Dear Progressive Reader,

Fifty years ago, on August 8, 1974, Richard Nixon took to the airwaves 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 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 to claim “I am not a crook.” As I wrote in July 2019, “The Progressive was a leading voice in the call to impeach Nixon and, in December 1973, even issued 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 interviewer David Frost in 1977, “when the President does it, that means that it is not illegal.” This sentiment has now been enshrined in an opinion by the U.S. Supreme Court with a ruling in the case of Trump v. United States. On July 29, President Joe Biden announced 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 the various ways he would attempt to use it as an authoritarian ruler. It is truly time, as Gerald Ford once said, 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 of a nuclear weapon. Today as conflicts rage between Russia and Ukraine, and in the Middle East, fears again are high of the possible intentional or accidental release of nuclear material. Last month, the United States made public the extent of its own arsenal of nuclear weapons. As Jim Carrier reports, “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 ‘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 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 of his recent medical appointment and how it calls into question any objections to socialized medicine; and Eleanor J. Bader examines the implications of the recent Supreme Court ruling criminalizing homelessness. Plus we feature new op-eds by Chris Beck, who tells the story of helping to form a union among architects; Anibel Ferus-Comelo who calls for public input into the way CHIPS Act funds are being spent; and Anthony Pahnke and Ryan Horvath who raise the alarm over the drugs being used in raising animals on large farms.

Also this week, John Nichols provides a portrait 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 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 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

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