Why Isn’t the Supreme Court on Twitter?
Earlier this year, the Supreme Court took an adventurous leap into the twentieth century. The coronavirus pandemic had made it impossible for the justices to safely hold their planned oral arguments in...
View ArticleStop Printing the R-Word
Last August, Washington Post columnist Theresa Vargas wrote about a third-party poll on public perception of the name and mascot of the Washington NFL team. I won’t print it here because it’s a slur....
View ArticleThe Democrats’ Future Depends on D.C. Statehood
The long debate around voting rights in Washington, D.C., which has been renewed this week ahead of Friday’s House vote on statehood for the capital, didn’t actually begin in that city. It predates the...
View ArticleThe Justice Department’s Fake Fight Against Sex Trafficking
When the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas announced it had seized another advertising website used by sex workers, QAnon followers loaded its Twitter feed down with patriotic...
View ArticleHow America Exports Police Violence Around the World
As the protest movement responding to the police killing of George Floyd has erupted across the country in recent weeks, my now habitual encounters with police clad in full riot gear in my usually calm...
View ArticleThe Trump Cult Is Loyal to an Ideology, Not the Man
As America heads toward a critical election, much of the world wonders whether Trump loyalists will have a change of heart. Adding to the list of national and international crises since Donald Trump...
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How the Confederates Conquered America’s “Home of the Infantry”
Few bases are as important to a military service’s identity as Fort Benning, the “home of the infantry,” is to the United States Army. It is there, along the Georgia-Alabama border, where young men...
View ArticleIs BlackRock the New Vampire Squid?
BlackRock is having a very good pandemic. The world’s largest asset manager has been tapped by the Federal Reserve to oversee three expansive government debt-buying programs meant to stave off economic...
View ArticleD.C. Statehood Is a Test of Biden’s Political Courage
On Friday, House Democrats are all but certain to pass a bill making the District of Columbia the nation’s fifty-first state, marking the first time in history a house of Congress has formally approved...
View ArticleI May Destroy You Is About So Much More Than Rape
Michaela Coel’s new television series, I May Destroy You, contains a scene in its first episode that hit me and many other writers like an arrow to the heart. Staring down the deadline to turn in a...
View ArticleAmerica Has a Secret Police Problem
Earlier this month, I spent a Wednesday afternoon walking through downtown Washington, D.C., to see the aftermath of the recent protests and riots. Federal police had used force to clear peaceful...
View ArticleThe Hidden Racism of Vaccine Testing
A vaccine for Covid-19 could hardly arrive soon enough. Level heads agree, however, that a vaccine will only be ready, in the best case, by autumn of 2021. Vaccines take time. They require an...
View ArticleThe Western Origins of the “Southern Strategy”
For many people, the so-called Southern strategy was the original sin that led directly to the many racial and political problems we face today. Richard Nixon, it is said, implemented this nefarious...
View ArticleThe Surprising Cross-Racial Saga of Modern Wealth Inequality
Lately, critics of the racialized maldistribution of wealth have seized on the notion of a “racial wealth gap” as a defining feature of the American political economy—and insisted that this gap has...
View ArticleIt Will Take Years to Undo the Damage from Trump’s Environmental Rollback
The Trump administration’s response to a pandemic that has killed more than 120,000 Americans and forced much of the country into a devastating economic slowdown has been a massive failure, leading to...
View ArticleThe “Women’s Vote” Never Existed
What, exactly, counts as a women’s issue? In 1972, the activist Johnnie Tillmon famously argued in Ms. magazine that welfare was a women’s issue because the overwhelming majority of recipients were...
View ArticleNew Orleans’ Underpaid, Overexposed Sanitation Workers
It’s common to hear the words of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in times of political unrest—particularly when this country’s destructive legacy of racism and white supremacy once again...
View ArticleStanding Their Ground in Well-Manicured Yards
The first time I glanced at the images, I thought, My God, the Naval Academy is under attack. It was the only way my brain could process what I’d seen: a middle-aged white man wielding a semiautomatic...
View ArticleJohn Roberts Chooses Precedent Over Ideology in Latest Abortion Fight
Monday’s ruling in June Medical Services v. Russo is a victory for the status quo. The 5–4 decision struck down a Louisiana law that would have closed all but one of the state’s abortion clinics if it...
View ArticleDemocrats Can’t Quit Their Addiction to Big-Money Donors
In an unexpected break from American politics as usual, several of the insurgent congressional candidates who scratched out surprise wins (or are on track to winning) in last Tuesday’s primary...
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