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Pining for the Moon
The moon belongs as much to art as to science. In the eighth century, the Venerable Bede described an eclipse correctly in flourishing prose, and vibrant illustrations of the satellite’s phases abound...
View ArticleIt’s Plainly Obvious That Donald Trump Has No Iran Policy
What, precisely, does Donald Trump want to do with Iran? It’s increasingly clear that even he doesn’t know the answer to that question.Last month, the president seemed close to taking military action...
View ArticleAlexander Acosta’s Trumpian Non-Apology
It was already clear before this week that Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta, as a federal prosecutor a decade ago, had mishandled the Jeffrey Epstein case: He gave the well-connected hedge-fund...
View ArticleNancy Pelosi Has Power—She Just Doesn’t Want to Use It
On Wednesday, Nancy Pelosi reminded her caucus who the real enemy is, telling them that they needed to present a united front in the fight against Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump. “Without that unity,...
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The Secrets in Greenland’s Ice
There are two major kinds of Arctic narratives. There are those of heroic and doomed adventurers, and there are the environmental stories. In one class are books like Hampton Sides’s In the Kingdom of...
View ArticleHow to Save Journalism
When we look back on the horrible summer of 2019, we might find that what seemed to be a minor event at the time turned out to be a watershed. On June 6, more than 300 workers at Vox Media staged a...
View ArticleNew York’s Invisible Climate Migrants
When Harold Jones first bought his home in Canarsie in 1991, he was struck most by the tall trees lining the street. Today, he’s more struck by the “For Sale” signs standing in their place.The trees...
View ArticleWhy We’re Challenging the 2020 Democrats to a Climate Summit
It’s been said before, but it bears repeating: The first round of Democratic presidential debates failed the planet. In a combined 240 minutes of discussion—at an event held in a city poised to sink...
View ArticleTrump Assembles His Gang of Social-Media Deplorables
Donald Trump’s war against the media reached perhaps its weirdest point on Thursday afternoon when the president hosted a “social media summit” that excluded Facebook and Twitter, but included a number...
View ArticleMy Mayor Pete Problem
One of the worst things I ever did happened in 1992. I was leaving the bar called The Bar (RIP) on Second Avenue and 4th Street to go to a party called Tattooed Love Child at another bar, Fez, located...
View ArticleTrump’s Day of Terror
Trump, ever the reality-TV showman, governs through spectacle. What could be more spectacular than a massive nationwide raid against undocumented immigrants? Set aside the morality or ethics for a...
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Most Veterans Say America’s Wars Are a Waste. No One’s Listening to Them.
In spite of his confused account of U.S. history, his partisan snipes, and his dictatorial posturing, Donald Trump’s parading and speechifying in Washington on July 4 attempted to glom onto one of the...
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Playing Soldiers
The World’s Only Corn Palace was crowded on this post–Independence Day weekend when I visited to see it thank me for my service. An estimated half-million tourists a year trek to Mitchell, South...
View ArticleTrump and His Deplorables
Hillary Clinton had a point. In September 2016, the Democratic presidential candidate criticized some of her rival’s supporters for backing him. “You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could...
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Lila Savage’s Say Say Say Is a Breakthrough in Women’s Fiction
Kirkus Reviews recently called Lila Savage’s debut novel Say Say Say, about a care worker who tends to a middle-aged woman with a serious brain injury, “tedious,” condemning her as “an author who is...
View ArticleThe Man Who Fell to Earth
For most of this year, Joe Biden has strutted across stages in New Hampshire and Iowa, and at swanky fundraisers in New York and California, as if he were already the Democratic nominee. Questions...
View ArticleMake the Guarantee Clause Great Again
The Supreme Court’s 5–4 ruling in Rucho v. Common Cause last month dealt a harsh blow to American democracy. For the last decade, federal courts were the strongest bulwark against partisan...
View ArticleMen of God and the Genesis of the U.S.-Saudi Relationship
On February 14, 1945, Saudi Arabia’s King Abdulaziz Ibn Saud, his advisors, and United States Envoy William Eddy crossed the gangplank from the USS Murphy to the USS Quincy for the first ever meeting...
View ArticleWhen John Paul Stevens Eviscerated Antonin Scalia
John Paul Stevens, who died on Tuesday, served on the Supreme Court for 35 years. His tenure, the second-longest in the court’s history, placed him in the middle of the great legal controversies of the...
View ArticleIt’s Not Strategy, It’s Racism
The idea that Donald Trump plays “3D chess” has never been particularly plausible; still, it was one of the most persistent themes of the 2016 election. The concept was (and is), to be fair, quite...
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