Joe Biden

When Jimmy Carter was president in the late 1970s, America faced a crippling energy crisis, and inevitably Carter was blamed for it by the American people. Given that he later lost to Ronald Reagan in the 1980 election, commentators have held ever since that presidents who preside over gas price hikes face political doom — regardless of whether it is their fault.

This article first appeared in Salon.

According to a report from the Guardian's David Smith, Donald Trump is reportedly obsessed with the televised Jan 6th hearings investigating his part in the insurrection that sent lawmakers fleeing for their lives, and he is growing angrier each day that his political future is sustaining irreparable damage.

As Smith notes, the former president is holed up at his Bedminster golf resort for the summer and has reportedly been watching the hearings unfold with no one coming to his defense since House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy pulled all the GOP lawmakers he recommended for the panel in a fit of pique.

According to a report from Politico, while Republicans are publically applauding a decision from the conservative Supreme Court to dismantle the 50-year-old Roe v Wade decision that allowed women to get an abortion, in private they are admitting it could not have come at a worse time.

In interviews with Politico's David Siders, Republican Party campaign consultants are throwing up their hands in frustration at a ruling that will make it harder for them to do their jobs in November -- particularly as they try to bring suburban women back into the fold after four years of Donald Trump.

With the fate of reproductive rights for tens of millions of Americans now dependent upon federal and state lawmakers in the wake of the Supreme Court's reversal of Roe v. Wade, Common Dreams takes a look at how Democratic and Republican candidates in 10 key U.S. Senate races responded to Friday's ruling.

"The court just took away a woman's most fundamental freedom... for the first time in our country's history, our daughters will grow up with fewer rights than their mothers had."

With inflation rising sharply, and the Federal Reserve raising interest rates, the United States is facing an increased risk of a downturn, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said Friday.

But any temporary pain caused by a recession would be "a necessary price to pay" to defeat damaging inflation, she said.

The US Supreme Court's historic end to nationwide abortion rights on Friday drew unusual criticism from some of America's closest allies and bucks a global trend to more liberal reproductive rights.

The decision came one day after the Supreme Court also struck down some of the modest restrictions on guns -- an issue that, along with the US embrace of the death penalty, has long shocked other Western nations.