How Does Ben Smith Sleep at Night?
Let’s be honest: Ben Smith is the best media columnist The New York Times has ever had. He instantly surpassed his poor predecessor upon landing from BuzzFeed earlier this year. He has even eclipsed...
View ArticleThe Clapping Stopped, but the Risks to Health Care Workers Didn’t
At 50 years old, and with three kids, Brígida Vidal struggles to keep up with the mountains of dirty linen she is expected to sort through each day at the industrial laundry plant where she works in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Elderly Trapped in Bronxwood
When someone in the building died, a notice was often taped to a window in the lobby: WE REGRET TO ANNOUNCE THE PASSING OF OUR FRIEND. The signs did not say how or where the friend had died, and...
View ArticleThe U.S. Is Addicted to Bad Middle East Policy
Last Friday, Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was assassinated, likely by agents of Israel’s Mossad and with the approval or assistance of the United States. Ostensibly a government...
View ArticleWelcome to the Pandemic Cliff
Members of Congress reconvened this week, facing a December 11 deadline to come up with a temporary spending bill to avoid a shutdown and increasingly dire pressure to pass some version of a stimulus...
View ArticleHow Trees Made Us Human
Chicago, in 1871, was alive to the giddy possibilities of modernity. The city had shot up from a flat expanse of grasses and wild garlic plants nearly overnight. In 1830, it had possessed a population...
View ArticleHow to Cover a Normal Cabinet
President-elect Joe Biden promised a return to normal on the campaign trail. His early picks for Cabinet and other high-level administration positions have, in their own way, delivered on that promise....
View ArticleWhy Joe Biden Can Stop Worrying and Start Spending Like Crazy
The last four years have seen no shortage of irony, but it still spins your head to think that the incoming administration might turn out to be more fiscally conservative than the last one. Ted...
View ArticleThe Problem With Putting a BlackRock Alum in Charge of Greening the Economy
This week, the Biden campaign is expected to announce officially that it’s tapped former Obama adviser and current BlackRock executive Brian Deese to head the National Economic Council. The appointment...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Wong Kar-wai’s Masterpieces of Political Uncertainty
A green young tailor’s assistant is summoned to see a high-flying prostitute. Their encounter lasts a few minutes, but his ensuing fixation on her is permanent. That’s a good investment on her part: He...
View ArticleThe Most Unpardonable Presidential Power
President Donald Trump took a break from undermining American democracy last week for a symbolic errand of mercy: granting a ceremonial pardon for two turkeys, Corn and Cob, in a televised White House...
View ArticleAmerican Military Supremacy is Not Inevitable
The country with the most powerful military in the world likes to pretend it has no choice in the matter. If the United States didn’t maintain order, the story goes, disorder would prevail. But as...
View ArticleTranscript: Questioning U.S. Military Primacy
A transcript of Episode 21 of The Politics of Everything, “American Military Supremacy is Not Inevitable”Laura Marsh: Today, the United States has the most powerful military in the world. It has more...
View ArticleThe Girlboss Feminism of Joe Biden’s Cabinet
To date, the Biden-Harris administration has named 17 women to top posts, some of them firsts, many of them contingent on Senate confirmation. Heading in the direction of gender parity in hiring has...
View ArticleThe Global Temptation to Keep Building Pipelines
There’s a fundamental tension at the heart of a lot of climate policy these days: Supporting renewable energy is good, but not enough. Merely increasing renewables won’t enable the world to meet...
View ArticleWho Gets to Recover From the Pandemic?
The impossible yet irresistible pandemic-related question: When will things get back to normal? In a recent interview with the University of Melbourne, Dr. Anthony Fauci attempted to answer the...
View ArticleDoes America Really Need More Inside-the-Beltway Journalism?
While newsletters have long been on the rise in the media landscape, 2020 has become the year they finally reached “so hot right now” status. Perhaps not coincidentally, 2020 has also been a year of...
View ArticleThe Future of Staying Home
A life lived indoors has long been viewed as the height of economic attainment: Elites relax in palatial compounds while couriers fetch packages and convey news of the dangerous world beyond the gates....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Monetizing the Final Frontier
On May 30, in the midst of a world-threatening pandemic and a surge of protests for racial justice, President Donald Trump arranged a photo op that harked back to the confident heyday of the Cold War...
View ArticleJoe Biden’s Cabinet Is a Lost Cause for the Left
Few portions of political discourse are as predictably shallow as presidential Cabinet discourse. Who should run the Department of Transportation? An affable also-ran in the Democratic primary who once...
View Article