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 put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right?” she said at a fundraiser in New York. “The racist, sexist, […]
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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 Dakota, to admire the odd, onion-domed sports and concert venue, which is decorated in byzantine “crop art” mosaics: Each year, the building’s […]
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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 last consensus issues in a broken American culture: We love to support our troops. “We celebrate our history, our people, and the […]
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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 moment, as the president regularly does. Sunday’s planned arrests of more than 2,000 families are a pitch-perfect sop to his base as he gears up for […]
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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 of right-wing conspiracy-mongers, provocateurs, and grifters. Defending the summit earlier in the day, he argued that he would be showcasing the future of media—and […]
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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 city poised to sink into the ocean—the moderators devoted a combined 15 minutes of airtime to the biggest existential threat humanity faces. We were hardly surprised. […]
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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 walkout in protest of management’s refusal to accede to their contract demands. The […]
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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 manager the deal of a lifetime for sex-trafficking underage girls, immunized his co-conspirators from potential charges, and denied his victims a chance for justice. […]
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The 2019 hurricane season has barely begun, and a troubling storm is already brewing. Heavy rains paralyzed New Orleans on Wednesday, with as much as ten inches falling in just a few hours, and the National Weather Service declared a “flash flood emergency.” This is just the beginning of what could be a truly awful […]
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With burgers-and-beer menu in front of me, it doesn’t seem that different at first from a typical American sports bar. The tattooed men nearby, maybe in their twenties, look like they spend every other day at the gym. There’s also a thirty-something wearing khakis and a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He’s […]
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The Republican Party’s approach to climate change used to be wholesale denial. Global warming was a hoax perpetrated either by greedy climate scientists or foreign countries that wanted control over America’s energy resources. Over time, Republicans began to admit that the climate was changing. But humans weren’t causing it, they insisted. The planet was warming […]
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The 2020 Democratic field now teems with proposals to mitigate rampaging wealth and income inequality, from Kamala Harris’s plan to increase tax credits for low- and moderate-income families to Elizabeth Warren’s wealth tax. Such plans overlook, however, the principal set of relations that skew American capitalism upward: the ownership and operational control of business enterprises. […]
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On Tuesday, House Democrats finally, at long last, took the Trump administration to court over its steadfast refusal to obey a subpoena for the president’s tax returns. The move came almost exactly six months after the party retook the House of Representatives and two months after Representative Richard Neal, chairman of the Ways and Means […]
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On July 1, 2018, the night of the election of president Andres Manuel López Obrador, I joined several friends to make our way to Mexico City’s Zócalo—the central square of this sprawling metropolis—where López Obrador would give his acceptance speech. Triumphant AMLO supporters flooded the streets. Firecrackers and car horns punctuated the celebratory hubbub. Confetti […]
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The annual G20 summit is a dry, diplomatic affair that rarely offers viral moments. This year’s gathering in Japan was an exception, thanks to Ivanka Trump. The French government posted a clip last weekend that shows British Prime Minister Theresa May and French President Emmanuel Macron deep in discussion as the president’s eldest daughter awkwardly […]
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Kevin Peterson is deliberate when he speaks. He pauses frequently, as though chewing over his next thought. In life as on YouTube, where he is one of a growing number of leftists and progressives who have attracted large online followings, he is disarmingly sincere. He tends to understate the case, introduce caveats, and admit uncertainty. […]
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When she stepped onto the debate stage in Miami last Thursday, Kamala Harris was running a presidential campaign that could best be described as “fine.” After entering the race with a huge rally in Oakland—and a strong $12 million raised in the first quarter—she largely receded to what’s been described as the contest’s “second tier.” […]
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The fall of 2017 dumps you roundly in the wrong. You catch yourself musing aloud to a friend, regarding Louis C.K.’s admission of masturbating in front of a large minority of his industry, about whether his having asked the women’s permission first shouldn’t count for something. Under her hard, silent look, you are forced to […]
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The Democratic debate last night wasn’t actually America’s introduction to Marianne Williamson. She has multiple New York Times best-selling books and was a regular fixture on The Oprah Winfrey Show for many years. In 1997, Mother Jones covered her fame and charisma—and shift to a more political message—in a prescient (and slightly mocking) profile. But […]
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Joe Biden had one job at his first Democratic debate. He didn’t have to win, but he couldn’t lose. He was there to remind everyone that he was a jovial grandpa—someone who would take his gloves off for Donald Trump, but put them back on for everyone else. He would take every opportunity to play […]
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