The Pioneers of the Misinformation Industry
There is an hour on the west side of Los Angeles, before the evening traffic slows to a crawl, when the falling light turns thin and clean. But young Andrew Breitbart often had to drive all day. After...
View ArticleAmerican Individualism Is My Climate Fear
For years you were a bore and a doomsayer if you mentioned climate change at a party. It wasn’t even the elephant in the room: There were no elephants. Just people.When an unapologetic denier of...
View ArticleAmerica’s Immigration System Is Fractured Beyond Repair
Among all the ongoing crises currently fighting for prominence in the national conversation, the broad suspension of immigration barely registers, despite the enormous scale of the chaos happening...
View ArticleThrow the Bums Out
Earlier this month, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo unveiled the Covid-19 mountain, a three-dimensional foam mound representing the pandemic’s toll on his state. He had used the “mountain” metaphor...
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The Tragic Politicization of Hagia Sophia
Last Friday, the Turkish Council of State overturned the 1934 ruling that had allowed Hagia Sophia, Istanbul’s soaring cathedral-turned-mosque, to be converted into a museum. Minutes later, President...
View ArticleA Window of Possibility on Self-Managed Abortion
Following what reproductive rights and justice advocates have long fought to secure, a federal judge in Maryland ruled this week that, for now, people seeking a medication abortion do not need to visit...
View ArticleDonald Trump Jr. Wages a Culture War on the Publishing Industry
There have been smoother book announcements than the one for Donald Trump Jr.’s second book, Liberal Privilege. After Axios’s Mike Allen reported that the book, focused on tarring Joe Biden, will be...
View ArticleThe Dark Obsessions of QAnon Are Merging With Mainstream Conservatism
The online furniture seller Wayfair is not engaged in child sex trafficking. The high prices of some of its industrial-grade cabinets do not mean that they conceal children. And yet these absurd,...
View ArticleIvanka Trump and Lockheed Martin Want You to Reach for the Stars and Stop...
Two weeks ago, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a record 4.8 million people were hired in the month of June. “Our economy is roaring back,” the president said at the time as CNBC marveled that...
View ArticleThe Supreme Court’s Unconscionable Rush to Kill a Prisoner
The federal government ended its 13-year moratorium on executions on Tuesday morning by killing Daniel Lewis Lee at the federal death chamber in Terre Haute, Indiana. Lewis is the first in a series of...
View ArticleWhy Is Biden Clinging to the Dream of Green Factories?
Just about everyone seems to want a green recovery from the coronavirus and its economic upheaval. Rishi Sunak—Britain’s Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer—has pledged to decarbonize Britain’s...
View ArticleDeb Haaland’s Plan to Embarrass Jair Bolsonaro
Support from the White House is one of the last things President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil has going for him, politically. His administration’s dismissive and callous response to the Covid-19 pandemic...
View ArticleThe Strategic Blunders of the Conservative Legal Movement
The major decisions from the Supreme Court’s most recent term were good for many people. Gay and transgender workers are now protected by Title VII’s ban on workplace discrimination. The Trump...
View ArticleThe Long War on Objectivity
The mess of histrionics and misinformation that passes for right-wing media these days didn’t spring from nowhere. How did this increasingly influential and well-funded sphere become what it is? On...
View ArticleHow Food Media Created Monsters in the Kitchen
Many kitchens in the restaurant industry are toxic, but few deserve the description quite so literally as Los Angeles jam destination Sqirl. Over the weekend, back-of-house workers at Sqirl took to...
View ArticleAnthony Fauci Is Not Our Savior
Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is on the outs with the president. Fauci has said that he hasn’t seen Donald Trump since the first week of...
View ArticleThe Self-Cancelation of Bari Weiss
What is the biggest media story of the last five years? The decimation of local news at the hands of private equity, Google, and Facebook (and the subsequent loss of tens of thousands of jobs) would...
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Why it’s Harder Than Ever to Make it in Hollywood
Edgar Momplaisir’s first glimpse of Hollywood success came early. Having dropped out of college in 2014 and moved to Southern California to chase the dream of writing for television, Momplaisir was...
View ArticleThe Democrats’ Baffling Silence as Millions of Americans Lose Their Health...
One of the many things that made the United States uniquely vulnerable to the coronavirus pandemic is the relationship between health care and employment in this country. About half of all Americans...
View ArticleCities Are Becoming Climate Death Traps
As the coronavirus pandemic continues throughout the United States, another deadly pandemic comes out to strike in the summer: extreme heat. Year after year, more people are dying because it’s simply...
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