Dear Progressive Reader,

Donald Trump now faces trials in four different jurisdictions for a total of ninety-one felony charges. As the staff at Politico write this week in their summary of all of the former President’s instances of legal jeopardy, “For the first 234 years of the nation’s history, no American President or former President had ever been indicted.” But at the same time, Trump remains the most likely Republican nominee for the 2024 presidential race. As the BBC points out, it will likely make his 2024 schedule rather congested. Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis is seeking a March 4, 2024, trial date in what is likely the most serious threat to Trump’s liberty. The Fulton County case would take place one day after the Super Tuesday primaries, and is structured as a RICO (racketeering) case against Trump and eighteen other co-defendants. Cartoonist Mark Fiore this week turns his illustrator’s pen to the question of Trump’s defense strategy.

Host Jeffrey Goldberg noted last night on “Washington Week” on PBS, “As things stand now, reporters will spend much of 2024 running between campaign rallies and court appearances by the man who, as of today, is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination.” Meanwhile, ABC News is reporting that Trump may not attend next week’s Republican debate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and may instead give an exclusive interview on the same day to former FOX News host Tucker Carlson. Meanwhile, a second Republican debate is now scheduled to be hosted by Fox Business on September 27 at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. Stay tuned for an ever changing landscape between now and next November.

This week on our website, Jeff Abbott reports on the contest for Ecuador’s presidency taking place this weekend after one of the candidates was assassinated following a rally. Abbott has also been covering Guatemala’s run-off election, which take place tomorrow as well. Last week marked the second anniversary of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, following the U.S. troop withdrawal, and Jackie Abramian describes efforts to hold that government accountable for its treatment of women and girls. And, as the film Oppenheimer continues to get high marks at the box office, Mary Dickson, a “downwinder” from the area near the atomic bomb test site, writes about the people whose lives have not been counted in the costs of nuclear weapons development.

As climate change continues to manifest in raging fires and storms, Danielle Arigoni of the National Housing Trust pens an op-ed on the effects of extreme heat and storms on older adults. Plus, Basav Sen of the Institute for Policy Studies looks at the hypocrisy in some of the Biden Administration’s climate legislation. And Mike Ervin describes the “dehydration ritual” that people with disabilities must go through in order to ride on commercial airplanes.

Today marks the anniversary of the murder in 1936 by Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca. I wrote in The Progressive in February 2017 about the quest, which is still ongoing, to definitively locate his remains as a part of efforts to recover historical memory of the victims of Spain’s Fascist coup. A 2017 independent film, Bones of Contention, takes this conversation further, in particular covering the oppression and murder of gays and lesbians under the regime of General Francisco Franco. In South America, the nation of Chile, too, continues its efforts to recover historical memory with the upcoming fiftieth anniversary of the coup in that country led by General Augusto Pinochet, and supported by the United States under Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. Last weekend I travelled to Chicago for two panels discussing that legacy, particularly through the lens of two North Americans, Frank Teruggi and Charles Horman, who were killed in the national stadium by the Chilean military following the coup.

Also in the stadium during that time was Madisonian Adam Schesch. Adam was an anti-Vietnam War activist and a student of revolutionary movements. Together with his then-wife Pat Garrett, he travelled to Chile to study and to offer support to the government of the popularly elected Socialist president Salvador Allende. In September 1973, following the coup, the two were detained for more than a week in the stadium, suffering physical and mental abuse and torture, and eventually gaining their freedom through the efforts of friends and supporters in the United States. In a long feature for The Progressive in February 1974, they chronicled their experiences and the aftermath of the coup in Chile. “We were stunned that it had all happened so fast, but the coup itself was no surprise. . . . We were psychologically prepared for the coup, but not for the speed and ruthlessness with which the Unidad Popular (Popular Unity Party) government was toppled and fascist control was established,” they recalled. Adam Schesch passed away this past Thursday. His commitment to building a better world will be sorely missed by all who knew him.

Please keep reading, and we will keep bringing you important articles on these and other issues of our time.

Sincerely,

Norman Stockwell
Publisher

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