The Strategic Blunders of the Conservative Legal Movement
The major decisions from the Supreme Court’s most recent term were good for many people. Gay and transgender workers are now protected by Title VII’s ban on workplace discrimination. The Trump...
View ArticleThe Long War on Objectivity
The mess of histrionics and misinformation that passes for right-wing media these days didn’t spring from nowhere. How did this increasingly influential and well-funded sphere become what it is? On...
View ArticleHow Food Media Created Monsters in the Kitchen
Many kitchens in the restaurant industry are toxic, but few deserve the description quite so literally as Los Angeles jam destination Sqirl. Over the weekend, back-of-house workers at Sqirl took to...
View ArticleAnthony Fauci Is Not Our Savior
Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is on the outs with the president. Fauci has said that he hasn’t seen Donald Trump since the first week of...
View ArticleThe Self-Cancelation of Bari Weiss
What is the biggest media story of the last five years? The decimation of local news at the hands of private equity, Google, and Facebook (and the subsequent loss of tens of thousands of jobs) would...
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Why it’s Harder Than Ever to Make it in Hollywood
Edgar Momplaisir’s first glimpse of Hollywood success came early. Having dropped out of college in 2014 and moved to Southern California to chase the dream of writing for television, Momplaisir was...
View ArticleThe Democrats’ Baffling Silence as Millions of Americans Lose Their Health...
One of the many things that made the United States uniquely vulnerable to the coronavirus pandemic is the relationship between health care and employment in this country. About half of all Americans...
View ArticleCities Are Becoming Climate Death Traps
As the coronavirus pandemic continues throughout the United States, another deadly pandemic comes out to strike in the summer: extreme heat. Year after year, more people are dying because it’s simply...
View ArticleThe Ethical Dilemma of My Parents’ Death Wish
When my mother is about to sob in the middle of a sentence, she has a tic where she punctuates the last thing she’s saying by sternly pointing her finger—at your chest, almost as if to ascribe...
View ArticleThe Truth About Trump’s Evangelical Support
Donald Trump has never pretended to practice traditional Christian virtues. Yet in 2016 he earned 81 percent of the white evangelical vote—a higher percentage than George W. Bush, Mitt Romney, or John...
View ArticleTwitter Is Not Prepared for the 2020 Election
That Twitter was caught flat-footed by the unprecedented security breach that occurred on Wednesday evening, in which a number of prominent accounts—including those of Joe Biden, Kanye West, and Elon...
View ArticleTrump’s Campaign Doesn’t Need a New Manager. It Needs a New Candidate.
Being the guy who resets a “Days/Hours/Minutes Without Donald Trump Firing Someone” sign could be a full-time job, though given the turnover that has plagued Trump’s campaigns and administration, it...
View ArticleThe Forever War Over War Literature
Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs Jim Webb might have seemed like a weird candidate to give the keynote speech to a roomful of antiwar activists, journalists, creative writers, and...
View ArticleThe Threat of a GOP That Accepts Climate Change
As the Trump administration rushes to tick off as many polluters’ wish-list items as possible before November, there are some quiet, if symbolic, changes afoot. On Monday, the American Petroleum...
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The Empathy of Black Voters
Last month’s Democratic primaries in New York likely made history—for all of American politics. Mondaire Jones won in the 17th Congressional District, which includes Rockland County and parts of...
View ArticleWill Big Philanthropy Defang Our Radical Moment?
This week, billionaire George Soros’s Open Society Foundations announced plans to grant $220 million to racial justice initiatives and Black-led organizations over the next five years. The recipients,...
View ArticleThe Trump Administration Is Treating U.S. Cities Like Occupied Territory
In an outcome absolutely no one could have predicted, President Trump’s decision to send federal Department of Homeland Security agents into Portland, Oregon, ostensibly to protect statues, has led to...
View ArticleOur Towns Aren’t Equipped to Handle Climate Emergencies
Imagine, briefly, that you’re charged with coordinating a small town’s response to disaster, developing contingency plans and staying in close contact with local agencies. For the last few months,...
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The Whiners Who Earn $200,000 and Complain They’re Broke
On July 11, MarketWatch published a letter, presumably real, from a reader complaining that she and her husband didn’t qualify for a stimulus payment because they make too much money. Said the upset...
View ArticleMoving Beyond Good and Evil in the Middle East
The chaotic and conflict-ridden Middle East is a scene of American failure. In recent decades, the United States has lavished more resources and attention there than on any other region. It has...
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