Letter
Ben Bragdon
Staff Writer
Ben Bragdon is managing editor of the Sun Journal. Prior to that, he was deputy managing editor for news at the Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel. Ben was previously editorial page editor for those newspapers and Central Maine Sunday for more than 10 years. Before that, he was managing editor for weekly newspapers at Current Publishing in Westbrook. He began his career as a reporter at the Piscataquis Observer in Dover-Foxcroft and editor at the Moosehead Messenger in Greenville. He has a bachelor’s degree in history from Boston University.
Commentary: With Supreme Court reform ideas, Biden is playing the long game
The first and easiest question to answer with respect to the package of Supreme Court reform measures that President Joe Biden announced Monday is whether there is any hope of their passage or enactment by the current Congress. There is not. With Congress hopelessly polarized and the Supreme Court hopelessly politicized, there is no chance […]
Commentary: Venezuela needs its neighbors’ help more than ever
Of all the different scenarios in Venezuela’s election on Sunday, we witnessed the most likely one: Nicolás Maduro was announced as the winner of the vote by the country’s electoral authority controlled by the authoritarian president’s close allies. Shortly past midnight in Caracas, the National Electoral Council said that Maduro got 51% of the vote […]
Commentary: Women are America’s working class now
It’s an election year, which means we’ll be hearing a lot from both Democrats and Republicans claiming that their party is the one true champion of working-class Americans. Sure, but what does it mean to be part of the working class in America these days? It means being female. If there’s one statistic that describes […]
Commentary: Extreme heat is making our mental health worse
On July 22, planet Earth achieved a terrifying milestone: Global temperatures reached their highest level in recorded history, breaking a record set just one day before. This year is expected to be the hottest in centuries. Heat waves are hotter, longer and more frequent than they were in the 1960s. By now, most of us […]
View from Away: NATO needs better bridges — and bulwarks
Although the U.S. and its allies agreed recently to put Ukraine on an “irreversible path” to NATO membership, there’s no avoiding the obvious: A Trump presidency could well render such pledges meaningless. Former President Donald Trump has threatened to hollow out U.S. support for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization — even if Congress puts up […]