Katrina vanden Heuvel | The Nation

Even Republicans will sometimes support progressive taxes. Representative Dave Camp is considering legislation that would increase taxes on the largest banks. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais.)

While the New Year’s deficit deal divided congressional Republicans, there’s one point on which they’re all reading from the same hymnal: No more tax talk! The revenues under the deal are relatively modest—they leave rich people’s taxes well short of Clinton era rates. But Republicans, while claiming to care deeply about the deficit, have locked arms to take further tax increases off the table. We can’t let them.

The conventional wisdom is that magazines are in decline. Newsweek’s print downfall was mourned as a death in the family (last week’s New Yorker described a gathering of ex-editors as an “Irish Wake”). Facing dwindling circulation, U.S. News and World Report has become more focused on its staple college and hospital rankings rather than on long-form journalism. Rolling Stone and Martha Stewart’s Omnimedia have seen layoffs, while old favorites like Gourmet and Life are long gone.

Last spring, the entrepreneurial and well-funded GOOD laid off virtually all of its editorial and writing staff. When The American Prospect, a haven for intelligent liberalism, was hit by a nearly fatal half-a-million-dollar deficit, The Nation spoke out urging people to help the magazine. The Prospect survived—barely—but journalism nearly lost an informed voice and essential training ground for many of America’s finest progressive journalists.

SENECA FALLS TO SELMA TO STONEWALL. “We the people declare today that the most evident of truths—that all of us are created equal—is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls and Selma and Stonewall.” The president’s much-quoted line from his inaugural speech powerfully charts “an arc of history that bends toward justice,” as John Nichols writes this week. Linking these historic moments to today’s struggle for pay equity for women and immigrants’ rights was a meaningful nod to the electorate that gave him victory on November 6. And while symbolic recognition is not a substitute for policy, it still matters, argues Melissa Harris-Perry in her column this week. “Obama positioned Seneca Falls, Selma and Stonewall as the fulfillment of a nascent promise in Jefferson’s declaration, and thereby recognizes the deeply American narrative embedded in these moments,” writes Harris-Perry.

YES, HE CAN. After a disappointing filibuster reform deal this week in Congress, Obama’s use of executive power has become even more significant going forward. In this week’s issue, we zero in on twenty actions the president should take to push for progressive change. From addressing the economy by creating a National Development Bank to challenging the school-to-prison pipeline—to auditing the Pentagon—the president can, and must, act in his second term to make our country better. “Pressing for reforms through executive action—using both “street heat” and “suite heat”—should be a serious focus of our work in the coming months,” we write. Read more about these twenty actions focusing on the environment, foreign policy, criminal justice, immigration, civil liberties and more. Also, we asked our readers to weigh in—find out what our thoughtful readers would like to see from the president during his second term.

BIG MONEY & POLITICS. As Lee Fang reports, Obama’s first term was shaped by clashes with big-business interests. Take the health reform fight, for example—opponents of reform spent over $323 million in negative advertising and offered $450,000 starting salaries to Democratic Senate staffers willing to join up with lobbying firms. And in the case of some senators, like Nebraska’s Ben Nelson—who eventually became a health industry lobbyist—their efforts paid off. But looking forward, President Obama plans to use his legions of volunteers to push back against special interests. “For Obama’s second term, even with a weaker position given the composition of Congress, he may succeed by returning to his community organizing roots—a recognition that social movements are an essential component in advancing progressive reforms over corporate or partisan opposition.” Find out more from Fang.

GUNS, RACE & POLITICS. President Obama announced some of the most sweeping gun control proposals in over two decades this week—George Zornick breaks down the president’s proposals, and what might happen next. But are our media and politics fostering an honest debate on what comprehensive reform will do? As Bryce Covert writes, as we push for gun control legislation, we must remember how reforms might impact those most affected by gun violence—and how the criminalization of certain guns could disproportionately affect people of color. “What may look like a colorblind law on the books can be interpreted and implemented in incredibly racist ways,” writes Covert. And as Mychal Denzel Smith argues, the conversation about guns has focused too much on keeping the weapons out of the hands of certain people—and not on real ways to reduce gun violence. But who are the “bad guys”? Read Smith’s piece, “It’s Not the Bad Guys—It’s the Guns,” here.

REMEMBERING AARON SWARTZ. We were saddened at the loss of Aaron Swartz last weekend, a tireless activist committed to making information free and accessible to all. “I remember always thinking that he always seemed too sensitive for this world we happen to live in, and I remember him working so mightily, so heroically, to try to bend the world into a place more hospitable to people like him, which also means hospitable to people like us,” writes The Nation’s Rick Perlstein. The New York Times cited Perlstein’s moving tribute in an article on Swartz’s extraordinary work as a data crusader. And on the prosecution of Swartz, Michelle Dean writes how the case was about more than hacking; rather, “it reflected a completely bizarre set of priorities in law enforcement, one which fetishizes the technicalities of the issues over the real justice of them.” Read more from Dean about the larger attack on those who want to “challenge the public to think more deeply and carefully about what justice demands.”

A NEW COLD WAR. “With the full support of a feckless policy elite and an uncritical media establishment, Washington is slipping, if not plunging, into a new cold war with Moscow,” writes Stephen F. Cohen in this week’s issue. “Relations, already deeply chilled by fundamental disputes over missile defense, the Middle East and Russia’s internal politics, have now been further poisoned by two conflicts reminiscent of tit-for-tat policy-making during the previous Cold War.” Russia’s adoption ban, or “Dima’s Law” comes on the tails of the US’s Magnitsky Act, which would essentially put Russian officials on a blacklist without due process. Find out more from Cohen on how this one-dimensional approach from President Obama, Congress and the media could prove disastrous for US-Russian relations.