When radioactive wastes aren’t radioactive wastes

The U.S. Department of Energy wants to redefine what constitutes high-level radioactive waste, cutting corners on the disposal of some of the most dangerous and long-lasting waste byproduct on earth — reprocessed spent fuel from the nuclear defense program. …...

Red state voters just overwhelmingly supported a minimum wage hike

On Tuesday, Arkansas voters overwhelmingly approved Issue 5, a ballot measure that will raise the state’s minimum wage from $8.50 to $11 by 2021. The vote is expected to raise wages for some 300,000 workers throughout the state. The measure received a staggering 68...

Fighting the last war with borrowed money

On Friday, while the White House press corps was playing Dungeons and Dragons: the Judge Kavanaugh edition, President Trump was signing an $854 billion dollar spending bill with no reporters present. The almost $1trillion package included an obscene $674 billion...

Trump and Jerusalem: Will His “hard power” Realism Backfire Bigly?

Clarity is preferable to ambiguity even when the clear picture is grim. So I have found in many circumstances, and so I find it now that President Trump declares his intention to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and, in all likelihood, move the United States...

The GOP’s Tax Cut Bill Probably Won’t Help the Middle Class

President Donald Trump may want to refer to the Republican tax reform law as a “Cut, Cut, Cut” bill, but for millions of lower income Americans, it may not actually do much cutting. The Republican bill would actually raise tax rates on almost 13 million...

Why Identity Politics and Class Politics Can’t be Separated

During last year’s Democratic primary race between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, the disagreements between the two candidates were most apparent when it came to the economy. While Sanders built his campaign around economic issues like income and wealth...

Pulling the lever for doomsday: How Donald Trump changed everything

I didn’t vote in the pivotal American election of 2016. Thirty-five years ago, in that unseasonably warm month of November, I was in Antarctica’s Allan Hills taking ice core samples with a hand augur. The pictures I have from that time show my team drilling deep into...