Author: TheGuardian

Ron Johnson, the senator from Wisconsin who has led the Republican campaign in the Senate of making unfounded claims about Joe Biden’s son Hunter, is facing a host of questions about his own ethics, including whether he personally benefited from a change in tax law that he sought in 2017. A letter sent by Johnson to the Senate ethics committee in May has revealed the senator began the process of selling a company he partly owned in February 2018, just months after he insisted the Trump administration change a portion of the tax law in a way that ultimately...

Coarse, cruel, chaotic. Donald Trump has been called a lot of things. Even some of his supporters have had a hard time embracing the darker aspects of his personality. Until recently they have, however, trusted the president on one one vital issue: the economy. But with about two weeks to go until the election, there are clear signs that Trump’s claims to have created the “greatest economy we’ve ever had in the history of our country” are unravelling. Perhaps nowhere is that more worrying for Trump than in Wisconsin. Losing Wisconsin ended Hillary Clinton’s presidential chances in 2016. Famously...

The pandemic forced Milwaukee’s 2020 Democratic National Convention to go virtual, but some feel the party abandons the Black communities that get them elected. As protesters outside Wauwatosa’s city hall shouted “wake up, wake up,” to energize the crowd, activist Charley Frazier remarked how just miles away, the Democratic national convention (DNC) had kicked off on what was The People’s Revolution’s 81st night of demonstrations. The coalition of organizers are made up of young activists challenging the current political system and trying to force systemic change. “This is the Milwaukee they don’t want you to see,” she said. “[It’s]...

Heather Cox Richardson offers an eloquent history of the negation of the American idea, with clear lessons for the November election. Heather Cox Richardson’s How the South Won the Civil War: Oligarchy, Democracy, and the Continuing Fight for the Soul of America is not principally about that war. Instead, it is a broad sweep of American history on the theme of the struggle between democracy and oligarchy – between the vision that “all men are created equal” and the frequency with which power has accumulated in the hands of a few, who have then sought to thwart equality. What...