Spanish Democracy Goes on Trial
By the time Jordi Cuixart and Jordi Sànchez go on trial on February 12 they will have been in jail nearly 500 days. The grassroots organizers for Catalonian independence will be tried by Spain’s...
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Fyre Festival Was a Huge Scam. Is Netflix’s Fyre Documentary a Scam, Too?
When two movies come out on the same topic, it’s a banner day for cultural criticism. The “twin film” phenomenon—such as the recent Hollywood treatments of the opioid crisis, Ben Is Back and Beautiful...
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Off the Map
In February 2003, Al Jazeera broadcast an interview with Donald Rumsfeld, then George W. Bush’s secretary of defense. “Would it worry you,” the interviewer asked him, “if you go by force into Iraq that...
View ArticleDomineque Ray Died So the Death Penalty Could Live
The Supreme Court can’t make everyone happy, but it rarely makes everyone mad. Chief Justice John Roberts and his four conservative colleagues did just that last week when they let the state of Alabama...
View ArticleJeff Bezos Is No Hero
The world’s richest man had a week unlike any in his life. Last Thursday, in a long post on the website Medium, Jeff Bezos accused the National Enquirer of extorting him with compromising photos. The...
View ArticleThis Is Not How You Stabilize the Middle East
This week, the United States and Poland will be co-hosting a summit in Warsaw to “Promote a Future of Peace and Security in the Middle East.” More than 70 countries have been invited, a departure from...
View ArticleIf Not the Green New Deal, Then What?
As momentum for the Green New Deal grows, so do its detractors. The ambitious plan to fight climate change introduced by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey last week has been...
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The Future of Meat Is Vegan
In August 2013, Mark Post, a professor of physiology at Maastricht University, held a press conference in a television studio kitchen in London. Lifting the silver lid from a platter, he revealed a...
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How Videos of Police Brutality Traumatize African Americans and Undermine the...
The nightmare haunts Victor Dempsey even in his waking hours, tightening his chest and snatching his breath. It is as if it’s waiting for him, and when he sleeps there’s no escape. The dream first came...
View ArticleThe Destructive Nihilism of Trump and the GOP
It’s long been clear that President Donald Trump won’t get anything resembling the border wall that he promised his supporters on the campaign trail. The government-funding deal struck between...
View ArticlePassive Resistance
When does a movement become a Movement?It is a vexing question. Invoking the term is meant to denote seriousness, to suggest that the activism you are engaged in will not disappear with the passing of...
View ArticleThe New Republic March Issue: The Battle for Silicon Valley’s Soul
New York, NY—(February 14, 2019)—The New Republic today published its March 2019 issue, with a cover package titled “The Battle for Silicon Valley’s Soul.” The five articles, respectively by Ben...
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The New Yorker Running for President of Nigeria
One evening last summer, Chike Ukaegbu, a 35-year-old New York tech entrepreneur, called his uncle, Augustine Akalonu: “Are you sitting down?” Ukaegbu asked. Dr. Akalonu was sitting down; he was...
View ArticleMarco Rubio, Trump’s Shadow Secretary of State
It was not so long ago that Donald Trump and Marco Rubio were bitter enemies. During the 2016 primary, Rubio called Trump a “con man” and suggested that he had wet his pants during a debate. In return,...
View ArticleDeath to the Critic!
The elastic face of Jake Gyllenhaal is mobile with outrage: “I assess out of adoration. I further the realm I analyze!” The critic for ArtWeb—a thin fictionalization of the ArtNet online fine-art hype...
View ArticleAmazon Shoots Its Hostages
Last Friday, less than 24 hours after detailing a bizarre plot by the National Enquirer to extort him with nude photos, Jeff Bezos took some hostages of its own. The newspaper he owns reported that...
View ArticleThis Is What the Beginning of a Real Israel Debate Looks Like
With all the shouting it was easy to miss, but something new happened in Washington this week. If you can’t see it yet, put yourself back in 2006, when everything about a Somali-American, Muslim...
View ArticleThe Nerdy, Ruthless Parodies of Documentary Now!
Documentary Now! is television for people who love movies—more specifically, documentary films. This may be a growing niche. Documentary has undergone something of a renaissance in the last ten years,...
View ArticleTrump Is the Real National Emergency
President Donald Trump has announced that he will sign the compromise spending bill struck between Democrats and Republicans this week, which will avert another government shutdown and provide $1.375...
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The Spiritual Case for Socialism
Any human identity is made up in part of beliefs about how to live—what is admirable, worthwhile, shameful, precious. These are not abstract opinions, but are better understood as parts of who we are,...
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