Donald Trump Archives - Page 20 of 57

Activism

The “Buffalo Protestor”

On Martin Gugino, friend and fellow activist

June 9, 2020 • by Jeremy Varon

I too reacted with horror at seeing the video of a 75-year-old man bleeding from the head after being shoved to the ground by Buffalo police. My stomach turned tighter when I realized, “Wait, I know that guy.” And now the president has tweeted about him, spinning the grotesque falsehood ...

History

Taking Children

An excerpt from Taking Children: A History of American Terror by Laura Briggs

June 8, 2020 • by Laura Briggs

The past stalks the present, the ghost in the machine of memory. This is why history writing matters; it gives us ways to understand the specters already among us and to assemble tools to transform our situation. Things change; the epidemic of child taking in the context of mass incarceration ...

Activism

Enough Is Enough

The power of violence and the power of non-violence

June 4, 2020 • by Jeremy Varon

Now everywhere quoted, Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1966 declaration that “a riot is the language of the unheard” serves as a thoughtful shorthand for understanding the jagged edge of today’s unrest. But even in Dr. King’s time, it was not particularly radical wisdom. In 1967, the Kerner Commission was tasked by ...

Activism

What Is to Be Done?

Three scholars of democracy respond to the protests

June 4, 2020 • by Eli Zaretsky, Jeffrey C. Goldfarb and Elzbieta Matynia

I believe this extraordinary nationwide mobilization is the best answer possible to the Democrats who engineered the destruction of the Sanders primary campaign -- I mean Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, James Carville, James Clyburn, Pete Buttigieg, and the innumerable reporters and media “experts” who from the beginning insisted ...

Theory & Practice

Sentencing the Present: Part Five

Critical conversations in a time of crisis

June 4, 2020 • by Benjamin Bernard, Jonathon Catlin, Benjamin P. Davis, Jodi Dean, Shannon Hoff, Micheline Aharonian Marcom, Zein Murib, Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Rocío Zambrana

This is the final seminar of the "Sentencing the Present" series. For previous seminars, see part one, part two, part three and part four. A sentence is protean: It can describe, question, or cry out. A sentence is critical: In passing judgment, it names wrongs, makes decisions, and declares publicly. In ...

Democracy

The Empire Strikes Back

Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement faces an uncertain future

May 28, 2020 • by Mark Frazier

On May 22, 2020, the National People’s Congress (NPC) in Beijing announced it would debate a new national policy for Hong Kong, a draft piece of legislation with an imposingly long and misleadingly soporific title: “Decision of the National People’s Congress on Establishing and Completing the Hong Kong Special Administrative ...

Democracy

Troilus and Cressida and a Diseased Body Politic

Reading Shakespeare in a time of plague

May 28, 2020 • by Emily Pitts Donahoe

We are perennially curious about what Shakespeare can teach us about our own world, hoping to find instruction and solace in his plays, poems, and exemplary turns of phrase. Recently, this curiosity has produced a score of tweets and articles speculating about Shakespeare’s productivity during periods when the plague ravaged London, ...

<em>Troilus and Cressida</em> and a Diseased Body Politic

North America

The DSA, Left-Bashing, and Joe Biden

We are about as interested in endorsing Biden as Biden’s campaign is interested in our endorsement

May 28, 2020 • by Annie Levin

The decision by Democratic Socialists of America to not endorse Joe Biden in the general election has been met with cries of alarm by some of our progressive friends. We are told that we are living through a second Weimar era and electing a Democrat to the presidency is our ...

Public Health

The Fascist Politics of the Pandemic

Around the world, far-right leaders’ responses to the pandemic feature key elements of fascist ideology

May 25, 2020 • by Federico Finchelstein and Jason Stanley

There is nothing like a pandemic to bring out the fascist ideology in countries under far-right rule. In the world's three largest democracies, national leaders are using the COVID-19 crisis to wage war on immigrants and minorities, while testing the limits of common sense. NEW YORK/NEW HAVEN -- In stark contrast ...

Activism

How Do You Protest in a Pandemic?

The challenges of creating a social movement while social distancing

May 12, 2020 • by Jane Desmond

On Thursday, April 15, the traditional day for paying federal taxes, several thousand cars rolled to a stop on the streets in Lansing, Michigan. They surrounded the State Capitol, commencing “Operation Gridlock” to protest Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s extension of the state’s “stay-at-home” order. Blaring horns, waving flags, and sprouting signs ...

Politics

How Fast Can a President Tweet? Once Every 7.5 Minutes

In a morning tweetstorm, the President seems consumed with his own safety

May 11, 2020 • by Heather Cox Richardson

Trump appears to be upset about the recent prominence of former President Barack Obama in the news. On Friday, a tape of Obama talking to about 3000 former staffers leaked. In it, the former President expressed dismay over the Justice Department's decision to drop the case against former National Security ...

How Fast Can a President Tweet? Once Every 7.5 Minutes

Democracy

The Power and Limits of Partisanship in the Struggle to Defeat Trumpism

A Critical Response to Osita Nwanevu’s “Bipartisanship Won’t Save Us”

May 7, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

As Nwanevu nicely outlines, the “emergency” legislation recently passed by Congress through bipartisan compromise, and signed into law by President Trump, is manifestly inadequate to the current crisis. It is also the necessary and predictable result of compromises with a Republican party that opposes remedial public policy as a matter ...