The 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...
View ArticleThe False Hope of “Bipartisan” Criminal Justice Reform
Alice Marie Johnson is free and starring in her first Super Bowl ad. Already, the campaign for her release had made international headlines: a black woman in her sixties, a casualty of America’s drug...
View ArticleAnd Now Back to Ignoring Indian Country
In the run-up to Super Bowl LIV, the issue of the Kansas City Chiefs’ appropriative fans and the San Francisco 49ers’ genocide-referencing team name was hashed out at least a dozen times over in the...
View ArticleAdam Schiff Summons the Damnation of History
Four years ago today, then-candidate Donald Trump lashed out at one of his foes on Twitter. His target at the time was Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who had just won the Iowa caucuses. The real estate mogul...
View ArticleEverything Is OK in Goop Lab
I have a friend who is a psychic. She has a handful of celebrity clients and performs at bachelorette parties. I had never tested her predictive abilities or asked for any kind of telepathic favors...
View ArticleIf Bloomberg Really Cared About Climate Change, He Wouldn’t Be Running
Climate-friendly billionaires are a bit of a paradox. Their multihome, private-jet lifestyles spew prodigious amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Even those who donate massively to...
View ArticleFiasco Tries to Make Iran-Contra a Teachable Moment
These are boom times for multitasking, boom times for alienation, and, thus, boom times for content. Audiences need entertainment (give me more to do with my phone!), and capital has made the safe bet:...
View ArticleAbolish the Iowa Caucus
Some things are worth preserving out of tradition. Every year, for example, my British mother makes a traditional Christmas pudding—a mélange of many different dried fruits and spices, treacle, and...
View ArticleThe Washington Post Has Gotten Off Easy for Too Long
For Jeff Bezos, ownership of The Washington Post has come with a number of unintended consequences. Since he purchased the paper in 2013, it has been dubbed the “Amazon Washington Post” by the...
View ArticleThe Iowa Caucus Was a Media Debacle, Too
On Monday night, not long after the Iowa Democratic Party announced it was conducting “quality control” on ballots from the Iowa caucus, cable news’s talking heads and Twitter’s energetic touts began...
View ArticleThe Iowa Caucuses Are Dead
Born in 1972, when anti-war crusader George McGovern put Iowa’s caucuses on the map by placing second and transforming himself into a major presidential contender. Died in 2020, when a technology...
View ArticleTrump Has Never Looked More Comfortable as a Demagogue
Roughly 24 hours ago, Democrats around the country were informed that the Iowa Democratic Party, after years of organization and effort from the Democratic candidates and their campaigns, would not be...
View ArticleThe Youth Climate Movement Comes to New Hampshire
On a January weekend in New Hampshire, one month away from the state’s presidential primary, it was 64 degrees and sunny. The average high for January is 34 degrees. Members of the New Hampshire Youth...
View ArticleThe Senate Has Convicted Itself
There was never much hope that Republican senators would vote in large enough numbers to remove President Donald Trump from office this week. So in his closing statement on Monday, California...
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