Elizabeth Warren vs. the Roberts Court
Elizabeth Warren unveiled her package of anti-corruption reforms last week at an auspicious moment. On the day the Massachusetts senator released the 289-page bill, two former members of President...
View ArticleRed-State Voters Take Medicaid Expansion Into Their Own Hands
Nebraska may be one of the most conservative states in the country, but in November, the state’s voters could advance a liberal cause. On Friday, Nebraska Secretary of State John Gale confirmed that...
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A Pioneer of Paranoia
When Joan Didion came out to the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 60s, she saw decline and decadence, a center no longer holding. In her essay “Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” she chronicled the moral...
View ArticleSilicon Valley and the Quest for a Utopian Workplace
The summer of 2018 was a trying one for Google, Tesla, and other members of a celebrated Silicon Valley cohort that was supposed to have re-written all the rules. These companies continue to amaze with...
View ArticleThe Tesla Paradox
Elon Musk’s dream is dead. Less than three weeks after tweeting that he was taking Tesla private, and that he had secured funding to do so, Musk published a statement announcing that the electric car...
View ArticleAndrew Cuomo’s Trumpian War on the NRA
The American Civil Liberties Union last week joined a closely watched court case, taking sides with a national advocacy organization against a powerful New Yorker who’s accused of enacting a...
View ArticleDoes Amazon Have More Power Than the Federal Reserve?
The Kansas City Federal Reserve, one of the dozen reserve banks in the U.S., gathered on Friday in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to discuss a signature puzzle of our times: How can the economy hum along, with...
View ArticlePapal Wrongdoing, or Palace Intrigue?
Sexual abuse by Catholic priests and its cover up by bishops was always going to dominate this past weekend’s trip by Pope Francis to Ireland. But the explosive culmination of the trip with calls for...
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A Trans Memoir Explores Masculinity In Extremis
The beginning of Thomas Page McBee’s new memoir finds him locked in battle with another man. “I loved him even as I danced around him with my hands in the air,” he writes. Although this is the opening...
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Humans Have Created a New Natural Disaster
“Beach, eat, drink, dance, repeat.” These are Rihanna’s favorite things to do in Barbados. In a June 7 interview with Conde Nast Traveller, the pop star gushed over her home country, a small island...
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Money for Nothing
Some years ago, I had a colleague who would frequently complain that he didn’t have enough to do. He’d mention how much free time he had to our team, ask for more tasks from our boss, and bring it up...
View ArticleThe Culture War Is On
At a White House dinner with roughly 100 evangelical leaders on Monday, President Donald Trump warned of trouble to come if the Democrats win control of Congress in the November midterms. “You’re one...
View ArticleCriminal Justice Reform Is on the Midterm Ballot
Andrew Gillum wasn’t expected to win Tuesday night’s Democratic primary for the Florida governor’s race, even after he won Senator Bernie Sanders’s endorsement weeks ago. The 39-year-old Tallahassee...
View ArticleWho Wants to Buy Barnes & Noble?
Can things get worse for Barnes & Noble? In 2018, it comes across as a silly question. Decades removed from its heyday as the brutalizer of small bookshops—the inspiration for Tom Hanks’s...
View ArticleCrime + Punishment Examines the Scourge of Police Quotas
In the opening scene of Crime + Punishment, a new documentary on Hulu, we hear a recorded telephone conversation between Officer Sandy Gonzalez, who has been with the New York Police Department for 12...
View ArticleIs California Becoming Unlivable?
Of all the advice my mother’s given me, she’s repeated three things most often: Don’t walk alone at night. Avoid processed food. And don’t ever move to California.“California’s going to fall off the...
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The Communities Losing Ground to Climate Change
Futuristic novels brim with images of coastal cities drowning in rising seas: New York City in Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140, Melbourne in George Turner’s The Drowned Towers, London in Megan...
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The Irreverent Joys of a Japanese Sherlock Holmes
A man in Tokyo has exploded. But why? He died mid-conversation with his mentee Wato Tachibana, a sweet-faced young surgeon. The violence seems to be without cause; the explosion has no clear mechanism....
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The Russia Investigation After Jeff Sessions
It’s virtually certain that President Donald Trump will fire Attorney General Jeff Sessions by the end of the year. In an interview with Bloomberg News on Thursday, the president said he wouldn’t...
View ArticleWhat Would You Ask Brett Kavanaugh?
Brett Kavanaugh’s big week on Capitol Hill is finally here. President Donald Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court will appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday and Wednesday for his...
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