Credit: Mr. Fish / Truthdig

The ruling elites are painfully aware that the foundations of American power are rotting. The outsourcing of manufacturing in the United States and the plunging of over half the population into poverty will, they know, not be reversed. The self-destructive government shutdown has been only one of numerous assaults on the efficiency of the administrative state. The failing roads, bridges and public transportation are making commerce and communications more difficult. The soaring government deficit, now almost a trillion dollars thanks to the Trump administration’s massive corporate tax cuts, cannot be eliminated. The seizure of the financial system by global speculators ensures, sooner rather than later, another financial meltdown. The dysfunction of democratic institutions, which vomit up con artists such as Donald Trump and hold as alternatives inept, corporate-indentured politicians such as Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi, is cementing into place a new authoritarianism. The hollowing out of the pillars of the state, including the diplomatic corps and regulatory agencies, leaves the blunt force of the military as the […]

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Credit: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration

In November 1971 the residents of Birmingham, Ala., feared for their lives when an atmospheric phenomenon known as an “inversion” trapped and concentrated industrial air pollutants in the city. Its residents were no strangers to industry’s air pollution—there are stories of people changing their white shirts after arriving at their offices because the shirts had turned black on the brief walk to work. This was the worst air pollution event residents had ever seen; Birmingham found itself in a health crisis.

The Jefferson County Health Department formally requested 23 major emitters of air pollution in Birmingham to reduce their emissions by 60 percent. This request went largely ignored, particularly by the largest emitters in the city. In the absence of state and local legal options the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) stepped in and for the first time in the federal agency’s history. It invoked emergency powers under the Clean Air Act to take enforcement action to abate air pollution. In the following days a combination of […]

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Anti-choice woman, who has no idea what she has gotten herself into.

Met Danielle in the counseling room of the Jackson Women’s Health Organization in Jackson, Mississippi, which sits on a busy corner in the city’s arts district. Its vibrant pink paint job has earned it the name “the Pink House,” and it is the state’s only remaining abortion clinic.

Dressed in gray sweatpants and a T-shirt, Danielle looked pensive as she sat in a narrow room in the back of the building alongside 12 other women there for abortion care. Betty Thompson, a counselor who has worked at the clinic for 24 years, stood before the women, ready to walk them through the necessary paperwork and go over next steps.

Twenty four years old with two young children, Danielle had just found out she was pregnant again. She had a fling with a co-worker, only to learn that he had sabotaged the condom they used. She was now four weeks pregnant. After weighing her options, she decided to terminate her pregnancy. She’d become pregnant via deception, […]

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