
The Right’s Green Awakening
Leading Republicans are abandoning climate-change denialism in order to design "green" policy favorable to capital.

Leading Republicans are abandoning climate-change denialism in order to design "green" policy favorable to capital.

Despite America’s two-party duopoly, third parties have played a crucial role in shaping US politics for good and ill — from bringing us pro-worker reforms and the welfare state to laying the groundwork for Donald Trump’s right-wing authoritarianism.

It was a hell of a year for the professional day traders who moonlight as members of Congress. Collectively they traded hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stocks and related securities — usually from industries that are closely regulated by Congress.

It’s clear that the GOP is capturing new parts of the working class. It’ll take credible appeals to workers’ frustrations and economic interests to win them back.

As Hurricane Milton bears down on their districts, two Republican representatives backed by fossil fuel companies are pushing legislation that claims the climate crisis is a “false emergency.”

The past week saw Democrats take up Trump’s hard-right immigration policy as their own for campaign fodder, with the liberal press’s assent. The very xenophobia that Democrats decried as “fascism” has become their policy agenda.

Ezra Klein’s new book Why We’re Polarized identifies much of what’s wrong in the gridlocked US political system. But he dismisses the role of class in cohering the movements that can finally democratize it.

Chuck Schumer spent New Year’s morning pretending he and establishment Democrats are fighting Republicans for $2,000 survival checks — right before he went to the Senate floor to surrender on live television. It's January 1 and the mask is already off.

The Republicans are a climate-denying suicide cult — everybody knows this. But in their own desperation to avoid debate on the climate crisis, the Democratic National Committee isn't far behind.

In February, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau proposed a rule that would limit most credit card late fees to $8. The rule is being fought by a group of House Republicans who took more than $600,000 from credit card companies in the last election cycle.

House Republicans voted yesterday to keep the monstrous war in Yemen going. But they couldn’t have succeeded without the help of several Democrats.

Democrats were ready to throw railworkers to the wolves, letting even Republicans outflank them on labor rights. But thanks to a last-minute legislative push by Bernie Sanders and his allies today, railworkers may be getting the sick leave they’re demanding.

Joe Biden has promised to crack down on overdraft and “junk” fees — a huge source of revenue for banks. Republicans and the banks who fund their campaigns are fighting desperately to preserve them.

There is no uniquely Trumpian health care agenda. The danger is the enactment of the GOP's reactionary proposals.

The United States would be much better off with a multiparty, proportional representation system. But we shouldn't delude ourselves that this “one quick fix” would root out the rot that pervades America's political economy.

Joe Biden has reverted to type, pushing a laughably inadequate infrastructure deal that ignores the accelerating climate crisis. There are now enough progressives in Congress to block the bill and insist on something better. They should.

Joe Biden has long prized bipartisanship above all, and some of his early actions indicate he simply wants to restore the country to its pre-Trump form. That would be a disaster.

Democratic elites are delusional — you can’t subdue the reactionary right without a robust alternative political vision.

The Republicans have learned a basic political lesson: benefit programs create their own constituencies. Will Democrats catch on?

As if the Electoral College weren’t antidemocratic enough already, the Supreme Court now looks poised to rule in favor of state legislatures deciding the outcome of the presidential election. That’s good news for Republicans and bad news for democracy.