Wendell Willkie’s World Without Borders
On a brisk morning in late August 1942, Wendell Willkie—a corporate lawyer, failed presidential candidate, and media darling—got onto an airplane for a trip around the world. Soon, he’d be holding...
View ArticleTV Race Fables and the Privilege of a Raging Class
Once, in the mid-1980s, I was invited by a black undergraduate student group at Yale to lead a fireside discussion in one of the residential colleges. I was bemused to learn that the group had planned...
View ArticleThe Accelerating Attack on Trans Student Athletes
Last October, the Supreme Court heard three cases that argued that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars discrimination on the basis of sex, includes discrimination against people on...
View ArticleFour New Justices, No Matter What
The death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, one of the most influential Supreme Court justices of all time, is first and foremost a cause for national mourning. But it is also a political opportunity. The...
View ArticleWe’ll Never Know the Pandemic’s True Toll on the Working Class
The single most important thing to understand about the coronavirus pandemic so far is that it has not affected everyone the same. (Though if you are the president, you could start with acknowledging...
View ArticleWhat a Defiant Democratic Party Looks Like
On Friday night, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death shocked an already reeling country. What came next, however, was sadly unsurprising. Mere hours after Ginsburg’s passing, McConnell...
View ArticleIs Defector the Future of Media?
When the staff of Deadspin resigned en masse last fall, it felt like the end of an era of online journalism. The fun internet—best embodied by the old Gawker Media sites and The Awl—was gone, undone by...
View ArticleMiranda July Takes on the Rigged System
Two closing parentheses, a “less than” sign, a “greater than” sign, then two opening parentheses: ))<>((. Anyone who has seen Miranda July’s 2005 feature debut, Me and You and Everyone We Know,...
View ArticleHow to End the Judicial Wars, Once and for All
There are two great losses in Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death. First and foremost among them is the person herself. The 87-year-old justice was a tireless and formidable figure in American law—an...
View ArticleThe Strangely Persistent Myth of the Suburbs
While Democrats pin their electoral hopes on turning wealthy suburbs blue, Donald Trump tells “Suburban housewives” on Twitter that Joe Biden will “destroy” their “American dream.” But who are suburban...
View ArticleMcConnell Will Sacrifice Anything to Fill Ginsburg’s Seat—Even His Senate...
I promised myself that I wouldn’t make predictions in 2020. I would write about what I wanted to happen, or what I feared could happen, but I would not play the game of definitively saying what would...
View ArticleImmigrant Street Vendors Are Feeding Others to Feed Themselves During the...
On an evening in late September at Corona Plaza, an open-air commercial hub in Queens, the bachata blaring from a Boost Mobile competes with the noise of trains clattering overhead; kids on scooters...
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The Case for Calling Climate Change “Genocide”
Alberta holds one of the world’s most ravaged regions. In the north of the Canadian province, a vast sprawl of industry the size of Florida has been erected to haul tar sands from beneath the forests,...
View ArticleCorporate America Is Irrationally Enthusiastic About Carbon Capture
Between 2010 and 2018, the Department of Energy poured $5 billion worth of research and development funding into carbon-capturing technologies, which aim to extract the greenhouse gas from power plants...
View ArticleThe Forgotten Feminists of the Backlash Decade
We don’t tend to think of the 1990s as a high point for feminism. It was the decade of Jesse Helms and Jerry Falwell, of Operation Rescue and Focus on the Family, of super-skinny supermodels and highly...
View ArticleSome Rich People Are Hilariously Freaked Out About a Biden Presidency
“They think this is going to hell in a hand basket,” one financial adviser told Marketwatch this week, describing his conservative clients’ growing sense of impending doom. In an interview on Wednesday...
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The World Is Finally Ready for Beverly Glenn-Copeland
The composer Beverly Glenn-Copeland weaves his way toward the stage, so slight and unassuming that he is barely noticed by the hipsters thronging the bar. Dressed in a uniform of pressed chinos, neat...
View ArticleWeaken the Presidency—Even If Biden Wins
In earlier chapters of American history, bad presidents eventually led to good government. Andrew Johnson’s stupendous failures after the Civil War spurred Radical Republicans to take command of...
View ArticleThe Democrats Have a Dianne Feinstein Problem
As the first tantalizing tastes of autumn reach swampy Washington, Democrats in Congress are likely finding it hard to enjoy the cooler weather and pumpkin spice lattes: Their next few months are going...
View ArticleUber and Lyft Are Charging Through Washington’s Revolving Door
On Labor Day, Uber released its first “climate assessment” report, admitting that the average trip taken on its service is 41 percent more carbon-intensive than a typical car ride. Two days later, Lyft...
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