Does Big Oil Need Big Government to Survive?
One hot morning in 1931, rural townspeople awoke to the sound of an invading army: The government had sent some 800 mounted troops to impose martial law and enforce state-mandated production orders....
View ArticleHow Hydroxychloroquine Became Conservative Media’s Coronavirus Miracle Drug
President Trump’s championing of the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a potential miracle cure for Covid-19—despite a lack of clinical trials and a lengthy list of side effects, such as cardiac...
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Don’t Look For Patient Zeros
On March 30, the New York Times flagship podcast, The Daily, released an episode titled “New Jersey’s Patient Zero.” What followed was a wrenching and compassionate story about New Jersey’s first...
View ArticlePlanned Parenthood Is the Real Star of Never Rarely Sometimes Always
Across the United States, institutions calling themselves Crisis Pregnancy Centers advise their clients not to pursue abortion, but instead either to parent or surrender their child for adoption. As...
View ArticleGig-Working Through the Apocalypse
Last May, Postmates notified Darren Lyn in an email that it had “updated” its payment structure. From that point on, he found, a given delivery job no longer came with a $4 minimum guarantee. Soon...
View ArticleThe Amateurs and Yes-Men in Trump’s Army of Judges
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is generally considered to be the second most powerful court in America. By virtue of its location in the nation’s capital, it hears more...
View ArticleBernie Sanders’s Gift to the Democratic Party
Hope—sometimes desperate hope—sustains all presidential campaigns. Even when a candidate withdraws in the face of daunting electoral odds, as Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, and Elizabeth Warren did...
View ArticleDon’t Mourn. Organize.
On the day of the Iowa caucuses in February, the now disgraced and retired MSNBC anchor Chris Matthews made a remark about Bernie Sanders’s chances of winning the general election that unintentionally...
View ArticleThe Planet Can’t Afford a Coronavirus Feud
It could have been an opportunity to set aside differences and work together. Instead, the coronavirus outbreak has further strained relations between the United States and China. In the past few...
View ArticleThe Socially Distanced Protester
Much of the emotional power of a march or demonstration comes from being there. Successful labor organizing likewise depends in part on the intimacy and convenience of people working near one another....
View ArticleThe Profound Simplicity of Bernie Sanders’s Vision
Bernie Sanders was always demanding too much, the argument went. “What he’s proposing is very much pie in the sky,” Joe Biden, now the unopposed Democratic nominee, said at the start of March. “If you...
View ArticleI Tried to Get Tested for Coronavirus in a Major City. It Was a Maze of Dead...
I currently live in Salt Lake City, but I’m originally from the New Mexico side of the Navajo Nation and still have cultural connections and citizen connections there—I’m still voting there. There are...
View ArticleThe Coronavirus Recession Is a Critical Test for the Labor Movement
It’s become increasingly common to hear people say that America has been shut down by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. This isn’t really true: Large sectors of the American workforce have been asked...
View ArticleThe Perilous Mess of Applying for Unemployment Right Now
Jonathan Canales has been working in service on and off since he was 17, and was a chef at an Atlanta bar called Georgia Beer Garden until about a month ago. Canales, who is 32 now, said his employers...
View ArticleAlone in the City of Sirens
In normal times, life in any city means a constant barrage of sounds: car horns, yowling cats, heated arguments from windows overhead—often over inconsequential things. For the past few weeks, the most...
View ArticleJoe Biden’s New Podcast Is So Bad
At this rate, every American will soon have a podcast. Two weeks ago, struggling to break through the noise of the coronavirus crisis, Joe Biden, like so many before him, plugged an SM57 microphone...
View ArticleThe Staggeringly Complicated Ethics of Ventilating Coronavirus Patients
On Wednesday, STAT News published an influential story asking whether ventilators are being overused for Covid-19 patients. The United States is facing a dire shortage of ventilators for coronavirus...
View ArticleThe New American Death Sentence
Worldwide, New York’s jail complex at Rikers Island has the highest rate of cases of the novel coronavirus—as of April 8, 287 in total. That’s 6.65 percent of people jailed there. Two people have died....
View ArticleDemocrats Decide, Again, Not to Try Anything New
It won’t be official until the 2020 Democratic National Convention—brought to you (perhaps) by Cisco Telepresence—but it is very nearly so: The Democratic Party’s leadership vacuum will persist for, at...
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Bringing Out the Dead in New York City
In one of the world’s largest churches, just north of Central Park, the pews have been replaced by beds. A sprawling tennis complex that hosts the U.S. Open likewise has been converted into a field...
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