Washington Spectator
Independent. Progressive. Uncompromising.
- Website
- washingtonspectator.org · all feeds from this site
- Feed URL
https://washingtonspectator.org/feed/
Read it in your FeedListing reader
Or add to: Feedly Inoreader Raw feed
Latest posts
-
We Know What You Are Against, What Are You For?
Someone once asked labor leader Samuel Gompers, “What does labor want?” His response is often misquoted, limited to one word: “More.” By doing so, that one-word answer makes the labor movement seem narrow and selfish. What Gompers (who lived from 1850 to 1924) actually said…
-
Politics Is War By Other Means
It’s hard to say which of the many jaw-dropping episodes in the first 21 months of the second Trump administration has been the most egregious. But a strong contender would be the moment, a year ago, when the president accused six Democratic veterans and former intelligence…
-
Trump Accounts: Not Good for Families and Not Good for America
Last July 4th, a new type of savings account was launched. Called Trump Accounts, they are part of the President’s Big Beautiful Bill, and they have three parts. (1) The government will put money into an account for new babies; (2) employers can contribute to these accounts; and…
-
To My First Born, Vadim Alexander Medish
Sue Orlean Edwards lives in Washington, D.C. Her poem, recited at a recent memorial service in the National Cathedral, is a meditation on the death of her eldest son Vadim in late 2025. An accomplished athlete, artist, musician, and scholar, he was stricken with a rare…
-
Trump’s $5,000 Election Bribe Would Benefit Only the Wealthy
Donald Trump again wants to bribe Americans. At the phony Republican mid-term convention in September, he promised all adults $5,000 if Republicans maintain control of the House and Senate after the November election. Anyone paying attention over the past 2 years, or for that…
-
The Plan to Treat Election-Related Protests as Terrorism
Ahead of the midterm elections, the Trump administration has been building a federal counterterrorism apparatus designed to turn alleged criminal conduct during protests against election-related abuses of federal power into the basis for targeting organizations, organizers and…
-
Why Authoritarians and Their Allies Scheme So Relentlessly to Undermine Multi-Racial Democracy
On April 29 of this year the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Louisiana v. Callais, overturning the creation of a Black Majority district in Louisiana, driving a stake into the heart of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and effectively dismantling the remaining few…
-
Venezuela and the New Spoils System: Access to Oil Starts with Access to Trump
Donald Trump has explained what the United States is doing in Venezuela in unusually candid terms. Speaking in Las Vegas on August 5 about the January military operation that removed Nicolás Maduro, Trump said the United States was “taking a lot of oil from Venezuela” and had…
-
AI + ICBM + Nukes = What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
While we leverage AI [Artificial Intelligence] and ML [Machine Learning] to expand decision space for senior leaders, we also remain committed to ensuring that these capabilities will not replace the human decision-making critical to advising and executing Presidential…
-
Mark Medish talks with Freedom Watch About “It’s the Power, Stupid.”
In this YouTube portrait produced by Freedom Watch Media, Mark Medish dissects Trump’s plan to undermine the midterms and summarizes the vulnerabilities of our elections system. Medish is co-author of “It’s the Power, Stupid”, the article he wrote with Joel McCleary for The…
-
Risks to American Democracy and Opportunities for Reform: A Conversation with Robert Reich
For our series Conversations on the State of Democracy, I sat down with Robert Reich near the Berkeley campus where he has spent a portion of his career. Reich was the Secretary of Labor in the Clinton Cabinet, served in the Ford administration and was an economic advisor on…
-
It’s the Power, Stupid:Dancing in the Dark, Part 4
The principle [of emergency power] lies about like a loaded weapon, ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need. —Justice Robert H. Jackson, dissenting in Korematsu v. United States (1944) The president will do it. The predicate…
-
Trump’s Two Oil Mysteries: Freedom Fuel and Venezuelan Crude
Gasoline prices are rising again, adding to voter concerns about the cost of living. Yet in the Philadelphia region, a new company, Freedom Fuel, is suddenly selling gasoline substantially below its competitors at more than two dozen stations. President Trump has personally…
-
The Wrecking Ball Comes For the Midterms
Last October, I wrote in The Washington Spectator that the Trump administration was constructing an integrated system to constrain voting and criminalize political opposition. Claims of election fraud, domestic terrorism, foreign financing and organized political violence were…