Just Rewrite the Senate Rules Already
As part of their ongoing effort to delay passage of the Democratic Covid-19 relief bill, Republicans are forcing Senate clerks to read the entire text aloud on the Senate floor. The bill is around 600...
View ArticleHow Real Is Nomadland?
The director Chloé Zhao’s films have been described as poetic. That could mean that her work seems always to be seeking the sublime: in the wide, luminous stretches of South Dakota’s Badlands, where...
View ArticleThe NatSec Bros Who Want to Save Congress From QAnon
Marcus Flowers may be the most mysterious person in American politics. On January 18, which was also his last day working for the Defense Department in a position he refuses to disclose, the career...
View ArticleThe Manifest Destiny Marauders Who Gave the “Filibuster” Its Name
In the summer of 1855, William Walker, a ruthless, ambitious, famously short Tennessean, invaded Nicaragua with a private militia, declared himself president, and reintroduced slavery. For his brief...
View ArticleMy Pandemic Year Behind the Checkout Counter
A few weeks ago at work, a man came in the door, crouched down, and shit on the floor. Colleagues who witnessed it happening were shocked but not surprised. This kind of thing—incidents having to do...
View ArticleJoe Manchin Wants to Pass a Popular Gun Control Bill That Will Save Lives,...
It’s difficult to remember now, but one of the last major items on the table for Congress before the novel coronavirus swept the globe last year was a gun control bill. Early in 2019, House Democrats...
View ArticleCall the Fossil Fuel Industry’s Net-Zero Bluff
This week marked a kind of coming out party for the Biden-era fossil fuel industry. At CERAWeek, the industry’s annual energy conference, its top brass talked about how eagerly they’re participating in...
View ArticleDoes Biden Want Less War or Just War With More Rules?
A clandestine airstrike here, a little diplomacy there, a wink and a nudge to America’s favorite Saudi failson dictator, and some paeans to democratic accountability at home—President Joe Biden’s...
View ArticleDavid Brooks and the Endless Grift of the Conservative Commentariat
How do you get rich? Writing last month in the preferred mode of his late career—the hastily written commencement address—David Brooks let his readers in on one weird trick that will help them enter...
View ArticleThe Gen X Culture Warriors Who Never Grew Up
Other than the joys and sorrows of leaving New York City (or staying there), no recent topic has launched more exasperating essays than “cancel culture.” When Glenn Greenwald departed The Intercept...
View ArticleInside a Long, Messy Year of Reopening Schools
Last month in Chicago, after months of heated negotiations, the teachers union and Chicago Public Schools emerged with one of the most detailed school reopening agreements in the nation. Brad Marianno,...
View ArticleThe Outlaw Chemists Who Deserve a Cut of the Psychedelic Gold Rush
On November 6, 2000, Kansas Highway Patrolmen pulled over a rented Buick LeSabre on what seemed like a routine traffic stop. That was until the driver, 58-year-old William Leonard Pickard, bolted from...
View ArticleThe John Birch Society Never Left
The Republican Party is facing what many observers are describing as a William F. Buckley moment—a make-or-break opportunity to purge the racists and conspiracy theorists who are rapidly gaining...
View ArticleThe Great Blind Spot in Hurricane Preparedness
Hurricane season is creeping its way deeper into spring. Last month, The Washington Post reported that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is considering officially moving up the start...
View ArticleThe Sad Implosion of Google’s Ethical A.I.
In December, Alphabet, Google’s parent company, fired Timnit Gebru, a celebrated artificial intelligence researcher and one of the most accomplished members of her field. Gebru, one of the few Black...
View ArticleAre We Ready for the Return of Mass Tourism?
It took a global pandemic for many of us to realize that we live in what Italian journalist and social theorist Marco D’Eramo calls the “Age of Tourism.” As he writes in his new book, The World in a...
View ArticleA Trial Can’t Bring Justice for George Floyd
On Sunday, the day before the opening of the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, charged with murdering George Floyd, protesters gathered around the county court building, in...
View ArticleHow Big Money Is Dividing American Catholicism
“This is what they have done,” Robert Busch writes with weary outrage as he forwards me a photograph of a group of nuns, one of them wearing a “Stop the Steal” button, cheerfully joining President...
View ArticleWhy Do Americans Have So Few Rights?
In 1991, Harvard Law professor Mary Ann Glendon came out with Rights Talk, a warning that Americans had embraced a divisive understanding of rights that would lead the country into greater and greater...
View ArticleEnduring Lessons for Humanity After a Year of Birding, Hiking, Gardening, and...
July 12, 2020, is the day Flynn Murray became a birder. That’s when the 31-year-old Brooklynite left her dog at home, grabbed her binoculars, and made it her sole mission to immerse herself in the...
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