Tag: -homepage-top

I Know Why College Grades Are Going Up. It’s Definitely Not Wokeism.

Even professionally secure faculty like me know to anticipate the possibility of grade complaints, so when we assess student work, we spend significant time justifying the grades we assign. This isn’t all bad; it’s important for students to understand the rationale behind the feedback, regardless of the grade. It’s not enough to just write “wrong” […]

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The CEOs Are Warming to Trump

As Brian Beutler pointed out in his Off Message newsletter, this was worthy of alarm bells: “The question of whether elites, particularly center-right elites, choose to abide fascism is central to the survival of democracy.” In a later post, Beutler dove deeper into Dimon’s rhetoric, and found evidence that whatever ties that might have bound […]

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Why the Explosive Jobs Report Will Hit Trump Harder Than You Think

The jobs report is a major victory for President Biden, especially heading into the election, as several recent benchmarks, including strong GDP and falling inflation, suggest a booming economy that even consumers are starting to notice. Liberals and Democrats have had good reason to panic about Biden’s low approval numbers, particularly on the economy. Those […]

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The Messenger Didn’t Stand a Chance

The Messenger was a particularly spectacular failure, but it also highlights how desperate the media industry has become to find a viable business strategy, especially at scale. Various pivots—notably to video via Facebook and YouTube, and audio via podcasting—led to brief windfalls. Both have dried up in recent years, thanks to tech companies’ dominance in advertising, […]

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How Elon Musk’s Zany Compensation Arrangement Got Blown Up in Court

But wait, you say: Ambitious or not, Musk met the targets. Doesn’t that count for something? Well, sure. If I bet you that next year I will write a book that spends 26 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list, and if I write that book, and if the book spends 26 weeks on […]

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That Judge Is Right. Elon Musk Isn’t Worth What Tesla Pays Him.

But wait, you say: Ambitious or not, Musk met the targets. Doesn’t that count for something? Well, sure. If I bet you that next year I will write a book that spends 26 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list, and if I write that book, and if the book spends 26 weeks on […]

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This Is Republican Governance on Trumpism

Mayorkas would be the first Cabinet secretary in 148 years to be impeached by the House. The first and only one so far to be impeached was William Belknap, who served as secretary of war during the Ulysses Grant administration. At the time, U.S. soldiers in military forts on the western frontier purchased their supplies […]

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The Republicans Are Performing for an Audience of One

Mayorkas would be the first Cabinet secretary in 148 years to be impeached by the House. The first and only one so far to be impeached was William Belknap, who served as secretary of war during the Ulysses Grant administration. At the time, U.S. soldiers in military forts on the Western frontier purchased their supplies […]

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Republicans Reveal Their Endgame in the Fight Over Trans Kids

In the past three years, Republican legislators have proposed and passed a dizzying series of laws prohibiting gender-affirming care for trans kids. Due to these efforts, an estimated 36 percent of trans minors live in states where such care is now banned. Now, lawmakers are opening up about their “endgame” in this crusade: banning gender-affirming […]

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Trump Is Doing Biden a Massive Favor on the Border

It has become the latest Trumpian litmus test: Anyone who doesn’t bend the knee is deemed an apostate. In rallying Republicans against the deal, Trump is showing his dominance over the party, proving to Republican officeholders and primary voters alike that he’s still the boss. Trump does have policy objections to the bill, in his […]

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Last Week Was Bad for Trump. This Week Could Be Four, Five Times Worse.

Last week’s damage award in the E. Jean Carroll case was staggering. We had a little office pool going (well, just three of us, and we didn’t actually bet money). I came in highest at $40 million, so under traditional Price Is Right rules, I was the closest, but nevertheless light-years off. That rigged, deep […]

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How Surveillance Is Changing Our Most Intimate Relationships

Then there are the subtle ways in which the increasing digitization of our social and professional lives encourages us to surveil potential mates and assume they’re doing likewise. Daters are now replicating state surveillance, says lawyer and surveillance expert Heidi Boghosian. You might research, or put less kindly, stalk someone before meeting them. In theory […]

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Nikki Haley Might Actually Be Helping Trump—and Hurting Biden

At the same time, it may also be true that if Haley were to drop out, thereby kicking off a very early (and tortuously long) general election campaign, it would help Joe Biden. It is still too early to tell what effect Trump’s numerous trials and legal problems will have on the 2024 campaign. But […]

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The GOP’s Surrender to Trump Unmasks MAGA’s Real Agenda

It’s sometimes argued that Democrats too are unreasonable on immigration; that they refuse to accept restrictions that are politically and substantively imperative. It’s true that any compromise would have to include new restrictions on asylum (my preferred deal would trade that for legalization of some undocumented immigrants living here and expanded legal pathways for entry). […]

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Trump Forces Terrified Republicans to Bend the Knee Yet Again

It’s sometimes argued that Democrats too are unreasonable on immigration; that they refuse to accept restrictions that are politically and substantively imperative. It’s true that any compromise would have to include new restrictions on asylum (my preferred deal would trade that for legalization of some undocumented immigrants living here and expanded legal pathways for entry). […]

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Nikki Haley Is Going to Lay into Trump, and It Will Be Great to Watch

But conflict is always new, especially when there hasn’t been that much of it in a campaign characterized by the reluctance of Trump’s Republican opponents to go after him in anything but the gentlest of terms. In addition, reporters are always drawn to intraparty conflict, which they find inherently more interesting than conflict between parties. […]

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Trump Routs the Republican Establishment Once Again

DeSantis and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, in contrast, understood that the cruelty was the point. Both bet that voters wanted a candidate who sounded like Trump but was younger and more competent: They both leaned into the former president’s draconian anti-immigration record and made social issues, particularly regarding gender and sexuality, centerpieces of their campaign. The […]

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What the Republican Establishment Still Doesn’t Understand About Donald Trump

DeSantis and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, in contrast, understood that the cruelty was the point. Both bet that voters wanted a candidate who sounded like Trump but was younger and more competent: They both leaned into the former president’s draconian anti-immigration record and made social issues, particularly regarding gender and sexuality, centerpieces of their campaign. The […]

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Elise Stefanik’s Deranged Defense of Trump Offers Democrats a Lesson

Even Republican Senator John Thune admits he’s “worried” about Trump’s appeal in the “middle of the electorate,” pointedly noting that this could hurt Republicans downballot. A Washington Post poll finds that large majorities of independents view the prosecutions of Trump as legitimate under the law. And as Ron Brownstein details, a fair amount of data […]

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Donald Trump Is Losing It. Will the Media Make It a Story?

Pelosi, to Trump, was the former opposition leader in the House. To Biden, that would be Kevin McCarthy. So let’s imagine together that last Friday night, Joe Biden had been speaking at a campaign event and had said: “You know, Marty Walsh, Marty Walsh, Marty Walsh…it was very disappointing the way he criticized Trump privately […]

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It’s Time for Democrats to Make Some Enemies

That brings us to the other commodity with which Democrats need to fill the space left by the absent primary: derogatory information about Republicans. This is one area where Democrats simply don’t seem to be on the same page. As The New Republic’s Greg Sargent reported this week, Representative Jamie Raskin and his colleagues on […]

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Trump’s Angry Rant About His Legal Mess Reveals an Ugly MAGA Truth

As of last summer, surprisingly large percentages of Republicans—and even larger percentages of voters who view Trump favorably—say things have gotten so bad that political violence is justified and that we need a leader to break rules to set things right. Robert Jones, the president of PRRI, said these are reasonable proxies for getting at […]

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What the Media Gets Wrong About the So-Called Border Crisis

Until 2022, Honduras was ruled by Juan Orlando Hernández, a repressive, corrupt president who both the Obama and Trump administrations propped up—supposedly because he represented “stability.” (Fortunately, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York was not buying it. Hernández’s preferred successor lost the 2021 election, and soon thereafter the ex-president was on […]

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Will the Supreme Court Finish Trump’s War Against Regulation?

Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo addresses the difficulty of killing regulations by handing the job over to judges. It invites the Supreme Court to reverse its 1984 ruling in Chevron USA v. Natural Resources Defense Council. That decision created what’s known as “Chevron deference,” which directs federal judges to give regulatory agencies broad latitude in […]

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House Republicans Only Have One Way out of Their Government Funding Debacle

Giving up control of the House would allow them to at least plead powerlessness. They could return to a defensive posture, accusing Biden and the Democrats of reckless spending, and wash their hands of any deal that funds the government through the 2024 election. As for the Hunter Biden investigation, there is an argument that […]

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The Fourteenth Amendment Scolds Abetting Trump’s Return

And at the top of the plutocratic food chain, a billionaire’s charitable enterprise can become a philanthropic Death Star. This week, The Baffler’s Tim Schwab took a deep dive into the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and discovered that the entity essentially exists as a public relations stunt to justify Gates’s own staggering wealth. One […]

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John Fetterman Speaks: I Haven’t Changed a Lick

Fetterman stopped reading, slid his phone into the kangaroo pouch of his black cotton hoodie. “I’ve been told that they’re not going to be put in harm’s way, but if the border talks did put them in harm’s way, I can never and would never vote against their interest,” he said. “To be clear,” he […]

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Elise Stefanik’s Ugly “Hostages” Barb Points to Serious GOP Mayhem Ahead

The way vulnerable Republicans ran from this is telling. “They’re criminal defendants, not hostages,” said Representative Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania. “I don’t defend people who hit cops, who vandalized our Capitol,” added Nebraska’s Don Bacon, pointedly adding of the “hostage” language: “The broad, broad electorate doesn’t like it.” Given that Fitzpatrick and Bacon represent two […]

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Mike DeWine Is Following the Right’s Vicious Abortion Playbook on Trans Health Care

“In many ways, this outcome is even worse than the lack of a veto,” wrote Zinnia Jones, a researcher and writer of Gender Analysis, about DeWine’s new strategy. Jones has been analyzing and reporting on similar efforts at using administrative rules to limit access to gender-affirming care, as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis attempted in 2022. […]

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