Utility Companies’ Deadly Addiction to Profit
Northern California’s investor-owned electric utility PG&E pleaded guilty to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter in June over its role in 2018’s deadly Camp Fire. Its billions of dollars worth of...
View ArticleThe AFL-CIO’s Untenable Stance on Cops
On the night of May 31, as Black Lives Matter protests raged throughout the nation’s capital, the house of labor went up in flames. The imposing headquarters of the American Federation of Labor and...
View ArticleThe Republicans’ Crimes Against Democracy
The presidential election is fewer than 100 days away, but the anxiety surrounding how it will play out is already at a fever pitch. One symptom of the anxiety is the Transition Integrity Project, a...
View ArticleI’m a Teacher in New York. I’m Doing My Job by Fighting an Unsafe Reopening.
What worries me most about schools reopening in the fall is that more people will die. Right now teachers are feeling like we’re rushing toward a reopening that isn’t well thought out. That’s why...
View ArticleThis Is How Trump Will Try to Take Down Kamala Harris
Biden’s search for a running mate is getting messier by the day. Over the last few elections, vice presidential candidates have been announced just days before the party conventions, so the pace of...
View ArticleThe Secret History of America’s Worthless Confederate Monuments
During an interview in late June, President Trump lingered for a few minutes on the Confederate monuments that protesters were tearing down across the country: “You don’t want to take away our heritage...
View ArticleClimate “Realism” Is the New Climate Denial
Going by headlines and poll results, climate change awareness has never been higher. While social media provides fertile ground for propaganda techniques, smear campaigns, fake experts, and conspiracy...
View ArticleWhat I Learned From the Worst Novelist in the English Language
Some time ago, after several years on the job market, I landed a professorship at a small university in Wisconsin, a little moon of the state system orbiting the more recognizable institution in...
View Article“Family Life Coaches,” Private Jets, and the One Percent’s Pandemic Economy
A “family life coach” position in Aspen pays between $80,000-$100,000—the ideal applicant “wins,” is willing to make time for “overnight stays,” and possesses the “3G’s: Grit, growth, gratitude.” A...
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Death by a Thousand Cuts for One of America’s Last Great Institutions
The carriers I know call it marriage mail. The average person likely thinks of it as junk mail—the coupon booklets from local businesses dumped immediately in the trash, save for maybe the extreme...
View ArticleThe Fall of the NRA
In January of 2017, the National Rifle Association was at the peak of its power. Already known as one of the mightiest interest groups in the United States, it had been an early backer of Donald Trump,...
View ArticleThe Real Reason BP Is Getting Greener
BP seems nervous about being a fossil fuel company these days. On Tuesday, the 12th most carbon-intensive company in the world announced plans to slash its oil and gas production by 40 percent over...
View ArticleThe Problem With MSNBC Isn’t That It’s Too Liberal
Public departures have been one of the biggest media stories of the summer. The New York Times opinion editor Bari Weiss walked off the job in July, claiming the newspaper was now being edited by woke...
View ArticleNew York’s Punishment May Not Fit the NRA’s Crime
The National Rifle Association once ranked among the most powerful political organizations in America. Now it could face dissolution under a lawsuit filed by New York Attorney General Letitia James. In...
View ArticleCorporate America’s Hollow Denunciations of Systemic Racism
In a video that circulated on social media two weeks after George Floyd’s death, 14 white celebrities gathered to take responsibility for “every not so funny joke” they’d laughed at and each time...
View ArticleThe Brutal World of Waiting for the Barbarians
It’s not clear quite what era you’re in. The place seems dislocated in time, an imperial outpost somewhere in the desert, its manners and materials evidently imported from some far-off capital. It...
View ArticleThe Wildly Unequal “Shecession”
When the pandemic lockdowns in the United States first began, there were troubling signs that women would bear the brunt of the coming economic collapse. As layoffs started, more women than men lost...
View ArticleThe Helpless Outrage of the Anti-Trump Book
On October 7, 2007, I attended a lecture by Seymour Hersh at the University of California, Los Angeles titled “The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib and Beyond.” At the time, Hersh was one of the most...
View ArticleDon’t Blame Never Trumpers for the Left’s Defeat
The failure of Bernie Sanders to take control of the Democratic Party in the 2020 primaries was understandably traumatic for the American left. Having rapidly ascended from seeming irrelevance to...
View ArticleThe Deadly Coronavirus Vaccine Gold Rush
A return to normal life after the pandemic, which we can only hope will be better and more equitable than the one that preceded it, depends on the creation of a safe and effective coronavirus vaccine....
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