Francis Fukuyama’s Shrinking Idea
There’s an intriguing phenomenon in publishing you could call the One Great Idea book. Usually written by a leading senior scholar in an interdisciplinary field such as international relations,...
View ArticleA Coal Baron’s Takeover of the EPA Is Nearly Complete
A few weeks after President Donald Trump moved into the White House, he received a memo from one of his biggest campaign donors: Robert Murray, the CEO of Murray Energy, America’s largest private coal...
View ArticleEdith Espinal Has Spent 18 Months Hiding From ICE in a Church. How Much...
There’s little about Ohio’s Columbus Mennonite Church that marks it as a sanctuary. Only a small cardboard sign by the parking lot proclaims, in English, Spanish, and Arabic, “No matter where you are...
View ArticleThis Is Not Normal. This Is Not Normal. This Is Not Normal.
The Trump International Hotel enjoys an enviable location in the nerve center of American governance. It stands on Pennsylvania Avenue, situated roughly midway between the White House and the Capitol....
View ArticleWelcome to the Next Two Years in America
“We are getting crushed!” So exclaimed President Trump to his chief of staff in response to media coverage of the government shutdown, according to The New York Times. This is an accurate description...
View ArticleWhy Is Greece Such a Hot Spot of Left-Wing Terrorism?
The posh Athenian neighborhood of Kolonaki is a hilly expanse of high-end boutiques, jewelry shops, museums, and art galleries. It’s an area of relatively untouched wealth, and even at the tail end of...
View ArticleThe Trump Shutdown Is an Environmental Crisis
The Environmental Protection Agency employs about 13,000 people to protect Americans from pollution. Last week, fewer than 900 were working, the rest having been furloughed due to the government...
View ArticleTrump and Xi: A Tale of Two Egos
Amid the many tributes paid to the late George H.W. Bush last November, an understandable minority dwelt on the moment when Bush became the first sitting president to throw up on a major ally. After 16...
View ArticleWant to Pass Medicare for All? Fix American Democracy First.
The federal government’s partial shutdown enters its second month this week, and there is no end in sight. It does not matter that the American public largely wants the government to reopen, or that...
View ArticleTrump’s Cruel Proposal to End the Shutdown
Senate Republicans and Democrats on Tuesday announced the first hint of progress in negotiations over the government shutdown. The chamber has scheduled procedural votes on two separate bills for...
View ArticleWhat Jill Abramson Gets Wrong About the Future of Journalism
Jill Abramson’s new book, Merchants of Truth: The Business of News and the Fight for Facts, is billed as a “definitive report on the disruption of the news media over the last decade,” even as Abramson...
View ArticleThis Is Nancy Pelosi’s Finest Hour
Just a few months ago, it seemed like Nancy Pelosi’s bid to become speaker of the House of Representatives was in trouble. While attacks from the right had been commonplace for years, she came under...
View ArticleHow Trump Suborns Perjury
BuzzFeed set off a cascading series of controversies last week when it reported that President Donald Trump had “directed” his longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about a Trump...
View ArticlePlease Don’t Let Venezuela Be Trump’s Shutdown Distraction
The fraught situation in Venezuela seems to be coming to a head. On Wednesday, 35-year-old opposition leader Juan Guaidó declared himself interim president following widespread protests calling for the...
View ArticleKing Donald’s Royal Moment
Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, recently handed President Donald Trump a way to cancel next week’s State of the Union address without losing face....
View ArticleThe Conflicted Soul of Modern Liberalism
“In the United States at this time,” Lionel Trilling asserted in 1950, “liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition.” A few years later, in his highly influential book...
View ArticleWhy Are Democrats Freaking Out About “Electability”?
Ben Terris calls it “Pundititis.” Democrats still haven’t recovered from the trauma of Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump, and it’s causing them to wring their hands about every candidate emerging...
View ArticleThis Is Chander Kanta. The Government Shutdown Has Left Her All Alone.
When it comes to the work she does, Chander Kanta is indistinguishable from a regular Environmental Protection Agency employee. For the last five years, the 70-year-old administrative assistant has put...
View ArticleGive Parents Money, Not Universal Pre-K
On Tuesday night, in her State of the State address, Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo staked her second term on an ambitious promise. “Tonight, I pledge to be the governor who brings universal...
View ArticleA Vacation in the Void
The world is impossibly old and disorganized. A long time ago, we began to structure it around the holy days of religion. More recently, the state endorsed holidays for labor and gave the year the...
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