Can the White House Press Briefing Be Saved?
Just how low has the bar been set for the Biden administration? Look no further than the reaction to new press secretary Jen Psaki’s first day on the job. Psaki has held two briefings in her first 36...
View ArticleKill Coal to Save Lives
On Tuesday, the D.C. Court of Appeals ruled that the Affordable Clean Energy, or ACE, rule—the Trump administration’s attempt to relax (or rather, erase) standards for carbon dioxide emissions from...
View ArticleDon’t Fire People for Dumb Tweets
On Wednesday, Will Wilkinson, a New York Times contributor and vice president at the center-right think tank the Niskanen Center made a joke on Twitter. “If Biden really wanted unity,” he tweeted,...
View ArticleMitch McConnell Is Killing the Filibuster
A good rule of thumb over the past five years is that if something strange can happen, then it probably will happen. One of those strange things happened earlier this month when the Democrats won two...
View ArticleDemocrats Can Preach “Unity” and Still Kill the Filibuster
“His position has not changed,” White House press secretary Jenn Psaki said Friday when asked whether the president thought the Senate should stop requiring supermajorities to pass most legislation—a...
View ArticleThe Very Serious Appeal of Call My Agent
In the days immediately following the publication of the not-exactly-positive review of Netflix’s Emily in Paris I wrote for this very website last October, friends and strangers alike had one burning...
View ArticleAgainst the Consensus Approach to History
In the mid-1940s, Edmund S. Morgan, a mild-mannered young historian, was teaching at Brown and making a name in the quiet field of early American studies. Having published a slim, well-received...
View ArticleRight to Work on a Hot Planet
By 1961, Charles Koch had stacked up three engineering degrees and was back home in Wichita, Kansas, to join the family business of oil refining, pipelines, and manufacturing. His father, Fred, was at...
View ArticleBan Trump and Break Up Facebook
Donald Trump wants back on Facebook, and he’s willing to go to court over it. Except in this case, it’s a strange kind of judicial authority: the Facebook Oversight Board, a Facebook-funded body that...
View ArticleHow Do You Deradicalize a Cop?
Even before the violence at the Capitol on January 6, when supporters of Donald Trump drawn from the ranks of MAGA rallygoers, anti-government militias, and QAnon stormed the building and breached the...
View ArticleWhat Happened to the Intern Revolution?
“Do you think we’ll ever use unpaid interns?” a friend once asked while we were being used as unpaid interns. It was 2011, in the thick of the long slog of the Great Recession, and we were both working...
View ArticleThe Fossil Fuel Industry Thinks It Will Have a Good Year Under Biden
The oil industry spent much of Joe Biden’s first week in office publicly squawking in protest. The American Petroleum Institute called his decision to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline a “significant...
View ArticleThe True Cost of Energy Monopolies
For the vast majority of North Carolina’s 10 million–plus residents, there is only one option if they’d like to heat their home, turn on the lights, or charge their phone: Duke Energy. The largest...
View ArticleWhy Josh Hawley is Playing the Victim
Two and a half weeks ago, something terrible happened to Senator Josh Hawley. Something not only fundamentally opposed to American values but downright unconstitutional, as well. Something that should...
View ArticleHow Biden Can Achieve a Russian Restoration
Volcanic protests erupted across Russia in the first weekend of Joe Biden’s presidency, adding the challenge of Putinism under duress to the more familiar challenge of dealing with Vladimir Putin’s...
View ArticleLeon Black and the American Tradition of Impunity
After a year of mounting pressure from investors and outside critics, Leon Black, the billionaire chief executive of private equity giant Apollo Global Management, announced on Monday that he would...
View ArticleThe Senate Is Failing
For one ever-so-fleeting moment after the Capitol Hill riot earlier this month, it looked as if the GOP might take decisive action against Donald Trump. Ten House Republicans voted to impeach him for...
View ArticleRepublicans Don’t Care About “Unity”
“Unity” is an elusive word in American politics. More often than not, it suggests something utopian and silly—the promise of an end to partisanship, an epiphanic recognition of a common interest after...
View ArticleThe Age of the Disappearing Boss
One of my first bosses, the publisher of a digital media startup, sat just a few rows of desks away from me. She blended in fairly easily. The only thing that made her stick out was that her leather...
View ArticleFine, Keep the Filibuster. Kill the 60-Vote Requirement Instead.
The standoff for control over the U.S. Senate ended Monday with GOP leader Mitch McConnell declaring victory, even though he failed to secure his main demand: an official commitment, by Senate...
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