A Whiff of Weimar
Thuringia lies at the geographic heart of Germany. It is where Bach was born, where Goethe wrote Faust, where Martin Luther was ordained as a monk. Germany’s first democratic constitution was adopted...
View ArticleThe War on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Goes to Court
For Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, Super Tuesday could mark a turning point in her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. It may also be a pivotal day for her greatest...
View Article60 Minutes Celebrates a War Criminal
Last weekend, for the first time ever, a long-term cease-fire deal in America’s longest-ever war went into effect. But on Sunday evening, viewers of 60 Minutes, America’s premier weekly news digest,...
View ArticleConservatives’ Coronavirus Denial Is Going to Get People Killed
Last week, at long last, the United States woke up to the threat of a global pandemic. The stock market tanked, as investors began to doubt the Trump administration’s ability to handle the coronavirus....
View ArticleDonald Trump’s Nominations Game Finally Backfired
A strange habit in President Donald Trump’s administration is the abundance of “acting” officials. Other presidents typically send major nominations to the Senate as quickly as possible so they can be...
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Life in China During the Coronavirus Lockdown
An estimated 10 million people live in Zhengzhou. But lately, the streets have been empty, resembling frames from a postapocalyptic movie.The city already felt different at the end of January, when the...
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Is the iPhone a Work of Art?
The Bauhaus, open for less than a decade and a half, was one of those rare influential failures. It was like the Velvet Underground, the band that inspired all of its fans to start bands of their own....
View ArticleChris Matthews Was Everything Wrong With Cable News
Chris Matthews’s abrupt resignation on Monday night shouldn’t have come as a surprise. He had spent the last two weeks doing the cable television equivalent of Sideshow Bob stepping on rakes—comparing...
View ArticleA Virus Is Not a Messaging Problem
Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention informed President Donald Trump that coronavirus was spreading within the United States between people who had no history of international...
View ArticleBon Appétit Test Kitchen Is a Green New Deal Fantasy
Between a seemingly endless election season, potential global pandemic, and looming climate catastrophe, these are stressful times. If you’ve wandered onto the internet seeking an easy hit of serotonin...
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The Radical Future of Self-Managed Abortion Is Already Here
Lizy and the woman who helped her to end her pregnancy met at a Starbucks in León, the largest city in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato. Then a 20-year-old social-work student with curly hair...
View ArticleFacing a Pandemic in the New Gilded Age
A small segment of the population, Bloomberg reported earlier this week, possesses a type of partial immunity to the coronavirus: They’re rich. With the news that the virus has spread to 60 countries...
View ArticleBloomberg Spent $233,333 an Hour to Lose the Presidency and Wage a Class War
After a predictably poor showing on Super Tuesday, Mike Bloomberg ended his presidential campaign Wednesday morning. It was a short and expensive endeavor, kind of like Bloomberg himself. (Thank you.)...
View ArticleJoe Biden Should Thank the Media for His Super Tuesday Win
Last month, his campaign stumbling, Joe Biden told a story about his deep, decades-long ties to social justice movements. “This day, 30 years ago, Nelson Mandela walked out of prison and entered into...
View ArticleThe Campaign at the End of the World
The relentless and obliterating inequality that warps every facet of American life is easy to see and increasingly difficult to ignore, but it can also be vexingly difficult to comprehend. The very...
View ArticleWhat If Biden Is Simply More Popular Than Sanders?
American radical John Reed called his exuberant account of the Russian Revolution Ten Days That Shook the World. A little more than a century later, American establishmentarian Joe Biden shook the...
View ArticleThe Media Decides
It feels safe at this point to call yesterday both an incredible Super Tuesday for Joe Biden’s campaign and one of the most remarkable days in the history of modern presidential politics. Biden, whose...
View ArticleIt Can Get So Much Worse
Back in the summer of 2016, an old ex-colleague and editor at Esquire reached out with an invitation for me to participate in covering what, then, was still a novel angle on the rise of Donald Trump:...
View ArticleThere Is Only One Way to Fix Our Broken Presidential Primary
Every four years, many Americans look at the presidential primary system and ask: Is this really the best way to choose a nominee? It’s hard to say yes. Iowa and New Hampshire unfairly monopolize the...
View ArticleHillary Clinton’s Neverending Story
In close-up, Hillary Clinton is enduring hair and makeup. She breathes deep through her nose, summoning reserves of patience, as two people go at her with brushes, lipstick, eyeliner. From behind the...
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