I Scored Worse Than Donald Trump Did on That Brain Test
President Donald Trump has once again pulled off another feat of political strategery that Democrats can’t possibly match: He has created another news cycle that’s largely concerned with whether or not...
View ArticleThe Only Person Who’s Figured Out How to Interview Trump
Chris Wallace’s interview with Donald Trump on this past Sunday’s edition of Fox News Sunday ended up being a bigger bombshell than it should have been. Sure, Wallace did his job—he asked tough...
View ArticleUnsolved Mysteries Is a Story of American Television’s Evolution
“What you are about to see is not a news broadcast.” So ran the voiceover at the start of each episode of the classic 1980s Unsolved Mysteries, a pioneer docuseries thriving at the intersection of the...
View ArticleJohn Lewis’s “Good Trouble” Is Happening in the Streets Right Now
Reflecting in 1985 on the Mississippi Freedom Summer and the radical moment he came up in, Congressman John Lewis described the endurance required in movement work. “You knew that you had to prepare...
View ArticleGreen Jobs Can Be Just as Good as Fossil Fuel Jobs
Conversations about jobs and the environment tend to play out along predictable lines: Fossil fuel jobs are havens of well-paid, unionized employment, so the story goes. Any move away from them will...
View ArticleTrump Has Brought America’s Dirty Wars Home
In 1963, the U.S. Agency for International Development released a training film for police called First Line of Defense. Designed to teach cops from Third World countries how to recognize the signs of...
View ArticleThe Ultimate White Fragility
Lately, the term “white fragility” has been much in the news. Coined by the scholar Robin DiAngelo, it has garnered her profiles in numerous publications, including the New York Times and the New...
View ArticleTrump’s Polling Decline Is Tying the Conservative Media in Knots
The New York Times noted Monday that the former vice president has held a lead of about nine points in national polls for over a month—the largest sustained lead for a presidential candidate in almost...
View ArticleThe Desolate Visions of Andy Warhol
In March, an Andy Warhol exhibition opened at the Tate Modern in London. It was a European sequel to the touring retrospective that bewitched the United States last year, but the Tate was forced to...
View ArticleDonald Trump Is Devouring His Country
It’s not nearly the same thing as getting used to it, but there is by now an identifiable rhythm to the Trump presidency. That rhythm is jittery, chaotic, and atonal, just one squashed-flat brown note...
View ArticleHow to Make a Deadly Pandemic in Indian Country
In 1868, four years after the Navajo Nation was forcibly removed from its homelands in what is known as the Long Walk, the nation signed a treaty with the United States. In exchange for Diné citizens...
View ArticleJohn Yoo’s Twisted Path to Trumpism
Axios ominously reported over the weekend that President Donald Trump and his aides “are privately considering a controversial strategy to act without legal authority to enact new federal policies.” In...
View ArticleFor Fossil Fuel Companies, Bankruptcy Is a Bailout
Around this time last year, Jeff Hoops—CEO of Blackjewel LLC—was having a busy week. On July 1, 2019, he filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, abruptly closing the company’s Bell Ayr and Eagle Butte mines...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Donald Trump Has Permanently Changed the Publishing Industry
As hard as it may be to believe, not too long ago, it was actually quite difficult to sell a book about Donald Trump. When investigative journalist David Cay Johnston sought a publisher for a biography...
View ArticleThe Infernal Logic of Professional Sports in a Pandemic
“Please don’t take me,” said four-time Major League Baseball All-Star and Braves franchise first baseman Freddie Freeman, as he described to reporters the prayers he offered on his worst night of...
View ArticleHere’s What It Would Take to Reopen Schools Safely
Schools need to reopen in the fall. Schools cannot reopen in the fall.As both a parent and a science and health journalist, I feel torn between these twin truths. And it’s clear I’m not the only...
View ArticleThere’s Never Been a Better Time to Be a White-Collar Criminal
In mid-June, a reporter at an Israeli news outlet gave me some startling information about an international criminal investigation that I had led while working as a prosecutor at the Justice...
View ArticleRich Republican Nihilists Don’t Care If You Can’t Pay Rent
While the op-ed pages of The New York Times and Wall Street Journal, and apparently at least one dinner party at a million-dollar Brooklyn brownstone, are increasingly obsessed with the sharpening...
View ArticleCongress’s Steadfast and Stupefying Refusal to End Surprise Billing
The stories abound: Patients break their legs, or have heart failure, or experience a mental health crisis, and they go to the hospital, as they’re supposed to. As is required in the United States,...
View ArticleThe Problem With Putinology
By most accounts, the Cold War came to end in 1991. Soviet defeat equaled the victory of the West. The Washington consensus set the economic terms. Democracies were proliferating after 1991, and on the...
View Article