Author: Common Dreams

Since the January 6 insurrection, six of the biggest fossil fuel companies in America have given nearly $700,000 to the campaign and leadership PACs of the Sedition Caucus, according to CREW’s ongoing tracking. They have also given more than $350,000 to the NRSC and NRCC which work to reelect congressional Republicans, a majority of whom voted against certifying the 2020 election, for a total of over $1 million to be potentially spent on keeping the Sedition Caucus in Congress. Valero Energy and Marathon Petroleum top the list at $400,000 and $264,500, respectively. Both companies pledged to stop donating indefinitely,...

As with climate change, inequality, and our other collective problems, solutions will entail confronting and reining in power, whether the power of wealth, of outsized political representation, or of social media companies. The United States is tumbling toward socio-political crisis. Here are just a few of the distress signals recently visible: The insurrection at the U.S. Capitol building (January 6, 2021). Rapidly increasing numbers of death threats against politicians—including threats from fellow politicians. A majority of followers of one of the two main political parties telling pollsters that they would approve of violence as a means to political power...

Many commentators in the LGBTQ space are talking about how the draft U.S. Supreme Court opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization might affect various constitutional rights that the LGBTQ community has secured over decades of advocacy and struggle. A common theme is that “they’re coming for us next,” after abortion. But make no mistake, the war against LGBTQ people in America is already raging. While the Dobbs draft opinion may preview a new front in that war (and I fear it does), attacks against LGBTQ people — especially youth — have been growing in intensity for several...

Amid the outpouring of grief and heartache following the May 14 massacre in Buffalo that left 10 people dead and three wounded, critical observers say the racial animus which evidence shows motivated the killer must be seen in the larger context of a white nationalist mindset that has increasingly broken into the mainstream of the right-wing political movement and Republican Party in recent years. Taken into custody at the scene of the mass shooting at the Tops Market and identified as Payton Gendron, the White 18-year-old male charged with the murders of the victims live-streamed his attack online where...

A federal judge found that former President Donald Trump and attorney John Eastman engaged in “a coup in search of a legal theory” on March 28. The court concluded that, more likely than not, their efforts to overturn the presidential election were federal crimes. The coup continues. Trump lost by more than seven million votes, but his false claim that Democrats stole the election from him is not just about 2020 anymore. It is about conditioning GOP voters for the ultimate Trump loyalty test: rejecting future elections that Trump or his designees lose. Sowing distrust in the system, Trump...