From the Left

Ian Maule/Getty Images North America/Getty Images

Trump’s First Week, the Real Story

From the Left / Robert B. Reich / Jan 27, 2025

The New York Times describes Trump as leading “a global wave of hard-line conservative populism.”

Rubbish.

What Trump is undertaking has nothing whatever to do with conservatism, which is about conserving institutions and shrinking the size of government. And it has nothing to do with populism, which is about confronting elites.

Trump is ...Read more

Trump Pardons Must Not Lead to the Unpardonable

From the Left / Clarence Page / Jan 27, 2025

Hindsight, as the old saying goes, is always 20/20. That thought came to mind after a couple of the roughly 1,500 Jan. 6 offenders given pardons by President Trump said they didn’t want it.

Finally, I thought, a bright light of sanity shows itself.

I am heartened by the example of Pamela Hemphill, 71, of Boise, Idaho, ...Read more

Trump's Executive Order on Birthright Citizenship, Explained

From the Left / ACLU / Jan 21, 2025

The American Civil Liberties Union and immigrants' rights advocates sued the Trump administration on its first day in office after President Donald Trump signed an executive order that seeks to strip certain babies born in the U.S. of the United States citizenship that the Constitution guarantees to them.

The lawsuit charges the Trump ...Read more

Dr. King's Dream Still Offers a Great Agenda

From the Left / Clarence Page / Jan 20, 2025

As we mark the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, ironically on the same day as Donald Trump’s second presidential inauguration, I am reminded of a famous quote from another King:

”Can we all get along?”

Yes, that plea came not from MLK but from Rodney King, no relation to the great civil rights leader, in May 1992 as riots ...Read more

'I Thought That Death Was Imminent'

From the Left / ACLU / Jan 13, 2025

*Jean Paul is a pseudonym. All names have been changed to protect those identified in this story.

I hail from Cameroon, a beautiful country tucked away in Central Africa that's sometimes called "Africa in miniature" for its diverse geography, culture, food and languages. Sadly, since 2016, this diversity has also contributed to conflict between...Read more

Jimmy Carter’s Funeral Brought a Rare and Much-Needed Vision of Peace

From the Left / Clarence Page / Jan 10, 2025

When he showed up at the Chicago Tribune one day in early 1976, James Earl Carter, Jr., was announced by one of our young newsroom copy clerks as “that governor from Georgia who thinks he can run for president.”

Yes, as a young reporter in that newsroom, I remember Jimmy Carter as a former peanut farmer from Plains, Georgia, and a former ...Read more

Disappearing Messages Don't Work -- and They're Great

From the Left / ACLU / Jan 06, 2025

Fifteen years ago it was unfathomable -- and a bad idea -- to imagine that your digital messages could automatically self-destruct. Once your message is on someone else's machine, you simply cannot guarantee that it will be destroyed when you want it to be. Fooling people into thinking they have more security and privacy than they really do ...Read more

MAGA Takes on Elon Musk’s 'Tech Bros'

From the Left / Clarence Page / Jan 06, 2025

Just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump was scheduled to return to the White House, the coterie of American tech oligarchs who played a decisive role in re-electing him was busy exerting their own power in ways that suggest the MAGA coalition may be heading for a crack-up.

Trump famously invited fellow billionaires Elon Musk and Vivek ...Read more

Attempts at a Technological Solution To Disinformation Will Do More Harm Than Good

From the Left / ACLU / Dec 30, 2024

There is widespread concern today about the use of generative AI and deepfakes to create fake videos that can manipulate and deceive people. Many are asking, is there any way that technology can confidently establish whether an image or video has been altered? A number of techniques have been proposed. They include -- most prominently -- a ...Read more

Behind the “Lie of the Year,” Some Bitter Truths

From the Left / Clarence Page / Dec 30, 2024

As it has been doing yearly since 2009, the fact-checking organization PolitiFact has chosen the Lie of the Year. There was an abundance of nominees.

And, it turns out, they chose the same whopper I identified as a top contender months ago: President-elect Donald Trump’s unfounded claim that Haitian migrants were eating the household pets of ...Read more

Welcome to the World of MAGA Machismo, Where Muscles Trump Brains

From the Left / Dick Polman / Nov 16, 2023

Ladies and gentleman, here is your United States Senate, then and now:

Sen. Daniel Webster on March 7, 1850: “It is fortunate that there is a Senate of the United States (with) a just sense of its own dignity, and its own high responsibilities, and a body to which the country looks with confidence for wise, moderate, patriotic, and healing ...Read more

A totally fixable budget impasse involving a potential presidential candidate

From the Left / John Micek / Jul 17, 2023

For those of you who haven’t been paying attention, Pennsylvania’s three-week-old budget impasse is the ultimate, binge-worthy summer drama.

There are great storylines, with real-world implications with fascinating characters in leading roles. And, like any addictive warm-weather series, the chances are pretty good that politics-watchers ...Read more

Trump and his lawyers think he can get away with anything. It's outlandish.

From the Left / Ruth Marcus / Oct 25, 2019

WASHINGTON -- "The king can do no wrong." That is the ancient legal maxim used to explain why a sovereign should not be held to account for misdeeds. President Trump and his lawyers are now making arguments that make this legal doctrine look wimpy. Their vision boils down to: The king can do whatever wrong he damn pleases, and there's nothing ...Read more