The Instant Nostalgia of the Televised Campaign
“What are we hearing, my friend?” asks Fox News host Neil Cavuto. He is speaking from a bright Fox studio. On the other side of the split screen is Peter Doocy, a Fox reporter, live from Rehoboth...
View ArticleThe Two Joe Bidens
Campaign leaks about Joe Biden’s intentions as president so far seem to follow two completely incompatible paths. On one track, Biden has been reinvigorated by the scale of the coronavirus pandemic and...
View ArticleHealth Care in America Is Exactly Like a “New Dress Shirt”
At the start of the pandemic, Bev Veals, a three-time cancer survivor and Carolina Beach resident, found herself in a very American predicament: Her husband had been furloughed, which put his...
View ArticleTrump Is Waging a One-Sided Judicial War Against Democrats
The Supreme Court’s most recent term ended without any unexpected retirements leaving a seat to be filled, but that hasn’t prevented President Donald Trump from sending some election-year signals about...
View ArticleThe Emptiness of Matthew Yglesias’s Biggest Idea
What is a book? A novel, a biography, a popular science story—I think I know what these are, even at the far edges of formal experimentation, where categories are tricky. But what does it mean when a...
View ArticleAcademia Was Built on White Theft
Last week, a white professor at George Washington University outed herself in a years-long charade in which she told people she was Black and built an academic career around this lie. Jessica Krug, who...
View ArticleDangers of the Lame Duck
Why is the period between Election Day and inauguration so long in the United States? What kind of trouble have past outgoing presidents made during the interregnum? And in the event Joe Biden wins,...
View ArticleWhy Doesn’t Michael Cohen Get to Be an Anti-Trump Crusader?
Michael Cohen knows you don’t trust him. In his tell-all memoir, Disloyal, he frequently acknowledges that he is “the least reliable narrator on the planet.” Having spent more than a decade lying,...
View ArticleSusanna Clarke’s Piranesi Is a Hall of Wonders
Susanna Clarke is the author of two literary legends. The first is fictional. In Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, her 2004 debut novel, Clarke created an alternative England where magicians conjure...
View ArticleDrilling for Oil While California Burns
Democrats now control every branch of government in California, which is home to what are arguably the most ambitious climate policies in the country. California is currently burning. Some 900...
View ArticleBen Sasse’s Plan to Save the Senate Will Bury It Instead
No one can blame Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse for his disillusionment with the Senate. Under Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the chamber is little more a well-oiled machine for stacking the federal...
View ArticleBob Woodward’s Critics Are Missing the Point
For Donald Trump, every story about him is a media story. Good stories come from good reporters with good sources working for good organizations—though every once in a blue moon, a good story comes...
View ArticleThere Is No Such Thing as a Conservative Workers’ Movement
The “statement on a conservative future for the American labor movement,” released just before Labor Day by the fledgling think tank American Compass, opens, naturally, with a celebration of “economic...
View ArticleThe Problem With Redemption for Wagner
At the beginning of Siegfried, the third opera in Richard Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung cycle, the dwarf Mime is trying to repair a magic sword that was broken to pieces in the previous installment....
View ArticleThe New York Times Discovers a Manhattan Makeover for Nu-Tenant Farming
It all starts out harmless enough: A Manhattan couple, after years spent frequenting the city’s farmers markets, became increasingly focused on eating local and understanding where their food came...
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Black Cinema Matters
In the fall of 1960, Melvin Van Peebles stood on the Champs-Élysées with wet cheeks and three reels of film under his arm. His life was in shambles. Hours before, the aspiring film director had been...
View ArticleWhat Is Covid-19 Doing to Our Hearts?
Brady Feeney hadn’t even taken any classes at Indiana University when he fell ill with Covid-19. Three weeks after he moved to Bloomington, the incoming freshman was in the emergency room, struggling...
View ArticleWhat If Democrats Just Promised to Make Things Work Again?
Writing for The New Republic, Clio Chang recently described her three-month attempt to receive unemployment benefits in New York after being laid off from her job at Vice. As a journalist who had been...
View ArticleAmerica’s Callous Indifference to Death
If one thing is clear about American history and politics, it is this: The United States has never honored the idea that everyone is created equal. It has never valued every human life the same, and...
View ArticleTrump’s OSHA Is Fining Companies Pennies for Pandemic Violations
If it feels to you as though the Covid-19 emergency is never going to end, that may be because September 13 will mark its six-month anniversary. Six months is a very long time for a public health...
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