Why Workers Everywhere Should Be Scared by Kentucky’s Assault on Unions

“A lot of working people voted for change in this election,” argued Bill Finn, the director of the Kentucky State Building and Construction Trades Council, as Kentucky legislators were shredding labor rights in the Bluegrass State. “They didn’t vote for this. They didn’t vote for a pay cut.”

Finn got that right. Kentucky Republicans launched the new year with a race to enact sweeping anti-labor legislation, and they weren’t concerning themselves with the question of whether they had a mandate to assault labor unions and undermine wages and workplace protections. They are moving immediately, aggressively, and thoroughly to implement an across-the-board assault on workers and the unions that represent them.

How Paul Ryan Won Over Every House Republican (Except For One)

WASHINGTON ― In October 2015, with Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) vowing that he would restore regular order and give members more control over the House, nine Republicans ― 10, if you count one member abstaining ― said no to Ryan becoming speaker.

On Tuesday, only one Republican voted against him.

When the House GOP held their internal elections behind closed doors in November, at least four conservative lawmakers left the room so they wouldn’t have to audibly register their discontent with the speaker. Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), Walter Jones (R-N.C.), Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) and Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) went into an antechamber of the sprawling Ways and Means Committee room and waited until the vote was over.

Paul Ryan: We’ll Defund Planned Parenthood In Our Obamacare Repeal Bill, Too

WASHINGTON ― With so much attention on GOP efforts to repeal Obamacare this month, there’s a detail to their plan that may slip under the radar: Their bill will strip all federal funding for Planned Parenthood, too.

“Planned Parenthood legislation would be in our reconciliation bill,” House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said during a Thursday press conference, referring to the process Republicans are using to pass an Obamacare repeal bill with a simple majority of votes instead of a supermajority, which means Democrats can’t filibuster it in the Senate.

Leitch needs to kick Kouvalis to the curb

Donna Trump, aka Kellie Leitch, has galloped into a political box canyon, raising dust in her wake.

The only way out is back the way she came. And that means running headlong into a very inconvenient truth for the wannabe leader of the Tories.

The issue this time is her campaign manager. Nick Kouvalis has admitted that he posted a pack of lies about Justin Trudeau for the express purpose of getting a rise out of the Left.

Why do right-wingers favor Keith Ellison in the DNC race? Various reasons, and they’re not pretty

As the contest over who will head the Democratic National Committee comes to a close, party leaders appear divided. Head counts by Democratic activists and news organizations indicate that none of the candidates for the office will likely win on the first ballot on Saturday. On the other side of the political aisle, however, there appears to be unity about who the Republicans would like to see leading the DNC: Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison.

The strong preference for Ellison won’t directly affect the chair contest. But it’s a bit unusual for people who profess to despise a political party to have such a strong preference about who should lead it.

The GOP’s new war on women: McConnell’s attempt to silence Elizabeth Warren epitomizes the newly empowered sexism of the right

Perhaps Sen. Mitch McConnell should have skipped his quadrennial all-day post-inauguration nap. Being awake for the Women’s March and witnessing all the rage and energy of millions of feminists might have woken him up to what kind of bee’s nest awaited him on Tuesday night, when he tried to stop one woman, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, from quoting another woman, Coretta Scott King, during the debate over Sen. Jeff Sessions’ nomination for attorney general.

What Progressives Need to Beat Trump—The Answer Isn't Copying What Right-Wingers Do

When you’re in the midst of multiple constitutional crises, it’s hard to focus on the future. But without that focus on the part of progressives and liberals, the fate of the republic looks bleak.

Donald Trump may not have been the dream candidate of right-wing leaders, but in the end, they deemed him close enough. For that, they’re being richly rewarded. In the course of a week, the religious right has gotten nearly everything its leaders ever longed for, short of overturning Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court case that legalized abortion. But they seem confident, given the president’s pick of Neil Gorsuch to the high court bench, that it’s just a matter of time—four, maybe eight, years—before that aim is achieved.

Up to 13,000 secretly hanged in Syrian jail, says Amnesty

As many as 13,000 opponents of Bashar al-Assad were secretly hanged in one of Syria’s most infamous prisons in the first five years of the country’s civil war as part of an extermination policy ordered by the highest levels of the Syrian government, according to Amnesty International.

Many thousands more people held in Saydnaya prison died through torture and starvation, Amnesty said, and the bodies were dumped in two mass graves on the outskirts of Damascus between midnight and dawn most Tuesday mornings for at least five years.

Trump’s Radical Anti-Americanism

Beate and Serge Klarsfeld, the couple who did so much to bear witness to the terrible truths of the Second World War, came to town last week to introduce their new memoir to an American audience. In it, there is a photograph that can only be called heartbreaking in its happiness, unbearable in its ordinariness. It shows an eight-year-old Serge with his sister and their Romanian-Jewish parents walking along a promenade in Nice, in 1943, still smiling, still feeling confident, even at that late date, that they are safe in their new French home. Within a few months, the children and their mother were hiding in a false closet, as Gestapo agents took their father to Auschwitz, and his death.

Want To See Fake News? Check Out 'Russia Today'

Canadian Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly has put the menace of "fake news" on notice.

Her plans to take on this challenge across social media and internet platforms is a welcome relief, as the face of digital technology, the normal exchange of information, and the entirety of public discourse has been rapidly descending into a disorienting mess.