Against Remote Work
As its boosters have long argued, remote work offers any number of obvious benefits. Companies save money on rent; employees don’t have to commute; and everyone, without the distractions of the office,...
View ArticleTranscript: The Future of Telecommuting
A transcript of Episode 23 of The Politics of Everything, “Against Remote Work”Laura Marsh: If you do an office job, there’s a good chance you spent a lot of the last year staring at your colleagues on...
View ArticleRepublicans Rethink “Law and Order” Once They Become Its Target
In the wake of last week’s Capitol riot, the path to Congress now includes a metal detector. To secure the chamber, Capitol police set up a security checkpoint outfitted with a series of magnometers....
View ArticleLiz and Dick Cheney Are No American Heroes
In the wake of the deadly January 6 raid on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump, some Republicans have broken away to support impeachment or otherwise criticize the president for catalyzing...
View ArticleThe Call Is Coming From Inside the House (and Senate)
Congress hasn’t been immune to violence among its members over the past 200 years. In her book The Field of Blood, which delves into lawmakers’ unruly behavior in the early republic, historian Joanne...
View ArticleImpeaching Trump Is a Pyrrhic Victory
Wednesday was the second saddest day in modern history on Capitol Hill.As the House voted to impeach Donald Trump for a second time, the Capitol was ringed by more American troops than are on duty in...
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August Wilson’s Uncompromising Vision for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
August Wilson had a magnificent ear. His supreme gift as a playwright was for transforming African American vernacular into crystalline poetry onstage. His sense for language was also evident in how he...
View ArticleThe War on Terror Only Created More Terror in America
Historians will spend decades parsing the tragic from the ridiculous in the events of the first few weeks of 2021, and many books will be written about the Capitol insurrection alone—perhaps the...
View ArticleThe Dream Job That Wasn’t
When I was young, my dream job was to be a horse. I didn’t want to be a horse girl, but a girl who is a horse. This made sense to me back then and also now. People respect horses, whose reputation is...
View ArticleThe Capitol Riot Revealed the Darkest Nightmares of White Evangelical America
White evangelicals believe they see truths that you and I cannot. While Americans around the country watched an inflamed mob overrun the Capitol on January 6, the evangelical participants in that mob...
View ArticleThe Incredible Power and Learned Helplessness of Twitter and Facebook
Despite being the CEO of both Twitter and the payments company Square, Jack Dorsey has an aw-shucks habit of seeming uncomfortable with the power he wields. On Wednesday, he tweeted a stem-winding...
View ArticleHow to Fight Climate Change and Fascists at the Same Time
Politicians in the United States have long had a single, instinctive response to crises both real and imagined: make new kinds of cops. After 9/11, the Bush administration created the Department of...
View ArticleThe Republican Plot to Rig the 2024 Election
The Republican Party is in rough shape. Under President Donald Trump, the GOP has now lost the House, the Senate, and the presidency in just four years—a feat unmatched in American politics since...
View ArticleAll That’s Left of Trumpism Is Hilariously Stupid, Deadly Serious Social...
The first sign that something may have been a bit amiss about last week’s MAGA insurrection at the Capitol arrived in a viral video on Twitter, amid the unfolding chaos. A distressed, red-eyed woman...
View ArticleAn Impeachment Trial Will Be Good Practice for Actual Oversight
“We’re not looking backward, we’re looking forward” was 10 days ago. Remember? That was Hakeem Jeffries, the fifth-highest-ranking Democrat in House leadership and a potential future Speaker, should...
View ArticleA Brief Cultural History of Work Sucking
In Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, the late David Graeber laments the proliferation of meaningless sectors and jobs that are not productive but seem to exist solely to keep people working. Plenty of jobs have...
View ArticleHow the GOP Fell in Love With Cancel Culture
In the aftermath of the pro-Trump riots that left five dead at the United States Capitol, Republicans have focused on the real problem: cancel culture. Citing the president’s removal from just about...
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John McCain’s Apache Land Grab Is Finally Happening
In 2014, the late Senator John McCain quietly slid a dagger into the backside of the Arizona tribal nations he was ostensibly elected to represent. Deep in an appropriations package for military...
View ArticleWhy the Environmental Justice Movement Should Think Locally
On a chilly December morning, Gabriel Jamison stood in front of a construction site in Brownsville, Brooklyn, with a sign and a megaphone. “National Grid has the nerve to sit there and come into a...
View ArticleI Went to High School With Biden’s Homeland Security Team
“Probably the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton, but the opening battles of all subsequent wars have been lost there.”—George Orwell, The Lion and the Unicorn, 1941Future...
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