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Dear Progressive Reader,
Fifty years ago, on August 8, 1974, Richard Nixon took to the airwaves ([link removed]) of national television and radio to announce to the American people that he was resigning the presidency effective the following day. “By taking this action,” he told ([link removed]) listeners and viewers, “I hope that I will have hastened the start of the process of healing which is so desperately needed in America.”
It was the culmination of a years-long campaign to oust the man who continued ([link removed]) to claim ([link removed]) “I am not a crook.” As I wrote ([link removed]) in July 2019, “The Progressive was a leading voice in the call to impeach Nixon and, in December 1973, even issued ([link removed]) a ten-point ‘Bill of Impeachment’ to help spur the process. ‘[T]he crisis that grips America today is of another, higher magnitude,’ wrote the editorial staff. ‘It swirls, of course, around the person of the President of the United States, but it impinges on every facet of the national life and character. We are confronted, suddenly and dramatically, with fundamental questions about our national community—questions that demand swift and decisive answers.’ ”
Nixon told ([link removed]) interviewer David Frost in 1977, “when the President does it, that means that it is not illegal.” This sentiment has now been enshrined in a ([link removed]) n opinion ([link removed]) by the U.S. Supreme Court with a ruling in the case of Trump v. United States ([link removed]) . On July 29, President Joe Biden announced ([link removed]) his intent to push for a Constitutional Amendment to make clear that “no President is above the law.” The potential for abuse
of presidential immunity is clear, Donald Trump himself has signaled ([link removed]) the various ways he would attempt to use it as an authoritarian ruler ([link removed]) . It is truly time, as Gerald Ford once said ([link removed]) , for “our national nightmare” to be over.
August 6 marked the seventy-ninth anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, by the United States in the world’s first use ([link removed]) of a nuclear weapon. Today as conflicts rage between Russia and Ukraine ([link removed]) , and in the Middle East ([link removed]) , fears again are high of the possible intentional ([link removed]) or accidental ([link removed]) release of nuclear material. Last month, the United States made public the extent of its own arsenal of nuclear weapons. As Jim Carrier reports ([link removed]) , “The U.S stockpile was created soon after the
Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs ended World War II, as Los Alamos continued to hand-fashion new bombs demanded by the military. In November 1945 Senator Edwin Johnson, Democrat of Colorado, urged ([link removed]) ‘vision and guts and plenty of bombs [to] compel mankind to adopt a policy of lasting peace or be burned to a crisp.’ ” Carrier points out that the recent release of information about U.S. stockpiles “comes amid a new arms race that the United States is helping to fuel with a $1.7 trillion investment in so-called modernization, replacing missiles, airplanes, and submarines, while upgrading 3,750 existing warheads and creating new ones for the first time in three decades.”
Elsewhere on our website this week, Kathy Kelly writes ([link removed]) about the dangerous gamble being waged by Israel in its war on Gaza, and how the United Nations needs to push for peace; Mike Ervin tells the story ([link removed]) of his recent medical appointment and how it calls into question any objections to socialized medicine; and Eleanor J. Bader examines ([link removed]) the implications of the recent Supreme Court ruling criminalizing homelessness. Plus we feature new op-eds by Chris Beck, who tells the story ([link removed]) of helping to form a union among architects; Anibel Ferus-Comelo who calls for
([link removed]) public input into the way CHIPS Act funds are being spent; and Anthony Pahnke and Ryan Horvath who raise the alarm ([link removed]) over the drugs being used in raising animals on large farms.
Also this week, John Nichols provides a portrait ([link removed]) of newly named candidate for Vice President, Tim Walz of Minnesota. The Progressive will continue to provide coverage of this year’s electoral campaigns on our website and in our magazine ([link removed]) as we prep our team of reporters to head to Chicago in about a week for the upcoming Democratic National Convention. Plus, as the Olympics winds to a close this weekend, it is notable that breaking—formerly called break dancing—was added to the list of sports this year for the first time. We covered that story in the December/January issue of The Progressive with an article ([link removed]) by 1980s breaker Marcus Reeves (then known as Kid Bop).
Please keep reading, and we will keep bringing you important articles on these and other issues of our time.
Sincerely,
Norman Stockwell
Publisher
P.S. – The Progressive is hosting a “meet & greet” with renowned musician Steve Earle at The Barrymore Theatre in Madison, Wisconsin of Friday, August 23. If you are in the area and would like to join us for this special event, please click here ([link removed]) to sign up. In addition, the promoter is generously donating a portion of every single ticket sold ([link removed]) to The Progressive. Please share this news with anyone you know in the Madison area, and if you are unable to join us for the show, but would like to support all of our work, please click here ([link removed]) to make a donation. Thank you!!
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