The future of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is at risk following recent statements and actions by Elon Musk, who claims President Trump has agreed to shut the agency down. Musk ...

Democrats should begin to prepare for the 2026 midterms. Before we get started, we need to understand what broke in 2024. 1.Democrats didn’t get out the vote. In 2020, there were 155 million voters; ...

On my kitchen wall there’s a poster with a slogan from World War II Britain: “Keep Calm and Carry On.” In the wake of the recent presidential debate (also known as The Debacle), pundit wannabes could ...

Berkeley City Hall’s efforts to enable the University of California's expansion in Berkeley have taken a new turn. Having already facilitated the school’s colonization of residential areas in ...

Now that I have been so slow to finish off this Activist’s Diary and fallen into covering two weeks of meetings, it feels like the world has shifted again. Trump’s visit with Viktor Orban at ...

The venerable Takács Quartet, formed in 1975 in Budapest, is now in its 49th year. Cellist András Fejer is the only current member who formed the original Takács Quartet when all its members were ...

After multiple stops and starts, I hope to finally get this off my desk. It has taken nearly three weeks from my first day of COVID episode two (the first was Delta in 2021) to feel normal again. I am ...

Two disturbing responses to last night's City Council meeting. The first, Sophie Hahn's shocking statement at Kate Harrison's resignation. Ms Harrison carefully delineated her principled stand in her ...

Update: Councilmember Harrison has informed the Planet that she is continuing her campaign for Mayor of Berkeley. The election for that office is in November. I have decided to resign from the ...

The plight of hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians, now in Rafah, waiting for hours in line for minimal food, paints a distressing picture. The severe backlog of aid trucks at the Rafah ...

City Council is on winter recess through January 15, 2024. The City Council agenda for January 16 is available for comment and follows the list of meetings by day of the week. At 5:30 pm the Human ...

With City Council on winter recess and most of the meetings for the year over, I turned on the audiobook version of McKay Coppins’ book Romney: A Reckoning and finished it in 2 ½ days while I put off ...