Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

I want to bake a pie for democracy

Pie crust being made
Rebecca Smith

Willis is the founder and director of Oregon's Kitchen Table at Portland State University and executive director of the Deliberative Democracy Consortium. She is the author of a textbook, a book of essays and two books of poems.

A fistful of blueberries, crabapples,
boysenberries, quince. Pink
currants, a sprinkle. Chokecherries,
honey, rum to taste.


A slosh of the miracle
that is vanilla
Then shroud our gaze and mutter
It must be done now, mustn't it?

Our troubles bearing
down the narrow
end of a scope.
Mustn't it?

Squinting at grackle
and rattlesnake,
flash flood
and cracked asphalt.

Whom do we petition?
Saint? Senator?
Titan of industry?
On second thought,

this is a day for a parade.
Let's call a vote. But even two
cups of sugar won't sweeten the pot.
Blackberries creep

over the back fence, tempting
as they ever were.
The ayes have it.
Four and twenty blackbirds

seem not quite enough now.
I prefer my fellowship at a distance.
Baking time: long and hot.
(Let us pray).

All of us jostling cheek to jowl
whispering sedition and joy
Bumping one against another—
the sharp elbows of rebellion,

the soft thighs of longing.
All of it, all of us,
here, together,
clouding our eyes.

Oh, world without end!
(Let us pray. Or at least call the question.)
Who will caucus with the dead?
I'll set the coffee on.

Read More

Poll: 82% of Americans Want Redistricting Done by Independent Commission, Not Politicians

Capitol building, Washington, DC

Unsplash/Getty Images

Poll: 82% of Americans Want Redistricting Done by Independent Commission, Not Politicians

There may be no greater indication that voters are not being listened to in the escalating redistricting war between the Republican and Democratic Parties than a new poll from NBC News that shows 8-in-10 Americans want the parties to stop.

It’s what they call an "80-20 issue," and yet neither party is standing up for the 80% as they prioritize control of Congress.

Keep ReadingShow less
Nationalization by Stealth: Trump’s New Industrial Playbook

The White House and money

AI generated image

Nationalization by Stealth: Trump’s New Industrial Playbook

In the United States, where the free market has long been exalted as the supreme engine of prosperity, a peculiar irony is taking shape. On August 22, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick announced that the federal government had acquired a stake of just under 10% in Intel, instantly making itself the company’s largest shareholder. The stake - roughly 433 million shares, valued at about $8.9 billion, purchased at $20.47 each - was carved out of the Biden-era CHIPS Act subsidies and repackaged as equity. Formally, it is a passive, non-voting stake, with no board seat or governance rights. Yet symbolism matters: Washington now sits, however discreetly, in Intel’s shareholder register. Soon afterward, reports emerged that Samsung, South Korea’s industrial giant, had also been considered for similar treatment. What once would have been denounced as creeping socialism in Washington is now unfolding under Donald Trump, a president who boasts of his devotion to private enterprise but increasingly embraces tactics that blur the line between capitalism and state control.

The word “nationalization,” for decades associated with postwar Britain, Latin American populists, or Arab strongmen, is suddenly back in circulation - but this time applied to the citadel of capitalism itself. Trump justifies the intervention as a matter of national security and economic patriotism. Subsidies, he argues, are wasteful. Tariffs, in his view, are a stronger tool for forcing corporations to relocate factories to U.S. soil. Yet the CHIPS Act, that bipartisan legacy of the Biden years, remains in force and politically untouchable, funneling billions of dollars into domestic semiconductor projects. Rather than scrap it, Trump has chosen to alter the terms: companies that benefit from taxpayer largesse must now cede equity to the state. Intel, heavily reliant on those funds, has become the test case for this new model of American industrial policy.

Keep ReadingShow less