SEPTEMBER 18, 2026

Farmers Are Going Broke Amid Rising Gas Prices, While the Ag Secretary Profits off Them
A new report finds that Trump is making millions off of his oil and gas stocks. His administration officials likely are, too. As farmers grapple with soaring diesel and fertilizer prices and the Department of Agriculture yanks support for cheaper, renewable forms of energy, the agency’s chief, Brooke Rollins, is carrying millions in highly profitable oil and gas investments. Inside Climate News via Portside

The end times fascists are plotting their escape from our world. Our mission is clear
For those who missed Naomi Klein’s and Astra Taylor’s DSA-sponsored preview of their new book, here’s a raucous summary:
Tech moguls are working toward an apocalyptic future from which only a chosen few will emerge unscathed. Today’s battle lines are not simply between people who struggle to survive under increasingly degraded and costly conditions and an oligarch class thinking of ever more ludicrous ways to waste their wealth. They are more cosmological than that. The Guardian

Going Home: What would it take to make housing a human right?
While U.S. policy has largely been hostile to housing as a human right, there have been points at which we came closer to establishing and safeguarding it.
“When we shout that housing is a human right—not just that housing should be a human right, or that we’re fighting to make housing a human right—we are saying that this right exists now, and the extreme housing inequities we face are therefore a severe violation of our human rights. There are legal statutes of various kinds that justify this claim. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948, declares in Article 25 that ‘everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care.’ But does this give us enough?” The Baffler

Game Changers: How To Build the Economy We Deserve
What’s needed are bold yet realistic policies that break cleanly from the corruption of the Trump years and the free-market fundamentalist era that preceded them. Righting the rules means an end to game-rigging by ruling elites …
“When a system reaches the point of breakdown, it’s time for radical change. That was the lesson of the 1930s, when the Great Depression ignited transformative labor and social movements that reset national priorities. It was also the negative lesson of the 1980s, when elites responded to stagflation with a neoliberal turn to “free markets” and enhanced corporate power. The resulting intensification of income and wealth inequality has enabled state capture by a white supremacist authoritarian movement in alliance with tech and fossil fuel interests. The antidote is increasingly clear… Common Dreams via Portside

State-led planning could advance clean energy in deregulated markets: report
States should step in with new long-term planning processes to bolster nuclear, offshore wind and other technologies that face major barriers, according to the Clean Air Task Force.
CATF’s report found “States are realizing that decarbonizing the power sector requires the addition of long lead times for development of barrier-prone technologies, such as nuclear, geothermal, offshore wind, and long-duration energy storage …In deregulated states, however, [clean electricity standards] and market prices do not provide [sufficiently] robust long-lead time price signals and are not designed to solve non-cost barriers to development of these technologies.” As states deregulated and shifted toward regional markets, the need became clear for “model legislation” formalizing state-led planning and procurement. Utility Dive

A two-fer: Attacks on education from grade school to university are the hallmark of our neoliberal age. The negative consequences of this are revealed in multiple ways, but particularly significant is its role in undermining critical thinking — something essential to building a humane society (and, not incidentally, to the socialist and labor movements). An article by novelist/essayist Jeanette Winterson — “More Questions than Answers” — is a reminder of what curiosity means. Looking at this from another angle, Maximillian Alverez in Real News Network writes of the importance of self expression in his article, “Why the Stories Working People Tell About Ourselves Matter.”