The Dangerous Inversions of the Debate Around Trans “Censorship”
In May, Betsy DeVos’s education department advised public schools in Connecticut that if they did not comply with the federal government’s dictates on gender expression and rescind a trans-affirming...
View ArticleFox News Prepares to Wage a Culture War on Joe Biden
On November 6, as Joe Biden widened his lead in Pennsylvania and inched toward the presidency, Fox News host Laura Ingraham urged the president to accept the results with “grace and composure.” To...
View ArticleThe Desperate Year of the Digital Media Titans
Six years ago, The New York Times surveyed the media landscape and found that the paper of record was lagging behind. Digital upstarts like BuzzFeed, HuffPost, and Vox Media were not only setting the...
View ArticleThe Trump Doctrine Is Whatever Mike Pompeo Wants It to Be
Donald Trump has been largely absent from his public duties, and his White House is stymying any attempts at a formal transition process as Trump’s legal team and various local allies try to steal the...
View ArticleThe Obama Reunion Isn’t Nearly Enough to Stave Off Catastrophe
Joe Biden’s picks for top national security appointments, reported by multiple outlets Sunday and Monday, are about what you’d expect: Longtime allies to the president-elect are getting another crack...
View ArticleHere Come the Adults
Twelve years ago this week, Barack Obama’s pick of Hillary Clinton for secretary of state had everyone in Washington reading (or claiming to read) Team of Rivals, Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book on Abraham...
View ArticleHow WeWork Got Away With Spectacular Failure
Over the summer, with the pandemic death toll well on its way to 200,000 and the economy in ruins, WeWork founder Adam Neumann—cut loose from the company the year before with a gargantuan golden...
View ArticleThe Damage Is the Point
President Donald Trump’s efforts to block or overturn the election results have failed at every turn. His lawsuits are being dismissed by incredulous judges; his personal campaign to short-circuit the...
View ArticleHow to Pitch Sold Short
What is Sold Short?Sold Short is a vertical about inequality. The stories we publish focus on labor, gender, racial justice, feminism, the family and kinship beyond it, Indian Country and tribal...
View ArticleMike Pompeo Is a Global Arsonist. Can Biden Put Out His Fires?
What is Secretary of State Mike Pompeo doing, and how bad will it get? America’s top diplomat recently concluded a 10-day, seven-country overseas trip that seemed designed to cause as much damage as...
View ArticleHow Newsmax Became Trump TV
Last week, Tucker Carlson did something remarkable: He acknowledged, albeit with no small number of caveats, that the Trump campaign had provided zero evidence to support its most recent round of...
View ArticleThe Government’s Human Cruelty Will Outlive Trump
“Our long nightmare will soon be over” is a phrase that one wouldn’t have been shocked to hear issued from the lips of liberal pundits or Joe Biden supporters as it slowly became apparent, in the days...
View ArticleIs America Trapped in a Caste System?
Three-quarters of the way into Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, Isabel Wilkerson describes the humiliation suffered by Black passengers on a steamship in the American South before the Civil War....
View ArticlePharma Executives Are Profiting From Covid Vaccine Press Releases
Who would have thought, a year ago, that at Thanksgiving 2020 the nation would be waiting with bated breath for pharmaceutical press releases? But as companies have released increasingly positive news...
View ArticleA Vacation Enclave in the Hamptons, Two 61-Foot Billboards, and an Endless...
Past a certain point east, Sunrise Highway is a quiet drive in November. Strip malls, a hollowed-out Chuck E. Cheese, and a dwindling number of other cars making the commute back to the farthest...
View ArticleAmerica Is Run by Geezers
Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election by a margin that, though wider than originally feared, was narrower than feels comfortable in a country on whose stability the world depends. One reason...
View ArticleThe Democrats’ Maddening Cowardice Is Carrying Over into the Biden Era
The debate over how to characterize what the country’s been put through over the past three weeks will carry on for the rest of our lives. And Donald Trump’s waddle through the stages of grief is sure...
View ArticleGod Save America From “Checks and Balances”
It is an underrated source of dysfunction in our politics that too many people believe our system of government makes any sense at all. Even when we export democracy abroad (as in Japan after World War...
View ArticlePretty Soon There’ll Be Just One Big Book Publisher Left
America’s biggest, most powerful book publisher is about to get even bigger and more powerful. On Wednesday, a number of outlets reported that Penguin Random House had reached an agreement with...
View ArticleDo You Know Your Microsoft Productivity Score?
The workplace panopticon is coming home. The societal shift to work from home and Zoom-led education has been a boon for makers of digital surveillance software. Numerous apps now sell themselves as...
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