We’re Freaking Out About Rats Cause We Can’t Handle Climate Change
We’re hearing a lot about chaos these days. Joe Biden claimed late last month that abolishing the filibuster would cause “chaos”—“nothing at all would get done,” he fretted. Cities that dare to...
View ArticleRichard Trumka Was Forthright Till the End
Liberals, said Richard Trumka, his lip curling. They’re killing us. That was about 10 years ago. We were standing in the conference room of The New Republic’s old Washington office, and though it was...
View ArticleWhy Are Democrats Inviting Republicans to Hold Them Hostage Over the Debt...
Congress votes from time to time on whether or not to collapse the American economy. So far, lawmakers haven’t actually voted in favor of economic ruin. But for some inexplicable reason, they decide to...
View ArticleThe “Reopening” Celebrations Were Misguided and Premature
Governor Gretchen Whitmer announced that Michigan would “open to full capacity” on June 22, when the state rescinded mask mandates and restrictions on indoor and outdoor gatherings. At a celebratory...
View ArticleThe Impossibility of the Tesla Tell-All
One night in 2003, engineers J.B. Straubel and Gene Berdichevsky stayed up late talking about the untapped potential of lithium-ion batteries. Lighter and more efficient than traditional batteries,...
View ArticleToo Many Americans Are Immune to Vaccine Mandates
The data that underpins the case for getting the Covid-19 vaccines is as irrefutable as it is remarkable: People who have gotten the shot are around 80 percent less likely to get infected, and those...
View ArticleYou’ll Probably Get Covid-19 Eventually. But Avoid It for as Long as You Can.
“Hot vax summer” never quite materialized. For parents, like me, and other caregivers with vulnerable family members, it wasn’t clear what exactly we could do safely. Now, as Covid-19 cases in the...
View ArticleCory Booker Wants Baby Bonds in the Budget Reconciliation Bill
The budget reconciliation bill, which Democrats intend to use to cover the elements of President Joe Biden’s agenda that are not included in the bipartisan infrastructure legislation, is quickly...
View ArticleThe Democrats Are Freaking Out About the 2022 Midterms. Good!
For the better part of President Joe Biden’s first year in office, there’s been talk of an FDR-size presidency and a “hot vax” summer. Now we might be on the cusp of a bipartisan infrastructure deal....
View ArticleThe Pandemic Cliff Is a Manufactured Crisis
Millions of renters who have been unable to pay their rent during the Covid-19 pandemic received a temporary, last-minute reprieve last month when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention...
View ArticleInfrastructure Week Could End the Era of Deficit Fearmongering
Quiz time: What is the current amount of the federal budget deficit?I’ll give the answer at the end of this column. For now, what you need to know is that it’s massive. Like, yuge. It’s...
View ArticleHow Does Amazon End?
Last week, beleaguered Amazon workers and organizers received a rare gift from the government—two, in fact. The National Labor Relations Board released a ruling stating that Amazon officials had...
View ArticleLionel Messi’s Depressing Departure From F.C. Barcelona Marks the End of...
It is a bit strange to refer to the relationship between a soccer player and the club that pays him more than £150 million a year as “romantic.” It is stranger still when that player has spent much of...
View ArticleThe Fate of Confederate Monuments Should Be Clear
In the year since the murder of George Floyd by a white police officer, and the mass protests that followed, Confederate monuments have come down with astonishing speed. According to a February 2021...
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Behind the GOP Strategy to Outlaw Trans Youth
This spring, when Libby Gonzales arrived in Austin, Texas, with her mother, Rachel, and her little sister, Cecilia, she was already a veteran of the state’s legislative sessions; this would be her...
View ArticleThe Infrastructure Bill’s Crypto Tax Was Always Going to Be a Fiasco
Of all the many provisions jammed into the 2,700-page bipartisan infrastructure bill that’s teetering ever closer to passage, an unlikely one has come to dominate the news in recent days:...
View ArticlePlaying Nice With the Fossil Fuel Industry Is Climate Denial
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has released the first, nearly 4,000-page installment of its Sixth Assessment Report. The report, from a working group of over 200 scientists, distills the...
View ArticleThe Media Was Too Quick to Crown Ron DeSantis
In mid-April, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis took a victory lap. With Covid-19 vaccinations readily available and the pandemic surely coming to an end, his laissez-faire approach to the public health...
View ArticleThe Truth Behind the Great Bacon Shortage of 2022
Americans love few things more than bacon. American media outlets love few things more than running stories about bacon shortages. In 2012, in the face of drought and record-high corn prices, one...
View ArticleHow the Far Right Weaponized America’s Democratic Roots
The deep chasm in American political culture continues to open, and to generate irreconcilable positions on everything from climate change to Covid-19 to critical race theory. The intensity of this...
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