Guest
Op-ed: How Gov. Healey can go above and beyond on housing and climate change
By Jacob Fridman | January 30Jacob Fridman is the president of Tufts New Liberals.
Jacob Fridman
Guest
Op-ed: SJP’s boycott perpetuates antisemitism on campus
By Jacob Fridman and Ian Kaplan | April 29Terrorist attacks in Israel in late March and early April have claimed the lives of 14 Israeli civilians. Many are worried that the region is again spiraling into war. Yet when messages of hope and calls for dialogue are most needed, Tufts Students for Justice in Palestine has expressed support for violence against Israeli civilians: “SJP supports the full range of Palestinian resistance against settler-colonialism,” students wrote in a Tufts Observer op-ed published prior to the attacks. SJP has also begun calling on Tufts students to boycott a number of Jewish-led student groups, including Tufts Friends of Israel, in which we serve as student leaders. Tufts Friends of Israel condemns this recent effort to marginalize Jewish students.
Column
A Better Consensus: Navigating a (probable) post-Roe world
By Jacob Fridman | December 8It is highly likely that the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) will overturn Roe v. Wade and leave the legality of abortion to the states. The nationwide legalization of abortion could no longer be the law of the land. Twenty one states will automatically implement some level of abortion restrictions, ranging from total bans to enforcement of prior laws, while 14 states and Washington, D.C. will automatically implement laws permitting abortion.
Column
A Better Consensus: We need filibuster restoration
By Jacob Fridman | December 1There’s a growing consensus in the Democratic Party to eliminate the Senate filibuster. Even President Biden is now open to at least reforming it.
Column
A Better Consensus: Let's do a public option instead
By Jacob Fridman | November 17President Biden finally reached a deal for his Build Back Better bill on Medicare drug pricing. Medicare, the program that gives health insurance to everyone over the age of 65, would be able to negotiate with drug companies for lower prices on life-saving drugs. It would also limit how much seniors would have to pay for drugs bought at pharmacies and keep insulin prices at a maximum of $35 a month. The administration and Congress are also working to have Medicare cover routine dental care, glasses and hearing aids, and also to expand Medicaid, the program for low-income individuals and those with disabilities.
Column
A Better Consensus: Expand the Child Tax Credit into a basic income
By Jacob Fridman | November 10Democratic Senator Joe Manchin’s concerns about the labor participation and budgetary costs of the Child Tax Credit have forced lawmakers to consider extending it for only one more year, not to 2025 as the Biden administration had proposed. Manchin’s demands would cap recipients’ earnings just $60,000 in income and add work requirements.
Viewpoint
A Better Consensus: We need a national gun license
By Jacob Fridman | November 3Content warning: This column discusses suicide, gun violence and domestic violence.
Column
A Better Consensus: A pro-unity solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
By Jacob Fridman | October 27What if I told you that there’s a middle-ground solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
Column
A Better Consensus: How the government can secure our digital liberty
By Jacob Fridman | October 13The recent testimony of Facebook’s degradation of democracy and harm to millions of young women’s self-esteem has proven again that Washington must act.
Column
A Better Consensus: Why ranked-choice voting is awesome
By Jacob Fridman | October 6We all know how elections go: the most polarizing candidate or the bland incumbent often wins with less than half the overall vote, or the race has so many candidates that just a few hundred votes decide the winner. In 2016, Trump won the Republican primaries with 1,543 delegates, well over half. However, he won only 44.95% of the popular vote. Flash forward to 2020, my own congressional district, Massachusetts’ 4th, had a nine-candidate Democratic primary. First place Jake Auchincloss beat second place Jesse Mermell, 22.4% to 21%, a margin of 2,145 votes in a race with over 157 thousands total. The other candidates had vote totals in the thousands, well over the 1.4% difference. These results are not representative, and in the case of Trump, these ‘plurality’ wins can be disastrous. How do we stop such close wins and candidates who thrive on a minority of the electorate? The answer is ranked-choice voting.
