Dear Progressive Reader,

Thursday was possibly the final public hearing of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. But it was not, as some media outlets have termed it, “the final meeting” of that committee. The committee continues to seek and gather evidence, including, now via subpoena, a request for testimony from former President Donald Trump. It is not the first time that a President or former President has been compelled to testify, but it has been a fairly rare occurrence. While Trump is unlikely to comply willingly, it is worth noting the precedent set by Theodore Roosevelt when, about 110 years ago as a former President, he was asked to testify in a congressional investigation into U.S. Steel Corporation. Roosevelt notably told Congress, “[A]n ex-president is merely a citizen of the United States, like any other citizen, and it is his plain duty to try to help this committee or respond to its invitation.”

In his opening remarks at the October 13 hearing, chair Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi, said: “From the beginning we understood that some people watching [the] proceedings would wrongly assume that the committee’s investigation was a partisan exercise. That’s why I asked those who were skeptical of our work to simply to listen to the evidence, to hear the testimony, with an open mind and to let the facts speak for themselves before reaching any judgment.” However, by all accounts, the viewers of the hearings seem to have been unswayed by all of the testimony and evidence, and it appears that in the upcoming midterm elections, no amount of information will affect the vote.

This seems to be also true in terms of candidate debates. With as many as ten hotly contested Senate races, all of which have been cited as possible determinants of the future of control of the U.S. Senate, there have been fewer public debates than ever. One example of this is the race in Wisconsin, where in the second of only two debates, incumbent Republican Senator Ron Johnson faced off against challenger Democratic Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes. At the end of the evening, as Erik Gunn reports, the candidates were asked to say something “admirable” about their opponent. Johnson took an oppositional tack in line with his entire campaign’s messaging: “Barnes had loving parents . . . . I guess what puzzles me . . . is with that upbringing, Why has he turned against America?”

One issue that is playing strongly among voters in the lead-up to the November 8 elections is the price of gasoline. As Mark Fiore illustrates, this was exacerbated by the recent decision of the OPEC nations, led by Saudi Arabia, to limit oil production, almost guaranteeing further price increases before the midterms. Meanwhile, Republican-led attacks on the freedom to read continue across the country, as Griffin Dix notes in an article that remembers his own father’s statement nearly seventy-years ago against McCarthy-era book bans. And Mike Ervin looks at a hopeful sign for the rights of voters with disabilities in Indiana.

The new book, Atomic Days by Joshua Frank, tells the story of efforts to clean-up the site of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State. As reviewer Ron Jacobs explains, “The fact that its primary purpose was the production of an element that remains deadly poisonous to humans and other life forms for tens of thousands of years is a damning testament to the suicidal nature of too many human pursuits.” And, as if to reinforce this view of deadly human pursuits, President Joe Biden recently announced a new policy on U.S. drone attacks. As Kathy Kelly and Nick Mottern relate, “The current lineup of world leaders seems incapable of leveling with their people about the consequences of pouring money into military budgets which continue to allow ‘defense’ corporations to profit from weapon sales worldwide. The defense industry’s fueling of forever wars and their legions of lobbyists assure that government officials continue feeding the greedy, barbaric corporate missions of outfits like Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and General Atomics.”

Finally, this past Friday was the fifty-eighth anniversary of the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. on October 14, 1964. In his December 10 acceptance speech in Oslo, King said, “I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. I believe that even amid today’s mortar bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow.”

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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