Why We Can’t Comprehend 250,000 Covid Deaths
We have so many numbers to describe how awful things are. Since February, the United States has conducted 170,315,721 Covid-19 tests, identified 11,603,800 cases, and tallied 250,300 deaths. In April,...
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What Now?
The euphoria from Joe Biden’s long-count victory is like the last leaf clinging to a late-autumn tree. Before that stubborn final leaf withers on the branch, here is a hopeful—yet realistic—scenario...
View ArticleBarack Obama Doesn’t Have the Answers
What are we supposed to do with Barack Obama? He’s said at least twice over the course of the publicity tour for his new presidential memoir, A Promised Land, that his ideal reader is a young person....
View ArticleEnding the Forever Wars, by Any Means Necessary
President Trump’s decision-making is defined by, if anything, incoherence. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that, in addition to golfing and undermining the election results, he is spending his last days...
View ArticleCan the Media Break Its Trump Addiction?
A week and a half ago, a spell seemed to break: Donald Trump began profusely lying on live television, and several networks cut the feed. It was treated as a minor miracle, proof not only that the...
View ArticleThe Supreme Court Faces a Matter of Life and Death
Millions of Americans who were reared on Law & Order and other courtroom dramas have a familiar, if slightly misleading, understanding of how criminal trials are supposed to work. The prosecution...
View ArticleHazard Pay Was Just a Brand Exercise
Remember hazard pay? That fleeting practice of employers raising essential workers’ wages during the pandemic—also known as a bare-minimum gesture of decency—first surfaced around the same time that...
View ArticleOligarch of the Month: Kelly Loeffler
Earlier this year, Kelly Loeffler—by many accounts the richest person in Congress—decided she wanted just a little more. Publicly, Loeffler, a former asset management executive whom Georgia’s...
View ArticleThe Airy Abstraction of “Our Democracy”
“That’s what’s at stake right now: our democracy,” Barack Obama said in his speech at the Democratic National Convention in August. Some version of this warning—somehow both apocalyptic and...
View ArticleWhy Police Back Gun Guys
Three years since Charlottesville, armed clashes at street protests over racial justice are still a defining feature of American politics, but the constellation of participants has changed. The white...
View ArticleDemocrats’ Fear of the Green New Deal Is Tearing the Party Apart
About two years ago, before the Sunrise Movement became a household name, the activist group staged a sit-in at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office. They were joined by Representative Alexandria...
View ArticleThe Fed Could Help Cash-Strapped Cities and States. Mnuchin Has Other Ideas.
Right now, cities and states across the country are being forced into crippling budget cuts. As tax revenues fall in the pandemic-induced recession, officials are shrinking public payrolls and slashing...
View ArticleTrump’s Motley Gang of Dead-Enders Are Circling the Drain
It’s been almost a fortnight since Joe Biden secured the necessary number of Electoral College votes to officially append the title “president-elect” to his name. But this reality has not yet been...
View ArticleBush Doesn’t Look Better in Hindsight. He Looks Worse.
I always thought George W. Bush wasn’t very bright and never liked him. I’ve never met him, but everyone I know who knew him thought he was a lightweight. However, when Bush was first elected, I was...
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The Biden Popular Front Is Doomed to Unravel
It’s lucky that votes usually don’t get counted till late at night. Victorious presidential candidates have two audiences to speak to. Their zealous volunteers generally get little reward other than...
View ArticleFox News Prepares to Wage a Culture War on Joe Biden
On November 6, as Joe Biden widened his lead in Pennsylvania and inched toward the presidency, Fox News host Laura Ingraham urged the president to accept the results with “grace and composure.” To...
View ArticleThe Dangerous Inversions of the Debate Around Trans “Censorship”
In May, Betsy DeVos’s education department advised public schools in Connecticut that if they did not comply with the federal government’s dictates on gender expression and rescind a trans-affirming...
View ArticleThe Desperate Year of the Digital Media Titans
Six years ago, The New York Times surveyed the media landscape and found that the paper of record was lagging behind. Digital upstarts like BuzzFeed, HuffPost, and Vox Media were not only setting the...
View ArticleThe Trump Doctrine Is Whatever Mike Pompeo Wants It to Be
Donald Trump has been largely absent from his public duties, and his White House is stymying any attempts at a formal transition process as Trump’s legal team and various local allies try to steal the...
View ArticleThe Obama Reunion Isn’t Nearly Enough to Stave Off Catastrophe
Joe Biden’s picks for top national security appointments, reported by multiple outlets Sunday and Monday, are about what you’d expect: Longtime allies to the president-elect are getting another crack...
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