Joe Biden Has Preserved Key Ethics Loopholes for New Appointees
Joe Biden’s new ethics order will limit one revolving door loophole between government and lobbying — but not the loopholes Biden’s own cabinet picks used to make their fortunes.
19241 Articles by: Frantz Durupt
Frantz Durupt is a journalist at French daily Libération.
As Joe Biden Takes Office, Labor Marches On
In the first 24 hours of the Joe Biden administration, Teamsters are on strike in the Bronx, Chicago teachers are preparing to stop work, and even the staff of the New Yorker are engaged in a work stoppage.
Joe Biden Was Right About the Lies in Our Politics. But He’s Repeatedly Been One of the Liars.
In his inauguration speech yesterday, Joe Biden rightly identified a crisis of ignored truth and unending lies in American politics. Donald Trump enflamed that crisis, but the political class, the media industry, and Biden himself helped create it.
How the Italian Communists Fought the Rise of Fascism
Founded 100 years ago today, the Italian Communist Party immediately faced a violent wave of repression, killing hundreds of militants. As policemen, business elites, and even liberal politicians swung behind Benito Mussolini, no party resisted the Fascist threat more than the Communists.
The Many Lives of Ignazio Silone
Inspired by the hardships faced by peasants in his native Abruzzo, Ignazio Silone’s Fontamara was one of the great anti-fascist novels of the twentieth century. But his own political journey was deeply conflicted, as he left behind his Bolshevik past to become a strident anti-communist.
Francesco Misiano, the Italian Communist Who Brought Battleship Potemkin to the West
The Italian Communist Party was founded 100 years ago today. One of its most remarkable early militants was Francesco Misiano — a keen internationalist who fought gun in hand in the German Revolution before becoming a leading light of Soviet cinema.
When Italy’s Communists Painted Naples Red
Founded 100 years ago today, the Italian Communist Party fought its most famous battles in the country’s Northern industrial heartlands. But in the Southern city of Naples, it had to tailor its activity to a more complex reality — a city whose large informal economy reflected the deep inequalities on which the Italian state was founded.
If Joe Biden Moves Left, You Can Thank the Left
Joe Biden has issued a raft of executive orders that are surprisingly progressive. But we know who to thank: the organized left, which has helped transform US politics.
The Door Has Been Opened to a More Democratic UAW
The United Auto Workers has fallen far from its postwar glory as the most important union in America. Flagrant leadership corruption has made things worse. But a recent settlement with the Justice Department opens up the possibility of democratizing the union, writes labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein.
Donald Trump Was a Warning Shot
In the end, Donald Trump didn’t destroy the American political system. He showed the world how corrupt, undemocratic, and reactionary it already was.
The Business Class Has Never Liked Democracy
Today, on Inauguration Day, we shouldn’t forget that the business class has long stoked fears of democracy — and bankrolled the conservative movement that gave us the events of January 6.
Donald Trump Was Always a Plutocratic Fraud
Donald Trump won the presidency claiming he was a radical opponent of the political establishment. That was always a lie — and his four years in the White House revealed he was just another reactionary, capitalist billionaire.
Joe Biden Is Not Ready to Confront Corporate America
Joe Biden will likely govern to the left of Barack Obama. But his willingness to spend has everything to do with capital’s relaxation of deficit worries — and where capital says “no,” no one should expect Biden to say “yes.”
If Biden Is to Succeed Where Obama Failed, He’ll Have to Fight the GOP
President Joe Biden now has a choice: make friends with congressional Republicans or actually make progress on the multiple overlapping crises facing the United States. He can’t do both.
Get Ready to Fight Joe Biden
The departure of Donald Trump from the White House is cause for celebration. Our task now is to build a democratic socialist alternative to Joe Biden — and to oppose the Democratic establishment’s neoliberal agenda.
The Sheer Absurdity of Trump’s “1776 Commission” Report Is Hard to Overstate
The “1776 Commission” report released by Donald Trump just before his exit from the presidency is so staggeringly awful, trotting out every moldy reactionary trope about the history of the United States it can, that it has to be read to be believed.
1,400 Workers in the Bronx Are on Strike for a Livable Wage
More than a thousand workers at Hunts Point Produce Market in the Bronx are striking for a dollar-an-hour raise. They risked their health to feed New York City throughout the pandemic — they deserve the city’s solidarity.
Joe Biden Lifted His Health Care Plan From Insurance Industry Lobbyists
Instead of pushing a promised public health care option or expanding Medicare or any of the other health reforms the United States desperately needs, Joe Biden’s health care reform draws from proposals from for-profit health insurance companies.
The Patient-to-Staff Ratios Won By California Nurses Save Lives. We Need More of Them.
California nurses fought for over a decade to win safe-staffing legislation, a crucial set of rules protecting both nurses’ rights on the job and the well-being of hospital patients. So far, no other state has followed suit — but nurses nationwide are struggling to change that.
Martial Arts in the Age of Trump
From the UFC to Hollywood, MMA and other ultra-brutal martial arts have gone mainstream — hand in hand with the rise of the far right.