Against the Consensus Approach to History
In the mid-1940s, Edmund S. Morgan, a mild-mannered young historian, was teaching at Brown and making a name in the quiet field of early American studies. Having published a slim, well-received...
View ArticleRight to Work on a Hot Planet
By 1961, Charles Koch had stacked up three engineering degrees and was back home in Wichita, Kansas, to join the family business of oil refining, pipelines, and manufacturing. His father, Fred, was at...
View ArticleBan Trump and Break Up Facebook
Donald Trump wants back on Facebook, and he’s willing to go to court over it. Except in this case, it’s a strange kind of judicial authority: the Facebook Oversight Board, a Facebook-funded body that...
View ArticleHow Do You Deradicalize a Cop?
Even before the violence at the Capitol on January 6, when supporters of Donald Trump drawn from the ranks of MAGA rallygoers, anti-government militias, and QAnon stormed the building and breached the...
View ArticleWhat Happened to the Intern Revolution?
“Do you think we’ll ever use unpaid interns?” a friend once asked while we were being used as unpaid interns. It was 2011, in the thick of the long slog of the Great Recession, and we were both working...
View ArticleThe Fossil Fuel Industry Thinks It Will Have a Good Year Under Biden
The oil industry spent much of Joe Biden’s first week in office publicly squawking in protest. The American Petroleum Institute called his decision to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline a “significant...
View ArticleThe True Cost of Energy Monopolies
For the vast majority of North Carolina’s 10 million–plus residents, there is only one option if they’d like to heat their home, turn on the lights, or charge their phone: Duke Energy. The largest...
View ArticleWhy Josh Hawley is Playing the Victim
Two and a half weeks ago, something terrible happened to Senator Josh Hawley. Something not only fundamentally opposed to American values but downright unconstitutional, as well. Something that should...
View ArticleHow Biden Can Achieve a Russian Restoration
Volcanic protests erupted across Russia in the first weekend of Joe Biden’s presidency, adding the challenge of Putinism under duress to the more familiar challenge of dealing with Vladimir Putin’s...
View ArticleLeon Black and the American Tradition of Impunity
After a year of mounting pressure from investors and outside critics, Leon Black, the billionaire chief executive of private equity giant Apollo Global Management, announced on Monday that he would...
View ArticleThe Senate Is Failing
For one ever-so-fleeting moment after the Capitol Hill riot earlier this month, it looked as if the GOP might take decisive action against Donald Trump. Ten House Republicans voted to impeach him for...
View ArticleRepublicans Don’t Care About “Unity”
“Unity” is an elusive word in American politics. More often than not, it suggests something utopian and silly—the promise of an end to partisanship, an epiphanic recognition of a common interest after...
View ArticleThe Age of the Disappearing Boss
One of my first bosses, the publisher of a digital media startup, sat just a few rows of desks away from me. She blended in fairly easily. The only thing that made her stick out was that her leather...
View ArticleFine, Keep the Filibuster. Kill the 60-Vote Requirement Instead.
The standoff for control over the U.S. Senate ended Monday with GOP leader Mitch McConnell declaring victory, even though he failed to secure his main demand: an official commitment, by Senate...
View ArticleHow The Dig and Ammonite Fetishize Britishness
With the release of the drama Ammonite, paleontology has joined palace intrigue and oil painting on the list of surprising provocations to lesbian sex in recent historical films. Ammonite is a...
View ArticleThe Persistence of Hate In American Politics
The historian Joan Wallach Scott started thinking of the judgment of history when the Charlottesville riots took place in 2017. The appearance of a large number of marchers chanting antisemitic slogans...
View ArticleThe D.C. Statehood Debate Is Coming, Like It or Not
While it remains unclear how Biden’s legislative agenda will take shape once coronavirus relief and impeachment have been dealt with, one item that will be competing for his attention will be statehood...
View ArticleThe GameStop Saga Shows How Casino Capitalism Is Eating the World
On a typical day in early January, the stock for GameStop, or GME—a beleaguered brick-and-mortar video game retailer undergoing downsizing—traded at around $18, with about 6.5 million shares changing...
View ArticleHere’s What Happens When Every Government Vehicle Is Electric
The best way to think of President Biden’s midweek flotilla of executive actions on climate is as a statement of intent: a signal of how this administration intends to approach the climate crisis....
View ArticleTribal Nations Deserve a Greater Say on Drilling Projects
President Joe Biden is looking to make good on a promise that every president since Bill Clinton has formally offered, in some shape or form: to uphold the sovereignty of tribal nations. If he actually...
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