Tax Bill Rewards Wealthy But Fails to Help Economy

By Steven Pressman

On January 1, 2018, the United States began an experiment with its future, as the new tax bill—drafted in secrecy, passed along party lines by Republicans in Congress, and signed by President Trump—went into effect. While Republicans claim that their tax bill will help the middle class and the U.S. economy, nothing can be further from the truth…

Dysfunction Hobbles Trump Justice Initiatives

By Andrew Cohen

As we enter Trump’s second year in office, our “tough-on-crime” president and his attorney general have failed or refused, in their first year in office, to fill six key Justice Department posts with Senate-confirmed picks. Vital federal law enforcement agencies—the Drug Enforcement Administration; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives; and the U.S. Marshals Service—are still being led by “acting” officials. As one former Justice Department inspector general says, it’s an “unprecedented”…

A Wolff at the Door

By Mort Rosenblum

It seems pretty clear watching the reaction to Michael Wolff’s neutron bomb, Fire and Fury: We Americans, collectively, have gone out of our flipping minds. How can we let this fake president continue to personify us?

The book, if hardly a literary masterwork, spills enough beans to bury Donald Trump, his clown-car inner circle, and the self-serving legislators who enable him. At least, you would think…

Rein in the Prosecutors

By Don Siegelman

As a loyal Democrat, I might be the last person to argue that President Trump has gotten something right, even inadvertently. Still, in raising a possible bias by the FBI in the Russia collusion investigation, he has landed on a troubling issue…

Acclaimed Black Cinema: On Moonlight, Fences, and Get Out

By Cyrus Cassells

The underdog Best Picture triumph at the 2017 Oscars of Barry Jenkins’s deeply affecting Moonlight, which already feels like a contemporary classic, over the lightweight, plucky, Hollywood fantasia La La Land, might be seen as a weather vane of sorts, an upbeat sign of the impact of the Black Lives Matter movement and the genuine strides the LGBT community made under Obama…