The Case for Single-Payer in a Pandemic
Single-payer supporters, myself included, have argued that the coronavirus pandemic demonstrates the flaws of America’s private insurance system, and that this system is hampering the nation’s ability...
View ArticleThe Coming Ecosystem Collapse Is Already Here for Coral
The Great Barrier Reef is in the midst of its third mass-bleaching event in the last five years. This year’s heat-induced bleaching—which occurs during the region’s summer season—is more severe than...
View ArticlePleading for Clemency in a Pandemic
As the coronavirus rips through prisons and jails across the United States, much of the attention has been focused on Rikers Island, the New York City jail which, with an infection rate that reached...
View ArticleDon’t Fear the Anti-Biden Socialist
On Monday, Bernie Sanders endorsed Joe Biden for the presidency in a live-streamed virtual appearance with the presumptive nominee from his home in Vermont. “Today,” he said to Biden, “I am asking all...
View ArticleA New York Garbage Map Reveals the Virus of White Supremacy
Earlier this week, The City, a nonprofit news organization covering New York, published a map detailing the drastic decline in trash collection in certain areas in Manhattan—specifically neighborhoods...
View ArticleCongress Has Abandoned the Country
Early English parliaments bore little resemblance to the legislative body that exists today in London. It began as a consultative gathering of feudal lords and high-ranking bishops, summoned by the...
View ArticleTrump’s War on VA Workers Is Exposing Them to the Coronavirus
“America will again, and soon, be open for business,” President Trump had said. “We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself.” That was on March 23, the same day that the Norfolk-based...
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What Richard Hofstadter Got Wrong
In another journalistic life, I worked at an estimable Beltway publication covering the daily business of Congress. One of the early directives I encountered there concerned the use of the word...
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Breaking the Grip of White Grievance
The month of March staggered us. Joe Biden, with his campaign on a ventilator, was revived as the likely Democratic nominee. A soaring economy, primed in theory at least to spur an incumbent president...
View ArticleIs This the End of the Indie Bookstore?
It was one of the biggest days in the history of Point Reyes Books. On Saturday, March 14, it had “holiday-level sales,” said Stephen Sparks, who has owned and operated the Marin County,...
View ArticleTrump Can’t Lie His Way Out of This One
On Tuesday, in the midst of a rant against the World Health Organization, Donald Trump actually said, “It would have been so easy to be truthful.”Richard Nixon in his speeches would often ridicule “the...
View ArticleTrump Finds His Own Dumb Endless War
Experts differ on the appropriate way to acknowledge an Air Force fighter jet flyover. Saying “thank you,” however loudly, doesn’t seem sufficient; the planes are very far away and moving very quickly,...
View ArticleThe Democrats’ Terrible Health Care Solution for the Newly Unemployed
Earlier this week, I received a letter whose return address immediately alarmed me. It was from COBRA, the simultaneously awkwardly and aptly named institution through which I currently get my health...
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Samantha Irby Is All Grown Up
A man once complimented Samantha Irby’s back during sex. Flattered, she gave it an exfoliating treatment, which unfortunately scraped the skin raw. The next time Irby’s suitor knocked on her door,...
View ArticleThe Hard Truth About Antibody Tests
As President Trump made moves this week to open the economy back up, public health officials warned that there are still not enough coronavirus tests available to make that possible. They cautioned...
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How Drugs Made American Warfare
In 1971, the year President Richard Nixon declared war on drugs, “wherever they are in the world,” the House Select Committee on Crime found that, between 1966 and 1969, the Pentagon had distributed...
View ArticleA New Home in a Country Shuttered by a Pandemic
As Charles and his family left a Tanzanian refugee camp in late January, bound for a new life in Pittsburgh, he allowed himself to feel hopeful. “When I arrived at the airport, I felt that hardness...
View ArticleCould Hunter Biden Cost His Father the Election?
As soon as Joe Biden reclaimed his position as the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, the right set its sights once more on his son Hunter. Two days after Biden’s South Carolina victory,...
View ArticleEssential Jobs, Disposable Workers
For many conservatives, there’s something bordering on romantic about the current minimum wage. It’s not a lock into poverty, it’s a rite of passage. “You can’t just knock out the entry level of the...
View ArticleBlessed Are the Rich
If the scriptures punched into me anything, it’s that the future is a torso in a bag, hidden in prison before summoned to be true. Space-sex, where has your winter gone? Today we lust after younger...
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