A Better Way to Stop Coronaviruses
It’s not known yet how, exactly, the current coronavirus outbreak got started. The viral pneumonia, called 2019-nCoV for now, belongs to the virus family that also gave birth to SARS and MERS. As with...
View ArticleHow Medicare for All Could Help Fight Pandemics
Consider the life of someone with the misfortune of contracting coronavirus in the United States. Let’s call her Mary, and let’s say she works at an airport as a baggage agent, helping travelers locate...
View ArticleThe Impeachment Trial Isn’t a Legal Process. It’s a Proxy War.
The impeachment trial of President Trump has been short on drama. The rules that govern the proceedings effectively preclude it—senators observing the trial sit testily, but quietly, through...
View ArticleAlan Dershowitz to Senators: L’état, C’est Trump
For the Senate’s first day of questioning on Wednesday, President Donald Trump’s legal team tapped Patrick Philbin to answer most of the questions. Philbin, a deputy White House counsel, largely gave...
View ArticleThe New Majority Behind Sex Work Decriminalization
When people have a real chance to say what kind of world they want, they tend to tell similar stories: safety for themselves and their families, dignified work, health care. Viewed this way, there is...
View ArticleThe Lies We Tell About Soldiers’ Traumatic Brain Injuries
The weekend before last, I went ice-fishing on “The Big Water,” Lake Superior, with my dog, and as I was dragging my sled back to the truck, I could feel my body starting to fail. Off the ice, mowing...
View ArticleTrump’s War Whisperer
In the immediate aftermath of the January drone strike that killed Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani, the person who explained President Donald Trump’s military strategy to the public was not...
View ArticleThe Panic of the Never Trumpers
All eyes will be on Iowa this Monday as voters cluster in school gymnasiums and churches around the state to kick off the months-long process of selecting a Democratic nominee for president. According...
View ArticleDemocratic Hawks Declare War on Bernie Sanders
The first openly anti–Bernie Sanders attack ad of the Democratic primary campaign is now airing across Iowa, thanks to a $680,000 ad buy from the PAC arm of Democratic Majority for Israel, a group...
View ArticleNorth Carolina Teachers Are Flirting With a Strike
Growing up in North Carolina, I didn’t know anyone in a union. And it wasn’t until a few years ago, as I became involved in my own union as a journalist, that I learned my home state bans public-sector...
View ArticleThe Assistant Looks at the Woman Behind a Bad Man
“Dream job” is a funny term because should we not dream of more? I love my job, but it speaks to our convoluted relationship to work that we’d describe it in terms so spiritual. Anyway, it’s worth...
View ArticleWarren Buffett Was a Terrible Newspaper Owner
When he purchased 63 local newspapers eight years ago, Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett knew this was not going to be one of his legendary investments. “The newspaper business,” he said, “is a...
View ArticleWhat the Green New Deal Could Mean for Iowa
Since the idea of a wide-reaching plan to stimulate the economy, combat inequality, and curb climate change entered the national spotlight in 2018, Fox News and the Republican Party have suggested it...
View ArticleThe Senate Embraces Nihilism
A question came up during the Senate’s impeachment trial of President Donald Trump this week: What matters? To Alan Dershowitz, the answer was power. The Harvard University law professor emeritus...
View ArticleA Legacy of Incoherence
On Friday night, the Los Angeles Lakers offered their tribute to Kobe Bryant, the man whose career first took shape on their courts: Every seat in the Staples Center had his jersey on it. There were...
View ArticleAmy Klobuchar Is in for the Long Haul
Amy Klobuchar began her Iowa campaign nearly a year ago in Mason City, just south of the Minnesota border. And on Sunday afternoon, the Minnesota senator returned to Mason City with a sense of fitting...
View ArticleThe Trump Official Who Could Obliterate Public Lands
It’s a natural fit for an administration as chaotic and corrupt as President Donald Trump’s that William Perry Pendley, who loathes America’s public lands, was picked last September, and reappointed in...
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The Uneasy Promise of Life in Silicon Valley
A couple of decades ago, it was easy to recognize a “selling out” narrative: An artist or group labors in obscurity doing good work until a corporation spots them and offers money and fame in exchange...
View ArticleOligarch of the Month: Elon Musk
Casting himself as a cross between Willy Wonka and a run-of-the-mill Bond villain, Elon Musk has spent his adult life trying to convince the least cool people in the world that he is the coolest person...
View ArticleTo End Forever War, Keep the Dollar Globally Dominant
In early 2016, Obama Treasury Secretary Jack Lew cautioned that the dollar’s dominance as a global currency rested, in part, on the U.S. government’s reluctance to fully weaponize it. If foreign...
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