Are the Democrats Too Boring?
Kamala Harris wants to increase teacher pay by $13,500. Cory Booker is proposing “baby bonds” to close the racial wealth gap. Amy Klobuchar has a $1 trillion infrastructure plan. Kirsten Gillibrand...
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The Dean
Architecture is a notoriously egotistical profession. One person, usually an older man, often takes credit for a lengthy and multifaceted process of planning and construction. It does not help that...
View ArticleThe Supreme Court’s Twisted Devotion to the Death Penalty
Supreme Court justices like to project an image of collegiality and sobriety to the American public. But that comity often breaks down when the court debates the death penalty. The latest example is...
View ArticleThe Media’s Dumb Avocado Hysteria
America would run out of avocados in three weeks if President Donald Trump were to make good on his recent threat to close the border with Mexico. If you hadn’t heard that by now, congratulations. You...
View ArticleThe Enduring Power of Neoconservatism
What is, or was, “neoconservatism?” Recently, military historian and columnist Max Boot, who previously self-identified as neoconservative, argued in The Washington Post that Americans need to “retire”...
View ArticleThe Border Wall Is Trump’s White Whale
In Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, Captain Ahab lusts for vengeance against the titular white whale for biting off his leg in an earlier voyage. His hatred overwhelms his senses so completely that he...
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Valeria Luiselli’s Impossible Novel
“Perhaps the only way to grant any justice” to the refugees who have died in the Sonoran and Chihuahuan Deserts, or anywhere on their journey toward a dignified life, Valeria Luiselli wrote in her 2017...
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MSNBC’s Wild Ride
On January 31, Rachel Maddow, the eponymous host of The Rachel Maddow Show, returned from a commercial break. In the previous segment, she had interviewed Betsy Woodruff, a Daily Beast reporter, who...
View ArticleWhen the Cool Uncle Becomes the Creepy Uncle
Not that long ago, “Uncle Joe Biden” was a term of endearment rather than an epithet. “Since 2008, Biden’s reputation as a wise elder has evaporated into the reputation of a cool uncle,” Philip Bump,...
View ArticleBernie Sanders Is the Frontrunner. Obviously.
The race for the Democratic nomination began in earnest over the past couple of weeks, or at least it feels that way. After flirting with a run for months, Beto O’Rourke finally made his move by...
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Why Thousands of Colombians Are Blocking the Pan-American Highway
The air is almost opaque from tear gas, lingering like heavy, burning perfume. Every few minutes, a warning shout echoes from up the highway—“Corre!” (“Run!”)—sending a cascade of people fleeing from...
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Never Sorry
In England, listeners Start the Week with the BBC radio program of that name, a superior chat show about new books and whatnot. On Monday, June 9, 1997, one of the guests was Eric Hobsbawm, who was by...
View ArticleIs Mexico on the Brink of a Labor Revolution?
On a Wednesday afternoon in late March, dozens of striking metalworkers gathered outside the gates of a steel factory three miles south of the Texas border. “Get out corrupt unions!” a banner read. The...
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It’s Not Just Pork: Trump Is Also Letting Nuclear Plants Regulate Their Own...
Nobody wants to deal with salmonella poisoning. Not you, not me, and certainly not the pork industry. Companies know that if their meat is contaminated with the disease-causing bacteria, they might...
View ArticleJerry Nadler Was Born to Battle Trump
Jerry Nadler and Donald Trump have a history. As Michael Daly has recounted in The Daily Beast, Trump approached Nadler in the 1980s, when Nadler was still a state assemblyman, and asked to build a...
View ArticleBernie Sanders Isn’t Scared of Fox News. Why Is the Democratic Party?
Howard Schultz has it all figured out. The real problem with Democrats is that they don’t reach out to the other side. (This, incidentally, is also the real problem with Republicans.) So Schultz is...
View ArticleThe Everyday Brutality of America’s Prisons
Earlier this week, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division released a summary of its findings on the state of Alabama’s prisons. The accounts are stomach-churning: The New York Times noted that...
View ArticleThe Green New Deal Fan on Fox News Wasn’t a Random Diner. He’s a Climate...
It is well known that President Donald Trump likes to watch Fox & Friends every morning. So it is likely that the commander-in-chief was watching Thursday when a young man at a diner in Riverside,...
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Top Billing
On a spring evening in 1955, Gwen Verdon and Bob Fosse met for the first time. She was the bigger star of the two, but technically he held much of the power. She was a famous Broadway dancer and...
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Blood Money
There’s a museum in East Jakarta that enshrines a toxic historical fantasy. Of course, all nations whitewash their bloody histories in the course of creating a heroic narrative about their stirring...
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