How Austerity Destroyed the Public Good
In 2005, I wrote a piece for The Nation surveying the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. I concluded it on this cautionary note:We have to be clear that what happened in New Orleans is an...
View ArticleA New Study Shows Why Fracking Has to Stop
California Governor Gavin Newsom said last Friday his state will stop issuing new permits for fracking in 2024. The embattled governor—likely facing a recall election this fall—also directed the...
View ArticleHow The Daily Mail Is Feeding the Right-Wing Culture War
For days, the American right has been on high alert: Joe Biden is coming for their meat. After the English tabloid The Daily Mail cited “recent studies” to claim that the Biden administration would...
View Article“John Kerry Is a Traitor” Is the Republicans’ New Dumb Meme
John Kerry has lost Lenny Dykstra. The eccentric former all-star baseball player turned bankrupt investment adviser on Tuesday morning claimed President Joe Biden’s climate envoy has undermined U.S....
View ArticleHelen Oyeyemi’s Impossible Places
Halfway through Helen Oyeyemi’s new novel, Peaces, I put the book down and looked up instructions on how to play the board game baduk. I found a video clip on YouTube that explained the rules. “It’s...
View ArticleOn Biden’s American Families Plan and Resisting the Conservative Politics of...
The American Families Plan is not utopian, but it could be understood as aspirational. According to reporting from Jeff Stein at The Washington Post, the plan, to be released by the Biden...
View ArticleJoe Biden Is Blowing a Big Moment for Medicare
Given the fact that we are in what we hope are the latter days of a global pandemic that arrived on these shores during a Democratic presidential primary that was all but defined by vigorous intraparty...
View ArticleIf Corporations Are People, Tax Them Like People
As if by magic, corporations were rendered human by the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United and 2014 Hobby Lobby decisions. They may now exercise free speech rights through unlimited political...
View ArticleHow Will We Know If There’s a Covid Supervariant?
The cognitive dissonance is hard to manage. On the one hand, new Covid cases in the United States are declining as vaccinations rise. A vaccinated summer gleams on the horizon. But internationally, we...
View ArticleThe Walls Are Finally Closing in on Rudy Giuliani
Hey, remember Rudy Giuliani? The former mayor of New York City? The guy who spent the last two years acting as Donald Trump’s lawyer, first by trying to wrap up the Russia investigation and then by...
View ArticleJoe Biden’s Bold Defense of American Democracy
Joe Biden’s presidency now has a lasting theme—one far more powerful than slogans like “Build Back Better” or all the variations on the “American Rescue Plan.” As he delivered his address to a more...
View ArticleThe Coming Revolution in the American Economy
In a 1981 speech to the boards of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, President Ronald Reagan expressed one of the central ideas of the coming era. “The societies which have achieved the...
View ArticleBiden’s 100-Day Honeymoon With the Climate Left Is Coming to an End
One hundred days in, what do we know about Bidenism as it pertains to the climate crisis? Expectations started out fairly low: Few expected the 78-year-old career centrist, who voted for the North...
View ArticleTrump Holdovers Are Dragging Down the Biden Agenda
During his campaign, Joe Biden repeatedly held out the promise of an FDR-size presidency—the better to counter the misrule of the Trump administration. It can be said that he has already made some...
View ArticleTucker Carlson Is Deadly Boring
The way that mainstream news outlets engage with Tucker Carlson has fallen into a predictable cycle. The host of Fox News’s flagship opinion program will say something outrageous on his nightly...
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Why Is Ed Helms Leading the First Native Sitcom?
In one sense, there has never been a show like Rutherford Falls before. Streaming on NBC’s service Peacock, Rutherford Falls is focused on the fictional titular northeastern town and the also-fictional...
View ArticleBiden, Do the Right Thing and Release the Vaccines From Pharma’s Grip
As members of the World Trade Organization meet Friday afternoon, countless residents of the United States, United Kingdom, the European Union, and other wealthy regions will be getting their second...
View ArticleThe Vexing Question of Puerto Rican Statehood
Statehood for the District of Columbia has become a live issue in recent weeks. House Democrats recently passed, again, a bill that would make D.C. America’s fifty-first state—a move that the Biden...
View ArticleWhy Is Greg Gutfeld Still on Television?
On April 5, Fox News debuted a weeknight show called Gutfeld! in the 11 o’clock hour, a slot that other networks reserve for the likes of Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, and Stephen Colbert. Hosted by a...
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