CounterPunch

Outspent 11 to 1 by Congresswoman Haley Stevens, Dr. Abdul Al-Sayed's August 4 win in the Michigan Democratic primary for the party's U.S. Senate nominee is the buzz of the nation. While big media outlets are wringing their hands or casting their eyes at familiar issues of affordability, rejection of establishment candidates and generational shift, many are missing an important element that could have clinched progressive Al-Sayed's upset victory in a race he won by about 15,000 votes: hyperscale Artificial Intelligence data centers, which loom big in Michigan.

Most people who society labels “environmentalists” begin their vocation in defense of their own local environment. If they continue that campaign, the work of a lifetime and beyond in itself, at first, they see the opposition as one or more “special interests,” influencing local politicians from the mayor to the congressman and US senator. But after a few years of legal and political struggle, you conclude it is more than a set of special interests; it is your whole local society.

My AI and I have good days and bad days. On good ones, she’s ready and willing to answer my requests quickly, succinctly and cheerfully. (I generally see it as a “she.”) Hallucinations are few and easy to spot. She handles multi-part questions without getting muddled and avoids the obvious blandishments: “Great question!” or “Your observation gets to the very heart of it.” Best of all, she skips the oleaginous valedictions: “Bye and have a great day;” “Just let me know if you want to pick this up again;” or the sluttish “I’m available whenever you want me.”

The Trump administration has been going on an offensive to suppress social movements. From unprecedented criminal sentences against immigrant rights

Climate change is the force behind the greatest migration storm of all time. It will be 500,000,000 or maybe 2,000,000,000 nobody knows for sure how many

A child burned to death in the bombing of Nagasaki. This photo, and others like it, were banned from publication by the US military until 1952.

Photograph Source: Brady-Handy Photograph Collection – Public Domain The Senate Democratic Diversity Initiative's latest staff diversity survey offers two stories about the U.S.

The rail network in the Catskills with summer resorts, ca. 1901 – Public Domain

Mono Lake, photo by Joshua Frank, August 3, 2026. I just returned after a few days of hiking in California's Eastern Sierra, home to the Lower 48's highest peak (Mt.

From the old fortress in Girne (in Turkish Cyprus) looking up at the Kyrenia Mountains, in which the author Lawrence Durrell lived in the 1950s, as he describes in his memoir Bitter Lemons of Cyprus.