By JEFF MACKLER When U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told a National Security Council meeting last week, from which President Trump had departed, that his boss was a “fucking moron,” it’s likely that Tillerson, who has refused to deny his characterization, was not referring literally to any diminished mental capacity of the president. After…
Soon after hurricane Irma devastated islands in the Caribbean and parts of Florida, Socialist Action reporter Ernie Gotta interviewed Omar Pérez Figueroa about the effects of the storm on Puerto Rico. Gotta followed up with Perez after hurricane Maria decimated the island. Pérez, a native of Puerto Rico, is a member of the Juventud Hostosiana, the youth…
By ERNIE GOTTA President Trump had this to say about professional athletes taking a knee during the National Anthem: “Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out! He’s fired. He’s fired!’” What was the response? The…
By MARTY GOODMAN Below is the text of a speech that the author delivered at a Sept. 13 forum in New York City sponsored by Socialist Action. What is fascism? Let’s consult an expert, Adolf Hitler. Hitler cut to the chase at a 1933 meeting of German industrialists when he told them: “Private enterprise cannot…
By BARRY SHEPPARD Trump made this unprecedented threat not in a tweet or off the cuff remark but in a written speech before the United Nations General Assembly. No other country in the U.N. has ever openly stated its intention to destroy another country. Coupled with his earlier threat to rain down “fire and fury”…
By MICHAEL SCHREIBER In the week following the white supremacist “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, which ended with the murder of Heather Heyer, anti-racist and anti-fascist protests erupted in hundreds of cities and towns across the United States. About 3000 marched in Philadelphia on Aug. 16, and 1000 rallied in Portland, Ore., two days…
By WAYNE DELUCA Only days after threatening “fire and fury” against North Korea, President Donald Trump said, “We have many options for Venezuela, including a possible military option, if necessary.” Trump was improvising, with no back-up from the Pentagon, and seems to be inventing his militaristic bombast as he goes. But we cannot dismiss the…
By JEFF MACKLER “Trump Ends Covert Aid to Syrian Rebels Trying to Topple Assad,” read a July 19 New York Times headline. Citing The Washington Post as its source, the article noted that the official termination of the “secret” U.S. program “was never publicly announced, just as the beginnings of the program four years ago…
By MARK SILVERMAN Senate Republicans failed in yet another effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, also known as “Obamacare,” having abandoned efforts to repeal and replace the ACA with a so-called “skinny” repeal-only effort. Despite engaging in the bullying tactics for which he is noted, President Donald J. Trump failed to galvanize Republicans as…
By BARRY SHEPPARD In regard to the charges about Trump‘s collusion with Russia to throw the election his way, and Russian meddling in the elections, we can mention that the list of the elections in all the countries Washington meddled in is far too long to for this post. In fact, the U.S. is the…
By JOHN LESLIE As Socialist Action goes to press, the health-care debate in Washington is on hold. The GOP plan, which was hatched in secret in a Senate back room, is wildly unpopular. Yet the Republicans seem intent on passing something that will give the appearance that Trump kept his campaign promise to “repeal and…
By JEFF MACKLER The lie that the U.S. is fighting Islamic State (ISIS) terrorism in Syria was publicly exploded on June 18 when a U.S. F/A-18 “Super Hornet” fighter jet launched from the George H.W. Bush aircraft carrier shot down a Syrian government aircraft. Syria said its plane had carried out a mission against ISIS…
By MICHAEL SCHREIBER “We’re getting out!” President Trump declared before the press and a knot of governmental officials who had gathered in the White House Rose Garden on June 1. “In order to fulfill my solemn duty to protect America and its citizens, the United States will withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord.” Trump characterized…
By THOMAS WEYTS — BRUSSELS —Twelve thousand people took part in the demonstration here on May 24 against Trump and the world that he stands for and against NATO. As expected and hoped, it was a very diverse, lively, and militant demonstration. More than 70 organizations took to the streets against war and imperialist adventures,…
By JEFF MACKLER In the days of my youth, our local peace group began its protests against U.S. nuclear weapons—atomic bombs at that time—by marching across the radius of total incineration, in our instance, the distance from the Ohio-based Strategic Air Command (SAC) Wright Patterson Air Force Base to a location nine miles away. Everything…
By CLIFF CONNER The Earth Day 2017 March for Science signals resistance to Donald Trump’s sharp infusion of irrationality into the national discourse. Official support for climate-change denial and other anti-science agendas has suddenly become much more explicit. At the same time, many protestors recognize a continuity linking Trump’s bizarre bluster with a pre-existing condition…
Stop the U.S. Bombing of Syria! U.S. Out Now! Self-determination for Syria! On April 6, the Trump administration launched 59 Tomahawk missiles at Syria’s al-Shayrat military airfield. The U.S. strikes decimated a number of buildings and airplanes. At least nine civilians and six Syrian soldiers were killed. Neither Trump nor any other U.S. government agency presented…
By BILL ONASCH Hiram W. Johnson, a long-serving Republican Senator from California, is generally credited as being the first to use the phrase “Truth is the First Casualty of War,” in 1917—directed toward the duplicity of Woodrow Wilson. President Wilson, after winning reelection by bragging “he kept us out of war,” a few months later…
By CRISTOBAL CAVAZOS DuPage Immigrant Solidarity Coalition Although, ironically, immigrant detentions are slightly down as the Great Deporter in Chief Barack Obama leaves office, Donald Trump’s new immigration guidelines seek to go well beyond Obama’s, with the possibility of deportations of millions of documented workers. Immigration agents and police officials, who in their majority supported…
By JOE AUCIELLO In an early test for the Trump administration, the pledge to “repeal and replace Obamacare” was developed into a legislative proposal that was withdrawn before its anticipated defeat in Congress. The full support of the president and a major push by Speaker of the House Paul Ryan came to nothing. The failure…
By JEFF MACKLER “The evidence is in,” say gleeful Democratic Party cheerleaders. Donald Trump was elected president because his Russian spy collaborators stole 20,000 secret e-mails from Democratic National Committee (DNC) computer servers, including e-mails from Hillary Clinton’s national campaign chair, John Podesta. The stolen e-mails demonstrated proof positive that the Democratic Party, violating its…
By JOE AUCIELLO With the election of Donald Trump as president, the Republican initiative to dismantle the Affordable Care Act (ACA), or “Obamacare,” begins in earnest and with real traction, following several years of consistent but failed attempts that were merely symbolic. Now, the right-wing rhetoric is shaping into reality. In February, President Trump met…
By MARK UGOLINI Trump’s war on immigrant workers has moved into high gear as new orders unleash the full force of the U.S. government to greatly expand deportations, harassment, and provocative police actions in minority communities. Under Barak Obama, deportations reached a record high 434,000 for the single year 2014. Known as the “Deporter-in-Chief,” Obama,…
By CELYNE CAMEN and KAREN SCHRAUFNAGEL Trump’s ban on Muslims, which tens of thousands protested at airports across the country, was the most recent escalation of an ongoing assault on the rights of Muslims and youth from Africa and the Middle East. This group has been targeted continuously at least since the beginning of the…
By JOE AUCIELLO If there is a training manual for the sons and daughters of the 1% on how to govern, a kind of “How To Fool and Rule The Masses For Dummies”—it’s easy enough to imagine the need for such a guide—then surely the deluxe edition would include links to what on “The…
