The New Language of Forever War-Making
“History, unfortunately, is a forever war,” according to Clifford D. May and Bradley Bowman, who seem never to have encountered a war they don’t like. This faux profundity comes midway through an essay...
View ArticleGive Joe Biden a Break
We have reached the stage in the unveiling of Joe Biden’s Cabinet and top White House staff when virtually every Democrat—with the possible exception of Kamala Harris—is upset by at least one pick and...
View ArticleBiden Isn’t a Lost Cause for the Left
New Mexico Congresswoman Deb Haaland—a citizen of the Laguna Pueblo nation, and among the first class of Native women elected to Congress in 2018—will reportedly be nominated by the Biden...
View ArticleHow to Win Hearts and Minds in Climate Politics
The climate emergency doesn’t feel great. We fear violent weather events and mourn vanishing seasons and species. We’ve had to name new conditions, like ecological grief and climate despair. Shaming...
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A Blueprint for a Trust-Busting Biden Presidency
Joe Biden has the opportunity to be America’s first trust-busting president in at least 50 years. He could go down in history as the smiling man on the back of an Amtrak train, declaring war, as...
View ArticleIs Dolly Parton the Voice of America?
On July 5, 1996, the world’s first cloned mammal was born in a lab at the University of Edinburgh. The lamb, carried to term by one ewe and carrying the cloned genetic code of another, represented an...
View ArticleRepublicans for Recession
Do congressional Republicans want to prolong the recession to hurt President-elect Joe Biden?Four years ago, I might have judged any such conclusion to be too cynical. But after watching Republican...
View ArticleTrump’s Most Vicious Cultists Aren’t Done With America
When spent nuclear fuel rods are removed from their reactor and cooled, they are typically surrounded in inert gas and sealed into thick steel and concrete casks that are intended to last for decades....
View ArticleJen O’Malley Dillon Fell Into Joe Biden’s Unity Trap
Jen O’Malley Dillon was always going to have to apologize. In an interview with Glamour, Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign manager and the incoming White House deputy chief of staff called Republicans (in...
View ArticleThe War on Christmas, Covid Edition
On April 3, as the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic raged through the country, a Federalist columnist named David Marcus wrote an article titled “we cannot destroy the country for the sake of New...
View ArticleThe Empty Ethics of “Shop Small”
This spring, Marissa Nuncio, director of the Garment Worker Center in Los Angeles, had a Zoom meeting with some of the center’s 300 members. Even during the pandemic, when they were considered...
View ArticleThe Rise and Fall of a Fracking Boom Town: An Oral History
It’s always feast or famine in Rock Springs. In the 1970s, this wind-worn mining town in southwest Wyoming was the site of an immense energy boom. Men from across the country moved in to make fast...
View ArticleHow to Restore the Glory of Government Science
This year, some of the most trusted science institutions in the world participated in a high-profile and disastrous national mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic. In February, the Centers for...
View ArticleThe Unacceptable Costs of Appeasing MAGA Nation
Even after Donald Trump is evicted from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, he will still lead a multimillion-person political movement determined to protect and defend a white nation-state. Deeply aggrieved,...
View ArticleThe Conservative War Against the Black Church
On December 12, two days before the electoral college confirmed President-elect Joe Biden’s win, Trump supporters gathered in Washington for a “Jericho March,” a prayer walk inspired by the Old...
View ArticleMonopolization Is Killing Art
When some colleagues and I recently met to discuss the past year in culture, we easily agreed on one thing only: Corporate consolidation, and not just the pandemic, took a heavy toll on the arts this...
View ArticleBillion-Dollar Book Companies Are Ripping Off Public Schools
For most of America’s 10 million middle schoolers, English class means enjoying—or, perhaps, enduring—the timeless narratives of the Western canon: Fahrenheit 451, Black Boy, The Giver, Parable of the...
View ArticleThe Case for Giving Workers Ownership Rights
It’s a certainty that we’ll be entering both the new year and a new Democratic administration with the American economy on its knees. We’ll return to something resembling normalcy with time, but...
View ArticleLet Them Eat $600
Nine months. That’s how long it took Congress to pass a second round of legislative relief in response to a global pandemic recession. In the interim, the economy imploded, the death toll reached and...
View ArticleThe Lethal Inequality on American Farms
When Flavio first heard about a temporary farm work program in the United States, it sounded like a great deal. Everything from his salary to his housing would be guaranteed in advance by his employer,...
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