News Releases

  • “Excess Mortality” During the Covid-19 Pandemic

    In the first study to delve beyond federal- and state-level statistics to look into county-level Covid-19 deaths in more granularity, researchers find that excess mortality was concentrated in nonmetropolitan areas of the country.


  • Biden Nominates Elliott Abrams

    Elliot Abrams is set to be nominated for the United States Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy. David DeCamp, news editor for antiwar.com says, “Abrams is a neoconservative hawk who led the Trump administration’s failed Venezuela regime change effort… Abrams is notorious for his role in covering up atrocities committed by U.S.-backed forces in Latin America during the Reagan administration… Abrams also served in the George W. Bush administration as the deputy national security advisor from 2005 – 2009.”


  • Sierra Leone Election Called “Rigged” 

    Chernoh Alphah Bah, founder of Africanist Press, is living in exile in the US for calling out political corruption in Sierra Leone. He says, “The nexus between financial corruption and political corruption is always anchored in rigged elections. Politicians who steal public funds can’t organize credible elections.”


  • Protests in France

    Regarding the recent murder of a 17-year-old kid of Algerian descent by French police, Jean Bricmont says, “Luckily, there are videos of the incident that prove that the policeman did not act in legitimate self-defense… starting in the 1970’s there was mass immigration that was of course favored by the employers, but also, in the name of diversity and multiculturalism… some of the descendants of these immigrants feel deeply alienated from French society, which leads to a dialectic of violence between them and the police as well as a large part of French society.”


  • Inside the Drug Shortages

    American patients are currently being affected by shortages of various medicines, and earlier this month, U.S. lawmakers introduced legislation to identify the country’s pharmaceutical supply chain weaknesses. But pharmacists have critiques.


  • Upholding the Myths of Colorblindness and the “Model Minority” 

    Regarding the Supreme Court’s recent decision against affirmative action in university/college admission policies, Kevin Kumashiro says, “Today’s SCOTUS decision is not surprising, but nonetheless a travesty… this decision perpetuates the myth of colorblindness that race no longer matters and that democracy is somehow advanced when we refuse to attend to long-standing and pervasive issues of racial injustices.”


  • Extreme Marine Heatwave

    June sea surface temperatures near Ireland and the U.K. are the highest seen in nearly two centuries.


  • New Findings on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

    A new meta-analysis of the efficacy of cognitive behavioral therapy found that CBT did not outperform other psychotherapies in the treatment of depression. 


  • What is “Wellness Capitalism”?

    In a new primer, researchers describe ‘wellness capitalism”––a model of public health involving the state, employers, and a wellness industry in which worker behaviors are monitored to improve society’s health.


  • Private Equity Firms Pocketing Money for Autism Services

    Between 2017 and 2022, PE completed 85 percent of all buyouts of autism service providers––the highest rate of buyouts in any industry. 


  • Post-Election Decisions

    ERIC FONER Professor of history at Columbia University, current president of the American Historical Association and author of The Story of American Freedom and Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, Foner said today: “In 1876, there was a dispute over the Hayes-Tilden presidential election returns from Florida, South Carolina and Louisiana. An electoral commission was formed (which…

  • The Election: Process and Results

    STEVEN HILL Co-author of “Reflecting All of Us” and Western regional director of the Center for Voting and Democracy, Hill said today: “This may be the push we need to get rid of the Electoral College — which was actually designed to limit the popular will. But if we have a direct popular vote, we…

  • Election Perspectives

    GWENDOLYN MINK Professor of politics at the University of California at Santa Cruz, Mink said today: “What’s wrong with the two-party system is not that there are only two parties. What’s wrong is that ours is a middle-class party system that leaves out a host of programmatic alternatives and choices, and correspondingly demobilizes millions of…

  • Keeping Millions From Voting

    MARC MAUER Co-author of the report “Losing the Vote: The Impact of Felony Disenfranchisement Laws in the United States,” Mauer is assistant director of The Sentencing Project. He said today: “America has just replaced Russia as the world leader in its rate of incarceration and incarcerates far more prisoners than any other nation — nearly…

  • A Missing Campaign Issue: Economic Apartheid

    JOEL BLAU Author of Illusions of Prosperity: America’s Working Families in an Age of Economic Insecurity, Blau said today: “The economic fissure in American society is the great unmentionable of this year’s presidential campaign. Between 1977 and 1999, the after-tax income of the top fifth increased 43 percent, while the after-tax income of the top…

  • Military Spending and Policy

    WILLIAM HARTUNG President’s fellow at the World Policy Institute, Hartung said today: “When Gore and Bush have addressed the Pentagon budget, they have talked about how much to increase it, not whether to do so. That is remarkable if you consider that at $311 billion per year, the United States is already spending more on…

  • The Environment: Behind the Rhetoric

    PATTI GOLDMAN A managing attorney with Earthjustice Defense Fund, Goldman said today: “Differences between Bush and Gore include the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, which came up in the debates. There are also differences in the priority and strategies for recovering Pacific salmon…. Gore favors having labor and environmental protection in trade agreements while Bush has not…

  • Bush and Gore Agree Death Penalty Deters; But What Are the Facts?

    Last night, presidential candidates George W. Bush and Al Gore agreed that the death penalty is an effective deterrent. “I think the reason to support the death penalty is because it saves other people’s lives,” Bush said during the debate. Gore agreed, saying: “I support the death penalty…. I think it is a deterrence. I…

  • Big Oil Gets Bigger: Chevron and Texaco

    Chevron has just agreed to acquire Texaco for $36 billion. This follows the BP-Amoco and Exxon-Mobil mergers. The following analysts are available for comments: WENONAH HAUTER Director of Public Citizen’s Critical Mass Energy Project, Hauter said today: “This trend towards more consolidation in the oil industry is bad for consumers in the long run and…

  • Perspectives on Mideast Crisis

    MARC ELLIS Director of the Center for American and Jewish Studies at Baylor University in Texas and author of Oh Jerusalem: The Contested Future of the Jewish Covenant, Ellis said today: “The escalation of the Israeli helicopter gunships firing into civilian areas is just appalling…. Justice would mean a shared real sovereignty of all of…

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