How to Make Progressivism Mean Something Again
In his book The Crisis of the Middle-Class Constitution, legal scholar and public policy analyst Ganesh Sitaraman writes the following: “When it is used today, ‘progressive’ is not usually thought of...
View ArticleThe Unbearable Realism of The Comey Rule
Many of us like our fiction to be realistic, with plausible scenarios and nuanced, recognizably human protagonists—and meanwhile we like our nonfiction to be outlandish, full of absurd plot twists and...
View ArticleSenate Republicans Have No Intention of Stopping Trump From Stealing the...
Thursday was the kind of day that many Beltway reporters have spent four years dreaming about: Democrats and Republicans came together to tell Donald Trump that he had gone too far. The bipartisan...
View ArticleWhy the Squad Voted Against Pelosi’s Energy Bill
If you’re like most people, you probably missed the news Thursday evening that the House had passed H.R. 4447, the Clean Energy Jobs and Innovation Act. The nearly 900-page piece of legislation itself...
View ArticleGiving People Money in a Pandemic Worked. Now Give Them More.
At first glance, there was something slightly counterintuitive in the Federal Reserve Board’s most recent report on the economic well-being of American households. In July—at the height of the pandemic...
View ArticleCan the Census Be Saved in Indian Country?
On Thursday evening, United States District Judge Lucy Koh issued a preliminary injunction requiring the Census Bureau to continue its fieldwork through October 31. It was a dramatic turn in what has...
View ArticleThe Suitors Demand an Audience
Tell them to keep their eyes, their brawn, the tentacles of their need sticking to my skin. Their bluff and bluster. Poisoned tongues saying thirst as spell, hips as prophecy. I’m loomed together,...
View ArticleMorning
Under a canopy skya man settles down a plastic apron on.As the train slips away evenly, a ghost is left back on the tracks, I open the window, glance into the courtyard, at the statue of Kirov. The...
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Amy Coney Barrett Wants Felons to Have Guns, But Not Votes
Like other journalists, I spent the bulk of this past week reviewing the writings and opinions of Amy Coney Barrett, who became President Donald Trump’s third Supreme Court nominee on Saturday. Her...
View ArticleBig Banks Cratered the Economy. Now They Swear They’ll Fix It.
In 2005, long before Occupy Wall Street, the publication of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century, or Bernie Sanders’s bid for the presidency, Citigroup released a report that outlined...
View Article“Just the Hint of Something Coming Here Terrorizes You”
On September 4, 2017, Hurricane Irma became the first Category 5 hurricane of the season, with sustained winds of 180 miles per hour at its peak. The storm slammed into Cudjoe Key, Florida, as a...
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The Vampire Ship
On April 28, 2014, a fishing trawler intercepted an oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman, a day after the tanker had left Dubai for Greece. Three men climbed aboard the tanker and spent the night packing...
View ArticleHow Corporations Scam Their Shareholders and Screw Over Workers
I recently wrote about the pernicious effect of Milton Friedman’s idea that public corporations should focus exclusively on shareholders, ignoring the interests of other stakeholders including...
View ArticleTrump Lies, and the Media Abides
Whenever I mix up words or forget what I was trying to say, I make fun of myself by saying “words are my craft, you know.” It’s funny because it’s true: I have one job, and it is to use words well,...
View ArticleDonald Trump’s Taxes Aren’t Surprising, But They’re Still a Huge Deal
What would it take for a story about Donald Trump to be surprising? This is, after all, someone who has, in the past few days alone, refused to commit to a peaceful transition of power in November and...
View ArticleOur Plutocratic Tax System Was Built for Rich Cheaters
Donald Trump’s previously undisclosed tax records, the subject of so much Democratic speculation since 2016, are finally public, thanks to a New York Times report released over the weekend. It was...
View ArticleThe Amy Coney Barrett Discourse Is a Trap
Poll after poll shows that a clear majority of Americans want the Supreme Court seat once held by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to be filled after the election. But that didn’t stop President Trump from...
View ArticleThe Elite Sisterhood of Amy Coney Barrett
Sometimes the reason “women’s rights” feel so tenuous is because the question “which women?” is as central as it is overlooked. The threat Amy Coney Barrett would pose to women as a Supreme Court...
View ArticleTrump Is Encouraging Big Pharma’s Worst Instincts
Was ever an October surprise so publicly plotted? President Donald Trump has repeatedly said, despite nearly all evidence to the contrary, that a vaccine for SARS-CoV-2 will be available before...
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