Washington -Joe Biden’s stunning victory on his boldly ambitious $1.9 trillion corona relief package and its striking popularity with voters, including grassroots Republicans, now tempts many Congressional Democrats to think that they can go-it-alone and leave Republicans on the sidelines. But will it work? Senate filibuster rules are a formidable, if not insurmountable barrier. The […]
Even after five decades with the New York Times and making documentaries for PBS, taking on a new social media like YouTube is daunting. So I looked for a mentor and found David Hoffman, a friendly Pied Piper and savvy filmmaker from Santa Cruz, California who has built an astounding audience of 600,000 subscribers on […]
Washington – The 2020 election let the genie out of the bottle. More than 100 million American voters discovered it was easier to vote by mail or to vote early in person and avoid the Election Day crush. Voter turnout broke records. But now Republican lawmakers across the country want to reverse history and roll […]
Washington – History may not exactly repeat itself, but in five decades of reporting I’ve learned it does echo with familiar refrains. Russia today, for example. It as if we’re back in the old USSR, once again witnessing the astounding spectacle of the solo dissenting voice of Aleksei Navalny, a 44-year-old activist defying the organized […]
Washington – The battle cry ”Go Big, Joe! Go Big!” echoed among Democrats after their underdog candidates scored stunning upset victories in Georgia, picking up two vital senate seats earlier this month. And with his $1.9 trillion corona relief plan, Joe Biden has indeed decided to “Go Big.” But “Going Big” is a gamble. It […]
(Author’s Note: Neil Sheehan and I worked together during the Vietnam War – in Saigon, Washington and on The New York Times Pentagon Papers series, the TOP SECRET internal Pentagon history of the war. Neil Sheehan died Jan. 7 at age 84. This is my memorial tribute to Neil, as a friend, colleague, and a […]
Washington – Just when you think we are out of the woods and that, for all his histrionics, Donald Trump will surrender the White House on time, he’s conjured some new backroom cabal to subvert our democracy with truculent QAnon conspirators, armed vigilantes or unprincipled Senators. You may dismiss it as political theater or narcissistic […]
Washington – Unless you tuned out Donald Trump on his final frenetic campaign blitz, you remember seeing him barnstorming across Florida, stoking the fears of Latino voters with his nightmare threat that Joe Biden & Company would “turn America into Communist Cuba or Socialist Venezuela.” Fearmongering pure and simple, but it worked with a big […]
Washington – While you and I have focused on the economic havoc of job losses, pay cuts and business failures caused by the corona pandemic, we missed noticing that the tiny sliver of super-super-rich at the apex of our economy was simultaneously fattening their already phenomenal fortunes, thanks to the pandemic. A surprise perhaps because […]
Washington – The flood tide is still rising, but already the Mega-Money tsunami of Election 2020 is going into the record books as the most expensive election in American history with the biggest flow of dark money ever funneled anonymously to candidates – $750 million, up from a minuscule $5 million a decade ago. With […]
Hedrick Smith, who conceived this website and is its principal writer and architect, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning former New York Times reporter and Emmy award-winning documentary producer for PBS and PBS FRONTLINE. more »
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