit Daniels, with lawyer Susan Necheles at one point saying: “You have a lot of experience in making phony stories about sex appear to be real.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“That’s not how I would put it,” Daniels replied. “The sex in the films is very much real, just like what happened to me in that room.”In a more pointed question, Necheles asked, “You were looking to extort money from president Trump, right?”, to which Daniels responded: “False.”Blade was asked on CNN about accusations that Daniels made up the affair. “I think she’s a brilliant writer,” Blade said. “So she would have written something way better than what she said about the Trump story.”He went on: “She wants to move past this. We just want to do what … normal people would get to do in some aspects, but I don’t know if that ever will be, and it breaks my heart.“Everybody has their agenda for her at this point, and I don’t see people fighting back for her.” More