Why Police Back Gun Guys
Three years since Charlottesville, armed clashes at street protests over racial justice are still a defining feature of American politics, but the constellation of participants has changed. The white...
View ArticleThe Airy Abstraction of “Our Democracy”
“That’s what’s at stake right now: our democracy,” Barack Obama said in his speech at the Democratic National Convention in August. Some version of this warning—somehow both apocalyptic and...
View ArticleDemocrats’ Fear of the Green New Deal Is Tearing the Party Apart
About two years ago, before the Sunrise Movement became a household name, the activist group staged a sit-in at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office. They were joined by Representative Alexandria...
View ArticleThe Fed Could Help Cash-Strapped Cities and States. Mnuchin Has Other Ideas.
Right now, cities and states across the country are being forced into crippling budget cuts. As tax revenues fall in the pandemic-induced recession, officials are shrinking public payrolls and slashing...
View ArticleTrump’s Motley Gang of Dead-Enders Are Circling the Drain
It’s been almost a fortnight since Joe Biden secured the necessary number of Electoral College votes to officially append the title “president-elect” to his name. But this reality has not yet been...
View ArticleBush Doesn’t Look Better in Hindsight. He Looks Worse.
I always thought George W. Bush wasn’t very bright and never liked him. I’ve never met him, but everyone I know who knew him thought he was a lightweight. However, when Bush was first elected, I was...
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The Biden Popular Front Is Doomed to Unravel
It’s lucky that votes usually don’t get counted till late at night. Victorious presidential candidates have two audiences to speak to. Their zealous volunteers generally get little reward other than...
View ArticleFox News Prepares to Wage a Culture War on Joe Biden
On November 6, as Joe Biden widened his lead in Pennsylvania and inched toward the presidency, Fox News host Laura Ingraham urged the president to accept the results with “grace and composure.” To...
View ArticleThe Dangerous Inversions of the Debate Around Trans “Censorship”
In May, Betsy DeVos’s education department advised public schools in Connecticut that if they did not comply with the federal government’s dictates on gender expression and rescind a trans-affirming...
View ArticleThe Desperate Year of the Digital Media Titans
Six years ago, The New York Times surveyed the media landscape and found that the paper of record was lagging behind. Digital upstarts like BuzzFeed, HuffPost, and Vox Media were not only setting the...
View ArticleThe Trump Doctrine Is Whatever Mike Pompeo Wants It to Be
Donald Trump has been largely absent from his public duties, and his White House is stymying any attempts at a formal transition process as Trump’s legal team and various local allies try to steal the...
View ArticleThe Obama Reunion Isn’t Nearly Enough to Stave Off Catastrophe
Joe Biden’s picks for top national security appointments, reported by multiple outlets Sunday and Monday, are about what you’d expect: Longtime allies to the president-elect are getting another crack...
View ArticleHere Come the Adults
Twelve years ago this week, Barack Obama’s pick of Hillary Clinton for secretary of state had everyone in Washington reading (or claiming to read) Team of Rivals, Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book on Abraham...
View ArticleHow WeWork Got Away With Spectacular Failure
Over the summer, with the pandemic death toll well on its way to 200,000 and the economy in ruins, WeWork founder Adam Neumann—cut loose from the company the year before with a gargantuan golden...
View ArticleThe Damage Is the Point
President Donald Trump’s efforts to block or overturn the election results have failed at every turn. His lawsuits are being dismissed by incredulous judges; his personal campaign to short-circuit the...
View ArticleHow to Pitch Sold Short
What is Sold Short?Sold Short is a vertical about inequality. The stories we publish focus on labor, gender, racial justice, feminism, the family and kinship beyond it, Indian Country and tribal...
View ArticleMike Pompeo Is a Global Arsonist. Can Biden Put Out His Fires?
What is Secretary of State Mike Pompeo doing, and how bad will it get? America’s top diplomat recently concluded a 10-day, seven-country overseas trip that seemed designed to cause as much damage as...
View ArticleHow Newsmax Became Trump TV
Last week, Tucker Carlson did something remarkable: He acknowledged, albeit with no small number of caveats, that the Trump campaign had provided zero evidence to support its most recent round of...
View ArticleThe Government’s Human Cruelty Will Outlive Trump
“Our long nightmare will soon be over” is a phrase that one wouldn’t have been shocked to hear issued from the lips of liberal pundits or Joe Biden supporters as it slowly became apparent, in the days...
View ArticleIs America Trapped in a Caste System?
Three-quarters of the way into Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, Isabel Wilkerson describes the humiliation suffered by Black passengers on a steamship in the American South before the Civil War....
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