Twilight of the “Adults in the Room”
Jim Mattis has a story to tell. For the first two years of the Trump administration, he was one of a handful of high-ranking figures who more or less openly pitched themselves as necessary checks on an...
View ArticleJoe Walsh Is Running for “Morning Joe”
Twenty-five years ago, Representative Joe Scarborough was a Gingrich Republican, swept into office in the Republican wave of 1994. He was, in many respects, one of the most radical members of that...
View ArticleIt’s Not Enough to Stop Amazon Deforestation
For three weeks, swaths of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil have been engulfed in flames—2.5 million acres to be exact. Another 1.8 million acres are burning in neighboring Bolivia, and thousands of...
View ArticleThe Border Wall Is Trump’s High Crime
There are, by the latest count, at least 130 House Democrats who support impeaching President Donald Trump, a number that has risen quietly but steadily in the wake of Robert Mueller’s testimony before...
View ArticleNew Yorkers Should Thank Police for the Summer “Slowdown”
Just ahead of a beautiful August weekend in New York, NYPD Chief of Department Terence Monahan, the highest-ranking uniformed officer in the force, was dispatched to local TV outlet NY1 to contradict...
View ArticleWho Gets to Say If Warren’s Apology to Cherokee Nation Is Enough?
On Tuesday, Politico published two pieces about Senator Elizabeth Warren’s tumultuous DNA test. One featured Native voices and served as an interesting insight into the still-ongoing criticism of...
View ArticleMillennial Parents Are Failing Their Children
Parents, myself included, regularly say they’d do anything for their children. They’d step in front of a bus for them, take a bullet for them, go full mama- or papa-bear to demolish—nay,...
View ArticleHow Trump’s Justice Department Screwed James Comey
There’s a lot of delicious irony in the Justice Department inspector general’s report finding that former FBI Director James Comey violated FBI rules by retaining four memos documenting President...
View ArticleThe Great Lie of the Right-Wing Populists
This was not a good week for democratic institutions in the Anglosphere. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson took the extraordinary step of suspending Parliament next month, undermining efforts to...
View ArticleThe Scourge of Worker Wellness Programs
When teachers and other school staff in West Virginia walked off the job in 2018, news coverage of the historic strike focused on bread-and-butter issues like their rising health-care premiums and low...
View ArticleAbolish ICE’s Union
The labor movement now finds itself at a crossroads on a host of issues, from surviving the climate crisis to navigating the looming specter of automation to out-maneuvering the most anti-labor...
View ArticleLeave Elizabeth Warren Alone
In less than two weeks, the ten leading Democratic candidates will all appear on the same debate stage for the first time. Outlets priming the pump for what will likely be the most important day of the...
View ArticleCold Case Hammarskjöld’s Artful Paranoia
I have always thought of conspiracy theories—whether spawned by the assassination of JFK, the death of Marilyn Monroe, or more recently, the suicide of Jeffrey Epstein in his Manhattan jail cell—as an...
View ArticleRight Brain
On my desk sit four containers of brain pills. Though they are made by four separate companies, they are similar enough in appearance and content to be almost interchangeable. The ingredients mention...
View ArticleMake Democratic Leaders Pay for Their Climate Cowardice
Climate coverage in the 2020 election is set to reach unprecedented levels this week, with CNN’s seven-hour “Climate Crisis Town Hall” slated for September 4. It will be the most attention ever devoted...
View ArticleDemocrats Need to Decide Whether They Care About Muslim Voters
The year was 2000. Hillary Clinton was running for one of New York’s two Senate seats, and she had a choice to make. On the final weekend of October, with the general vote less than two weeks away, the...
View ArticleWhen the State Enforces “Straight Pride”
The few hundred marchers and supporters who turned out for the Straight Pride Parade in Boston on Saturday were vastly outnumbered by thousands of counterprotesters—that was the main takeaway from the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Fog of Intervention
Let’s say it’s January 2021, and President Bernie Sanders has just assumed office. On his second day as commander-in-chief of the most powerful military in world history, Bernie and his foreign policy...
View ArticleThe Boundless Grift of Right-Wing Media Watchdogs
Over the past week, a number of journalists and politicians have expressed indignation as details of a new conservative media venture, which aims to personally attack journalists by unearthing their...
View ArticleA Seven-Hour Case for a Real Climate Debate
There is no good reason that any normal person should have to sit through seven hours of any televised event. Nor is there a good reason that such a time-suck should be thrust upon American voters as...
View Article