In Defense of Rude Politics
Last week, Amber Rudd, the former home secretary of the United Kingdom—akin to America’s Homeland Security chief—was disinvited from an International Women’s Day event at Oxford University at the last...
View ArticleDemocrats Sleepwalk Into the Nomination of Joe Biden
There are millions of votes left to be cast in the Democratic primary contest, but the outcome appears fairly set. Joe Biden will likely be the Democratic nominee for president, having won a blowout...
View ArticleThe Political Realignment From Hell
On Tuesday, President Trump met with Republican senators to discuss policies to fight the economic shock of the coronavirus and dramatic fall in oil prices that’s accompanied it. Ahead of the meeting,...
View ArticleCan $500 a Month Change Your Life?
Jovan Bravo and his wife knew they wanted to move, but could never quite make it happen: They would sock away $100 to $150 a month and then have an expense come up—a car breaking down, their daughter’s...
View ArticleThe Coronavirus Exposes Amazon’s Algorithmic Greed
At a press conference on Monday, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that the state would begin to manufacture its own hand sanitizer at the cost of $6 a gallon, as part of a broader effort to...
View ArticleLegal Weed Is the Next Tribal Sovereignty Test
On Tuesday, the Oglala Sioux Tribe overwhelmingly voted to legalize marijuana for recreational and medicinal use on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. As Chase Iron Eyes, a spokesman for...
View ArticleThe Gauzy Myth of the Sanders Campaign
Dressed in a dark suit and a muted tie, with his flyaway hair neatly combed, Bernie Sanders looked funereal as he belatedly read a statement to the media on Wednesday afternoon—17 hours after the polls...
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Joe Biden’s Endless Search for a Message
Joe Biden’s history of hesitating to run for president—he contemplated runs in 1984, 1988, 2008, and 2016—is often ascribed to his sense of responsibility. Recounting how Biden finally backed himself...
View ArticleCable News for the Left?
The Bernie Sanders campaign has regularly complained about the “liberal” media, particularly MSNBC, the country’s leftmost cable news outlet. Faiz Shakir, Sanders’s campaign manager, told Vanity Fair...
View ArticleThe Coronavirus Commission in Trump’s Future
The World Health Organization declared on Wednesday that the coronavirus outbreak had become a pandemic, urging governments to take further steps to stem the now-worldwide spread of the virus. “WHO has...
View ArticleThis Primary Is About Two Competing Visions of the Future
For most Democratic politicians, the future is a bright investment opportunity. Increasing funding for education is “investing in our future.” Addressing climate change does not mean reining in the...
View ArticleThe Bernie Sanders Movement Without Bernie Sanders
For Bernie Sanders’s supporters, one source of frustration in the recent round of primaries is the peculiar fact that his campaign’s agenda seems to be doing better than the candidate himself. On...
View ArticleA Better World Is Possible Without a Pandemic
In Detroit earlier this week, city officials announced a moratorium on new water shutoffs. They are also returning service to customers behind on their bills, and locking in water fees at $25 a month...
View ArticleThe Dismantled State Takes on a Pandemic
Donald Trump’s televised address to the nation Wednesday night on the coronavirus pandemic failed just about every single test of political rhetoric. It neither reassured the American people nor did it...
View ArticleThe Coronavirus Is a Test of Joe Biden’s Ideas
In a speech immediately heralded as “presidential,” Joe Biden addressed the coronavirus pandemic and laid out his proposal for limiting the “human and economic” toll of the illness. His plan includes...
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What’s So Funny About the End of the World?
I’ve flirted with vegetarianism the way you might with faith on a turbulent flight. I’ve made New Year’s resolutions; I’ve joined the mail-order bean club. Declining to eat meat may seem like a...
View ArticleA Golden Opportunity for a Green Stimulus
As Congress debated Thursday whether paid leave was worth paying for during a pandemic, the Federal Reserve announced it would inject $1.5 trillion worth of liquidity into the American economy in an...
View ArticleIt’s the End of Trump’s Presidency—Again
We are in the midst of several overlapping crises. The United States is clearly unprepared for coronavirus, which is rapidly spreading. The economy is buckling under the strain: The long bull market is...
View ArticleTrump Is Cutting Food Stamps During a Pandemic
James Murphy has spent a lot of time looking for a job—“in retail, manufacturing, anything”—but always ends up moving from gig to gig, unable to find something steady. He can’t afford permanent...
View ArticleThe President Who Wasn’t There
All I can think about are my hands: the surfaces they’ve touched, the door knobs they’ve turned, the itches they’ve scratched (always, invariably, on the face). I think about the last time my hands...
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