The Shadowy Group Keeping a Right-Wing Stranglehold on the States
Last month, with the inauguration of a newly elected Democratic governor fast approaching, Michigan’s Republican legislators made a last-minute attempt to ram through a bill to dramatically weaken...
View ArticleIn Defense of Serenity
If there’s anything that you might already know about the new Matthew McConaughey movie Serenity, it’s that it contains a big twist. And if there’s anything you know about the big critics’ reviews,...
View ArticleThe False Martyrdom of Roger Stone
From the way some have spoken about Roger Stone’s arrest last week, a casual observer could be mistaken for thinking that the veteran GOP political operative and longtime Trump adviser was the victim...
View ArticleCould Unions Help Defeat ISIS?
What’s the best way to fight terrorism? As the United States withdraws from Afghanistan and Syria, shifting from the unending War on Terror to the no less unending “Great Power competition” with China...
View ArticleThe Fetid, Right-Wing Origins of “Learn to Code”
Last Thursday, I received the news that the HuffPost Opinion section—where I’d been opining on a weekly basis for a few months—had been axed in its entirety. The same opinion column had had a home at...
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Stop Ignoring What Is Happening in Serbia
Aleksandar Vucic is a busy president. The Serbian leader claims to work at least 15 hours a day, from early in the morning until at least 10:30 in the evening—“as long as I can endure.” And from his...
View ArticleHoward Schultz Is Democrats’ Chance to Bury Clintonism Forever
Ever since Howard Schultz announced on Sunday that he was considering an independent bid for president, a kind of mass hysteria has gripped the left broadly. The overwhelming reaction was one of fear:...
View ArticleBudweiser’s Super Bowl B.S.
The iconic American beer with the cherry-red label is going green. Since 2017, Budweiser has ditched its gas-powered delivery trucks in favor of Teslas. It has begun converting all of its U.S. brewing...
View ArticleTrump Is Not Going to Be Talked Out of Attacking the Press
President Donald Trump on Thursday sat down with two reporters from The New York Times and its publisher, Arthur Sulzberger, for one of his semi-regular Oval Office interviews with the newspaper. As is...
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A Sadistic Master Storyteller
In his 1881 masterpiece, Epitaph of a Small Winner, the Brazilian novelist Machado de Assis instructs his readers to memorize the phrase “the voluptuousness of misery.” “Study it from time to time,...
View ArticleFacebook Remade the Internet in Its Hideous Image
Fifteen years ago today, Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook—then known as TheFacebook—out of his Harvard dorm room. It now has more than two and a half billion users across its applications, including...
View ArticleRalph Northam’s Trumpian Lack of Shame
Ralph Northam still has the lawful power to exercise his constitutional duties as governor of Virginia. Over the last four days, however, he has forsaken whatever moral or democratic authority he once...
View ArticleEverybody’s a Suspect in Everybody Knows
The camera accompanies a man down several stories in a rickety elevator. As he leaves the building, we stay inside, watching through cracked, dirty glass as he kicks a car and attacks a woman wearing a...
View ArticleStop Looking for Meaning in Brexit
In Alan Bennet’s play The History Boys, a charismatic history teacher at a state school in 1980s northern England attempts to tutor students for the entry exams of Oxford and Cambridge. “How do you...
View ArticleWhat a Waste
President Donald Trump, fresh off a humbling defeat in November’s midterms and a humiliating retreat in the shutdown standoff with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last month, opted for a bipartisan message...
View ArticleThe Story Behind the Green New Deal’s Meteoric Rise
On November 13, 2018, just days after Democrats reclaimed the House of Representatives, dozens of young activists filed silently into Representative Nancy Pelosi’s office on Capitol Hill. Some sat down...
View ArticleIt Will Take More Than Congress to Cure America’s War Addiction
Is Congress finally asserting itself in foreign policy? In January, legislators reintroduced a resolution that directs President Trump to end U.S. support for the Saudi-led coalition’s catastrophic war...
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What Is the Legacy of Communist China’s Fine Art?
In a tiny gallery on Henry Street last week, the young artist Chang Yuchen taught me one of her father’s drawing lessons: “There is no line in the real world.” A subzero wind blew outside as she held...
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How a Demon-Slaying Pentecostal Billionaire Is Ushering in a Post-Catholic...
The headquarters of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God does not resemble your typical megachurch. Its eighteen stories dwarf the big-boxes of the Texas and Missouri exurbs. Behind pillared...
View ArticleToday Is a Momentous Day for Abortion Rights
It’s been a relatively quiet term at the Supreme Court since the justices reconvened last October. The court has some important cases on its docket this year, notably on tribal reservations in...
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