Portside

The Left Needs Its Own Foreign Policy Published July 14, 2026 The Democratic Party establishment is taking a beating, and Gaza is a big part of the reason why. Two years before her primary victory over fifteen-term congressional incumbent Diana DeGette, Melat Kiros was fired for criticizing her law firm’s stance on Gaza. Columbia University is set to be represented in Congress by Darializa Avila Chevalier, who was arrested while participating in Columbia’s Gaza Solidarity Encampment.

Feds and Deputized Cops Stockpiling War Machines for Deportation Published July 14, 2026 Federal agents and local cops are inking thousands of deals to collaborate on immigration law enforcement, while stockpiling historic amounts of military-grade weapons. That’s the takeaway from contractual agreements, federal procurement records, Department of Defense property data, and information obtained through records requests, the Prospect found.

‘Misuse’ of Crowd Control Weapons on ICE Protesters Led to Blindings and Traumatic Brain Injuries, Report Finds Published July 14, 2026 It’s been a brutal tactic deployed by local and federal law enforcement officials time and again over the past year: using teargas, rubber bullets and pepper spray to control protests outside ICE detention centers or during enforcement operations.

Who Should Own the Robots? Published July 14, 2026 In late February, Andrej Karpathy, a founding member of OpenAI who has since left the organization, posted on X that something had broken in the way software gets made. “It is hard to communicate how much programming has changed due to AI in the last 2 months,” he wrote.

We’re All Trapped in Capitalism’s Backrooms Published July 14, 2026 Modern horror media is always a revelation about the world that produced it, but few of our contemporary myths feel as precisely calibrated to the present moment as the Backrooms. The Backrooms are not a haunted house, nor an abandoned ruin, a cursed forest, or any of the traditional thresholds through which the uncanny once entered human life.

Dispatches From the Culture Wars — July 14, 2026 Published July 14, 2026 Farce of July The Platner Conundrum Lies and Truth About the Smithsonian Florida Cubans and Latin America Policy Kids Jump In Please Master Save Us from the Commies 2026 Labor Notes Conference Biscuits in the Oven, Buns in the Bed — Meet Emma Waters Talking Strategy Palestine Showdown at Christian Zionist Summit Farce of July By Rex Huppke, USA TODAY This spectacle on the National Mall in Washington, DC, part of Trump’s...

Americans since the end of the Cold War haven’t bothered to think much about nuclear weapons. Last spring, the Trump administration decided to default to its 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, a report that is supposed to explain U.S. nuclear-weapons policy to Congress and the American people, rather than issue an update. But a lot has changed in almost 10 years, including the eruption of two sizable wars.

This Week in People’s History, Jul 15–21, 2026 Published July 13, 2026 Exposing the CIA’s Brutal and Illegal Operation Phoenix (1971) FIFTY-FIVE YEARS AGO, ON JULY 15, 1971, the curtain of secrecy that had prevented public scrutiny of the CIA’s “Operation Phoenix” in South Vietnam began to open, and the revelations of the program’s illegality and brutality caused widespread outrage.

America’s Workers Deserve a Four Day Week Published July 13, 2026 The U.S. workweek has remained unchanged for 85 years, despite a 4-fold increase in labor productivity. As a result, American workers are on the job many more hours than workers in other wealthy countries and have among the highest stress levels in the world. However, a growing body of evidence shows that many organizations can thrive with a 4-day, 32-hour weekly schedule.

Food Giants Defeat Lawsuit Calling Ultraprocessed Products Addictive Published July 13, 2026 Dive Brief: A judge permanently dismissed a lawsuit alleging Kraft-Heinz, PepsiCo and other food giants failed to warn consumers of the risks associated with ultraprocessed products.