New Future

As Donald Trump works to undermine the Social Security Administration, his ultrarich Social Security commissioner, Frank Bisignano, was just approved for a giant tax break on a $484 million capital gains sale.

The Trump coalition unites anti-corporate populists and libertarian futurists — two factions with irreconcilable views. The struggle over AI copyright underscores just how unstable that alliance has become.

While the South Korean media has been focused on a snap presidential election, an important scandal has emerged involving the union that represents Samsung workers. It’s a cautionary tale about the difficulties facing organized labor in South Korea.

The Inflation Reduction Act has helped create good union jobs in the clean energy sector. Republicans want to derail this progress to pay for tax cuts for the rich. The building trades are starting to fight back, and environmentalists should join them.

The New Jersey Transit engineers’ strike caught many commuters by surprise. But since 2019, the engineers have been working without a new contract while making less than their counterparts at Metro-North, Amtrak, and the Long Island Rail Road.

Germany has clamped down on pro-Palestine protest more harshly than most other European states. Despite the threat of violent repression, protesters, many of whom were Jewish and Palestinian, gathered in Berlin to commemorate the Nakba.

When United Food and Commercial Workers president Marc Perrone announced his retirement May 13, the union’s leadership immediately appointed his successor. This makes four presidents in a row first selected by UFCW leadership rather than by convention.

The hyperelitist world of prerevolutionary France fostered resentment among writers excluded from salons and high society. This bitterness proved a fertile breeding ground for revolution led by writers who targeted their anger at the old order.

Ultranationalist candidate George Simion has a big poll lead ahead of Sunday’s Romanian presidential election. He’s sought legitimacy from foreign leaders like Donald Trump and Giorgia Meloni, showing how the far right is increasingly the establishment.

The governments of India and Pakistan pulled back from the brink over Kashmir because neither can afford a full-scale war. Bellicose rhetoric and a climate of strident nationalism have helped both governments as they face problems on the domestic front.

Last week, Donald Trump’s UK ambassador, Warren Stephens, helped negotiate a trade deal between the UK and the US. Stephens holds shares worth hundreds of millions of dollars in key sectors that stand to benefit from the agreement.

Trump administration officials including RFK Jr want to add work requirements to Medicaid, arguing that there is a major scourge of able-bodied recipients refusing to get jobs. Their case dramatically overstates how many people in this group are not working.

The Trump administration has called off a bombing campaign that failed to achieve its stated goal of destroying the Ansar Allah movement. But steps taken by Trump to restrict aid are continuing to aggravate the dire humanitarian situation in Yemen.

On Sunday, Poland votes in the first round of presidential elections. The contest is dominated by various right-wingers, while small progressive forces speak mainly to the highly educated, professionals, and the downwardly mobile middle classes.