The Problem With Putting a BlackRock Alum in Charge of Greening the Economy
This week, the Biden campaign is expected to announce officially that it’s tapped former Obama adviser and current BlackRock executive Brian Deese to head the National Economic Council. The appointment...
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Wong Kar-wai’s Masterpieces of Political Uncertainty
A green young tailor’s assistant is summoned to see a high-flying prostitute. Their encounter lasts a few minutes, but his ensuing fixation on her is permanent. That’s a good investment on her part: He...
View ArticleThe Most Unpardonable Presidential Power
President Donald Trump took a break from undermining American democracy last week for a symbolic errand of mercy: granting a ceremonial pardon for two turkeys, Corn and Cob, in a televised White House...
View ArticleAmerican Military Supremacy is Not Inevitable
The country with the most powerful military in the world likes to pretend it has no choice in the matter. If the United States didn’t maintain order, the story goes, disorder would prevail. But as...
View ArticleTranscript: Questioning U.S. Military Primacy
A transcript of Episode 21 of The Politics of Everything, “American Military Supremacy is Not Inevitable”Laura Marsh: Today, the United States has the most powerful military in the world. It has more...
View ArticleThe Girlboss Feminism of Joe Biden’s Cabinet
To date, the Biden-Harris administration has named 17 women to top posts, some of them firsts, many of them contingent on Senate confirmation. Heading in the direction of gender parity in hiring has...
View ArticleThe Global Temptation to Keep Building Pipelines
There’s a fundamental tension at the heart of a lot of climate policy these days: Supporting renewable energy is good, but not enough. Merely increasing renewables won’t enable the world to meet...
View ArticleWho Gets to Recover From the Pandemic?
The impossible yet irresistible pandemic-related question: When will things get back to normal? In a recent interview with the University of Melbourne, Dr. Anthony Fauci attempted to answer the...
View ArticleDoes America Really Need More Inside-the-Beltway Journalism?
While newsletters have long been on the rise in the media landscape, 2020 has become the year they finally reached “so hot right now” status. Perhaps not coincidentally, 2020 has also been a year of...
View ArticleThe Future of Staying Home
A life lived indoors has long been viewed as the height of economic attainment: Elites relax in palatial compounds while couriers fetch packages and convey news of the dangerous world beyond the gates....
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Monetizing the Final Frontier
On May 30, in the midst of a world-threatening pandemic and a surge of protests for racial justice, President Donald Trump arranged a photo op that harked back to the confident heyday of the Cold War...
View ArticleJoe Biden’s Cabinet Is a Lost Cause for the Left
Few portions of political discourse are as predictably shallow as presidential Cabinet discourse. Who should run the Department of Transportation? An affable also-ran in the Democratic primary who once...
View ArticleThe Predictable, Preventable Mess of Reopening Schools in Indian Country
In August, as families across the country prepared for the new school year, Smithsonian magazine spoke to more than a dozen anonymous tribal citizens about remote learning, public health protocols, and...
View ArticleWelcome to the New Era of Cops Driving Teslas
Elon Musk isn’t known for being a practical, by-the-book guy. At different points, the newly minted second-richest person on earth has started a company to implant computer chips into human brains,...
View ArticleWhy We Love the Monolith
On Monday, airborne sheep surveyors in San Juan County, Utah, observed a three-sided, 11-foot-tall reflective metal object nestled in the orange rock. After the Bureau of Land Management issued an...
View ArticleThe Media Is Finally Tuning Trump Out
On Wednesday, for 46 minutes, President Trump gave perhaps the most deranged speech of his political career—which means it was arguably the most deranged speech of any presidency since a drunk Andrew...
View ArticleDown With Slack
Salesforce is paying $28 billion to purchase Slack, the intraoffice texting service that has turned the American workplace into a dystopian micro-Twitterverse. Sold as a tool to improve communication...
View ArticleWe Need More Than Antitrust Law to Tackle Big Tech
The frightening power of Big Tech is one of the few issues Democrats and Republicans still agree on, even if they don’t agree on the specifics. Conservatives often claim to be victims of a type of...
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The Tangled Legacy of James Beard
The quest for authenticity is perhaps the central obsession of modern food culture. Food today is a vehicle not only for sustenance or pleasure, but for a certain type of truth—for tastes and...
View ArticleAn Epidemic of Arrogance on the Supreme Court
Earlier this year, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote one of the finest opinions in the Supreme Court’s recent history. His majority ruling in McGirt v. Oklahoma recognized that a large swath of that state is...
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