US foreign policy has shifted dramatically from just a brief 20 years ago. This is not the making of Donald Trump, Xi Jinping or Vladimir Putin. Rather, they are symptoms of forces that have been building since the post-Soviet era. With the ascendency of the US as the global superpower and the...
As the revolt was beginning to brew on streets across the nation on May 30, US President Donald Trump was celebrating the success of SpaceX’s launch of a manned mission to the international space station, the first time a private company has put human beings in space. Although it increasingly...
In 2017, US President Donald Trump’s new administration found itself in a quandary. Should it continue providing weapons for use in Saudi Arabia’s murderous war in Yemen that had been raging for two years? In June 2017, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman unexpectedly declared neighboring...
Immunologist Dr. Rick Bright has the job title of the director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA). He is the author of the phrase “the darkest winter in modern history,” which may one day become the title of a Hollywood movie that recounts the invasion in...
Coups have been one of the greatest threats to democracy. The people elect a daring leader willing to take on the status quo. And then, as in Iran in 1953 or Chile in 1973, the military pushes the leader aside to take control. Sometimes the generals remain in power; sometimes they restore a royal...
French King Louis XV reputedly said, “Après moi, le déluge.” (“After me, the flood.”) Whether that line was really his or not remains unclear, but not long after his death did come the French Revolution. We should be so lucky! Our all-American version of Louis XV, Donald I, is...
When John Bolton resigned (or was fired) a little over a week ago, the media in the US lost a recognizable, well-branded, political and ideological mustache. President Donald Trump has now replaced his media-friendly, saber-rattling, “give me war or give me death (i.e., fire me)” national...
When Steve Bannon left the Trump administration in 2017 after having established the new dogma of “America First,” few assumed that his new vocation would be to convert Europe to his doctrine. No one expected an opportunist who had dallied with the movie industry and alt-right journalism at...
Freedom is under attack around the world. Police are rounding up hundreds of opposition protesters in Moscow, while hundreds of thousands are protesting in Hong Kong for freer elections, a free press and freedom from extradition to China. Yet in the United States, the hard right is taking...
Earlier this year, the Trump administration cut funding to the Organization for American States for protecting reproductive rights. While America’s attention has turned to the restrictive abortion bans across numerous states, the Trump administration has continued its relentless attacks on...
