Twitter Is Enabling Saudi Arabia’s Brutal Crackdown on Dissent
Contrary to Saudi Arabia’s self-proclaimed image as a reform-minded state gradually opening to the world, the country’s human rights situation is worsening, according to both activists and the family...
View ArticleThe Case for More Canceling
Dan Pfieffer, a former senior aide to President Barack Obama and current podcast co-host, shared some interesting data in a recent newsletter. If you had the vague sense that the incredibly stupid...
View ArticleCare Work Is Climate Work
“What is infrastructure?” Somehow, this is the question under debate right now, thanks to America’s antiquated political system, which has made it virtually impossible to pass anything that isn’t a...
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Fox News Made Matt Gaetz
In his 2019 book, Firebrand: Dispatches From the Front Lines of the MAGA Revolution, (a document that one day will likely go by the name of “Exhibit A”), Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz made the case...
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How Bill Gates Impeded Global Access to Covid Vaccines
On February 11, 2020, public health and infectious disease experts gathered by the hundreds at the World Health Organization’s Geneva mothership. The official pronouncement of a pandemic was still a...
View ArticleBurning Pig Poop Fumes Doesn’t Solve Anything
Last week, the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality officially approved the installation of biogas digesters at four Smithfield-owned hog waste lagoons in the Sampson and Duplin counties....
View ArticleKazuo Ishiguro’s Deceptively Simple Story of AI
The titular narrator of Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro’s new novel, is a robot. This isn’t spoiler—this revelation comes early in the book. Klara is an Artificial Friend, a lifelike but nevertheless...
View ArticleJohn Boehner Can’t Disown the Rot He Created
John Boehner wants you to know how appalled he is by a faction of the right whose rise he actively facilitated. In excerpts of his new memoir, On the House, that were published in Politico and reported...
View ArticleDon’t Change, Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal is, financially speaking, quietly one of the most successful newspapers in the country. But you don’t hear about the Journal’s success all that often. The media industry...
View ArticleThe Lost Worlds of Edward Said
Exiles often have conflicting feelings about their adoptive society, and Edward Said was no exception. As a Palestinian in the United States, he recognized the country’s pervasive racism and violence,...
View ArticleAre States Really Abolishing Qualified Immunity for Cops? Not Exactly.
According to the news, New Mexico supposedly abolished qualified immunity last week. Axios reported that Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham signed a bill that “eliminates a legal defense known as...
View ArticleWhy Hasn’t Biden Canceled the Dakota Access Pipeline Yet?
Last Friday, more than 400 people—lawyers, journalists, court staffers, gas and oil employees, and Indigenous citizens—joined a conference call that the fractious group believed might provide at least...
View ArticleThe Case for the Talking Filibuster
As dawn rose over the Capitol on a Wednesday in early March 1960, two men remained on the Senate floor—segregationist South Carolina Senator Olin Johnson was reading aloud from the collected works of...
View ArticleBiden’s Homeland Security Is Just as Bad as Trump’s
Abolish what? The deportation arm of the United States government appears to be secure under President Joe Biden. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has a “noble mission,” according to Alejandro...
View ArticleCorporations That Donate to Mitch McConnell Don’t Care About Climate Change
On Tuesday, executives from more than 300 companies—including renewables firms and several gas and electric utilities—released a letter urging the Biden administration to pledge to cut emissions by 50...
View ArticleHow Americans Lost Their Fervor for Freedom
In America today, the right has a monopoly on the word “freedom.” Conservatives talk about “freedom” at every opportunity, while liberals and leftists do so only with embarrassment, shielded with...
View ArticleIs Biden Ditching His Promise to Protect Workers From Covid-19?
Among the various ways President Donald Trump caused more Americans to die needlessly from Covid-19 was by failing to issue a legally enforceable “emergency temporary standard” to protect workers. The...
View ArticleDeath to America’s Manicured Lawns
Last week, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported that the Southern Nevada Water Authority is officially proposing a ban on the continued maintenance of ornamental grass in the desert metropolis, and...
View ArticleOnce Again, Police Rally Around Their Death-Dealing Power
Following a night of protest in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, after an officer shot and killed a young Black man, Daunte Wright, police raised a “thin blue line” flag, under the stars and stripes....
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