Why We’re Obsessed Once Again With Covid-19’s Origin Story
Just like that, we’re back to arguing about the coronavirus’s origins. Last week, Newsweek explored the idea that a group of virus-hunting researchers went out looking for coronaviruses in China (to...
View ArticleThe Supreme Court’s Conservatives May Have Found a Tool to Restrict Abortion
The Supreme Court announced on Monday that it would hear its first abortion-related case since Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation last fall. The case, Cameron v. EMW Women’s Surgical Center, is...
View ArticleThe Republican Poseurs Who Claim to Be True Texans
Earlier this week, a campaign video emerged out of Texas showing a brawny bull-rider trying to buck his way into Congress. The ad, featuring Republican candidate and former professional wrestler Dan...
View ArticleThe Agony and the Ecstasy of Living Nowhere
The “RV Entrepreneur Summit,” held at a mountaintop lodge overlooking Alabama’s Lake Guntersville in the summer of 2019, promised attendees a long weekend of networking with full-time R.V.ers,...
View ArticleThe End of Infrastructure Week
On Wednesday, President Joe Biden is expected to give a speech in Pittsburgh laying out the contours of his Build Back Better infrastructure plan. The details on what he’ll specifically propose remain...
View ArticleHow an Upper West Side Hotel Came to Embody the City’s Failure on Homelessness
Last March, before the coronavirus was declared an emergency in the state, New York City seemed to be on the cusp of a gorgeous seasonal change. Thousands of hotel rooms across the boroughs had been...
View ArticleA Rust Belt City’s New Working Class
To grow up in Pittsburgh in the 1990s and 2000s—as I did—was to experience something paradoxical: slow-motion whiplash. In my early childhood, everyone seemed to agree that the city was dying around...
View ArticleDon’t Fall for the Carbon Tax Trap
After a few weeks of being compared to Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson, Joe Biden seems to be losing some of his transformational zeal. The administration is reportedly walking back from...
View ArticleA Vaccine Passport Would Be an Ethical Disaster Right Now
Justin Amash, the dissident Michigan Republican-turned-libertarian member of the House of Representatives, said they’re “dystopian.” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis believes they’re an unnecessary...
View ArticleThe Media Is Blowing Coverage of the GOP’s Voter Suppression Efforts
Writing in the Washington Post shortly after the January 6 Capitol insurrection, Margaret Sullivan noted a sea change in American journalism. After months of Republican lies about voter fraud and an...
View ArticleAndrew Cuomo, the Creepy Tyrant of Albany
Andrew Cuomo has been mired in scandal for weeks, for actions that, in some cases, date back years. To what extent has the governor’s bullying been hiding in plain sight? On Episode 28 of The Politics...
View ArticleThe Republican Disinformation Campaign Behind Arkansas’s Vile Anti-Trans Law
When young trans people and their allies testified in the Arkansas state legislature over the last weeks, it seemed clear that this was not supposed to be a debate. Rumba Yambú, the director of...
View ArticleMatt Gaetz’s Trumpian Defense Against Allegations of Sex Trafficking
On Tuesday morning, Axios reported that Florida Representative Matt Gaetz was thinking about leaving Congress for a conservative media gig, perhaps at Newsmax or another friendly outlet. This wasn’t a...
View ArticleBiden Is Too Worried About the Deficit, Not Worried Enough About Climate Change
To meet the emissions targets outlined in the Paris Agreement, experts estimate the United States government will need to spend at least $1 trillion annually, or between 3 to 5 percent of GDP, for a...
View ArticleThe Haunted Imagination of Alfred Hitchcock
The twentieth century ushered in the age of the uncanny. The concept, of course, has always been with us, as we see from the earliest of the surviving great epics, Gilgamesh, haunted as it is by the...
View ArticleThe Eternal Quest for the Unicorn Apartment
No matter what kind of self-hypnotized state I’m in when scrolling on social media, I will always pause for a well-designed interior. The other day, I hovered over a video of a young woman giving a...
View ArticleThe “Root Cause” of Central American Migration Is Broken U.S. Policies
There’s an interesting turn of phrase that’s come to dominate the Biden administration’s rhetoric around immigration: “root causes.”This notion featured prominently in one of the president’s early...
View ArticleMass Incarceration Draws Its Own Maps and Creates a Country in Its Image
In 2008, a man named Danny Young received just two votes for his candidacy to the City Council in Anamosa, Iowa: one from his wife and one from his neighbor. Both were write-ins, but he still won...
View ArticleWhy Would Anyone Pay Andrew Cuomo $4 Million for a Book?
Seven years ago, on the eve of being elected to a second term as governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo completed a rite of passage familiar to all presidential aspirants: He published a memoir, All Things...
View ArticleOligarch of the Month: Rupert Murdoch
Ten days after the United Kingdom began doling out Covid-19 vaccine, Rupert Murdoch received his first dose. At that point, fewer than half a million people had been vaccinated worldwide. In a...
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