Author: Common Dreams

A coordinated right-wing effort to entrench Republican power by dismantling voting rights and disenfranchising voters of color poses an existential threat to American democracy, according to the National Urban League’s annual State of Black America report published on April 12. The NUL’s 2022 report, entitled Under Siege: The Plot to Destroy Democracy, details how Republican federal and state lawmakers are working “in concert” with political operatives and violent extremists “to disenfranchise, delude, manipulate, and intimidate American voters and establish a one-party rule.” NUL president and CEO Marc H. Morial writes in the report’s executive summary that “since the passage...

The new revelation that Facebook hired one of the largest Republican consulting firms in the United States to carry out a public attack campaign against rival platform TikTok was seen as further evidence of the social media behemoth’s growing alliance with the rightwing political apparatus. According to the Washington Post, which first reported Facebook’s move, the campaign against TikTok orchestrated by Targeted Victory, a digital-first agency based in Virginia, “includes placing Op-Eds and letters to the editor in major regional news outlets, promoting dubious stories about alleged TikTok trends that actually originated on Facebook, and pushing to draw political...

Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson excused one of the leaders of the extremist Oath Keepers organization implicated in the January 6th insurrection by describing him as “a devout Christian.” It is safe to surmise that he would not have offered a similar defense for a Muslim American. Since September 11th, and even before that ominous date, they have suffered bitterly from discrimination and hate crimes in this country, while their religion has been demonized. During the first year of the Trump administration, about half of Muslim Americans polled said that they had personally experienced some type of discrimination. No matter...

After the initial flush of optimism from the passage of the landmark infrastructure bill, the Biden Presidency is starting the year on a political down note. Both the “Build Back Better” and voting reform acts have stalled seemingly indefinitely. Just as troubling his approval rating and the public’s overall optimism about the nation’s direction have plummeted to near historic lows. Biden’s response is as predictable as it is lamentable. He has blamed the scourge of hyper-partisanship and mourns the golden age of political bipartisanship that reigned supreme in the recent past. He lamented on a popular late-night show that...