By Carter Sherman Vice News (6/25/19) After a courtroom victory for the Trump administration last week, American teenagers may no longer be able to rely on a federal program that lets them access birth control and STI testing on the cheap. Last week, a panel of judges on the Ninth Circuit ruled to let the Trump administration rewrite the rules of Title X, a $286 million federal family planning program. Under the new rules, Title X beneficiaries — the program helps about 4 million low-income people — are banned from referring patients for abortions. They must also physically and…

Wisconsin journalist and native son, John Nichols (Photo by The Progressive). By Mark L. Taylor The Commoner Call (6/24/19) Commoner Call columnist Dan Peak recently interviewed Wisconsin journalist and author John Nichols on Viroqua’s community radio station WDRT several days before a recent standing-room-only public talk to the Vernon County Democratic Party. Nichols’ work appears in the Cap Times, The Nation and The Progressive magazines. He is also the author of a number of books. Nichols, whose family on both sides reaches back before Wisconsin became a state in 1848, discusses  a variety of topics directly impacting the state’s struggling dairy farmers and rural…

His latest dreadful week on the campaign trail is a case in point. By Zach Carter HuffPost (6/22/19) The first time Joe Biden ran for president was in 1988. Sort of. Biden officially withdrew from that contest in September 1987, after just three and a half months as a declared candidate. Despite building what The New York Times called “a formidable corps of fund-raisers,” Biden spent his brief time on the campaign trail bumbling from unforced error to unforced error. He insulted voters face to face, telling one, “I think I probably have a much higher I.Q. than you.” He…

In censoring a serious discussion of climate, the DNC aligns itself with Trump’s anti-climate agenda. By Alison Rose Levy TruthOut (6/16/19) One can’t mention the Green New Deal without a chorus of people asking, “How will we pay for it?” But when it comes to a crowded field of more than 20 Democratic presidential contenders, few bother to ask, “Who’s footing the bill for this horse race?” That’s because the reason is obvious. With a few exceptions, large donors and Wall Street interests back nearly every contender. In a time when democratic values and policies are shredded daily, will the unprecedented Democratic…

“No one’s standard of living would change.” By Eoin Higgins Common Dreams (6/19/19) Don’t worry, billionaires: your standard of living won’t change under a Joe Biden administration. That’s the message the Democratic frontrunner delivered to donors Tuesday as he continued a fundraising trip in New York that saw him on Monday tell a room of wealthy Wall Streeters “you guys are great” and ask a Trump-loving supermarket magnate for support. In Biden’s comments Tuesday, the former vice president told a room of 100 of the New York financial elite, including bankers Robert Rubin and Roger Altman, both of whom worked in the Treasury…

Shows what a free press can do. [Editor’s Note: Journalist Glenn Greenwald and a team of young Intercept journalists are reporting despite serious threats. — Mark L. Taylor] Intercept (6/15/19) Last Sunday, the Intercept and the Intercept Brasil published a series of exposés that has created a major political earthquake in Brazil that has only grown and intensified throughout the week. In less than a week, the once-revered Justice Minister of President Bolsonaro’s government, Sergio Moro, now faces widespread calls to resign from the same large Brazilian media outlets that spent years transforming him into an untouchable icon of integrity and uncritically…

  By Ben Norton The Grayzone (6/14/19) The Donald Trump administration’s evidence-less accusations against Iran have fallen apart within a matter of hours. But these US allegations did manage to disrupt an important meeting of Asian leaders at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit, where Tehran was hoping to make diplomatic breakthroughs to ease a crippling American economic blockade. On Thursday, June 13, two oil tankers traveling through the Gulf of Oman on their way to Japan suffered from mysterious explosions. The cause of the incident was not clear. The US government claimed without evidence that Iran was responsible for supposed “attacks” on…

By Charles P. Pierce Esquire (6/14/19) There is a fascinating lawsuit playing out in New York and, as far as I can tell, the only outlet that fully realizes its importance is Josh Marshall’s Talking Points Memo, which has put reporter Tierney Sneed on the case. In brief, Matt Dunlap, Maine’s Democratic Secretary of State, is suing the president*’s phony, and now defunct, “voter-security” commission in order to obtain internal commission documents that Dunlap claims were withheld from him, even though he also was a member of the commission. His primary targets are emails exchanged between Kris Kobach, J. Christian Adams,…