Reading List

The most recent articles from a list of feeds I subscribe to.

Other first ladies had cash grabs. Melania tops them all.

Many Americans are facing severe economic hardship. But not the incoming president and first lady of the United States. In fact, the incumbent first lady has just accepted a media deal that will pay her at least seven times the income of the average American household. The year? 1932. The first lady? Eleanor Roosevelt, who […]

Minneapolis is showing a new kind of anti-Trump resistance

While the Trump administration continues its immigration enforcement operations in Minnesota, anti-ICE protests continued in Minneapolis and around the country — from Los Angeles to rural Maine — over the weekend. In the Twin Cities area, meanwhile, this activism is well-organized; but it’s not a traditional, anti-government protest movement of the likes we saw during […]

There’s a silver lining to our health care cost crisis

Another window to stem America’s latest health care cost crisis has closed. Congress set a self-imposed deadline of January 30 to reach a compromise to extend financial assistance available under the Affordable Care Act, and that deadline has passed without an agreement. Already, about 4 million Americans have lost their government aid, and many of […]

Donald Trump’s ego might just save democracy

President Donald Trump is frequently accused of authoritarian ambitions. It’s an image he often seems to relish, either sincerely or as trolling. “Usually they say, ‘He’s a horrible dictator-type person,’ I’m a dictator,” he said in Davos. “But sometimes you need a dictator!” Over the past decade, he’s made a political career by dominating the […]

Trump’s massive self-own

When President Donald Trump launched his deportation campaign last January, he had the American public at his back. Under Joe Biden, unauthorized border crossings had soared to record levels — and threw America into a nativist mood. In November 2024, a CBS News/YouGov poll found 57 percent of Americans expressing support for “a national program […]