Deal With It
If you only casually follow politics, you probably don’t know much about Senator Patty Murray. She's rarely on TV or in the headlines. She’s not inclined to tear into her Republican colleagues or give...
View ArticleRepublicans Say Baltimore Proves Social Welfare Doesn't Work. How Will...
The civil unrest in Baltimore, Maryland served as a tragic but fitting backdrop for Hillary Clinton’s latest speech, which outlined ideas that states and the federal government could use to reduce...
View ArticlePope Francis's Speech to Congress Will Backfire on Republicans
When House Speaker John Boehner invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address Congress earl
View ArticleNo Republican Is Fit, Able, and Willing to Run the House of Representatives
If House Speaker John Boehner secretly had no intention to resign, and was instead using the threat of retirement to teach Republican House members that they need him—not the other way around—he's...
View ArticleThe Republican Party's Dysfunction Is an Embarrassment to Us All
The movement within the House Republican conference to make Paul Ryan the next speaker has evolved into a desperate clamor, with members from almost every faction practically begging him to enter the r
View ArticleIf Paul Ryan Thinks His Demands Will Control Right-Wingers, He's Fooling Himself
Paul Ryan won't agree to be the next speaker of the House of Representatives unless the reactionary conservatives who comprise the House Freedom Caucus agree to meet his terms, most of which are
View ArticlePaul Ryan Won't Sacrifice Family Time for Work, But Doesn't Care If Other...
Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan declared late last month that he would not run for House speaker because, among other reasons, he didn't want to sacrifice time with his famil
View ArticleHow Democrats Lost the Budget War
There are two conclusions to draw from the fact that Republican and Democratic leaders have reached an agreement with the White House to budget for the government, and to e
View ArticlePaul Ryan's a Good Guy. So What?
Paul Ryan is now the speaker of the House, putting an end to internecine Republican
View ArticleWhat Paul Ryan Could Learn From Pope Francis About Family Leave
Advocates of better parental leave policies have a new ally as of last week: Pope Francis.
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The British Museum’s ‘Looting’ Problem
This weekend, headlines across the internet announced that the British Museum was to “return looted antiquities to Iraq.” Eight tiny artifacts, some of them 5,000 years old, were handed to Iraqi...
View ArticleViral Ads Don’t Guarantee Victory
On Twitter, where his handle is @IronStache, Randy Bryce seems like he’s already the Democratic nominee for Wisconsin’s 1st congressional district—retiring House Speaker Paul Ryan’s seat. He isn’t....
View ArticleA New Golden Age for Trophy Hunters
President Donald Trump’s proposal last month to weaken the Endangered Species Act has sparked a familiar debate. Environmentalists say he’s shilling for the fossil fuel and logging industries, which...
View ArticleWhat France Means When It Talks About ‘Anti-Semitism’
“They spit when I walked in the street,” Joanna Galilli, 28, a French Jew, told the New York Times late last month. She, like many Jews in recent years, had left a suburb of Paris to move to the 17th...
View ArticleWhat Democrats Should Really Ask Brett Kavanaugh
Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominees are often described as “battles,” but they usually turn out to be dramatic theater rather than a theater of war. Nominees are more than happy to...
View ArticleTV’s True Crime Voyeurism Reaches Its Crude End
American culture is in love with murder. It has always been this way: People like watching killers cavort in the movies, and trashy true-crime documentaries pull in the numbers. There’s a whole network...
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When a Young Trump Went to Russia
On a frigid December day in 2017, Oleg Kalugin opens the door of his house in Rockville, Maryland, an upper-middle-class suburb of Washington, D.C., to meet me. Nothing in particular distinguishes his...
View ArticleHow to Cure Corporate America’s Selfishness
Corporations have always been “creatures of the State,” as Teddy Roosevelt once called them. But they have become a kind of Frankenstein’s monster, unmoored from their creators to wreak havoc on the...
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Moments Like This
There’s something about a first national election of the Trump presidency that focuses the mind. For now, at least, anxious rhetoric about contemporary America’s proximity to Weimar Germany and...
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