The Right’s Fight Against LGBTQ Rights Is More Than a Culture War
For the first time, the Equality Act, the federal legislation prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation, will get a hearing in the Senate, when the...
View ArticleThe Cousinhood That Still Rules Britain
It’s no secret that Britain has in recent years been something of a mess, yet the Conservative Party’s popularity continues unabated. Why don’t British voters blame Boris Johnson or his party for the...
View ArticleTucker Carlson Is Leading the Anti-Vax Right
In an email to staff last week, Fox News’s Lachlan Murdoch announced that the network won’t be reopening its offices until Labor Day. “The health and safety of our workforce has remained my priority,”...
View ArticleBreak up the Telecom Giants
Early in February, a strange and humbly formatted quarter-page ad appeared in The Wall Street Journal. It was an open letter to AT&T CEO John Stankey from one Aaron M. Epstein of North Hollywood,...
View ArticleHow The New York Times Blew the Cuomo Story
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is facing the densest thicket of scandals to ensnare any American politician since—well, the end of the Trump administration less than two months ago. Even so, the...
View ArticleThe Right-Wing War on State Courts
State courts! Of all the institutions of American government, they might receive the least attention relative to their impact on day-to-day life. State courts are where most criminal trials are held,...
View ArticleThe Biden-LBJ Comparisons Are Overblown
Pundits have gotten kind of goofy about Joe Biden recently. After the president signed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act on March 11, David Brooks called Biden a “transformational president,”...
View ArticleThe Republican Party Crack-Up
“The purpose of the Democratic Party,” the political consultant Robert Shrum once advised, “is to take care of ordinary Americans.” Fair enough, as far as his statement goes. But if that’s the purpose...
View ArticleStop Worrying About Conservatives Refusing to Be Vaccinated
It is probably good news that Donald Trump, speaking on Fox News on Tuesday, encouraged viewers to get a Covid-19 vaccine. “I would recommend it to a lot of people that don’t want to get it,” the...
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We’re Hurtling Toward Global Suicide
On January 13, one week before the inauguration of Joe Biden as the forty-sixth president of the United States and seven long days after the storming of the Capitol by an armed right-wing mob, it was...
View ArticleHalting the AstraZeneca Vaccine Over Blood Clots Could Do More Damage Than Good
The AstraZeneca vaccine rollout was already chaotic. But overly jumpy governmental decisions may have made it even worse. Countries like Denmark, Norway, France, Germany, and Italy all temporarily...
View ArticleRepublicans Know They’re Losing the Filibuster Fight
Glacially and fitfully, the filibuster debate is continuing to move in the right direction. In an interview that aired Tuesday night, President Joe Biden said for the very first time that he’d be open...
View ArticleRepublican Brats Are Complaining About Getting Billions in Covid Relief
One of the more puzzling developments in states’ rights conservatism has been the combination of don’t-tread-on-me militancy with a determination to keep sucking on the federal teat. This untidy jumble...
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The Shadow Over H.P. Lovecraft
Eight decades after the writer H.P. Lovecraft died of intestinal cancer, having published in his lifetime only one book, riddled with printing errors, his name appeared on billboards throughout the...
View ArticleConservatives Tried to Use the Pandemic to Crush Abortion Access. Abortion...
After declaring a state of emergency around this time last year, Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves announced his intent to halt all surgical abortions in the state. “We’re doing everything in our power,...
View ArticleWhat Is Substack?
Substack, the flourishing four-year-old newsletter company, has always touted itself as a savior. It was a way to make real money from writing without the hand-to-mouth hustle of freelancing. You could...
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Is Zack Snyder’s Justice League the Worst Superhero Movie Yet?
This week, HBO Max began streaming Zack Snyder’s Justice League, a remake of the 2017 movie Justice League. With an unfathomable running time of four hours and two minutes, the new movie is one of the...
View ArticleThe Obscure House Election That’s Put Democrats in a Bitter, No-Win Situation
After Election Day last year, it was Donald Trump’s doomed, illiberal crusade to overturn his loss to President Joe Biden that preoccupied the nation. Far less attention was paid to a dispute over the...
View ArticleThe Eternal Fantasy of a Racially Virtuous America
“The great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us … history is literally present in all that we do.”—James Baldwin, 1965In the weeks since the storming of the U.S. Capitol by a...
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Can OPEC Rescue the Planet?
“In less than 100 years,” Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the shah of Iran, told The New Republic in 1973, “this oil business will be finished.” Today, we face a different type of reckoning. Oil won’t run out...
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