Tag: -homepage-top

Trump Will Be a Dictator on Day One and Every Day Thereafter

“We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government but in the media,” he said Tuesday on a podcast hosted by Steve Bannon, another close Trump adviser. “Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections—we’re going to […]

Read More

COP28 Is Where People Go to Make Promises They Don’t Intend to Keep

A draft negotiating text released Tuesday morning UAE time shows that such a phaseout is indeed being considered by countries currently haggling over what the final, codified takeaways from the stocktake will be. “An orderly and just phase out of fossil fuels” is listed as “Option 1.” Option 2 calls for accelerating “efforts towards phasing […]

Read More

The COP28 Climate Talks: So Many Pledges, So Little Progress

A draft negotiating text released Tuesday morning UAE time shows that such a phaseout is indeed being considered by countries currently haggling over what the final, codified takeaways from the stocktake will be. “An orderly and just phase out of fossil fuels” is listed as “Option 1.” Option 2 calls for accelerating “efforts towards phasing […]

Read More

Yes, They’re Pro-Confederacy. But They’re Just the Nicest Ladies.

“And when I say ‘pitiful’…,” he paused, trying to interpret how the UDC handled the incident. “There’s this sense of grandness from their perspective about what they’re doing,” he continued, “and that did not feel grand.” I’m accustomed to the UDC’s rebuffs, but I found it striking that the group refused St. Paul’s, a neighbor […]

Read More

The Cost of Overcorrecting on Lyndon Johnson and Vietnam

His reputation changed in the early 2000s, as more historians and Americans started to look beyond Vietnam in assessing his tenure. The tide started to turn as much more attention was focused on the sheer breath of domestic accomplishments that he left behind. Lectures, books, films, and television reintroduced Americans to the nation’s thirty-sixth commander […]

Read More

Let’s Admit It: “Bidenomics” Has Failed

In 1984, the nation had been grappling with inflation rates higher than 3 percent annually since Lyndon Johnson was in the White House. For 15 years, Americans had grown inured to picking up a can of Campbell’s soup and discovering stickers with three different prices on it, each one higher than the last. That was […]

Read More

Why “Bidenomics” Failed

In 1984, the nation had been grappling with inflation rates higher than 3 percent annually since Lyndon Johnson was in the White House. For 15 years, Americans had grown inured to picking up a can of Campbell’s soup and discovering stickers with three different prices on it, each one higher than the last. That was […]

Read More

Henry Kissinger Only Cared About One Thing

Far from blemishing his record, Kissinger’s willingness to inflict remorseless violence in the service of an abstract conception of U.S. grand strategy was precisely his appeal. Kissinger’s crimes—a nonexhaustive list would include the illegal carpet-bombings of Cambodia and Laos, the extermination campaigns in Bangladesh and East Timor, and the support for right-wing military juntas from […]

Read More

The U.S. Is in a Spectacularly Bad Position to Talk About Climate Change Right Now

The U.S. has no plan to proactively phase out so-called “unabated” fossil fuel production, despite the pledge it’s made to that effect. There are also no assurances that emissions from ever-expanding fossil fuel production can in fact be abated—a term that refers to capturing and storing carbon emissions—at any meaningful scale. Kerry, meanwhile, said during […]

Read More

At the U.N. Climate Talks, the U.S. Is Just Another Petrostate

The U.S. has no plan to proactively phase out so-called “unabated” fossil fuel production, despite the pledge it’s made to that effect. There are also no assurances that emissions from ever-expanding fossil fuel production can in fact be abated—a term that refers to capturing and storing carbon emissions—at any meaningful scale. Kerry, meanwhile, said during […]

Read More

If Trump Wins Again, There May Be No Stopping Him

Finally, there is the Twenty-Second Amendment. Since its ratification in 1951, all presidents have been limited to two full terms in office. That prohibition is absolute: Neither Congress nor the electorate can suspend or lift it. It is also deeply ingrained in American culture. George Washington established it as a tradition by refusing to run […]

Read More

No, TikTok, Joe Biden Doesn’t Control the Price of a Quarter Pounder

Relatedly, the idea that the economy is horrible and that it’s all Biden’s fault has taken firm hold on social media. That Washington Post piece I linked to above about the McDonald’s TikTok story cited a consultant who tracks these things as observing that chatter on the site around #economycollapsing went berserk over the past […]

Read More

The Ultimate Cost of Biden’s Refusal to Call for a Full Cease-fire in Gaza

More bad news for Biden: Young voters tend to be loyal not to a party or candidate but to their preferred policy objectives, often voting on a single issue. They didn’t vote for Biden in 2020; they voted against Trump, more specifically his policy agenda. They weren’t excited about Biden, but their lack of enthusiasm […]

Read More

Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley Have One Chance to Stop Trump

Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis are the two candidates who, based on polls and finances (including Super PACs), appear to have the staying power to challenge Trump in New Hampshire. With his anti-Trump fervor, Chris Christie is also betting on the Granite State. But Christie, who finished sixth in the 2016 New Hampshire primary, is […]

Read More

Israel Arms the World’s Autocrats—With Weapons Tested on Palestinians

How to summarize nearly a century of Zionist and Palestinian bloodshed and peacekeeping—of industrialization and expulsion, the birth of a “rules-based international order,” war, occupation, the DotCom boom? Loewenstein begins with his own story: He grew up in a “liberal Zionist” community in Melbourne—his grandparents had fled the Nazis in 1939, arriving in Australia as […]

Read More

Reconsidering the American Fridge

I spent the past week glued to my phone, as I’m sure many of you did, scrolling through endless news and horrible videos of the violence in the Middle East. Sometimes, when global disasters or conflicts happen, people will whip up an infographic pointing out the (occasionally tenuous) connections to climate change; I generally roll […]

Read More

The Red State Brain Drain Isn’t Coming. It’s Happening Right Now.

For Tyler, the final straw was a dustup over a video he showed his class a few months after he collected his prize. The video was about the seventeenth-century English settlement in Jamestown, Virginia. It was hosted by John Green, author of the 2012 young adult novel The Fault in Our Stars. Green has engaged […]

Read More

The Bizarre Reason a Colorado Judge Didn’t Disqualify Trump From Running in 2024

Two conservative law scholars, William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen, also foresaw this argument and dismissed it out of hand. “No one denies that the President is an executive branch officer holding executive office,” they wrote. “At the risk of belaboring the obvious: Article II refers to the ‘office’ of President innumerable times. It specifies […]

Read More

The Real Reason Why Biden Shouldn’t Drop Out

Those who have been watching the Republican debates (not necessarily a recommended activity) probably will have noticed that, in a technical sense, both Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis have grown more adept over the last three months. That is the learning curve at work. A bygone example illustrates this point for me. Gary Hart—the Democratic […]

Read More

This Weird Evangelical Oil Company Supports Israel—and Seems to Have No Oil

Despite Zion having been granted a new exploration license from the Israeli government in September, the company’s prospects seem, by its own account, bleak. Activities are suspended “as a result of the Israel-Hamas War,” per a quarterly report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on November 9. So far this year the company has […]

Read More

This Oil Company Wants Your Money, Your Prayers, and Your Support for Israel

Despite Zion having been granted a new exploration license from the Israeli government in September, the company’s prospects seem, by its own account, bleak. Activities are suspended “as a result of the Israel-Hamas War,” per a quarterly report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on November 9. So far this year the company has […]

Read More

The City That Just Might Decide the 2024 Election

“The reason that North Side Milwaukee looks like it looks, with abandoned buildings and a lot of vacant commercial space … A.O. Smith started doing what everybody else did. They started making those automobile frames down in Mexico,” he says. “When they shut down [in Milwaukee], those jobs never got replaced.” “You’re starting to get […]

Read More

Republicans Are Obsessed With Dead Whales

President Trump took the opportunity to congratulate U.S. Rep Jeff Van Drew, an outspoken wind critic, on Truth Social. (“The whales, which are dying in record numbers because of these wind scams, are very happy tonight,” he wrote. “Way to go Jeff. The people of New Jersey love you!”) Meanwhile, Michael Shellenberger, a popular figure […]

Read More

Biden Is Ignoring His Own Advice About Running for President

Seen through this lens, the answer to the question that baffles some pundits—why is Biden so unpopular?—seems fairly obvious. The antidote to a world enmeshed in wars, a leaden economy, and an environmental catastrophe is not a mumble-prone 80-year-old incumbent. There’s no tactful way to say it: We want to face the apocalypse with Bill […]

Read More

Why Biden Shouldn’t Run for Reelection—According to Biden Himself

Seen through this lens, the answer to the question that baffles some pundits—why is Biden so unpopular?—seems fairly obvious. The antidote to a world enmeshed in wars, a leaden economy, and an environmental catastrophe is not a mumble-prone 80-year-old incumbent. There’s no tactful way to say it: We want to face the apocalypse with Bill […]

Read More

It’s Official: With “Vermin,” Trump Is Now Using Straight-up Nazi Talk

I began to read what I could about the Nazi genocide, which really was very easy because there was actually rather little available in English. The most shockingly relevant anti-Semitic work I found was The Eternal Jew, a 1940 German “documentary” that portrayed Jews in a ghetto swarming in tight quarters, bearded caftaned creatures, and […]

Read More

The Fashion Empire Built on Stolen Ideas

“We don’t do this for [return on investment],” she said. “And I will just say, the question comes up, candidly, a little too much.” About five months later, Microsoft discontinued most of its ergonomic keyboards. When asked about sales projections for Victoria’s Secret’s adaptive line, chief diversity officer Lydia Smith, like Lay-Flurrie, “declined to share […]

Read More

Let’s Give Black World War II Vets What We Promised

extending to surviving Black World War II veterans and their direct descendants the housing and education benefits denied under the 1944 G.I. Bill. Veterans and their descendants could get access to the VA Loan Guaranty Program, as well as post-9/11 G.I. Bill educational assistance provisions, which grant financial assistance for school and job training. This […]

Read More

After Wednesday’s Debate, the GOP Primary Is a Three-Horse Race

In policy terms, not much was new. Both candidates underlined yet again that, as if America didn’t have enough problems, they both seemed eager to get into a war with Mexico over fentanyl. Haley said flatly, “We’ll send special operations in to take out the cartels.” And DeSantis’s tough-guy bluster seemed almost comic. “I’m telling […]

Read More