In 1933, a new craze took New York society by storm: the scavenger hunt. It began at a party that Elsa Maxwell, a prominent gossip columnist, threw at the Waldorf Astoria. Her guests were divided into small teams who competed against each other to obtain a list of items that included a live monkey, a […]
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The Overlooked Truths About Biden’s Age
In terms of optics and in terms of energy, I wish President Biden were younger. There’s no point in pretending otherwise. And from the casual conversations all around me and the formal polling of voters, I know I’m in robust company. A great many Americans consider his age unideal, and that belief is why there’s […]
Read MoreScreens Are Everywhere in Schools. Do They Actually Help Kids Learn?
A few weeks ago, a parent who lives in Texas asked me how much my kids were using screens to do schoolwork in their classrooms. She wasn’t talking about personal devices. (Smartwatches and smartphones are banned in my children’s schools during the school day, which I’m very happy about; I find any argument for allowing […]
Read MoreElon Musk Is Preoccupied With Something He Doesn’t Understand
There is no particular mystery to unravel around the political views of Elon Musk, the billionaire technology and social media executive. He is — and for some time, has been — on the far right wing of American politics. He is an enthusiastic purveyor of far-right conspiracy theories, using his platform on the website X […]
Read MoreMaking the Case for Capitalism
Combating the climate crisis is the ultimate long-term challenge. Can society rapidly overhaul energy production, transportation, heavy industry, agriculture and more in order to prevent truly catastrophic global warming? The jury is still out, and time is running short. And there are very real questions whether such a quest can succeed within the constraints of […]
Read MoreAre Immigrants the Secret to America’s Economic Success?
When we accuse a politician of dehumanizing some ethnic group, we’re usually being metaphorical. The other day, however, Donald Trump said it straight out: Some migrants are “not people, in my opinion.” Well, in my opinion, they are people. I’d still say that even if the migrant crime wave Trump and his allies harp on […]
Read MoreWhat Makes a Coincidence Meaningful?
There are two kinds of people in the world: People who say, “What a coincidence,” and people who say, “Just a coincidence.” Same facts, different reactions. Are you the “what a” kind or the “just a” kind? I want your emails. I’m a “just a coincidence” person. I attended an economics conference in the World […]
Read MoreKellyanne Conway Has Some Weak Advice for Her Party
It is beyond obvious at this point that abortion is the Achilles’ heel of the Republican Party. The prospect of a national abortion ban almost certainly helped Democrats stave off a red wave in the 2022 midterm elections, and assisted them the following year in both statewide and state legislative races in Virginia and Kentucky. […]
Read MoreShare of Democratic Registrations Is Declining, but What Does It Mean?
Newly registered voters, who are disproportionately young and nonwhite, have tended to lean Democratic. That’s been less and less true during the Biden era. A majority of states ask people to select a party affiliation when they register, and last year newly registered Democrats made up only about 53 percent of those who chose a […]
Read MoreThe Friends Who Got Away
Where did J. go? For a while there he was such a treasured part of my life, someone I thought about frequently, someone I yearned to see, someone whose dinner company I relished, someone whose emails made me smile. I can’t remember how we met — a mutual acquaintance, I think — but after we […]
Read MoreThe Grotesque Rise of Mark Robinson
Ah, the double edge of a Donald Trump endorsement. On the one hand, the MAGA chieftain has commanded his tribe to vote for you, and that can be enough to propel a candidate into the winner’s circle. On the other hand, you’re stuck with whatever loopy language and loopier logic he used. In endorsing Mark […]
Read MoreThe 2020 Election Is Back
It’s Biden vs. Trump. To me, that’s the only real takeaway from Super Tuesday, when President Biden and Donald J. Trump won nearly all of the delegates at stake. It will still be a week or two before they officially clinch their nominations, but at this point the primaries are effectively over. The general election […]
Read More‘Fix the Damn Roads’: How Democrats in Purple and Red States Win
When Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania got an emergency call about I-95 last June, his first thought turned to semantics. “When you say ‘collapse,’ do you really mean collapse?” he recalled wondering. Highways don’t typically do that, but then tractor-trailers don’t typically flip over and catch fire, which had happened on an elevated section of […]
Read MoreThe Big Change Between the 2020 and 2024 Races: Biden Is Unpopular
Let’s just say it: Joe Biden should be expected to win this election. He’s an incumbent president running for re-election with a reasonably healthy economy against an unpopular opponent accused of multiple federal crimes. And yet President Biden is not winning, at least not now. Polls show him trailing in states worth well over 270 […]
Read MoreThe Meaning of the Super Bowl ‘He Gets Us’ Ad
During Super Bowl Sunday, a 60-second ad aired about Jesus Christ, and no one seemed angrier about it than Christians. The ad depicts a series of images of one person washing another person’s feet. Each pairing seems unlikely. An oil rig worker washes the feet of a climate activist. A cop washes the feet of […]
Read MoreHistory, by and of Women
This week, I’ve been spending time in what I’ve come to think of as the Anne de Courcy extended universe. De Courcy, a British journalist and prolific author of popular history books, writes about the past through the stories of women of the era. Some of her books are biographies of famous figures, such as […]
Read MoreNot an Ordinary Special Election, and Yet a Typical Result
As I prepared to write this ahead of Tuesday’s special election to replace George Santos in New York’s Third District, two completely different outcomes seemed easy to imagine — or explain away. One was that the results would be excellent for Democrats, like most special elections this year. If their strength was just about the […]
Read MoreFor Voters, When Does Old Become Too Old?
When a reporter asked President Biden on Thursday night about concerns about his age, his first instinct was to reject the premise. He replied in part: “That is your judgment. That is not the judgment of the press.” The question was about the public’s concern, not the press, but either way the concerns over his […]
Read MoreIceland Is Living in our Future
I spent the first half of this week reporting in Iceland, and I came away convinced that the country provides a window into our collective future in at least three important ways. Iceland uses remarkably few fossil fuels to power its economy and heat its homes. Instead, 85 percent of the country’s energy comes from […]
Read MoreHow Shrinking Populations Fuel Divisive Politics
In the 2000 film “Almost Famous,” Cameron Crowe’s comedy-drama about rock musicians in the 1970s, the character played by Zooey Deschanel at one point gives her younger brother some advice. “Listen to ‘Tommy’ with a candle burning, and you’ll see your whole future,” she says. I’m going to borrow that thought for today’s newsletter: Stare […]
Read MoreTurnout Data Reveals the Core of Democrats’ Success in Special Elections
Over the last year, two different sets of data have yielded two very different theories of where Democrats stand heading into 2024. On one hand, there’s polling. Survey after survey shows President Biden even or trailing against Donald J. Trump. Voters, especially young and nonwhite voters, appear extremely dissatisfied with the president. No matter how […]
Read MoreTrump’s Running Mate? It’s Gotta Be Vivek Ramaswamy.
The conventional wisdom has long been that a presidential candidate should pick a running mate who provides some extra vitamins or different flavors. If you’re a rib-eye, you do broccoli. If you’re pralines and cream, you choose cookie dough. But if you’re Donald Trump, that makes no sense whatsoever. You double down, which means you […]
Read MoreWhat Murder Mysteries Solve
At the beginning of December, I turned to whodunit fiction as a respite from the accumulated exhaustion of a long year, and the more recent stresses of writing about the horrors of the war in Israel and Gaza. But why, if that was my purpose, would I find solace in such an inherently violent genre? […]
Read MoreIs the European Union’s Economy Really Worse Off Than America’s?
In my most recent column I had a bit of fun with Kristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota, who has ominously warned that President Biden will turn us into Europe. I joked that this would mean adding five or six years to our life expectancy. When I shared Noem’s remarks on social media, some […]
Read MoreNever Trumpers Never Had a Chance
The Republican presidential primary is all but over. Even if Nikki Haley stays in the race, it’s hard to see her winning a single primary, including the one in her home state of South Carolina next month. Even though Haley received an impressive 43 percent of the New Hampshire vote, her electoral reality is grim. […]
Read MoreThe Victorious, Censorious, Malicious Donald Trump
About an hour and a half after Donald Trump was declared the winner of the Republican primary in New Hampshire, he appeared onstage at a victory rally in Nashua, N.H., to bask in his accomplishment and bash lesser mortals. Bask-and-bash is his preferred M.O., an indulgence of the love he feels for himself and the […]
Read MoreGood News for Rich Uncles and Orphaned Heiresses.
You may remember that I’ve been blitzing my way through murder mysteries this winter. As it turns out, one Agatha Christie mystery is fun, two are interesting, but once you get past three or four, they start to raise real questions about the economic incentives of the early 20th century. If Jane Austen made a […]
Read MoreIt’s Fair to Ask: Is the Republican Race Over?
Is the Republican presidential primary over already? Not quite, but it’s a reasonable question after New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary delivered a clear victory for Donald J. Trump on Tuesday night. And if your definition of “over” is whether Mr. Trump is now on track to win without a serious contest, the answer is probably “yes.” […]
Read MoreJane Goodall Says 2024 is the ‘Most Consequential Voting Year’
When I caught up with Jane Goodall in 2019, she was calling on consumers and businesses to make responsible choices and protect the natural world. Now she is telling people something much more simple: vote. The celebrated primatologist thinks governments around the globe are not working hard enough to combat climate change. And in a […]
Read MoreWhy Does Consumer Sentiment Follow the Stock Market?
A funny thing happened on the way to the 2024 election. Well, actually, a lot of funny things happened. (Ron DeSantis!) But I’m talking about the economy. As I wrote in my latest column, there seems to have been a sudden upswing in consumer sentiment, which is finally starting to catch up with the reality […]
Read MoreWe Need a New Word for ‘Plagiarism’
Leave it to a linguist to say this, but we need another word. In this case, we need a word for the relatively minor, “duplicative language” version of plagiarism. To present someone else’s ideas as one’s own is unquestionably wrong, in academia and elsewhere. However, to cite boilerplate statements — the assumptions basic to a […]
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