Both Democrats and Republicans now claim that Mexico has become a back door for Chinese goods to enter the United States. There’s little evidence for it, but that hasn’t stopped the US from bullying its southern neighbor.
Almost 60 years ago, Joan Didion wrote that “the city burning is Los Angeles’s deepest image of itself.” Since then, insurance companies and developers have prioritized short-term profits over housing resilience and affordability for Californians.
Tomorrow Donald Trump will take the oath of office again. By spurning economic populism and embracing Bush-era Republicans, Democrats helped pave the way for his second inauguration.
On Wednesday, Jared Kushner doubled his stake in a financial firm that stands to gain from turbocharging illegal Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory — just before the announcement of a cease-fire deal that Kushner may have helped advise on.
It is absurd to suggest that insurance companies have been blindsided by increasing climate risks. On the contrary, they’ve been fully aware, highly prepared, and hard at work protecting profits at the expense of policyholders.
The TikTok ban is about US tech hegemony, not national security or protecting Americans’ data, which homegrown social media companies make a business of collecting and selling.
Mark Zuckerberg’s embrace of the Republican Party has come as a surprise to those who identified him and Meta with the progressive wing of the Democrats. In reality, he has long championed right-wing causes from school privatization to government deregulation.
On Thursday, France’s Parti Socialiste refused to back a motion of no confidence in François Bayrou’s government. It sold out its left-wing allies for feeble concessions, renewing the party’s dismal record of tailing neoliberal centrists.
From price gouging to risky developing to insurance dysfunction, the dynamics of private housing markets are making the Los Angeles fire disaster considerably worse. We don’t need to prioritize real estate profits over people’s housing needs.
There is no ambiguity about President Joe Biden’s foreign policy record: it was bloody, and it was disastrous.
South Korea’s right-wing president, Yoon Suk-yeol, has finally been arrested after his attempt to stage a coup. But Yoon’s supporters are still mobilizing aggressively, hoping that Donald Trump will take their side over false claims of electoral fraud.
The Trump presidency is not a pathology of mass politics. It’s a problem of our billionaire political economy.