In These Times

United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain is poised to win a second four-year term, with an overwhelming lead in member balloting for the union’s top officers. The election was a referendum on the new fighting direction Fain has taken the union by leading 2023’s Stand-Up Strike against the Big 3 automakers, other bold contract fights and new organizing campaigns. It marks the second time members have voted for their top officers in the union’s 91 years.

Miles Kampf-Lassin October 7, 2026 Palantir CEO Alex Karp speaking at Fox Business Network Studios on July 27 in New York City. Photo by John Lamparski/Getty Images Hot Earth Summer continued to torch the planet as many regions were blanketed in sweltering heat domes and Earth’s ocean temperatures hit a new record high in August. The hot, dry conditions have had disastrous impacts on vegetation and animal species, while also making it more difficult to battle wildfires.

On Aug. 18, Toledo, Ohio residents awoke to a series of explosions and a large chemical fire in their backyards. Brent Industries, an industrial recycling business, caught aflame, killing two employees. Now, residents face a slew of health concerns and have many questions about how to best care for the community at large. In Sep., Maximilian Alvarez sat down with a panel of residents and a community leader to discuss the aftermath of the disaster.

Jen Sorensen October 6, 2026 Free for any DSA or Union member Get 10 print issues of our award-winning, worker-first journalism here! Jen Sorensen is a cartoonist for Daily Kos, The Nation, In These Times, Politico and other publications throughout the US. She received the 2023 Berryman Award for Editorial Cartooning from the National Press Foundation, and is a recipient of the 2014 Herblock Prize and a 2013 Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award. She is also a Pulitzer Finalist.

Adam Zyglis October 2, 2026 Free for any DSA or Union member Get 10 print issues of our award-winning, worker-first journalism here! Adam Zyglis is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American editorial cartoonist who works for the Buffalo News.

We have better technology, so why regress? For one, ​“better” is doing a lot of work. Spotify’s default streaming quality is compressed (some of the original audio data is stripped out to save space), which is why more than a few hard-core music lovers call it mid.

The fragility of U.S. democracy is not an accident. Nor is it an inevitable product of our unfinished national slog toward freedom or proof of the inability of regular people to wisely govern their own affairs. It is instead the consequence of direct attacks on the architecture that makes any democratic system possible. Our supporting pillars are being chipped away, and if that is not stopped, the house will collapse.

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Peter Kuper September 25, 2026 Free for any DSA or Union member Get 10 print issues of our award-winning, worker-first journalism here!

The cost of healthcare just keeps going up — and millions of Americans are set to lose coverage. Under the GOP’s so-called ​“Big Beautiful Bill,” around 17 million people in this country will lose health care thanks to the law’s Medicaid cuts, failure to renew Affordable Care Act subsidies and other changes. Those cuts accelerate after this year’s midterms. Instead, that money is going toward tax cuts for the rich plus record budgets for Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Pentagon.