What Nancy Pelosi Gets Right About the Green New Deal
Last week, Senator Dianne Feinstein was caught on video condescending to a group of school-age climate activists, telling them “there’s no way to pay for” the Green New Deal. “I’ve been in the Senate...
View ArticleRefusing to Repatriate “ISIS Brides” Is a Terrible Idea From Any Perspective
Hoda Muthana, who grew up in Alabama, and Shamima Begum from London are both in Kurdish-run refugee camps in northern Syria. Both have infant children. And both have been told that, because they left...
View ArticleDo Venezuelans Actually Want U.S. Help?
Three trucks loaded with food and medicine for the Venezuelan people went up in flames last week on the Colombia-Venezuela border, as the country’s military engaged with opposition forces in a burst...
View ArticleThe Sensible Politics of Soaking the Rich
Everybody hates taxes. That’s one of the unalienable truths in U.S. politics, and it’s been proven again as the April 15 filing deadline approaches. A drop in tax refunds earlier this year, potentially...
View ArticleThe Anguish of the “Old Millennial”
In the never-ending semantic struggle that is generational terminology (if one thing remains consistent from generation to generation, it is that a giant block of people never know what to call...
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He Said, She Said
When Afternoon of a Faun, the new novel by James Lasdun, landed on my desk, I knew only two things: that this was a #MeToo novel about rape allegations written by a man, and that this man had already...
View ArticleIndia Adopts Bush’s “Hot Pursuit” Principle
It is a page from the American playbook. On February 26, 2019, twelve days after a suicide bomber with a truck laden with explosives rammed into a bus carrying Indian paramilitary soldiers, Indian...
View ArticleHow to Save Americans From the Hell of Work
Elite workers are in existential crisis: Their stable, well-paying jobs are making them “miserable.” That’s the takeaway from several recent articles in the (elite) press. In the New York Times...
View ArticleConservatives’ Coming War on the Warren Court
Two years after Clarence Thomas’s bruising confirmation hearing in 1991, The New York Times reported that the Supreme Court justice told two of his law clerks that he planned to serve until 2034. That...
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A Single Life Full of People
To love is no easy task. An abundance of literature and pop culture warns us of its trickiness, and often, personal experience emphasizes the point. We love, when people are disagreeable and obnoxious;...
View ArticleThe Potency of Republicans’ Hamburger Lie
Conservatives are starting beef with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez again. Earlier this month, on Showtime’s Desus & Mero talk show, the freshman congresswoman said her plan to fight climate change—the...
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Rescue a Refugee: Get Charged With Trafficking?
The case was sensational. Two young volunteers stood accused of masterminding a massive smuggling operation on the Greek island of Lesvos, innocently disguised as a search-and-rescue NGO. One, Sarah...
View ArticleWho’s Afraid of The Prodigy?
In 1997, Keith Flint was very confused. After a long youth dancing in English rural barns (literally—his local club in Essex was called The Barn), the band he sang for was breaking America. With its...
View ArticleWinning the White House Won’t Fix Our Democracy
There are 14 prominent Democrats who believe they ought to be next president of the United States. As many as a dozen more may join them. But not Eric Holder. Obama’s first attorney general announced...
View ArticleWhy a Coup Is Unlikely in Venezuela
For the first two years of his administration, Donald Trump couldn’t seem to decide what country he wanted to invade and overthrow more. One day Iran was in the crosshairs, the next North Korea, then...
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How Eve Babitz Found Home
In Los Angeles, in 1947, 14-year-old Susan Sontag would take the trolley to the “enchanted crossroads” of Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue to listen to records and read Partisan Review,...
View ArticleMaking Georgia’s Bad Elections Even Worse
After Brian Kemp suppressed enough votes and stirred up enough bigotries to get himself elected governor of Georgia last November, you might have expected him to hit the ground running with some...
View ArticleIn the Future, No One Deserves an Oscar
Last month’s Academy Awards almost marked the beginning of a new era in movie history. Having changed film and television viewing forever, Netflix had just one world left to conquer: The Oscars. To...
View ArticleThe Shameful Campaign to Silence Ilhan Omar
History has been curling back lately in the most uncomfortable ways. Nearly 125 years ago, a French military court convicted the artillery captain Alfred Dreyfus of treason for handing military secrets...
View ArticleIlhan Omar’s Victory for Political Sanity
Would House Democrats censure one of their own for daring to suggest that the deep-pocketed fossil fuel lobby buys influence in Congress? What about a member who said the same about Big Pharma? And...
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