The Tide Is Turning Against the Filibuster
At Thursday’s funeral for Georgia Representative John Lewis, former President Barack Obama delivered a eulogy that’s made political waves and might very well shape a Biden presidency. The best way to...
View ArticleThe Rise of the Creepy Reopening Industry
In New York City, “non-essential” offices were allowed to open again in June at limited capacity as cases spiked in other parts of the country. While the once frenetic business center of Midtown still...
View ArticleHugh Hewitt Has Always Been a Hack
Over the last four years, the conservative pundit Hugh Hewitt has gone to extraordinary lengths to pretend that Donald Trump does not exist. Hewitt does acknowledge the existence of some version of...
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Beyond Big Meat
The hogs screech as the barn fills with steam. Thousands jostle and shriek. It takes hours, but eventually they quiet and then collapse. By morning, their bodies cover the floor. Survivors snort and...
View ArticleThe New Aristocracy Discovers “Microschools”
This week’s Twitter villain hails, like many of his kind, from the Bay Area. Jason Calacanis is a podcaster and talking head on the subject of investment (he leads The Syndicate, “a group of 4,122...
View ArticleTikTok and America’s Bleak Techno-Nationalism
Whatever passes for industrial policy in the United States seems to revolve around the petulant whims of President Donald Trump. Whether a company will be rewarded with government contracts, castigated...
View ArticleThe Washington Media Is Starting to Treat Trump Like a Clown
The most jarring thing about Donald Trump is that he is president. Nearly every press conference, public event, and interview is awash with contradictions. On the one hand, there is the man in the...
View ArticleThe Anti-Election Party
The nightmare scenario for liberals across America—what if a defeated Donald Trump refuses to leave office?—reared its head last week when the president floated the idea of delaying the election. “With...
View ArticleThe Pandemic Benefit Seems So Great Because Actual Wages Are Insanely Low
At the end of last week, the $600 federal unemployment insurance supplement expired after a congressional deadlock on passing a new stimulus bill, leaving millions of laid-off workers without income...
View ArticleUtility Companies’ Deadly Addiction to Profit
Northern California’s investor-owned electric utility PG&E pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter in June over its role in 2018’s deadly Camp Fire. Its billions of dollars worth of...
View ArticleThe AFL-CIO’s Untenable Stance on Cops
On the night of May 31, as Black Lives Matter protests raged throughout the nation’s capital, the house of labor went up in flames. The imposing headquarters of the American Federation of Labor and...
View ArticleThe Republicans’ Crimes Against Democracy
The presidential election is fewer than 100 days away, but the anxiety surrounding how it will play out is already at a fever pitch. One symptom of the anxiety is the Transition Integrity Project, a...
View ArticleI’m a Teacher in New York. I’m Doing My Job by Fighting an Unsafe Reopening.
What worries me most about schools reopening in the fall is that more people will die. Right now teachers are feeling like we’re rushing toward a reopening that isn’t well thought out. That’s why...
View ArticleThis Is How Trump Will Try to Take Down Kamala Harris
Biden’s search for a running mate is getting messier by the day. Over the last few elections, vice presidential candidates have been announced just days before the party conventions, so the pace of...
View ArticleWhat I Learned From the Worst Novelist in the English Language
Some time ago, after several years on the job market, I landed a professorship at a small university in Wisconsin, a little moon of the state system orbiting the more recognizable institution in...
View ArticleThe Secret History of America’s Worthless Confederate Monuments
During an interview in late June, President Trump lingered for a few minutes on the Confederate monuments that protesters were tearing down across the country: “You don’t want to take away our heritage...
View ArticleClimate “Realism” Is the New Climate Denial
Going by headlines and poll results, climate change awareness has never been higher. While social media provides fertile ground for propaganda techniques, smear campaigns, fake experts, and conspiracy...
View Article“Family Life Coaches,” Private Jets, and the One Percent’s Pandemic Economy
A “family life coach” position in Aspen pays between $80,000-$100,000—the ideal applicant “wins,” is willing to make time for “overnight stays,” and possesses the “3G’s: Grit, growth, gratitude.” A...
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Death by a Thousand Cuts for One of America’s Last Great Institutions
The carriers I know call it marriage mail. The average person likely thinks of it as junk mail—the coupon booklets from local businesses dumped immediately in the trash, save for maybe the extreme...
View ArticleThe Fall of the NRA
In January of 2017, the National Rifle Association was at the peak of its power. Already known as one of the mightiest interest groups in the United States, it had been an early backer of Donald Trump,...
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