Mega-Donor Ambassadors Are Corrupting American Diplomacy
Those who’ve followed the Ukraine scandal are familiar by now with Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union. He’s a key player in the alleged scheme to subvert President Donald...
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Facing Up to the Past, German-Style
A compulsion to find meaning in chaos has produced many Theories of Trumpism. Initially shocked by such an erratic candidate and a startlingly racist campaign immediately following the United States’...
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Trump, Blackface, and Guns
For most Americans, the 2019 political calendar has been overshadowed by next year’s presidential battle royale, which will feature an embattled incumbent, possible impeachment proceedings in Congress,...
View ArticleTrump’s Claims About Fighting Corruption Are a Joke
In February of 2017, just a few weeks into President Donald Trump’s reign, GOP legislators employed powers granted to them under the 1996 Congressional Review Act (CRA)—a legislative tactic described,...
View ArticleThe Class War of Fare-Dodging Crackdowns
With New York City making the decision to shut down Rikers Island, and Americans increasingly aware of the deep inequities of the current justice system, one would almost think the U.S. is on the brink...
View ArticleDid a Drug Company Illegally Experiment on a Louisiana Prisoner?
In May, a drug company called BioCorRx began offering free Naltrexone implants, a slow-release drug that reduces opioid cravings, to incarcerated people. The first prisoner underwent the surgical...
View ArticleAfter Deadspin
Nick Denton, in the last post published by Gawker before it was shuttered in 2016, laid out the structural reasons for his website’s ruin: a new oligarchic, “techlord” class that was more than willing...
View ArticleJ Street Is Minding the Mainstream
Twelve hundred college students sat—and, frequently enough, jumped and applauded—in a cavernous convention space in Washington, D.C., on Sunday, rallying to get the Democratic National Committee to...
View ArticleFast, Casual, and Out of Control
The fast-casual burrito-slinging behemoth Chipotle was awash in Halloween-themed promotions this month. Cheap “boorritos”! TikTok contests! But no haul of spooky goodies could hide the spirit of labor...
View ArticleWould J.D. Salinger Be Famous Today?
Photographs are not allowed at the New York Public Library’s exhibition about J.D. Salinger. You have to leave your cellphone outside the small jewel box room where the library has installed a...
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Inside the World of Misinformation
For centuries information was scarce. The math was simple: The higher up the societal food chain you were, the better the information you had. And it could be explosive. Information made Microsoft and...
View ArticleBiden’s Super PAC Buddy Has a Paul Manafort Problem
Earlier this week, Joe Biden’s campaign, struggling on the polling and fundraising fronts alike, finally dropped its reservations about relying on super PACs for support. The details of the new Unite...
View ArticleThe Fight to Save Chaco Canyon
On Wednesday, the House voted to pass the Chaco Cultural Heritage Area Protection Act, which would permanently ban any drilling or mining within a ten-mile radius of Chaco Canyon. The canyon is a...
View ArticleTrump’s Defenders Think We’re Idiots
For the past four weeks, I’ve been monitoring the evolving defenses put forth by President Trump’s allies. They began with flat-out denials of wrongdoing that didn’t survive casual brushes with...
View ArticleThe Politics of Impeachment Have Reached the Point of No Return
The House vote to approve rules for the impeachment inquiry has not only taken us into a new stage of the House’s formal proceedings, but into a new realm of impeachment politics as well. Having...
View ArticleL’Simcha: Tree of Life
Eleven elders were executed in a Pittsburgh synagoguein the deadliest attack on jewish americans in history— & there’s no way to make sense of this sentence in language.to diagram or scan it. The...
View ArticleGlobal Warming Is Already Destroying New England’s Fisheries
To wake up in the Northeastern United States—as California blazes and Japan digs itself out of typhoon damage—is to experience an uneasy gratitude for all that is not burning, battered or underwater....
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Moving Beyond Misogyny
Before the smoke had cleared after the terrorist attacks of September 11, Americans were already asking, “Why do they hate us?” The question felt useless, even whiny. It was also unanswerable, since...
View ArticleKeep American Skies Open to Russia
If you’re a nuclear superpower and you’re trying to convince the only other nuclear superpower that you’re not about to attack them, what can you do to build that trust? This was one key problem of the...
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Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other Deserves All the Prizes
Bless the artist whose work is so sui generis that there’s no noun to accurately describe it. I’m thinking of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, often called a “nonfiction novel” for taking liberties with...
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