Do We Still Need Ted Lasso’s Relentless American Positivity?
The first season of Ted Lasso, Apple TV’s streaming series about an American college football coach (Jason Sudeikis) who takes over a top-flight English soccer team, was blessed with perfect timing. It...
View ArticleThe Trap Doors and Dead Ends of Trying to Get Treated for Long Covid
Tiffany Nazaire felt her first Covid symptoms last October and was diagnosed—along with many of her colleagues at the hospital where she worked—later that month. In the nine months that have passed...
View ArticleWe’ll Never Fix Hospitals’ Price Gouging If We Don’t Break Their Stranglehold...
Nearly every hospital in the United States appears to be flouting Trump-era rules mandating price transparency, according to a bombshell new study. Put into effect on January 1 under the Trump...
View ArticlePolice Are Quietly Collecting Dystopian Gadgets That Put More Lives in Danger
Amid doe-eyed stories of overwhelmed police engaging in walkouts and a rash of angry op-eds about underfunded police departments leading to waves of violent crime, the market for new police gadgets and...
View ArticleThe Debt Ceiling Debate Is Congress at Its Dumbest
As I warned last October, Republicans planted a fiscal time bomb two years ago in the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2019. What they did at the time was suspend the debt limit—an archaic fiscal tool that...
View ArticlePolice Officers Give Congress a Front-Row Seat to the Trauma of Our Politics
Four law enforcement officers who defended the Capitol during the insurrection on January 6 entered a House committee hearing room on Tuesday, cutting striking figures in their uniforms. They provided...
View ArticleIt Sure Looks Like Roe’s Foes Noticed That Amy Coney Barrett Is on the...
When the state of Mississippi first asked the Supreme Court to take up Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in March 2020, it argued that the court didn’t need to overturn Roe v. Wade to rule...
View ArticleBetter Rules Won’t Fix Democracy
For all that ails Western democracy at the moment, it certainly doesn’t lack diagnoses. Critics such as Jonathan Rauch insist that a surfeit of popular sovereignty has tipped the delicate balance of...
View ArticleHow Do You Convince People to Eat Less Meat?
In early July, Spain’s minister of consumer affairs, Alberto Garzón, posted a short video on Twitter urging Spaniards to decrease their meat consumption. From a political communication perspective, it...
View ArticleThe Forever Wars Aren’t Ending. They’re Just Being Rebranded.
After 18 years of illegal warfare, corruption, and untold numbers of innocent people killed or made into refugees, the U.S. combat mission in Iraq will be declared finished—for the third time. Sort of....
View ArticleThe Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill Refuses to Die
The prospect of a massive infrastructure bill that’s mutually agreeable to both parties has become somewhat of a last great hope for bipartisanship in an increasingly rancorous and divided Congress....
View ArticlePlease Don’t Rush to Get a Third Covid Shot
This week, Pfizer released early results showing that a third dose of its Covid-19 vaccine with BioNTech can dramatically increase antibody levels several months after vaccination, particularly among...
View ArticleAmerican Education Is Founded on White Race Theory
In June, Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds signed a bill that prohibits “race scapegoating” and “race stereotyping” in K-12 education, as well as teaching “specific concepts” such as “the United States of...
View ArticleSonia Kennebeck’s Grim Documentaries About Whistleblowers Expose the Excesses...
“United States v. Reality Winner” is a principled, soulful documentary about the National Security Agency contractor who sent a document outlining Russian election hacking and influence efforts to The...
View ArticleConservatives’ Bullshit War on Simone Biles
For most of this week, the right has raged about Simone Biles. By deciding to withdraw from the Tokyo Olympics to focus on her mental health—a wholly reasonable decision given that gymnastics is an...
View ArticleMasks Are Mandatory Again on Capitol Hill. It’s Not Going Well.
The act of wearing a mask has been a point of political contention for as long as the pandemic has ravaged the country, and the halls of Congress has seen its share of this stress, as lawmakers have...
View ArticleOligarch of the Month: Richard Branson
Music-and-travel tycoon Richard Branson didn’t quite make it to space in July, though he came pretty close: From his VSS Unity space capsule, he live-streamed 53.5 miles above the earth and only 8.5...
View ArticleThe Green Knight Is A Delightfully Gory Moral Test
It is Christmas Day in a great castle. King Arthur and Guinevere and their knights are feasting, when a green man on a big green horse bursts through the door. He lays down a bizarre challenge: He...
View ArticleThe Revolution That Wasn’t
For the American left of the 1960s and early 1970s, the past refuses to stay past. Two of the most popular films nominated for Best Picture this year—Shaka King’s Judas and the Black Messiah and Aaron...
View ArticleVaccine Mandates Are as American as Apple Pie
If you support mandatory vaccination to fight Covid-19, you are in good company. The first vaccine mandate in American history came from none other than George Washington at the height of the American...
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